I haven't watched in years but I've seen clips on the Daytime Emmys. I don't think that's true. There is some really good acting on daytime soaps.
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Writers Strike 2023?
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Writing? They’re recycling the same plots for decades. In my mom’s last weeks, we put the two CBS soaps had left on for her, whether she could know it or not. She watched them for decades, so why not…if something was getting through, it would have been familiar.
Like, really familiar. Good lord, it was the same characters and the same stories from 1980-something. Lots of the same actors. And good acting? Eh, no. Not that they have anything of substance to work with, but still, it was almost comically sad.
Yes, we all know those few cases of people who started there and moved on and up. They’re the limited exceptions, not the rule.
Like, really familiar. Good lord, it was the same characters and the same stories from 1980-something. Lots of the same actors. And good acting? Eh, no. Not that they have anything of substance to work with, but still, it was almost comically sad.
Yes, we all know those few cases of people who started there and moved on and up. They’re the limited exceptions, not the rule.
Until about 10 years ago when the last daytime soap filmed in NYC, there were many daytime soap actors doing a soap and a Broadway or off Broadway show at the same time. NY based soaps were filled with current and former NY stage actors.
The thing that's always gotten to me about soaps is how their "happy" scenes -- at parties, in casinos, etc. -- look and feel so dead and joyless, even when the dialogue is positive, or at least as positive as dialogue can be in a soap, in which adultery, auto accidents, heart attacks and shocking paternity tests are always less than 10 minutes away.
The word for that is "slumming." It's not great art, but it pays decently, so why not do it in the daytime if your Broadway show won't go on for another 6 to 8 hours, or if you're between shows?
But the quality of the acting, staging, lighting, special effects and visuals in general are superb. And the writing absolutely fits the characters in the show, demonstrating how single-writer productions can be much better than the "writer room" practice of Hollywood.
Even the “classic” prime time sudsers like Dallas and Dynasty had better production values. Hackneyed plots, yes. But it looked better and had better acting. Move it up to shows like Yellowstone that have continuing drama elements but are otherwise much further removed from a “soap opera” and it’s another level entirely.
That's argument that old-timers often make in dismissing contemporary country music, where songs can have a half dozen or more "writer" credits attached to them. But the most important thing in music is the melody, especially the hook, and usually only one or two of the writers have any input on that. The rest are concept/word people. "Yellowstone" features music (and artists) from inside and outside the Nashville factory, and no one seems to complain.
And those shows had the luxury of larger budgets for sets, lighting, costumes and were shooting one 1 hour episode per week, which provides a lot of time for rehearsals, dry runs, rewrites and multiple takes. At that time daytime soaps shot a 1 hour episode every day, which gives a lot less rehearsal time, no time for rewrites and almost never a second take after filming a scene. These days they are often filming 1,5 to 2 one hour episodes daily.
This is what Donna Mills (Knots Landing) had to say about a recent appearance on General Hospital “But the way they shoot soaps now is so hard. You might be shooting scenes for two or more episodes a day, and there’s no time to rehearse. It just wasn’t a very satisfying experience for me, as an actor.”
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Be that all as it may be, it remains that the end product is…just bad. Those final weeks I alluded to earlier, not just recycled plots I remembered from the 80s when I still lived at home and would catch some episodes with her…hell, they spent half of each show seemingly restating what already happened.
Yeah, yeah, I know how viewing patterns have changed. You’re catching people up who only see a fraction of the shows. But it’s still laughably bad television.
Yeah, yeah, I know how viewing patterns have changed. You’re catching people up who only see a fraction of the shows. But it’s still laughably bad television.
A technique that goes back to well before television. Serial comic strips usually spent their first and sometimes second boxes telling readers how the previous day's strip had ended. My newspaper ran the sports-oriented strip "Gil Thorp" in the '80s and '90s and a copy desk colleague and I were embarrassingly addicted to it -- even though we could count on the same improbable dialogue every day. On Thursday, Coach Thorp would tell an athlete, "Bobby, I'm kicking you off the team!" in the last box of the strip. Friday's strip would begin with Bobby speaking: "You're telling me you're kicking me off the team?" The transitions were handled more elegantly in older, more admired strips like "Prince Valiant," but the technique was the same. You couldn't assume that all your readers had read the previous day's strip.
Peanuts is more my taste in comics. 😃
Serial strips never really clicked for me. Though when I was so much younger, Brenda Starr was kind of hot. Then again, so was Batgirl.
Serial strips never really clicked for me. Though when I was so much younger, Brenda Starr was kind of hot. Then again, so was Batgirl.
Lucy: Linus, grow up and lose that blanket!
Linus: You're telling me I should lose my blanket?
Of course, it never worked that way because Peanuts was never a true serial strip, although certain themes would carry over occasionally -- like the Christmas-oriented strips every December, the baseball situations every April.
Well there is this:
www.theatlantic.com
I think the article frankly hits a lot of points many of us or other journalists have already made, but in a more perfunctory way. We already know that everything prestige is soap opera now, and that they aren't being respected for it. We've known that a long time. Part of this is daytime soap operas own fault, because the remaining soaps continue to marginalize themselves even today in terms of content out of fear of their remaining audience and fear of losing it all if they break from inertia.
How the Daytime Soap Opera Took Over Prestige Television
Daytime soaps, unfairly maligned for too long, might seem in danger of extinction. But prime-time prestige television has absorbed their DNA.
I think the article frankly hits a lot of points many of us or other journalists have already made, but in a more perfunctory way. We already know that everything prestige is soap opera now, and that they aren't being respected for it. We've known that a long time. Part of this is daytime soap operas own fault, because the remaining soaps continue to marginalize themselves even today in terms of content out of fear of their remaining audience and fear of losing it all if they break from inertia.
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If something is considered prestigious, doesn’t that suggest respect?
Yellowstone did not suffer for being serialized. Heck, Stranger Things didn’t suffer for it, let alone Yellowstone. Having a serialized storytelling format does not make comparable to a soap opera in the minds of viewers.
Yellowstone did not suffer for being serialized. Heck, Stranger Things didn’t suffer for it, let alone Yellowstone. Having a serialized storytelling format does not make comparable to a soap opera in the minds of viewers.
Given that there are no scripts due to WGA being on strike, is there even any reason for the studios to negotiate in good faith with SAG-AFTRA right now? What are they going to act?
does one strike give leverage to another?
There was an extension previously, so I’d hardly discount that possibility again…or for that matter, that they reach at least a tentative agreement before the deadline. Reports indicate progress was made, so while there may be chest thumping and plenty of strong statements in the press, it’s entirely possible a strike is averted.
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