I remember when I was in second grade, I had watched an episode of "Another World" with my Mom and there was a scene where someone came up behind someone else and put a cloth soaked in chloroform over the person's mouth. For some reason, that really stuck with me. I then proceeded to tell my second grade teacher, Miss Lively (RANDOM FACTOID: Miss Lively worked as Bill Cosby's cook.) what I had seen and that it had freaked me out. Luckily she knew my mother personally and that she wasn't some crazy nutter that forced me to watch soaps.
A few years later it was the Luke & Laura storyline on "General Hospital" that I was enamored of. My aunt, who was in her late teens at the time, had all of the soap opera magazines with photos and photos of Luke & Laura and LOVED General Hospital. I watched it whenever I could.
When I was in junior high, this morphed into a routine:
"Days of Our Lives" from 1-2PM (whenever I stayed home sick from school or on a holiday)
"As the World Turns" from 2-3PM (I'd rush home as fast I could to catch at least half of it).
"General Hospital" from 3-4PM
"As the World Turns" quickly became my favorite. The Dusty Donovan/Lily Walsh/Holden Snyder love triangle was the new soap opera love story. (Rich girl falls in love with heartthrob and then meets stable boy. You see where that's going.)
Dusty (Brian Bloom) & Lily (Martha Byrne):
Holden (Jon Hensley) & Lily (and no...this is not from my own personal collection, although I DID subscribe back in the day!)
I continued to watch these throughout high school and college, basically until I got a "real" job and couldn't watch them regularly anymore.
Here's where the enigma factors come in.
Ever noticed that you could not watch a soap opera for say seven years and then catch an episode and a) the characters are the same [maybe different actors or actresses] and b) the storylines are the same. Oh, look -- someone's been kidnapped and taken to an island that's its own country. Funny because that happened the LAST time I watched this. (The "country" of Alamainia is alive and well on "Days of Our Lives."
Ever noticed that kids on soaps age REALLY fast? There's even a formal name for this -- Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome (SORAS.) Yes, you read that right. One minute they're riding the pony at the fair and the next they're filling out a FAFSA for college.
I've noticed this -- I don't find soap operas as alluring as I used to. Occasionally, I flip by SOAPnet and catch "Days of Our Lives." I find the romances cheesy. The dialogue is embarrassing (as is the acting in some cases.) The sets are hokey. The storylines are boring. Is it me? Are my TV show watching tastes more refined? Have they gone downhill over the years?
Thoughts? Questions? Comments?
Soaps have changed. The writing just isn't as good as it used to be. I have a theory about why they aren't as popular and why they are somewhat dying... people used to watch soaps as an escape from their everyday lives. The story lines and the up and down romances captivated people and was that little bit of drama that people needed. Today, people have tons of drama in their own lives. The stories that used to be popular on soaps are now commonplace in everyday life. People no longer need the escape, because everywhere they turn, they are seeing what they used to turn to soaps to see... not only in their own lives, but in their friends' lives as well. As much as I love Facebook and Twitter, they have become a place where everyone can share their own personal drama, so there isn't as big of need for soaps anymore... All that being said, I still watch The Young and the Restless daily :)
ReplyDeleteLongest comment ever? haha...
PS... "Laura" (Genie Francis) is now on Y&R