FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: daveB from Oakland on April 14, 2011, 07:00:07 PM
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... and condolences (http://www.avclub.com/articles/abc-cancels-all-my-children-and-one-life-to-live,54616/) to the hundreds of writers, actors, and others who worked so hard to perpetuate all those inane storylines for the last 500 years ...
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I really do feel bad for Spike. I've followed a soap or two in my day, and it's shocking when they go off the air. They seem so eternal, their deaths are all the more dismaying.
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Is any soap left at this point?
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Is any soap left at this point?
Mad Men?
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You know who really killed the soaps? OJ Simpson. Seriously. I was listening to a podcast the other day comparing pro wrestling to soap operas and they said that one of the key factors in the downfall of soaps is that they were preempted so often during the OJ trial that people just forgot about them.
I do feel for Spike here. My relationship with pro wrestling is similar to Spike's relationship with soaps and if wrestling went away I'd certainly survive, but I definitely would feel it's absence.
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You know who really killed the soaps? OJ Simpson. Seriously...
I like that theory. The ascendancy of tabloid culture killing the soaps. TMZ, Us Weekly, etcetera ... all those tabloid organs seem to operate on a soap-like trajectory: long, boring stretches of nothing much happening occasionally punctuated by batshit-insane WTF moments.
Another thought: I think it was Chris L who called the show this week on the "forwards/backwards" topic and said that TV is going forward and movies are going backwards. Presumably talking about shows like Mad Men, the Sopranos, Breaking Bad ... shows that are soapish, minus the meandering nonsense. Shows that are working towards a worthwhile endpoint. So I guess I can appreciate what the soaps contributed without necessarily missing them that much.
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You know who really killed the soaps? OJ Simpson. Seriously...
I like that theory. The ascendancy of tabloid culture killing the soaps. TMZ, Us Weekly, etcetera ... all those tabloid organs seem to operate on a soap-like trajectory: long, boring stretches of nothing much happening occasionally punctuated by batshit-insane WTF moments.
Another thought: I think it was Chris L who called the show this week on the "forwards/backwards" topic and said that TV is going forward and movies are going backwards. Presumably talking about shows like Mad Men, the Sopranos, Breaking Bad ... shows that are soapish, minus the meandering nonsense. Shows that are working towards a worthwhile endpoint. So I guess I can appreciate what the soaps contributed without necessarily missing them that much.
I would like to go on the record as saying that my comment regarding Mad Men was intended as a fanciful jest. I truly love that show and think it's fantastic.
I agree with your point. Soaps were the first television programs to have any sort of continuity in storyline as far as I can tell. A lot of good TV today owes debt to soaps.
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Soaps were the first television programs to have any sort of continuity in storyline as far as I can tell. A lot of good TV today owes debtto soaps.
I never had any use for them myself, but in another thread we're still talking about my favorite-ever (non-comedic) show Twin Peaks 20 years later, and surely it could not even have been dreamed without the soaps as forerunners. Not to mention The Days of the Week.
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You know who really killed the soaps? OJ Simpson. Seriously. I was listening to a podcast the other day comparing pro wrestling to soap operas and they said that one of the key factors in the downfall of soaps is that they were preempted so often during the OJ trial that people just forgot about them.
Is it fair to say that the OJ debacle was the birth of reality TV? And that it was reality TV that helped to kill soaps? I should add that soaps in the UK are doing just fine. They are on in primetime here.
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It used to be soaps versus game shows. Then all the talk shows arrived--Phil Donohue's, then Oprah Winfrey's, Ricki Lake's, Sally Jesse Raphael's, etc.--themselves the progeny of the morning shows. With the later, trashier talk shows came the judge shows. Real-life soap opera proved more gripping than fictional, for some reason. I don't get it (I've always preferred fantasy to reality myself).
Another thing that screwed soaps, I think, is that there came to be too many of them. In the far-off days of my girlhood, soaps were on for only a couple of hours a day; late morning/early afternoon and late afternoon were reserved for movies. I would get home from school, watch Another World and Dark Shadows and then watch a movie. All three major networks aired a movie at three or four, not to mention what was on offer on channels 5, 9, and 11. The movies fell by the wayside, more soaps were created to fill the gap, and most increased in length to a full hour, and I bet the glut overwhelmed a lot of people. The talk shows were a refreshing novelty, and, as they got more lurid, they sucked in ever more gawkers. Soaps, as ridiculous as their plots can get, just can't compete with freak shows.
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I think soaps kinda screwed themselves, they've always been trash tv because of the way they're made. They are written fast and shot fast. They have to be meandering and crazy and shot like crap with bad acting because they have to knock out an episode everyday. They're stuck in a 1930's radio paradigm that they can never grow out of.
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Hey, Santa Barbara had many moments of greatness. It was very short-lived, though, and that probably helped it.
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Is any soap left at this point?
Days of Our Lives!
And of course General Hospital is still around whenever Franco wants to pop in.
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... and condolences (http://www.avclub.com/articles/abc-cancels-all-my-children-and-one-life-to-live,54616/) to the hundreds of writers, actors, and others who worked so hard to perpetuate all those inane storylines for the last 500 years ...
and yet, WWE continues to dominate Appalachia with the same inane storylines
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I feel bad for the older folks who were looking to retire and watch soaps all day. I mean, if soaps were my favorite thing, that would be my dream too.
Then I read some of the comments on the online articles about Soapocalypse 2011, and these people writing in are either excellent actors or are truly mad -- either way, only confirming to the TV execs that they made the right decision.
EDIT: and just when I posted this, I saw Dave Holmes' tumblr, and WOW O. M. G. :
http://daveholmes.tumblr.com/post/4647103945 (http://daveholmes.tumblr.com/post/4647103945)
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Is any soap left at this point?
Mad Men?
Spot on! Mad Men is a soap opera with fancy sets and costumes.
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I feel bad for the older folks who were looking to retire and watch soaps all day. I mean, if soaps were my favorite thing, that would be my dream too.
Then I read some of the comments on the online articles about Soapocalypse 2011, and these people writing in are either excellent actors or are truly mad -- either way, only confirming to the TV execs that they made the right decision.
EDIT: and just when I posted this, I saw Dave Holmes' tumblr, and WOW O. M. G. :
http://daveholmes.tumblr.com/post/4647103945 (http://daveholmes.tumblr.com/post/4647103945)
Holmes' pointer to comments on the cancellation contains some hysterical crazy, but also some well-written parody of hysterical crazy, like this: "If you can’t see that the timing of these cancellations perfectly coincides with the reveal of Gaga’s alien facebones…it’s all happening."
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Doesn't the book of Revelation name the canceling of the soaps one of the signs of the Apocalypse?
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I figure if I could get through the cancellation of "Soap", then a lot of folks can get over the recent cancellation of soaps.
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I think you can blame the demise of the soap on two factors. For one, soaps are losing female viewers--their key demographic. Many women have entered the workforce and no longer have the time nor the opportunity to watch daytime television. This loss of viewers has made soaps far less palatable to advertisers.
The second factor is production costs. Of course, soaps are less costly to produce than a primetime drama or sitcom. But relative to cheapo reality fare, soaps are a pretty expensive proposition. So why spend a large sum of money on making a soap when you (the network) could spend far less to produce a talk show that would get nearly the same ratings at a fraction of the cost?
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Is any soap left at this point?
Mad Men?
Spot on! Mad Men is a soap opera with fancy sets and costumes.
Yeah, I'll give you that. I also think it's an interesting character study as we watch adults (and kids -- hiya, Keiran Shilpya) from that era try to adapt to one of the most turbulent eras of American culture. Nobody would care about the show if it were set in 1940 or 1980.
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Zach Galifanakis had the best take on Mad Men: "So, Mad Men is a show about people in their early 60s..."