Soap Opera from Hell

I'm starting this thread to discuss the phenomenon of the TV Soap Opera--essentially, how soap operas carry on relentlessly, day after day, month after month, year after year--the same old parade of flat, two-dimensional characters in the same old worn out, hackneyed, clichéd situations again and again, motivated purely by commercial factors--the ratings, advertizing contracts, etc. Nuclear war might break out or a meteorite might collide against the earth or we might experience a second Flood or the Second Coming, but the soap operas will still carry on through it all, and a certain segment of the populace will still be more interested in them--in who's getting married or who's getting divorced or who's having an affair with whom--than in what's happening in the rest of the world! That's kind of funny and sad, ridiculous and pathetic, all at the same time!

Does anyone here even watch soap operas? I never have. (except for a few episodes of "Passions", but I couldn't tell ya what really happens there now.)

I don't either, but some people still do!

In any case, a lot of prime time TV is becoming more and more like a soap opera! Take, for example, shows like NYPD Blue and Judging Amy, and now, the new show "Las Vegas"--which looks like a prime candidate for Soapy Operatic stuff. Okay, maybe better in production with better characters and actors and script and stuff, but, in the end, the same principle applies, I'd say!

i've watched a few in my time, a little bit embarrasingly. used to watch a few with my family, dallas, twin peaks, beverly hills 90210, some other crap. most recently i got into buffy the vampire slayer last winter, and i have to agree with you that most stuff on tv is fairly close to a soap opera and a big waste of time.
i dont pretend to know or judge why other people watch soaps or tv in general. maybe they find them genuinely enjoyable, or they have a lot going on in their lives and just need a small but regular supply of passive entertainment, tv being the most easilly attainable. but for me i think a large part of it is procrastination. certain things are easy ways of escaping the things that i need to do [homework, actively coming up with ways of making myself happy, etc.], passive entertainment. and when it comes down to it while i can say certain of them are more rewarding than others, ultimately one waste of time is as good as another, and that goes for entertainment as a whole. i dont really want to use that as an excuse though, for playing videogames or watching er or some crappy passtime like that instead of reading up on how to fix my bike, or finishing the research i'm working on for school, etc [assuming always that either of those things would either be an equally fun passtime or lead to some more rewarding ends]. but i dont think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive.

i suspect that it's really easy to become fixated on just about anything, actually. i have a friend who spends about all of his hours awake obsessively playing his guitar or working at his computer. his computer work makes him a good deal of money, so i guess it's useful on some level, but when you look closer the stuff he's producing isnt really anything all that stimulating and is generally just unfathomable [albeit complex] nonsense. it probably doesnt give any meaning to his life but it keeps him from getting too bored to stomach going on.

I used to watch Days of our Lives in good ol' days when the stories were well told, but now it's getting too ridiculous.

Was there ever a time when the stories were well told?

I used to watch Dynasty back in India, as it was all the rage back then. They didn't show Dallas on any of the channels, though.

Yeah, if you were a fan.

That's pretty subjective!

I have never watched a soap opera and have no desire to... when I was a kid, there was an elderly lady who lived next door who watched them all the time.... she used to tell my mom about what happened to so and so and for a long time, my mom thought she was talking about someone she knew... turned out it was all the soap people... I guess they kept her company during the day...

__________________

I think soaps have become a really interested phenomenonenomenonenmonpokemon... doh! PHENOMENON!!! They have become a distinctive genre on its own that involves specific themes, settings, milieus, characters, music, cinematography, costume.. the works!! The tempo in these soaps makes a turtle look like a greyhound.

When I was younger I used to watch Dynasty and Falcon Crest, but those weren't really soaps in the same way as more recent "hyper-soaps" like Days of Our Lives. The biggest difference is, correct me if I'm wrong, that Dynasty and Dallas and all those classics were broadcasted on a weekly basis where Days of Our Lives is delivering a new episode every single day. YAY!!!!! This of course leads to a lot lesser time and money (and talent) to spend on every episode - and you can tell quite easily, can't you.

Since the soaps originally were made to suit housewives there are a few things in them that differs from ordinary tv-series. There are always strong and powerful women in them. The most prominent women in soaps are often company executives or head of a family and always very wealthy. There are almost always a cunning and evil female character that gets back on the men, i.e. does what all the female viewers would love to do. The men are often strong but sensitive guys with a lot of muscles. Nice to look at and with hearts of gold and that value the family more than anything. The man of every woman's dream. Then of course we have the JR:s, the evildoers, in short, the root of all evil.

There are a lot of interesting things in soap and I could go on forever. The funniest thing about them to me though is the fact that every character in the soaps loves to talk to him- or herself! They do this all the time!!!

- Oh, Stephano! You thought you can fool me. But I have something you didn't expect me to have. Oh yes, Stephano.. You will be very surprised. Very, very surprised........

*zoom in on face, actress stare into the camera for ten seconds and fiftyfive episodes later we get to find out what that "secret" really is*

__________________
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

--------

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Amen, Peter. The phenomenon of soap operas, and their place in society, is interesting as hell. I've done similar analyses of romance novels.

Yeah, well, it's easier to use soliloquy than to get the actor to emote enough to actually show us how he/she feels. It's an easy way out, a hack trick.

Shakespeare was a big fan of soliloquy, too--and he was the "hack" of his day.

__________________
You were a demon and a lawyer? Wow. Insert joke here."

Soapspeare.

Why do the characters in these soaps always have evil twins? If MoFo were a soap opera, Ugly Celebrity would probably pop up!

Yeah, and kill his evil twin!

Hmm... and I always thought your evil twin was "Straight Celebrity"! (j/k)

Well, that was funny.

Anyway, I guess I haven't had enough of an exposure to Soaps to do a decent analysis of them, but whatever little exposure I have leads me to one undeniable, indisputable conclusion... BORING AS HELL! And the way they go on and on and on, oblivious of what's going on in the rest of the world--the marriages, the divorces, the affairs, in never-ending, nauseatingly self-absorbed succession is sickening to say the least. The meandering storyline in soaps, concocted every night by a team of "specialists" with a very limited imagination, the fake, superficial, shallow characters, the contrived scenarios and empty relationships--they are all enough to make one puke! Not the least sickening is the unrealistic characterizations--phoney, stereotypical, two-dimensional characters with no basis in real life! Personally, I'm just glad to be living in the real world and not some fantasy TV-land in which everyone looks like they have spent their life savings on plastic surgery and the extent of their education goes as far as the third grade (if they're lucky!)

Why are there two Soap Opera from Hell threads? Has that something to do with the evil twin part??

I don't know, but I have reason to believe that one of them took over my corporation and slept with my husband.

No, I believe that was me. Sorry about that.