Jump to content

Well Plotted Soap Stories


Recommended Posts

  • Members

I wonder if due to the popularity of the Loving Murders if it would have been a better bet for ABC to keep the show branded as Loving and then just introduced new characters with the handful they were planning to keep in Corinth and just do a huge reboot of the show. It could have possibly prevented some of the loss of viewers that happened when the show was redone as The City.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 52
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Members

And one of the fallouts with Marty's role in the Billy story was that when she was gang raped by the frat brothers...her credibility was questioned due to her past history of lying...and it led to a 'wait until dark ' cat and mouse story between Todd and his attorney Nora (who got him off partly due to using Marty's past history against her in the trial).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

So many affiliates have a local news show or a local lifestyle show that they want to air at lunchtime because they get all the ad revenue. And, half hour shows apparently need to have a sheltering effect from a big show that they can follow, not lead off the block. Clearances was a problem for GEN, CIT, PC (all new & lunch) and Sunset Beach & Santa Barbara (new and NBC affiliates are arseholes)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

DAYS- John & Marlena 1991-1991. Years of solid story beginning with Marlena's return from the dead, OG Roman's return, the quadrangle between Roman/Marlena/John/Isabella and the eventual affair. The payoff being the creation of evil Sami. Several plots like Mason Blanche were contained within the story, and seeds for the posession were being planted by about late '94. A geat example of a story leading to another without hitting a dead end.

Y&R- Marge Cotrooke 1.0 , 1989-90. In 1989 the audience was given so much detail. Marge was shown changing her hair style, having apendix surgery to mimic Kay's pain,  Clint taping Kay & Rex in the bedroom to help Marge match Katherine's sexual demeanor, testing a forged signature at the bank while impersonating Katherine. Soaps wouldn't go this far into deatil with a silly doppleganger plot these days. Despite the possible arguement that the plot was silly and may have dragged too long, great attention to detail was made in the beginning. 

Edited by ironlion
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

It is kind of miraculous that ABC ran LOVING for as many years as they did. I wonder how much of it was "what else are we going to run against Y&R anyway?" and Agnes Nixon's pull (assuming she still had it at that point). I read her autobiography, and I thought it was strange that she NEVER mentioned Loving at all. Of course, she wrote tons about creating AMC and OLTL and her start in soaps, but not one word about Loving. It would have been interesting to get her viewpoint on why it never took off like her other creations. You can't say the show was a total flop. It ran for over a decade, and I'm sure money was made.

The plotting for Marty's rape was very well-conceived, too. I found the graphicness of the plot hard to stomach at times, but in terms of plotting an arc for multiple characters, it was genius. I remember reading an interview with Michael Malone where he said he took the approach that the town of Llanview was actually the main character of the show. I think his experience as a novelist helped in terms of creating these large umbrella stories.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I read it & I loved it but I kept waiting for her to talk about Rachel & Ada as parallels to Erica & Mona. Disappointed. And, of course she saved AW and she could have had bragging rights to that. About shows that made money, it's not about that, it's about *enough* money.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • Thanks @Paul Raven  They should have brought Billy back in the early '90s for more drama with Hart and Blake. Maybe Blake would have gotten involved with him to try to ruin him in Roger's eyes, but realize under his sweet nature, Billy was a player himself.
    • Checked. Taggert last date, Wed, 7-19-23, so a long dadgummed time ago.
    • Please register in order to view this content

    • Watching the cult of Fetterman collapse is one of the few political bright spots for me. The best part  is watching all the people who built him up now decide they want to tear him down. I'll be fascinated to see how this ends for him. https://buckscountybeacon.com/2025/05/pennsylvanias-democratic-senator-john-fetterman-raises-alarms-with-outburst-at-meeting-with-union-officials/

      Please register in order to view this content

    • Long ago, this Rachel fan channel uploaded a number of clips of Rachel with Felicia during the alcoholism story, and this one in particular stands out for me. 

      Please register in order to view this content

      And then you have this scene, which is the dark mirror of the above, especially the final moment: By the late '80s, especially after Wallingford's death, those times were gone, and Donna Swajeski added further misery to Felicia with the Gold Street backstory. Luckily, after a bit of time the show found a good framing for this new twist on Felicia. The stories with finding and losing a love from her past, learning that a woman she hated was the daughter she'd spent years searching for, sinking into alcoholism, they all fit into the type of material suited for the '40s and '50s screen goddesses.  When Dano tried some of this old weepy type of material when she went back to ABC, it mostly fell flat, as the atmosphere wasn't the same and her character always felt shoehorned in. It worked perfectly at this period on AW because you had Iris, you had Rachel, you had Donna - you had a number of tough-but-vulnerable women of a certain age, most of them grandmothers by this point, but still trying to find love, find themselves. This is what AW could have had earlier if they hadn't dumped Pat and Alice, but better late than never. This is an approach you saw more often on British soaps than on US soaps, which for a number of years respected women in that age group. Both UK and US soaps have done away with this, both countries having the ladies devolve into perpetual ingenues (with added doses of endlessly self-aware camp in the UK) or just being shipped off entirely.  You could even see that on AW with the treatment of Iris (shipped off, never to be mentioned again, too old to return), Donna (repeatedly humiliated and crippled), Felicia (regressed into degrading herself with married John), Rachel (mother to newborn twins, put into lengthy periods of trauma through her new relationship with Carl). 
    • I'm of a certain age where I caught some of Upton's final year and it was not great but Jean Holloway was worse. All I remember is Bambi, Bambi, Bambi!
    • Yes, of course, all of those servants added to the overall picture at AW & also people had relationships with those servants! I like it when Anita asks after one of the servants at the club, how their children are doing & like that. 
    • Great scenes between Marlena and EJ today. Paula and Jeanne are making EJ have more depth than Ron had during his long drawn out tenure.
    • Might as well say it, Minority opinion, granted, but I like Joss & I'm okay with this WSB story & i hope that Emma will be their next recruit & she & Joss can be partners.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy