Soaps That Were Good at Comedy?

[Planet Soap]

My vote is OLTL during the Gary Tomlin era from 2001-2002. Funny moments from Todd, Asa, Nikki Smith and Alex especially during this period. It balanced the comedy drama aspect and the show won an emmy.

[Faulkner]

Santa Barbara, of course, since it was those crazy Dobsons. They had some of the genre’s best comedic actors in Nicolas Coster (R.I.P.), Lane Davies, Robin Mattson, Louise Sorel, Justin Deas, et al, who could handle the screwball pace and also enliven some of the more womp-womp material. 

AMC had some incredibly funny characters like Dorothy Lyman’s Opal, Phoebe, Erica, the list goes on…

 

[BetterForgotten]

Classic era Coronation Street (60’s - early 90’s).

[MichaelGL]

That brief period where Jennifer, Adrianne, and I think a few other ladies consumed pot brownies on DAYS. Tomlin/Whitesell.

Sunset Beach also had some good humor too. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by MichaelGL

[YRBB]

Y&R is not the first soap to come to mind regarding humor, but when it did it, it did it extremely well. Jill, Katherine, and Esther could and were very often laugh-out-loud funny. The one-liners, Katherine barking at Esther, Esther's health-craze kicks. Truly funny stuff when they wanted it to be.

Edited July 5, 2023 by YRBB

[Efulton]

Another World in the mid 80s - Felicia, Cass, Wallingford, Cecile, Lily, Kathleen.  They could move from drama to comedy seamlessly.  Also, Tony the Tuna and Dee.

General Hospital 80s-90s: The Quartermaine's.  Especially when David Lewis was playing Edward.  

Santa Barbara 1984-88: The Lockridges, Gina & Keith, Julia and Mason - intelligent, quirky humour.  After the Dobsons left the humour was dumbed down.

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Efulton

[kalbir]

That resulted in the LOL scene of Brock sneaking a bucket of fried chicken into the house.

[MichaelGL]

I recall this scene and it was laugh out loud funny, not something I was used to seeing on soaps at the time, as I was always P&G soap fan. 

[Darn]

Soaps, to me, have always done better with funny lines as opposed to funny characters. I never find comedic characters or set pieces very funny.

I'd take several root canals over watching Susan on Days do literally anything. Roxy on OLTL was a colorful break from life and death stakes of everything else but every time she got her own story I was most annoyed than amused.

I like characters who clever and humorous like Lucinda or Erica or Kay or Michael Baldwin. The humor for me usually comes from the sharp-tongued characters, not the "funny" ones.

[YRfan23]

Y&R and B&B had great subtle humor which works for the type of shows they are, but to me Passions is always gonna be more of a soap opera “Dramedy” more then any other show, besides Days which is up their with the “Dramedy” aspect imo. 

[Darn]

It's a shame 80% of Passions jokes were about assault or incest. Or literal hell. And this show was marketed to the youths.

[gimmetoo]

For sure, 80s era AMC had great comedic characters:  Langley and Phoebe, Opal, Edna, Verla Grubbs, Tad the Cad and Erica Kane of course...

[Contessa Donatella]

AW: Samuel D. Ratcliffe was supposedly the writer of most of he Cass-Felicia-Wally high jinks although I think Gary Tomlin did some of that writing, too. Also Iris's maid Vivian was a comedic character played by Getchen Oer, I think that was her name. Plus there was a comedic device where all the plants had names out of Greek mythology. 

A big "ditto" to Santa Barbara where Mason's alters were played for laughs instead of serious issue drama. And the drag queen! 

 

[Liberty City]

I was about to come in and state that Santa Barbara, during the Dobson's messy first era, was very comedy-stanced, and it is something they did quite well, and it's what made it standout against its counterparts.

[heffos]

GL in the early '80s was pretty good with it, especially Lisa Brown as Nola Reardon.