Are Soaps Dead? I'm Not Sure, But Pass The Vicodin

First, the bad news. The dentist said I would have to have two teeth removed...root canal and then ... a bone graft.

A what? What the hell is ... a bone graft? Well, truth be told, I could go into detail. But I wont. Let's just say, it's as hideous and painful as it sounds. More bad news. Out of pocket, even with insurance...this little trip to the dentist was going to cost me $2,000 (well, actually $1904, but why quibble?) As a journalist, $200 would have been a lot...but $2,000? Kill me now. It gets worse. On the way back from said dentist, my car died.

In years gone past, I would have greeted such a day with "Oh well, that's life." I might have even drowned my sorrows in some booze, but I don't drink (as a journalist, I did enough imbibing in the 80s). Ah, I know...soap operas! The old standby. When you're having a piss-poor, miserable, are-you-kidding-me? kinda day, nothing is -- or should I say was -- better than getting lost in a couple of daytime dramas.

Soaps and booze? Not a bad combo. And both quite addicting.

Or I should say was. Kicking booze was easy. I just stopped. Cold turkey. Kicking the soap habit has been harder. But it, too, has all but been kicked.

The ratings say, I'm not alone in kicking the habit. When I first got addiction, back when I was 16, and racing home from high school, it was either soaps or a new version of Mickey Mouse Club. Yes, I'm old enough (48 and soon) to remember the days of just three networks and some local stations. Quaint, but that's what we had.

No offense to Mickey but a shirtless Jameson Parker on One Life to Live was by far the easier choice. Not to mention the intrigue of watching him try to get his fiance, a nun turned nurse (I'm not making this up) into bed, begging her for sex ... but...she had to wait! Not to mention she was a virgin but getting married for the second time (say what??) and he was just so horny he had to keep begging (this went on for weeks) and she kept saying no, until he decided to sleep with the town tramp. After all, he was so horny. Wouldn't you be? I sure was.

Okay, admitted horn dog status aside, I DID soon get intrigued and hooked on other plots. Viki's baby was kidnapped by the crazy baby sitter who thought the baby was hers. The black police chief actually had a real role and a storyline and unlike a lot of the prime time shows of the time, he was actually significant in his world. And the women were smart, and in charge, and the wealthy people were miserable and the working class people were all trying to be rich. Loved it.

That was then, this is now.

Adding to the tooth pain, and lots of Vicodin (yeah, Vicodin!) I flipped on my soaps and what was most painful (teeth aside) was...basically how they all sucked.

Royal sucking. Not just basic, they're-having-a-bad-day, or it's-a-filler-Wednesday-where-nothing-happens kinda day, this was a Friday. Right. Where all the juicy, clever, cliff hanger stuff is supposed to happen.

The stuff that is so outrageous you know you have to watch Monday to find out what happened. AND six months later, you're still trying to find out. Nah. No such luck. They just sucked.

The humor I have watched leeched out of the medium for a decade? Totally gone. The smart women? They've apparently all high-tailed it out of town. What I mostly saw was simpering, frightened, scared, brain-dead women, some abused mentally or physically...some unable to make the simplest of decisions, without, of course asking a man first. (Have any soap writers or executives working today read a newspaper in the past decade?)

The black people? Largely window dressing. The variety of characters who have no lives, no purpose, no reason for being...other than to count on someone's statistical reports to the actor's unions to say "see, we are hiring a lot of minorities."

The writing, if you could call it that, was mostly uninspired, trite, written on a 3rd grade level and...just not entertaining.

More Vicodin! If I'm going to slog through an afternoon of this ... drama, at least an altered state might help. It's not helping. The sexuality? Gone. The class struggles? Missing. The relevance to life, the mirror of society, interesting characters struggling between good and evil? There, but threadbare.

Over the years, my allegiances varied to various networks. When I was working at ABC in college, I was all about the ABC line-up (then 5 shows, now 3). And then CBS, and NBC and then for a time, a couple of shows from each network at the same time. (Thanks to the VCR).

When I started writing about daytime TV for People, TV Guide, back in the early 80s, there were like 16, 17 soaps on. The highest rated now, Young and the Restless (and probably my current favorite, although that's only because it's the most palatable of all the crap that's being served up) has the kind of rating that would have gotten it canceled in 1988. Twenty years later, it's at the top of a mostly moribund, lackluster heap.

Right now, there are 8 soaps across the three networks (3 on ABC, 1 on NBC and 4 on CBS). Two are hanging on by a thread. That's being kind. In some ways, creatively, socially, in terms of pop culture, they're all pretty much hanging by a thread. And it's not inconceivable that in the next 2-3 years, they might all be gone.

 

That will be a shame. And when that day comes, I'll really need to reach back for some Vicodin.

 

Rather than sound like a complete pessimist, I DO hope these shows make a turn-around. I want to see them thrive again. The sitcom died, but The Cosby Show helped bring it back. TV is cyclical. There is no reasons soaps can't have another hey day.

 

Daytime isn't dead. Not yet. But it is on a resuscitator.  Lots of people, the ones having bad days, miserable, my-boss-can-be-such-an-ass, my-car-is-dead, my-husband-sucks kinda days, need these shows.

 

What do the shows need? That's another blog ... a longer blog ... for another time.

For now, I have to go back to the FF button and pop another Vicodin.