From 2008: What's to like? And what have we lost?

I wrote the following piece as a follow-up to my first essay (first post, below), in 2008. Then, I promptly forgot about it. I just found it again, this morning. I'm posting it now because I think it sums up why the soap opera, as a genre, is an important one, and why its "death" is such a loss, as far as I am concerned.

The conclusion I came to in 2008 is, alas, no longer applicable, ironically.

From 2008:

Confessions of a Soap-Opera Addict, Part II: What’s to Like?

               So, if the flaws of the dramatic serial are so painfully obvious to everyone--especially to those who don't watch them--then why are they still on the air, some even enjoying their 40^th anniversaries? Why did the genre not die out once television writing gained a certain level of sophistication and integrity? Do people only watch nowadays for the chance to mock derisively at the screen?  Are the only people who actually watch these things either hopelessly deluded, live in a fantasy world, or have decidedly low-brow tastes?

               The answer to the first two questions is that as the overall writing for television improved significantly during the 90s and the 2000s, daytime dramas enjoyed a concurrent improvement.  Prime time television shows learned a great deal about how to exploit the episodic nature of television by figuring out that a character’s development does not have to happen in a single episode. Nay, it could actually take time, develop gradually, and that development can be shown over a handful of episodes, even seasons.  A “thread” from an earlier episode—a throw-away thought or random detail—can be further developed later on during the season, and that development can be followed up in later episodes. I saw this most clearly while being a devoted fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, whose writers virtually defined what is now known in the business as a “character arc.” Then they also discovered that they can take the same concept and apply it to circumstances—consequences of a single action or decision can ripple through multiple episodes, multiple seasons.  The daytime writers of the 2000s must have been 14-year-old Star Trek fans in the 1990s who learned this lesson and applied it to their own genre, for this appears more and more, in more and more complicated ways, in soap operas today. This technique not only gives dramas a certain level of sophistication (and demand a certain level of viewer sophistication as well),  but it also makes them more and more like real life and less and less like life in another dimension.

               Although life in another dimension is not always a bad thing.  You must remember that most soap operas have casts of about 30-35 at any given moment during the year.  They are often set in small towns that are suburbs of larger, more recognizable cities. “All My Children” is in “Pine Valley,” and “One Life to Live” is in “Llanview,” both of which are described as suburbs of Philadelphia, which is also close enough to New York City that the characters often make trips to The City. Lately, the characters on “One Life” have also made many trips to Atlantic City (and back again, several times a day!).  All soap opera characters mention that theirs is a “small town,”  a comment usually made to explain how and why past loves cannot realistically be avoided.  But the main consequence of all this “small-town-ness” is that so many things happen to so few people.  Soap Opera Land is a very small universe, where all things happen to all people. In real life, all things happen, but not to all people.  Yes, some people lose their homes to a hurricane. But not all of them do. Yes, some people’s marriages are damaged by infidelity (lots of them, actually)—but not all of them. Some people tragically lose loved ones to accidents, murder, disease, or abandonment.  But not all people. But in Soap Opera Land, everyone experiences these things, sooner or later, at one time or another, especially if they stay on the show long enough. Soap Opera Land is Real Life, but concentrated. Yes, Erica Kane has been married 11 times and had 10 husbands. She represents, though, that portion of the general population who have experienced multiple marriages.  To be exactly right, she probably should be married a few more times before retirement!

               And here’s the main two benefits of this peculiar set of circumstances:  First, because Soap Opera Land is both so concentrated and so protracted over time, we as viewers have the extraordinary opportunity to witness the development of a single actor’s acting skills.  Although this may not always happen (there have been some notable exceptions of actors who were wretched at the beginning, and even more wretched on their last day), most of them have the time and the opportunity to learn their craft through practice and exigency. Front-burner storyline actors (those in featured storylines) must memorize up to 50 pages of dialogue a day. This is extremely difficult, all by itself. Added to that is the necessity of delivering those lines with sincerity and in a way that is consistent with the character’s personality and history.  The ones not up to the task, mercifully, leave, allowing their roles to be either re-cast or written off. That usually leaves the door open for those with true talent, and with true dedication to their craft, to rise to the occasion.  This past May, I saw some of the finest acting I've ever seen on daytime television when Rex (played by John-Paul Lavoisier) and Adriana (played by  Melissa Fumero) on “One Life to Live” broke up.  With understated, restrained, painfully honest acting, both of these actors gave the performances of their lives. I would not have believed either of them capable of such acting when they first came on the show, Lavoisier 6 years ago, and Fumero 5 years before. Both of them have had lots of time and multiple front-burner storylines in order to learn their business, and it paid off in a stunning sequence of scenes which were very unlike the histrionic melodrama that soap operas have been blamed for in the past.

               The second benefit of this circumstance is that the writers have fantastic opportunities to take on controversial and sometimes shocking storylines.  Rape, rape resulting in pregnancy, transgender issues, anorexia, and homosexuality  have all been  explored with  great sensitivity on “All My Children.”  On “One Life to Live,” mental illness, abusive childhoods, gang rape, prostitution, and issues of social class have all been intertwined into major storylines that have not only educated people on many of these conditions or issues, but also on how difficult they are to confront and resolve.   They often come back to “haunt” the characters, in a way that lets the viewer know that many of these issues can never be fully resolved in a human lifetime.

               So even though there is a lot of justifiable criticism aimed at the genre, as a genre, it has been able to grow, adapt, change, and learn from its own successes and its own mistakes, providing us, the viewers, with a model for how that possibility exists for us—always.   Their continued existence seems to suggest that we, also, can endure.