ALL: Couple vs SUPER Couple?

[Contessa Donatella]

I would tend to agree that Mason & Julia at the very least had a supercouple vibe.

[Contessa Donatella]

I knew I had another cite. 

Maloney, M., & Bell, L. P. (2012). The Young and Restless Life 0f William J. Bell. Sourcebooks, Inc. [beginning on pg. 70]

    Bill encouraged Bill and Susan's romance off camera, but he couldn't come up with enough obstacles to keep Doug and Julie apart on screen, not the least of which was having Doug marry Julie's mother, Addie! In fact, Susan Seaforth Hayes suspects that if Bill hadn't left the show after launching Y&R that Doug & Julie's October 1, 1976, marriage would never have taken place.
    "In retrospect, he was right not to marry us," Seaforth Hayes adds. "Only dull things happen to married people on soap operas."
    "Bill never would have married us," her husband concurs.
    The Hayeses are correct about Bill's feelings on wedded bliss and his characters. "I don't like marriages," Bill wrote in his story projection for DAYS in 1967. "That is, in serials," he hastened to clarify. "Too often, it closes doors rather than opens them."

[Khan]

Cliff and Nina weren't a couple or a supercouple.  They were just Agnes Nixon and Wisner Washam messing with our heads for a decade.

[Maxim]

Thank you for this.  I love the quote - I don't like marriages. 

SO ICONIC. 

[Contessa Donatella]

I love that whole book that Lee Bell had Michael J. Maloney write. My very strong impression from it is that Bill Bell was very confident in his specific ideas about many things & he was not going to be having his mind changed about them. 

For one specific example, which I absolutely object to, Bell is said to have thought the sex between Bill Horton & Laura Spencer that night at the hospital when he went to her, drunk, was consensual. I remember watching Bill rape Laura. I only wish I had access to the episode, although I've said nothing would get me to re-watch it, but, maybe that statement would. 

[Paul Raven]

Bill may have stated he didn't like marriages but on DOOL,Y&R and B&B, he married off all the major couples.

Victor,Ashley, Nikki, Jack had several marriages under his tenure.

So I still don't get why Doug and Julie were a special exception. 

[Contessa Donatella]

I see what you're saying, completely. Just have no clue. Pulling an idea out of thin air, what if it was a philosophy he had with them them, early ya know, but abandoned because the pressure to have weddings was just too great? But, that is strictly speculation. Like 'if you can't beat 'em enjoy it'?

[Khan]

I don't get it either, but in a way, it made sense for Doug and for Julie.  As wonderful as the Hayeses were together - as I've said elsewhere, they're probably the only soap couple who, once they were wed, never should've been split up - I think they must've been PHENOMENAL when they weren't.  SSH's face and eyes were made for the close-up, so seeing the ache and the longing register every time she wanted to be next to Doug but couldn't...?  And all Bill Hayes needed to do in order to express Doug's need for Julie was to sing some song like "The Look of Love," and I'll bet viewers back then ate this [!@#$%^&*] up.

Edited January 24 by Khan

[j swift]

Couldn't also be that people grow and change creatively, and the way Mr. Bell felt about weddings in the 1976, was not the same way that he felt in 1986?

“A foolish adherence to consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Planet Soap]

But, marriages on the Young and the Restless and the Bold and the Beautiful did not last long.

B&B brakes couples up too fast for anyone to care.

On Y&R for example Victor and Nikki have been a super couple for nearly 45 years but they've only actually been married for less than 20.  Victor started cheating on Nikki just one year into the marriage.

And for characters like Ashley, she got married so frequently most of her pairings I don't care about outside of Victor and maybe Brad.

I think ABC, specifically General Hospital is the best at super couples because they're given years to build momentum on screen.

Edited January 25 by Planet Soap

[Contessa Donatella]

During the 80s it seems to me DAYS was not only best at supercouples but took it too far & were supercouple crazy at the expense of other kinds of storylines & literally with too many power, supercouples, so, when being best turns & bites the hand that created it. 

[kalbir]

We saw in the 1980s and 1990s Ratings threads that Days had a ratings drop in the last year and a half of the supercouple era (Spring 1989 to Fall 1990). Lots of factors in play I think: viewers getting tired of the supercouple and action/adventure trends, head writer change from Leah Laiman to Anne Howard Bailey then Richard J. Allen and Anne Schoettle, lead-in change from Scrabble to Generations, time slot rival Y&R being #1 by a large margin, time slot rival B&B showing growth.

[Contessa Donatella]

Wow, @kalbirthat's a lot of reasons! You might even say multi-layered, also multi-faceted. Given how fans can grow weary of too much of one thing, even if it's a good thing, with all of the rest of that going on, it's no wonder DAYS fell down in the ratings. I will never stop wishing that everyone had taken their half hour shows & tucked them in, rather than make them be the lead-in. That goes for Generations & also The City & PC! Those guys never had a fighting chance. They were doomed.

[Soaplovers]

Couple:  Two people that exist well on their own or together storywise.  And if broken up, can co exist without the whole will they or won't they....and can be paired up with other people in equally popular couplings.

Supercouples: To me, a kiss of death in terms of plot and character development.  They cease to exist as an individual character.  Only way to pair them with others successfully if one of the two leaves the canvas.

Examples of super couples:

 

1) Luke and Laura

2) Greg and Jenny

3) Tad and Dixie

4) Josh and Reva

5) Bo and Hope

 

Examples of couples:

 

1) Adam and Brooke (AMC)

2) Tom and Erica (AMC)

3) Ed and Holly (GL)

4) Lisa and Bob (ATWT)

5) Paul and Lauren (Y & R)

[AMCOLTLLover]

Sometimes I forget Paul and Lauren were even thing even though they were big when I started this show lol but they proofed they can survive without the other.