Unpopular opinions: cancelled soaps edition

[amybrickwallace]

Passions was pretty bad in the beginning, but to be fair they had more time than SUN to improve.

[FrenchBug82]

I think Sunset Beach still had time to, if not improve, at least adapt to what it was and feel less out of sync.
When it started Aaron Spelling clearly thought that because he had had success in primetime, he'd have it easy in daytime too so the show was taking itself seriously.
It was jarring because the acting was often mediocre and the show looked and felt so incredibly cheap (which is a real shocker considering that should have been the one thing AS knew how to do well).
It is once they realized what they were putting out was mostly trash and embraced it - like the infamous turkey baster story - that it became a bit more fun and enjoyable. It lowered its pretensions and didn't pretend to be anything more than it was. 
Funnily enough, a lot of the cast they got rid of during their first retool were some of the most credible actors but they still played the people who were left and who could act in pretty decent classic soapy storylines (I stand by what my opinion that the Annie/Olivia/Gregory corner of the show had a lot of good stuff that stands the test of time) while the rest was just fluff. And it worked as fluff.
But fluff is fluff and it is not a very solid foundation for a long run. 
 

Passions certainly improved during its run but took a serious nosedive at the very end imo. I am still certain that something happened behind-the-scenes that so many established couples, long-running storylines and character personalities were switched so abruptly and confusingly all of a sudden.
Whatever else we could say about JER he had a clear vision that shone through even when the show was bad but then towards the end so many things went out of the window that it became hard for me to even understand that these were the same characters and story universe I had been watching until then. And that's very off-putting.

Edited October 31, 2021 by FrenchBug82

[amybrickwallace]

In hindsight, it's too bad they just didn't end with NBC. DirecTV was a travesty.

[FrenchBug82]

Granted, my issues started when they were still on NBC but it definitely was a bad move.
And I was watching Michael Fairman's interview with Erika Slezak just last night and boy does she seem to wish Prospect Park had never happened either.
It seems that, as happy as helping them survive makes fans on the moment, it is probably better to let them die in glory than try to keep them alive past their due date.

[Vee]

I don't regret a thing about the PP soaps, beyond the higher-up administration debacle. I've watched what Erika has said about it, and she has often been both complimentary and critical; I've heard her be much harsher about, say, Linda Gottlieb. I agree with a lot of her complaints but I also think those shows, in their final form, were the future of the genre denied despite many, many BTS hiccups and obvious growing pains. It wasn't an issue at the in-show creative level, it was the administrative above them and I'll always stand by that.

[FrenchBug82]

My gripe about the PP soaps personally was my intense dislike of some the off-screen plot points they chose to write in the continuity in order to explain why certain characters weren't there. But I suppose disliking story choices is not specific to the PP adventure so I might be in slight bad faith here.

The two criticisms she gives in the Fairman interview are:
- that they "didn't know how to make a soap". That could mean a lot of things but I take it to refer to the concrete production issues we have heard about which must have galled someone used to a well-oiled machine. That definitely tracks with your diagnosis.
- Especially since her second substance-based criticism is completely off-base in my opinion. She complains they made the show too "risque" because it was online and wanted to be "modern".
Well, yeah. That seemed like an obvious move to be more explicit about sex and not be afraid of swear words if you don't have the constraints of network TV. 
ES is an elderly woman now and with that comes old-fashioned attitudes, I suppose.

[Vee]

I've heard and read Erika talk about the PP soaps a number of times since they went under, not just the Fairman interview, and she's always been very candid. But she hasn't completely dismissed them in terms of quality either; I've never gotten the sense she wrote them off as worthless or unworthy. There were tonal and aesthetic issues with the shows at times, but I think a medium is capable of being found between modernizing the show and trying too hard to be edgy, and the shows evolved as they went. I still think they're the best soaps we've had for most of the last decade, especially AMC 2.0.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Vee

[Chris 2]

The problem with the PP soaps, beyond content, is that I don’t believe there’s a market on streaming for the volume of content they were producing. They initially started out with four episodes per week and realized people were falling behind, so they cut it to two. I think the same fate will befall Judge Judy’s new show on imdbTV. Streaming TV is about close-ended seasons or self-contained chunks of content. I can’t see shows that are stripped (run 5 days a week, continuously) working on streaming. Streaming isn’t like broadcast where viewers aren’t worried if they miss a day. Since it’s on demand, they have the ability to watch every episode. And if they get the sense that they’re “too far behind” and it feels like a chore to catch up, they will abandon it rather than skip ahead.

If one of the daytime soaps adopted a seasonal format on a streaming service, I could maybe see that working. Maybe a 65-episode season or something like that once per year. People could watch at their leisure and not worry about falling hopelessly behind. But to do X number of episodes per week continuously? I don’t see that happening.

[Vee]

A seasonal format is definitely necessary.

[amybrickwallace]

Especially since she's going to do the show without longtime sidekick and fan favorite Byrd!!!

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[Xanthe]

The way people have often watched soaps, at least with the advent of the VCR,  has been to pick and choose which storylines to follow and which to dip in and out of. The real streaming innovation for serials might be to enable that type of "choose your own path" with temptations to interest the viewer in following side paths. Maybe that idea is better suited to offering vintage and antique soap experiences rather than producing new content though.

[Vee]

The way to do it, then and now IMO, would be to pump out between 30-50 half hour episodes per 'season' - whatever constitutes a typical quadrant of arc storytelling on a classic old school soap, or perhaps not unlike the Port Charles arc format. Package them, then drop them daily or bi-daily or whatever and then take breaks. Like any streaming show.

I love the Choose Your Own Adventure media experiments with interactive streaming shows like Black Mirror's Bandersnatch or the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt film (and before them, Steven Soderbergh's semi-interactive Mosaic series with Sharon Stone, Garrett Hedlund and ATWT's Jennifer Ferrin on HBO, an uneven but fascinating experience), but I think that would be so cost-intensive for soaps and impossible to do.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Vee

[Liberty City]

Between the acting and writing, it was poor camp, IMHO. I liked it when I first began watching it, then began Santa Barbara, returned to Sunset Beach and saw how... bad it genuinely was. The idea of an Aaron Spelling daytime soap should have worked, but it did not.

[Liberty City]

I noticed when Sunset Beach changed its production model within its first year it began to shift to a more standard-produced soap opera, but with no budget. I firmly believe NBC, much like Santa Barbara, was not the right network for the soap. I'm surprised FOX never tried to enter into the daytime arena with a soap opera, which would put it in direct alignment with the three major television networks. And given how successful Beverly Hills, 90210 was for the network, it would've been a solid sell. Spelling could've been the Dick Wolf of FOX. I'm just not sold on the Ben & Meg storyline, and why it was the driving force for the soap. I genuinely don't. Not to mention, I don't believe Robert Guza Jr. was the right person to head write for the tenure that he did. Not to mention, I would have loved to have seen what H. Wesley Kenney had in mind for the soap, especially since it's likely what caused him to leave, due to "creative differences." Kenny, to me, was a much stronger producer than Gary Tomlin; he worked such powerful soaps that he had the influence of the likes of William J. Bell. Up to that point, Tomlin had worked on All My Children as a producer, and I am unfamiliar if Agnes Nixon were around during his tenure (1995–1996), but his green showed in the quality of the serial's run.

I can't and don't hold that against them... it was a quick "get in and get it done" type of situation that producers and writers were placed into, and they all handled it as well as they could. Plus, many of the cast had re-located to Los Angeles for ABC's final months of production, so I doubt they wanted to return to the east coast, All My Children actors especially. For One Life to Live it was easier, since many of their cast were still on the east coast.

I think the formats All My Children and One Life to Live employed were ahead of their time; in re-watching All My Children, its production model reminds me that of Hollyoaks (which also streams on Hulu). Not to mention, Beyond Salem employed an episode-per-day format, and it seemed to work for them. And Days of Our Lives, from my understanding, is still a popular stream on Peacock (as it was on NBC.com), so I think if people are invested, then they're invested.

I'm going to embrace the new bailiff, and give him the benefit of a chance. I'm more so concerned about the other new rules coming into play.

I also think producing each soap for two-weeks and then swapping was a bad idea. Clearly, sharing a production space was another issue. Had they been able to get a space where both soaps could produce at the same time, I do believe it would've been oiled together. But, Richard H. Frank & Jeff Kwatinetz went in with the best of intentions, and I stand firm on that. But it's clear they were in over their heads with producing BOTH at the same time. They bit off more than they could chew.

I think it irked One Life to Live fans more than it did All My Children fans. But you could tell, when they swore off the swearing, the episodes still had them, but they were censored. Let us not forget this gem:

But, like you said, Erika Slezak's old-fashioned attitude is likely what brings on her view point of things, because it seems like majority of the cast had little issue with it.

[Chris 2]

 “Beyond Salem” is a good example of how the future of the format can evolve. It’s essentially a limited series as opposed to an open-ended one. And they could do future “seasons” if they economics make sense.