3 minutes ago, Gatecrashers said:

Seriously asking... How does a play give you a deeper dive into a character's psyche than a soap opera?

There was a time when I might've said, "It doesn't." But the writing on TV and in movies has grown very shallow these past 2-3 decades. They've mistaken ponderousness for complexity. Heck, even a lot of plays written and produced aren't as complex as ones by, say, Edward Albee, or Sam Shepard. It's as if these people are afraid of challenging audiences, because, if they do, their brains will implode or something, lol.

50 minutes ago, Khan said:

I'd agree, except soaps in the '60's and '70's went far deeper into characters' psychologies than BTG or other soaps do today. Some (like @GLATWT88 ) blame that on how we've been conditioned as TV watchers over the decades. I blame it on the fact that not enough of today's writers actually read books or see plays. What they know, they know from watching television.

I can't really speak to that as I personally don't know any TV writers, soap or otherwise. However, from the creative output that continues to cone our and flourish in other mediums, I would say that creativity is still pretty high. Soaps seem to have stagnated long ago for a number of reasons I am not going to outline now.

I want to preface this next part by saying that I thank MVJ for putting getting a new soap on our screens on network TV in this century. If you had ask me even a few years ago before the announcement of BTG, I would have told you with certainty that a new soap would never see the light of day on network TV ever again nor would a soap in a traditional format ever see life on streaming. She has done something unprecedented in many ways. Furthermore, I do not think MVJ should be kicked off her own show or let go or whatever the conversation was. I honestly don't even know what that whole conversation was about since I am usually catching up these days that I skim many comments so don't always get the full picture.

Now, I do think MVJ is an artist that may be too close to her art. Hence, why we have characters that probably should have been let go for lack of craft (AA), other characters that seem to have gone "safe" when they were originally presented with more of an edge, and then others that seem to face no consequence at all. I think AA is self-explanatory. As for character being safe, Bill is one that comes to mind. At first, Bill was painted a lot more ruthless. He was actually quite vicious with making Dani and the Duprees attend his wedding - even the way he went about it was vindicative and dark. Now, he is a whole big teddy bear who is easily duped by his barbie wife. We hardly seen him question her off behavior and while I do think we are headed that way, it would have been nice to see it build over time. Then, we have characters like Leslie who roam around interacting with everyone like they don't already believe she tried to kill Laura. Leslie should have gone away for some time already and I am one who thinks TMG is brilliant, but her having no redemption yet and just going around town acting crazy is wearing thin. She is also all over the place. One day she seems like a vindictive lunatic and the next she is running around begging people for favors.