SOD from August 1995: The One Lesson Soaps Refuse To Learn

[Vizion]

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[soapfan770]

They sure didn’t learn! By the summer of 1999 GL was complete giving airtime to all

the San Cristobel and Santos characters with no vets in any of the episodes whatsoever. 
 

Then there was that trend with ATWT of bringing back legacy characters but some of them came back with completely opposite personalities as they had before.

[AbcNbc247]

AW was definitely a victim of the "Younger Characters" mandate. It ultimately led it to its cancellation.

 

I think it depends a lot on the writer too. If you have a talented writer who develops his or her characters well enough and talented actors playing these new characters, they're really shouldn't be that big of a problem. 

 

Look at DAYS. In 1980, most of Nina Laemele's characters were disasters, but when the Bradys and Dimera families were introduced, they practically saved the show. Same goes for AW. So many characters that were introduced in 1982 were duds, but look what Cass, Felicia and Donna did for that show not even a year later.

[Franko]

Oh, come off it, Claire Labine. Lois was a total writer's pet and you know it.

(This is coming from someone who loved the character.)

 

Different times: the shocking idea of Roseanne without Roseanne.

[Paul Raven]

This is an error repeated over and over. Especially frustrating when there are characters available who could take the place of these newbies and still fulfill the same story function.

ATWT never brought back Frannie or Andy.

On Days where is Andrew Donovan?

Colleen Carlton gets killed off on Y&R.

The list goes on and on...

[j swift]

SOD always struck such an odd tone for a "fan magazine."  They were consistent in their argument about new characters, without any factual support from the fan base.  People who wrote to the magazine to complain were hardly a random survey of fan opinions, and yet their opinions were treated as if they were gospel.  It is similar to the misunderstanding that continues in popular culture wherein audience response is  conflated with Twitter reactions.  These are often the biases of the loudest portions of the audience and do not necessarily reflect the audience as a whole. 

 

Even the introduction to the argument lacks logical coherence.  They espouse that scenes with two new characters interacting are difficult for the audience to understand.  However, soaps are notorious for repetition because they are on five times a week.  So, multiple scenes where new characters will inevitably use their full names when replying to each other ("Connor McCabe what are you doing here?") are usually fairly easy to comprehend.  Thus, the whole thesis fails to hold water.  It could equally be argued that a lack of support for new characters was the downfall of soaps like Santa Barbara and Search for Tomorrow, which floundered to hold on to their audience once established actors left and poor writing that failed to create replacements with unique personalities.   Also, if every new character is related to existing characters then we get redundancies (like GH's Dawn and Emily as interchangeable Quartermaine foster daughters) rather than exploring other parts of the soap village.  I would suggest that answer is not always about bringing on a new generation, but establishing intriguing characters who are supported by well conceived plots.

 

Finally, who writes an entire article about the fan's support for preexisting characters and includes a side bar about how long term actors should be replaced if they hold the production "hostage" for more money? 

Edited July 9, 2020 by j swift