Soaps You Could Never Get Into (It's Not You, It's Me)

[Mitch]

Santa Barbara..it was just a mess but a mess that thought really, really highly of itself and its "intelligence and wit" because its Mom told it so( this being the soap mags.)

Sunset Beach..its just played like a parody..kind of like "The Sun Also Rises," instead of a real soap. The actors were plastic, not sexy!

 

Passions-well I LOVED the self referential supernatural part of it, with Tabby and Timmy practically stopping to wink at the audience...(and sometimes actually did..) but then..the Sunset Beach soap parody part started with really bad actors with their shirts off...(though I did like Alastair Crane...but he obviously was not running around with his shirt off!0

[SoapDope]

Growing up I watched CBS soaps. I thought ABC soaps were silly and contrived. I remember a friend making fun of Susan Lucci and saying they refused to watch her. Days also looked stupid to me in the 90's, especially when they were getting all this love and fanfare with Marlena's devil possession etc...The soap media thought Days could do no wrong then. Looking at episodes of the 60's and 70's, I can understand what a great show it was, especially under Bill Bell. 

[amybrickwallace]

 

Even though I never watched SB when it was originally on, I eventually saw the majority of it on YouTube. The first year was a mess, but they were off and running from about 1985 to 1990. 1991 really was the death knell (Marcy Walker choosing to leave and the Dobsons firing Carrington Garland) and A Martinez' departure a year later was the final nail in the coffin. By then, it didn't even feel like the same show.

 

Still, I can see why SB wouldn't have been everyone’s cup of tea. The plots could get overly wacky and no family save the Capwells had any consistent longevity.

 

[Faulkner]

The show is a bit all over the place, and there were so many random forgettable characters. Sooo many. But when it sang, it really sang. For a soap fan, I’m not a romance guy, and even I swoon watching Cruz and Eden. Marcy and A were glorious together, and I really love that Eden could be such a bitch lol.

[Soap-princess]

All My Children and Days. 
AMC seemed to be a contrived version of Y&R or Bold with inferior talent and sets. Days..Just never interested me.

[amybrickwallace]

For some reason, the NYC-based soaps have always intrigued me far more than the ones taped in LA. I'm not sure why, especially because the first soaps I followed were DAYS and GH.

[AmandainNC28655]

I could never get into Passions or Sunset Beach.  Passions was just too off the wall for my taste.

[Pine Charles]

Same.

 

I think the West Coast soaps always seemed more plastic and less “real”.

AMC had characters like people I would actually see amongst day-to-day life.

And while AMC did have “pretty people”, they also did a good job at diversifying the cast in terms of looks and the social classes of the characters..... of course, I’m talking about during the heyday period. 

Edited March 3, 2021 by Pine Charles

[Planet Soap]

I was thinking that myself. AMC --outside of B&B-- is the closest soap to Y&R. Mostly down to earth stories and glamorous back in its day, only AMC is better at exploring social issues and casual dialogue.

 

I'm trying to get in to Marland era As the World turns but there's just so many characters. I love ATWT but can never quite get all the way in with because I don't know who's, and what connection they have half the time.

Edited March 3, 2021 by ironlion

[Faulkner]

Even though ATWT was originally my mom’s show and not mine (I watched OLTL), I had gleaned enough from my repeated glimpses of the Marland era to pretty easily jump in during the mid-‘90s when I became a more regular viewer. But by that time, a lot of Marland’s characters were gone, and only the big big names were left: Lucinda, Lily, Tom, Barbara, Margo, Hal, John, Lisa, and others.

 

It’s funny: I have such a love-hate relationship with AMC. While I always respected it, something about its tone always bugged me EXCEPT for Lorraine Broderick’s tenure in the mid-‘90s, when I just plain loved it. I don’t have the same uncomplicated allegiance to it that I do Y&R or GL, even though both of those shows deeply disappointed me.

[amybrickwallace]

 

I can see that, and also the NYC soaps had the luxury of mining the rich theatrical landscape for stage-trained actors. 

[Bill Bauer]

 

I agree. I sampled most of the soaps from the 70s on and I strangely never could get into any of the ABC soaps. I say "strangely" because I don't know why all the soaps I never liked just happen to be on the same network. I have nothing against the network and they all had different writers. storylines, actors, etc. The only one I sort of, kind of got into was Ryan's Hope but it was never one of my favourites. I just had an aversion to ABC soaps and I don't really know why.  

[Soap-princess]

Lol. Passions was an acquired taste. I think it was creative for new age soap fans and not the established ones. 

[amybrickwallace]

I know this is soap sacrilege, but I have tried to get into DS and just can't. Maybe it's just because each actor plays multiple characters and that is too confusing for me.

[beebs]

Yeah I've never really cared for it, either. I think I just have something against anything supernatural, which is why Passions completely turned me off as well (though I can overlook DAYS' kookier forays for some reason). PC stops existing to me once the vampires start for this same reason.