Before Gloria Monty, soaps had a smaller scale, stories were about relationships of all kinds (romance and family mostly), and seemed more like slice of life stories compared to other media. As working class issues and wealth inequality dominate our daily lives, how do we all feel about how soaps represent that slice of life aspect currently and would you even want to see that in the shows?

GH has virtually ignored any modern relevance to issues facing the medical industry since COVID began. Nobody really struggles for money anymore. The Q’s have nice sets but there is less distinction on the show about their wealth vs other people’s lives.

This came up for me rewatching the early Labine stories about Charles Street and the incinerator project. It reminded me once again that soaps just don’t resemble anything real anymore when it comes to socioeconomics. BTG’s comes the closest, but the main family is ultra wealthy by design. Where is our Angel Square, 5th Street, Pine Cone Hotels, etc? Part of the problem BITD was sometimes those stories felt trite and involved white savior complex because not enough diversity existed in the writing rooms. But at least they tried!

It just feels like most of the characters on these shows now are just generically comfortable and don’t have any reference to middle class issues and economics.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by titan1978

"This is Us" was a primetime soap (not promoted as a soap but instead promoted as primetime serial drama, similar thing, different promotion).
To me, the characters felt like real people.

Edit to add:

The three adult siblings came from a working class family.
Viewers saw them going back and forth through time as children, teens, young adults, and people in their thirties.
Certainly the parents were working class. Mandy Moore played the mom, and she did great with her portrayal. Her character's parents had money but she didn't take the money. Milo Ventimiglia played her husband, who was a war veteran, struggling through various jobs in the construction business.
The three adult children:
Justin Hartley's character was an actor so by definition had money.
Sterling K. Brown's character was a financial advisor but he had relatable struggles.
Chrissy Metz's character struggled through various jobs and eventually became a music teacher.

Edited 41 minutes ago41 min by janea4old

51 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

It just feels like most of the characters on these shows now are just generically comfortable and don’t have any reference to middle class issues and economics.

Yeah it's all generically upper middle class to wealthy on most of the daytime soaps, except for BTG.