7 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

100% yes. The heart, the soul, the essence, TPTB's understanding of, and the quality of many/most soaps disappeared in the early 1980s

It could be argued that once they revealed the Ice Princess was a weather machine, the line in the sand was drawn. It’s not like supernatural stuff hadn’t existed before, Dark Shadows was there. And The Edge of Night was also there, a non traditional soap with a long history of murder and other crimes, trials, and some sensationalistic elements. But the Ice Princess was outlandish and it’s also kind of stupid, and following it up a year-ish later with the haunted sword was not good.

But before that the partnerships of Gloria Monty and Marland/PFS were still rooted in modernizing tradition, and their better writing and plotting made a stronger show. They were still telling character driven stories, even if Monty had upped the pace and style/settings.

The real problem for me was everyone trying to do their version. I think daytime as a whole would have been stronger if everybody had not tried to do what Monty was doing. As we have discussed in the classic thread before, she intimately knew the traditions of soap opera from her long tenures at other shows. She was a talented director and had good dramatic instincts, and was accomplishing something on GH that was kind of singular and probably should have remained that way.

I think the ultimate near fatal blows to the genre was increasing network driven story approvals and notes, with people in those positions that didn’t understand or value the genre. Riche and Labine pitched the HIV story directly to Pat Fili-Krushel and it was approved on the spot. She called Labine near the climax and asked does Robin have to be HIV positive, and Labine said if she isn’t then what’s the point? And Pat agreed, and added something along the lines of this is breaking my heart, which made Labine happy because it was supposed to move the audience. That was a network exec that didn’t come up under soaps but got it. Brian Frons did come from a history with soaps and was clearly ashamed of them.

All My Children circa 1981 to 1984 was pretty strong with a good mix of character, heart, humor, gothic, and glamour. Erica Kane being anything else would never happen Based on the clips from the late 70s, it seemed almost stodgy and lacking in personality though the stories were great.

I think the mid 80s for most soaps is where the scale tipped totally over into escapism from reality to varying degrees for each soap opera. Although I'll be honest, as a child.. I loved late 80s Days and I distinctly remember Patch and Kayla's 1988 wedding as being beautiful and payoff for their tortured love story.

It's interesting that OLTL went more in the sci-fi direction with the Ivan Kipling brain chip story than AMC. Agnes must have wielded enough power to say 'No, not happening'. Around that time they did the Cobra story, where Brooke's mother was some sort of crime lord, but I think that's the closest they got.

RH got in the act with the Merit Kara,Egyptian treasure stuff.

Again at CBS Bill Bell was having none of that and the closest GL got was Quint and the hidden treasure. Search had the Operation Sunburst /Hong Kong QE2 stories and ATWT, Tom/Margo/Mr Big.

NBC had Days go the adventure/spy route and Stefano the super villian. Texas did the Hipotah story but AW stayed more grounded.

But overall there was a major shift to more fanciful stuff post Ice Princess.

32 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

It could be argued that once they revealed the Ice Princess was a weather machine, the line in the sand was drawn.

Yes, the contamination of the soaps was born there.

32 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

It’s not like supernatural stuff hadn’t existed before, Dark Shadows was there. And The Edge of Night was also there, a non traditional soap with a long history of murder and other crimes, trials, and some sensationalistic elements.

Okay, but DS was CREATED and INTENDED to be a supernatural soap, set in a realm outside the rules of reality. It developed a rabid cult following, primarily among young people who reveled in the camp, but it was never a major ratings success, and interest in the series dwindled away after only a few years, when its outlandish material could not be sustained. That should have been a lesson/warning for the networks: novelty soaps were not destined to last.

TEON was predicated on mystery and crime stories, but it was well written, focused on multi-dimensional and intelligent characters, and never veered into the realm of total implausibility. As long as crime and murder existed, TEON was not a far-fetched, insipid joke.

32 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

But the Ice Princess was outlandish and it’s also kind of stupid, and following it up a year-ish later with the haunted sword was not good.

There was David Gray and his mysterious powers and that stupid ring, Casey the alien, Luke suddenly turning psychic...one painfully idiotic plot after another. UGH!

32 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

But before that the partnerships of Gloria Monty and Marland/PFS were still rooted in modernizing tradition, and their better writing and plotting made a stronger show. They were still telling character driven stories, even if Monty had upped the pace and style/settings.

The real problem for me was everyone trying to do their version. I think daytime as a whole would have been stronger if everybody had not tried to do what Monty was doing. As we have discussed in the classic thread before, she intimately knew the traditions of soap opera from her long tenures at other shows. She was a talented director and had good dramatic instincts, and was accomplishing something on GH that was kind of singular and probably should have remained that way.

Other shows, which went the low-brow, sci-fi route did not understand that GH had soared in the ratings BEFORE the fantasy crap began. It was the mature writing by worthy writers (Marland and Falken Smith) that drew us in. We cared about the characters and the relationships (Lesley/Rick/Alan/Monica, Scotty/Laura, etc). When the Ice Princess and degradation of the show began, we watched IN SPITE OF the stupid new plots, not BECAUSE OF them. Many other soaps didn't get the concept, and just offered us dumb stories without characters and relationships worth investing in. It turned out to be a disaster.

32 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

I think the ultimate near fatal blows to the genre was increasing network driven story approvals and notes, with people in those positions that didn’t understand or value the genre. Riche and Labine pitched the HIV story directly to Pat Fili-Krushel and it was approved on the spot. She called Labine near the climax and asked does Robin have to be HIV positive, and Labine said if she isn’t then what’s the point? And Pat agreed, and added something along the lines of this is breaking my heart, which made Labine happy because it was supposed to move the audience. That was a network exec that didn’t come up under soaps but got it. Brian Frons did come from a history with soaps and was clearly ashamed of them.

To me, the last time any soap really shone was the Riche/Labine era of GH, with the stories about BJ's heart and Stone's death. What beautiful, legendary material we were given.

Alas, it's all be downhill from there.

3 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

It's interesting that OLTL went more in the sci-fi direction with the Ivan Kipling brain chip story than AMC. Agnes must have wielded enough power to say 'No, not happening'. Around that time they did the Cobra story, where Brooke's mother was some sort of crime lord, but I think that's the closest they got.

RH got in the act with the Merit Kara,Egyptian treasure stuff.

Again at CBS Bill Bell was having none of that and the closest GL got was Quint and the hidden treasure. Search had the Operation Sunburst /Hong Kong QE2 stories and ATWT, Tom/Margo/Mr Big.

NBC had Days go the adventure/spy route and Stefano the super villian. Texas did the Hipotah story but AW stayed more grounded.

But overall there was a major shift to more fanciful stuff post Ice Princess.

While it’s true they didn’t all go the full Ice Princess, every one of them ended up emulating Monty-isms. They almost all had at least one big action adventure umbrella story, even P&G soaps. They all started doing elaborate remotes or smaller location shooting. Young characters began driving story in a way that they never did before. Guiding Light had the infamous Dreaming Death. Y&R started doing remotes regularly, and Lauren was buried alive, Brad Carleton locked in the cage. Jenny died in AMC while on location on AMC. Bill Bell wasn’t immune and from that interview he gave with Labine he was also a fan of Monty’s production and Francis/Geary. Labine even states in that interview everyone else trying to do what Monty did was a huge mistake.

I would argue young characters were used before GH, but without Laura (and her pairings) we would never have gotten the same time and attention as leads with GL’s four musketeers, Bo/Hope, Jenny/Greg, Cricket and the young set on Y&R of her generation amongst others, and all of them were used in thriller type stories instead of just the classic young love stuff from before.

They always learn the wrong and easy lesson. When Reilly got the ratings so high on DAYS, they emulated the supernatural and not the structure. Without him I highly doubt vampires would eventually have invaded Port Charles. Didn’t AW have a pseudo vampire story during that time too? Clone and time traveling Reva were also a direct result of Reilly. His DAYS was outlandish but that was the filter to tell love stories, triangles, romances. It was incredibly slowed down, and dumbed down, so it was easy to get into and drop in and out of and that showed in the large young audience. It ultimately was not for me and I didn’t enjoy it much past Maison Blanche, but I got why it took off.

3 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

When the Ice Princess and degradation of the show began, we watched IN SPITE OF the stupid new plots, not BECAUSE OF them. Many other soaps didn't get the concept, and just offered us dumb stories without characters and relationships worth investing in. It turned out to be a disaster.

I wasn’t alive or old enough to see any of this first hand. But when I did finally see it the Ice Princess really does get stupid around the time the weather machine is revealed/used. But as a one off it’s not the worst thing I have seen. But it shocks me now having seen the continuous missteps after the wedding how GH stayed at the top for the seasons. Yes, their ratings eroded by millions when they lost Genie (and as far as Luke being so important, well they ultimately lost less of the audience when he left in 1983 than they did when she left, but again, TPTB learn the wrong lessons!), but not enough to topple them.

I mean David Grey, psychic Luke, the haunted sword, Jackie and Laura Templeton, all disasters in less than a year. GH really had a hold on that audience because soaps have driven me away for longer with less missteps. It’s truly bad, and fascinating to watch them refocus so much of the narrative on the Quartermaines and Robert to dig them out of it. Emma Samms really plays a part too, and again, tptb always think it’s the man that the audience is there for. I have also argued that while they may have hated each other, PFS and Monty were a good team, and GH is better in that era every time she is the HW.

3 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

To me, the last time any soap really shone was the Riche/Labine era of GH, with the stories about BJ's heart and Stone's death. What beautiful, legendary material we were given.

Something else I have posted about before is that Luke and Laura worked so well in 1993 because the actors could be more down to earth and their character foundations were built in a more grounded way by Marland and PFS, so while they were famous for larger than life stories they also fit in with the tone Riche was going for. They still had adventure, but the mob is not the same as carbonic snow, and they once again had real stakes.

Something else occurring to me when discussing the Monty-fication of daytime is John Black. I loved Drake, and I enjoyed his stories BITD. But John Black just always stood out to me like a sore thumb when they tried to bring him down to earth. Roman was in larger than life stories, but at his core he was a regular guy. Same with Marlena. And Bo and Hope, (although I love Hope, she is not the most successful soap opera lady cop though). But John’s entire creation and evolution depended on one larger than life story or idea after another, and I think it limited his success at times. I always bought Drake in a romance, that’s not what I mean. Stefano also didn’t work for me as just the head of a criminal empire after his run in the 90’s.

John was a lot like Robert Scorpio in that sense. I used to wonder what Labine would have done had Robert and Anna agreed when Riche was trying to get them to stay. I think keeping them would have changed the trajectory of a lot of Riche’s efforts to ground the show in a more realistic tone and away from the super cops era. Sean Donnelly suffered, and without the Ryan story I think Felicia would have too.

I remember thinking as the material got more complex and deeper how impressed I was with the cast of GH. It was and remains my favorite soap. But I had no idea these folks were capable of the kind of storytelling they accomplished when Labine took over.

4 hours ago, titan1978 said:

I remember thinking as the material got more complex and deeper how impressed I was with the cast of GH. It was and remains my favorite soap. But I had no idea these folks were capable of the kind of storytelling they accomplished when Labine took over.

Ironically, that echoes Douglas Marland's comments about GH's cast after he had left to work on GL. Initially, he said, when he joined GH after working at TD, he wasn't too sure about whether the actors at GH were up to the challenges that he and Gloria Monty presented. (I suspect that's because 1) they were "Hollywood actors" and 2) they were stuck playing some of the dreariest storylines in daytime). By the end of his time there, however, he grew to love that cast and thought they were some of the best actors in the business.

I guess that's always been a problem not just for GH actors but for actors on most other West Coast-based soaps as well. They're West Coast-based actors, working on shows that don't have the same, theatrical vibe that the East Coast-based soaps had, so people assume they're lightweight; when, in reality, they almost have to work harder than their NYC counterparts to convince everyone else that they aren't just pretty hair models surrounded with more lavish-looking sets.

5 minutes ago, Khan said:

They're West Coast-based actors, working on shows that don't have the same, theatrical vibe that the East Coast-based soaps had, so people assume they're lightweight; when, in reality, they almost have to work harder than their NYC counterparts to convince everyone else that they aren't just pretty hair models surrounded with more lavish-looking sets.

I once read that the difference between New York soaps and Los Angeles soaps was that the New York soaps were all about the theater and the Los Angeles soaps were all about the looks. Maybe that applied in the 1970s but not so much in the 1980s and 1990s.

Just now, kalbir said:

I once read that the difference between New York soaps and Los Angeles soaps was that the New York soaps were all about the theater and the Los Angeles soaps were all about the looks. Maybe that applied in the 1970s but not so much in the 1980s and 1990s.

I agree. Nevertheless, I think that perception (or, rather, misperception) continued throughout the '80's and '90's, even as the NYC-based soaps were adopting the aesthetics of the LA-based ones more and more.

For me personally, the storylines that I tend to be drawn to have some world of logic undergirding the story. Dolls coming to life don't appeal to be when the story is being portrayed by real people and not some animated story. 🤷🏾‍♀️

And that phrase "well, you know it's (just) a soap opera irritates me because it's as if someone is saying "well, it's a soap opera, so be prepared to leave your brain at the door before you enter". My opinion but I often feel as if that mentality is why only four soaps remain on network broadcast (terrestrial) television.

I can see the logic in the criticism when it came to ABC shows. AMC, OLTL, and Ryan’s Hope all had deeper characters that were fully explored. The GH folks suffered a lot of romantic woes and tragedy in the earlier days, but whenever I see older scenes or read recaps they just are not as rich or complex compared to Nixon’s early characters, or Lemay’s erudite and sophisticated Another World. Even the Dobsons dug deeper at Guiding Light, and they were foundational at GH from scripts to later Head Writers.

I think the characters/casts could have done it well though, especially with Steve, Jessie, Lee Baldwin, and Phil Brewer. I will be honest and say I always found Rachel Ames kind of mannered and not quite as strong as the others.

Early Y&R suffers from that pretty people more than talented actors criticism. But Bell’s DAYS was full of very talented actors who could have played anything.

7 minutes ago, DramatistDreamer said:

For me personally, the storylines that I tend to be drawn to have some world of logic undergirding the story. Dolls coming to life don't appeal to be when the story is being portrayed by real people and not some animated story. 🤷🏾‍♀️

And that phrase "well, you know it's (just) a soap opera irritates me because it's as if someone is saying "well, it's a soap opera, so be prepared to leave your brain at the door before you enter". My opinion but I often feel as if that mentality is why only four soaps remain on network broadcast (terrestrial) television.

I think the problem is when they started to become too homogenized by both copying each other and then later adding playing safe to that. I can handle almost any soap nonsense if it is told well.

That mentality of it’s just a soap and or those fans will accept anything is why we have some of the problems they all face right now. Too many shallow psychos of the current sweeps period stories, baby switches, back from the dead, actors from other soaps back on the same show as different characters or invading another shows through soap stunt casting. It has hurt more than it has helped.

In like five years GH has dipped into the long lost relative or child well too many times. Off the top of my head we have Laura with Martin/Cyrus, Esme, Cody, Trina’s paternity, Nathan/Cassius, Willow/Nelle, Gio, Sasha, Peter August, etc. It’s just too much.