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15 hours ago, BoldRestless said:

You can see in that example there's about half a dozen really mundane things that would light up social media today as being incredibly controversial. Those kind of layers are gone.

That Paul story is a great example. They covered multiple angles because Bell embraced the format (I mean you could argue he was part of the foundations of the format). That luxury is time. It’s the double edged sword- they have all this time to kill, and they are also blessed with that time to make fully realized stories/characters. Even Monty’s GH took time compared to now, and they were considered fast paced!

They were also not afraid to cover controversial topics. Although Bell often told stories with poor people from a kind of paternalistic and simplistic angle. Almost all Cricket’s summer stories reek of those tropes, and so does April.

It’s just striking how far we have fallen. I know the American audience is deeply divided, intolerant, and vocal about it from all ideological directions. But we had Kish, and Lulu having a teenage abortion, ATWT’s gay characters, and now I don’t think any of those stories would be told as fully or even at all.

13 hours ago, te. said:

I think it's more down to the 80s Reagan-ism, the worship of wealth and letting the villain continuously get away with it due to perceived viewer popularity. The Ewings and the Carringtons were originally bad guys, but became more and more "aspirational" as the 80s trudged on. That's still something that echoes in soaps today (see: "Dupree strong" for the billionth time).

I don’t know, we had stories well into the 90’s and early 2000’s that showed characters with more normal jobs, having money troubles, and layers of wealth. Adam Chancellor/Palmer were more monied than Erica, who had more conspicuous wealth than Brooke. I think it’s beyond the Reagan thing. It’s like they just decided nobody cares about that or it’s too close to reality so they just don’t mention it.

13 hours ago, Stevel said:

A wealthy character can fit whatever shortcuts a plot may require. Money pays for planes and helicopters and ships. And motor vehicles.

A wealthy character is like an escape hatch. No financial restrictions.

Now almost everyone has the resources of a wealthy character.

It’s lazy/convenience based writing. I think Valentini is so afraid of the show seeming boring or old fashioned by showing all those details and taking time that he just dropped them. Like you said, it’s easier when anyone can jump on a plane at any time to move the plot along. It’s also easier to puzzle piece the episodes together when they don’t have a bunch of details to keep track of.

13 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

When Victor was introduced, again he was wealthy, with a ranch and some business interests but not at billionaire level.

Even if we accept in 2026 Victor would probably be a billionaire, and Jabot might be worth a billion, that doesn’t mean the Abbots should all just be rich, or that nobody on the show isn’t directly tied to someone ultra wealthy!

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

They also have no interest in a doctor being a central character in a way which can capture medical stories.

It’s a shame. We have several doctors including a trans woman co-chief of staff and they avoid her almost completely, and the rest of the hospital is just there as a place to have scenes. Liz is the head nurse and I think she’s used worse than Jessie was by Gloria Monty in the late 70’s/early 80’s, before she was too ill to be depended on.

About the working class characters, I know Valentini came up under OLTL Rauch, and that kind of stuff was not his vibe. But even with him you still had Wanda running the diner, like Ruby on GH. Viki and Dorian lived in houses so pretentious they had names, same with Erica on AMC. But we also had people living at the Pine Cone Hotel, and Angel Square. Marlena had a spacious home with Roman and then a penthouse. But she wasn’t living in the Kiriakas mansion. And Carrie/Austin/Sami lived in a perfectly believable apartment complex with roommates. There used to be layers!

17 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Those 1970's wealthy characters were somewhat relatable. Philip Chancellor ran a factory, they had a grand house and some servants but that was it.

I wish it had have been specified what Chancellor and Prentiss did.

I always got the impression Chancellor Industries was a group of factories, just like the one Phillip oversaw in Genoa City. In one of the early episodes, Phillip encouraged Kay to take a vacation to Nassau, but he couldn't accompany her because it would look bad to take a vacation while he was doing lay-offs at the plant. There was never any indication that Phillip & Kay were "billionaires", just that they'd grown wealthy from running blue-collar type businesses (probably shirt factories, or jeans factories, or coat factories). We saw the innerworkings of the Chancellor Industries corporate offices in 1980, and that seemed to underline that it was merely a small to mid-sized company that operated factories. It seemed downright ludicrous when Kay Chancellor died circa 2013, and they announced she was magically a billionaire.

When John and Jill Abbott were divorcing in 1985 or 1986, they made a BIG DEAL about John Abbott being required to file a financial disclosure to determine Jill's settlement and alimony payments. Michael Crawford (Jill's attorney) was surprised to learn that John Abbott was worth almost four million dollars! Brenda Dickson's Jill became extremely greedy when she heard that "giant" number being thrown around. In today's dollars, that would be like $12 million -- not even enough to require the filing of an estate tax return at John's death.

The writers have completely lost sight of poorer people, and they've also lost sight of the "moderate wealth" we were always led to believe the upper echelon characters possessed.

On 6/2/2026 at 10:56 AM, DRW50 said:

They could with Patrick and Robin.

A lot of people said they stopped watching when they decided to no longer have Robin and Patrick as a couple. I guess the two of them could make the show more grounded. However I'm pessimistic about the GH writers properly doing medical storylines. I believe they would have Robin and Patrick getting mixed up with a bunch of other bs that has nothing to do with medicine.

On 6/2/2026 at 12:55 AM, te. said:

but I can't help but feel that the bad guys getting their comeuppance in major ways just... don't really happen that much anymore? Instead it's very much "ruh-oh, how will they get out of this mess this week?" (again, see JR).

Do you think that part of it is because the writers don't understand how to show the cruelty of rich people? From what little I've seen of Y&R and DOOL I know for a fact that Victor and Stefano can be cold blooded men when they want. GH used to present the Cassadines as the main villains .Even in the 90s and 2000s when it came to the "good" members of the family they were still presented as inherently richer, more powerful, more perverse, and more vicious than mobsters if they chose to be.

On 6/1/2026 at 10:07 PM, DRW50 said:

Other than the Labine era, possibly, I think GH would have always avoided those issues.

Damn you're right. GH was the most medically relevant in the 90s. That's wild to think about.

Edited June 3Jun 3 by melanatedbtgfan

18 minutes ago, melanatedbtgfan said:

lot of people said they stopped watching when they decided to no longer have Robin and Patrick as a couple. I guess the two of them could make the show more grounded. However I'm pessimistic about the GH writers properly doing medical storylines. I believe they would have Robin and Patrick getting mixed up with a bunch of other bs that has nothing to do with medicine.

The deep medical stories stopped after Lulu’s bone marrow transplant IMO, and even that one was repurposed by the remains of the Labine team to use as a mechanism to bring Nikolas on the show and reintroduce the Cassadines. Genie Francis recommended the idea of Laura having a child with Stavros that she left behind, and Guza/Riche liked it. The bone marrow angle was one of the proposed stories for the 1993 return of Luke & Laura, and everybody thought it needed to be a bigger story based in the types of stuff they used to do, so they tabled it.

But what Patrick and Robin brought to the table was using the hospital as both character and setting, and it was a priority to keep it relevant when they were on the show. They told other medical stories, but nothing like the depth that Labine did. Compare something like Alexis having a cancer story to Monica’s, or Jake’s death/transplant story with BJ/Maxie. They don’t compare well at all. But Guza/JFP kept the hospital as a major part of the show from Robin’s return to the earlier part of Valentini/Ron.

Edited June 4Jun 4 by titan1978

On 6/3/2026 at 7:04 PM, titan1978 said:

Genie Francis recommended the idea of Laura having a child with Stavros that she left behind, and Guza/Riche liked it.

Genie is outstanding for coming up with that idea. Her acting skills as Laura's life imploded is tough to watch. I respect it.

Soaps don't do rape or sexual assault stories any more.

In the 80's and 90's just about every soap had a female character raped. Days in particular-there was hardly a female character that didn't go through that.

38 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

In the 80's and 90's just about every soap had a female character raped. Days in particular-there was hardly a female character that didn't go through that.

It was often an obstacle for a couple to overcome, especially on DAYS during the supercouple era. Really gross. I admit that I ended up liking Jack, but he really should not have been redeemed in such a way that he just became a comedy character. But when Lawrence assaulted Jennifer I was disgusted and horrified that they had Carly fall back in love with him. It was so bad.

I think a healthy balance is needed between escapism and reality. I remember years ago when Y & R tried to use the character of Lola as a working class girl that seemed to hate the wealthy.. and I don't know why that didn't work. Was it due to the acting, the writing, or that the character lacked layers? Perhaps it was all of the above.

One thing that BTG has done right is presenting a character like Kat, who isn't pre-occupied with sex.. and when she did lose her virginity, it was realistically done because some people don't have these magical first time experiences with sex. And there was a process where she had to learn to kind of get into having sex with her partner that was relatable. Even though she's a Have character, I think she's probably one of the best written and realistic characters.. someone that means well.. but sometimes is blinded by her privlege and ends up doing the wrong thing. If her on screen partner could act.. I would say that they have a good rapport because the conversations they have are semi realistic.. but it would be nice if she didn't have to do all the heavy lifting.

@Taoboi I actually think Kat is my favorite on this soap.

Re Lola Y&R Something was off about that character. She was just too staunch in opposing Kyle and his wealth. Like he gave her a designer handbag and she threw a fit,

Girl, the guy is wealthy. Why should he have to hide or feel sorry for that?

And because class difference hadn't been apart of the show in years it didn't feel integrated.

Fascinating thread. I have more to say once I've thought about it more, but one thing about revisiting so many episodes of AMC from 1995 via Pluto TV Canada that does stand out is that even though by the mid 90s Pine Valley was centred around three extremely rich households (the Chandlers, the Wildwind group and, though featured less heavily by now, the Cortlands... I suppose Phoebe Tyler is still around as well, although the Tylers were no longer much of a presence,) there still was an attempt to show a lot of middle class and even poor characters and families. It's debatable how well this is handled, but looking back at it in hindsight it certainly IS still a focus that I think even ten years later would be lacking on most soap operas, including AMC. And I do find it frustrating when suddenly you have a show built around characters where money never seems to be an issue at all, etc.

On 6/4/2026 at 11:20 PM, Paul Raven said:

Soaps don't do rape or sexual assault stories any more.

In the 80's and 90's just about every soap had a female character raped. Days in particular-there was hardly a female character that didn't go through that.

I love Agnes Nixon, as everyone knows, but she certainly went several times to the tired trope of rehabilitating a "bad" character by having them raped...

In regards to abortion and how post 2000 or so the shows basically stayed completely away from it (and certainly would never use the word.) It sounds funny to say I loved an abortion story, but I did love how with the Hulu All My Children they finally addressed abortion in a relatively honest and layered way (and despite showing different sides of it--in this case Angie not approving of the act itself--they still went through with the abortion because it was right for the character of Cassandra and her situation.) That would NOT have happened at that time on a network soap. Despite the fact that 20 years before, in the early/mid 90s they HAD told just such a story on AMC on ABC with Julia. It's depressing to think how these shows have regressed with what kinds of stories they can tell, and become essentially more conservative when really, to bring in and keep new viewers they should be going the other way.

On 6/1/2026 at 10:42 AM, janea4old said:

"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.

The one issue re finances about This is Us that I remember people bringing up though was how easily these characters could fly around the country with zero thought about money. To be fair, maybe this was a necessary evil just to tell the stories...

I'm a huge huge fan of the Herskovitz/Zwick dramas thirtysomething, My So-Called Life (not created by them, but by former thirtysomething writer Winnie Holzman, who must be filthy rich now thanks to Wicked, but with them producing and much of the same team) and Once and Again. Again, not really soap opera as they focused on the mundane, but still soap adjacent. And I do think they did as good a job as I've seen on American TV at addressing money issues, the disparity between friends and relationships with people of different economic/social classes, etc... (I remember as a teen watching My So-Called Life, my mom got hooked watching with us and she said one thing she most liked was that the house sets were messy which she had never seen on tv before :P )

On 6/1/2026 at 7:01 PM, DRW50 said:

You're right. This is down to ageism, sexism, and also the midlife crises of producers. Viki became much weaker as a character in the mid/late '90s and never recovered. Erica at least I could say was meant to never grow up, but it still felt increasingly contrived seeing the show come up with the thinnest of reasons to destroy her life.

Right. Watching so much of 1995 AMC, and this might be more in hindsight, Erica still works for me even if she is not "acting her age." But she works because she is still at this point the exception on the soap, is completely in character (some people simply do NOT mature, especially if they never have to,) and it's even pointed out by other characters. At some point characters like that almost became the norm (and certainly by the time we had Erica becoming a Vegas showgirl it became outlandish.)

On 6/2/2026 at 11:48 AM, soapfave06 said:

I was just thinking yesterday when I was scrolling through social media. In the random clip, someone’s grandmother was critiquing her decor and offering advice in a comedic way. We can’t even get simple everyday scenes like that but we get the same dialogue day in and day out. It can’t be that difficult to add some everyday life in scenes and the few times they have done it, even if the episode is blah, at least it feels real.

Yes, this. Again, while at the time when the AMC 1995 episodes were airing I think fans were already calling out the show for losing some of what made it so special. And yet, watching now, we still have SO many of these wonderful types of scenes that add nothing to the plot, but add tremendously to the sense of a lived reality (and, with the right actors, are enjoyable to watch.) Stuff like Peggy (played by the wonderful Ann Meara) and her interactions while working at Wildwind, Myrtle mocking Marian and Enid Nelson when they come into her dress shop, Jackson talking about how much he enjoyed the Summers as a kid in the South, just to name three moments in the episodes that aired this week. I have no idea why these types of scenes and dialogue seem so absent from soaps (and have for a long time now,) because they really don't seem difficult to do. So I can only assume that the powers that be feel they are a waste of time now...