SORAS

[Bill Bauer]

 

That was one of the many WTF? moments that GL pulled off in it's waning days. Not only did Jude's younger sister become his older sister but with Leah now being older it meant that Rick would have had to cheat on Mel with Harley which obviously never happened. 

[Dion]

 

 

 

I was thinking of Nicholas earlier actually.

 

I think it's commonly forgotten that Nicholas didn't actually go straight from 6 - 16. Instead, at roughly the same time Heather Tom joined, the show cast John Alden (Kay Alden's son) as Nicholas. I'm not entirely sure how old he was, but I think he was about 8 or 9 when Nicholas should have only been 2.

 

The main purpose of the pre-teen Nicholas seems to have been so Victor could fret about Jack replacing him as a father figure, as Jack was married to Nikki and living at the ranch during that time.

 

Then of course not too long after Victor returned from the dead he was complaining to Hope that Nikki had sent his son off to boarding school and the rest as they say is history...

 

[carolineg]

Sami/Eric/Belle/Brady bother me to no end.  Sami was 15 when she kidnapped baby Belle.  It's annoying to the audience to just forget that when her existence drove story for years.   Also Paul being Will's age is annoying because he was basically born right after Belle in the retcon.

 

 

[soapfan770]

I remember Belle around 2005/2006 mentioned her 21st birthday was coming up and I just a poster on another website at the time “Doesn’t that make Sami 37 years old?!?” I die laughing still!

[carolineg]

 

Haha!  it doesn't help that Martha Madison is practically the same age as Ali Sweeney either. And EM is about 10 years too old to play Brady.  But Sami became at grandma at like 33 lol  And they aged Claire way too quick as well.

I get why they didn't make Belle/Will contemporaries, but it would have been way more awesome if they did.  Imagine the drama.

Edited June 6, 2020 by carolineg

[All My Shadows]

And this is exactly what I  mean when I say IMPATIENT. At some point, where does the writer say "That would be a great story, but obviously, since Nicholas is TWO YEARS OLD, we're not ready for that yet, but man, in a couple of years, it'll be great!" I mean, by the early 90s, if I'm a soap writer, and SORAS has been going on for at least 30-40 years, then of course I'm going to use it, so I'm not bashing the writers who did use it at all. It's just the idea of it.

 

Like, I fully admit to being nearly cartoonish in my hatred for it

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Then de-SORASing. Someone who knows all the specific ages and years can outline the mess with Erica and Kendall on AMC, but we were supposed to buy Erica as being in her 40s throughout the 2000s. Like really?

[kalbir]

@All My Shadows @GLATWT88 @Dion Billy went from 6 to 16 in 1999 when David Tom was cast.

[carolineg]

It's the same way we bought Marlena being pregnant at 60.  And how she hasn't aged in years lol.  They are just daytime queens and we have to allow it lol.

[Jonathan]

 

Erica ages in reverse like Benjamin Button.

[SoapDope]

Victoria being aged with Heather Tom was a bit jarring, but Joshua Morrow becoming a teenage Nicholas overnight was mind blowing. How old is Nikki supposed to be these days ?  Melody Thomas Scott was born in 1956. 

 

Dylan was supposedly conceived in a half @$$ed rewrite of history during the cult story of 1980 (Steve Burton was born 1970)

Victoria was born in 1982 (Amelia Heinle was born in 1973)

Nicholas was born in 1988  (Joshua Morrow as born in 1974)

 

I was born in 1978 and technically older than all these characters, but they are all now older than me.....LOL

[titan1978]

I think soaps dragging out people getting together is also to blame from the writing standpoint.  
 

You have couples that are on and off for years so the show can build to a wedding payoff (they all used to do this, Bell talks about wedding payoffs being important in the 70’s even).  It was the main plot of the super couple era, to build to a lavish wedding.  The problem is they rarely take the same care and time after.  They want to skip to the next major life issue to generate drama.  So we usually get children quickly, and then the kids that survive their mothers being pushed down stairs and medical crisis and bus accidents go straight to unruly teens.

 

My biggest issue is that they SORAS these kids, then give us maybe one or two actual teen years before they start aging them up again and marrying them off.  It’s ridiculous!  They are so scared of any controversy, yet they want the hot teens to have relationships, so they age them to 18 as quick as possible so they can start having sex.  

And in this modern soap era, from 2000 on, we have fans and the stars of these shows unwilling to accept the older characters moving into appropriate stories to make room for the next generation.  So all these shows have a million vets not being properly used, a handful of characters in their mid 20’s to mid 30’s, and then new crops of teens that almost all vanish again every 4 years, leaving maybe one or two characters behind with no supporting peers.  DAYS has been particularly awful in this regard.

[Chris B]

I think the concept is necessary because without it you’d go long stretches of time with no teen storylines. US fans are so resistant to new families and that would be the only other way to have characters of all ages without SORAS.  

[soapfan770]

Haha I think TPTB realized their mistake and miscasting for Leah they almost erased her out of existence to the point that they didn’t even show her in GL’s finally year.

 

Haha that’s one of the few times I think it was alright to go ahead to SOARS a character given that John & Jill were already past their well past their prime. I suppose they could’ve made Phillip IV/Chance older and be the one to date Mac but I appreciated what we got back then I suppose.

[Dion]

IIRC they did at least have Billy off-screen for nearly a year because John had been written out and had taken Billy off to New York with him.

 

Yeah they could have, but then again I think the Romeo and Juliet angle wouldn't have worked as well with Phillip/Chance and Mac because Nina would most likely have been firmly in their corner and as Chance's mother, she would have basically told Jill to butt out!

[Darn]

 

It definitely bothers me less when the parents are older people. Like Victor and Kate having a son go from 4 to 16 was like...ok whatever.

 

I get annoyed when the parents are still young and viable and suddenly they have a teenager who serves no purpose. Y&R aged up Noah and then did nothing with him for years. What was the point? Now he's 30 and has never had a significant story.