The Art of the Soap Opera. Trash or Revolutionary???

Hello and welcome back! As promised, I am keeping it light and airy for just a couple of weeks. And this week I am talking about soap operas! And the daytime soaps. If I delved into the nighttime soaps, we would be here all night!! 😂

Also please be forewarned that I will be speaking mostly about the ABC soaps, since they were the ones I primarily watched.

However, I became very interested in Another World, Days of Our Lives, and Young & the Restless, too!

And I do have a bit of knowledge about nearly ALL of them, the main ones anyway.

Now. I am going to take this time to answer my own question, which is the title of this post. Are soaps trash or revolutionary?

REVOLUTIONARY, BITCH!!! 🤣🤣🤣

They may be trash now, but back during their heyday – OMG!!! NOBODY missed the soaps!!! And I do mean NOBODY!!!

Housewives didn’t miss their soaps.

Kids out of school for the summer didn’t miss the soaps.

College kids across America scheduled their classes around the soaps. I don’t recall doing that, but then I got my first VCR in college and didn’t have to worry about it. College students caught the soaps in the student union, too!

And even husbands and men who worked night shifts, didn’t miss the soaps!!!

My mother brought in a portable TV on her job so she and her coworker could watch THE SOAPS!!!! 😂🤣😂🤣

People, no doubt, thought soaps were originally about the romance. However, there were MANY times soaps delved into some pretty heavy, real-life topics.

Back in their heyday, soaps were great storytelling vehicles, covering such topics as alcoholism, rape, sexual abuse, cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, eating disorders, DID (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), Alzheimer’s disease, the AIDS crisis, coming out stories, LGBTQ+ stories, prostitution, the mob, and the list goes on and on.

Soaps provided an opportunity to learn and talk about subjects we did not dare discuss. They taught us about certain diseases and ailments that were also happening to real people.

Okay. Don’t play with me, as y’all know at some point in time you watched them. And no doubt you even got hooked like I did. 😂

The whole legend of getting hooked on the stories because of your grandma is very true. That’s where I got my start. My beloved grandmother, Costella, would watch from 12:30 till about 5 p.m., watching both the ABC and NBC soaps. And whenever one of her gal pals would call or she was on the phone and her shows would start, she would ALWAYS end that call by saying, “I’ve got to go now. My stories ’bout to come on!!!” 😂😂😂

And my mother and aunt watched, too. Their soaps were mostly the CBS ones, and whenever they were together, they talked incessantly about Victor Newman, brilliantly played by Eric Braeden, from The Young & The Restless – Y&R. Oh boy, I will never forget what my mother would say about Victor Newman: “Victor can play some games.” 😂

As a child, I remember very vividly various scenes from the soaps. See if you remember or know what and/or whom I’m talking about:

Kim (played by the wonderful Kathryn Hays), from As the World Turns caught in a tornado!!!

Mary Kennicott (Susan Blanchard) visiting Jeff Martin (then played by her real-life husband, Charles Frank) in the hospital as a ghost on All My Children – AMC!!!

Victor Newman locking that poor man up in a secret room!! That poor man was Michael Scott, portrayed by Nick Benedict who played one of the Phil Brents on AMC and was a part of the whole Phil/Tara/Erica storyline!

YASSSSSS, HONEY!!! 😂😂😂

When I was a preteen, I began to think soaps were dumb and stupid. However, things took a dramatic turn (no pun intended) around 1980-81 when I was watching an episode of AMC, and Monique Jonvil (Gillian Spencer, who was the original Viki on OLTL!) was on the witness stand testifying in the Sybil Thorne murder case. In testifying, she revealed some things that made Nina Courtland (Taylor Miller, who has such gorgeous eyes) realize that she was not just her friend, but her MOTHER!!! And her father Palmer Courtlandt (the absolutely amazing James Mitchell) had lied to her all those years saying she was dead! I remember like it was yesterday Nina standing up, muttering “Mother?” and then collapsing!! Nina hit the floor in the wake of the news, y’all!! 🤣🤣😁😁

But it was the summer of 1981 watching General Hospital – GH – and the Ice Princess caper that truly got me HOOKED, when both Luke Spencer (yes, THAT Luke – Anthony Geary) and Robert Scorpio (sexy Tristan Rogers) shimmied across this rope suspended high above water to get aboard the Cassidine yacht!!!! Laura (the extraordinarily talented Genie Francis) had already snuck onboard. LOL

And the Cassadines wanted world domination, and to achieve their evil goal, they had plans to freeze the entire world, if necessary, starting with Port Charles, and Luke saved the day!!

So, soaps even delved into Sci-Fi!!!! Talk about revolutionary!!!

And from that moment on, I would catch both AMC and GH when I was out of school for the summer!! I skipped One Life to Live – OLTL because back then I thought it was dull, though I did catch some great moments when Marco (the incredible Gerald Anthony) and Karen Wolek, (played by THE Judith Light), hopped that train to go on the run in ’81!! 😁😊

Speaking of Karen Wolek and the phenomenally talented Judith Light, remember this iconic scene from below?? And what it was in reference to? And what Karen admitted to God and the rest of the world and all of Llanview??? There will be a clip of that at the end of this post. Tee hee.

And then there was the whole Echo DiSavoy mess on OLTL in 1983!!! That’s right, Kim Zimmer – yes, Reva Shayne – was on OLTL before she was on Guiding Light!!! Then decades later after GL ended, she returned to OLTL to cause more trouble for Clint, Viki, and Viki’s new husband at the time, Charlie Banks (sexy Brian Kerwin!!!)

My tune about OLTL changed during the summer of 1985 when Viki Buchanan (played by the PHENOMENAL ERIKA SLEZAK) turned into NIKI SMITH on the witness stand when Tina Clayton (the beloved Andrea Evans who just passed away 😓) was accused of murdering Harry O’Neill (Frank Converse)!!!!

See below:

As a matter of fact, I remember seeing bits and pieces of the Niki Smith saga unfold back in the day when Tina found the Secret Room underneath Llanfair, and she found out that she was not Viki’s ward, but in fact Viki’s half sister!!! And when confronted with the news, Viki remembered walking in on her father, THE great Victor Lord, in bed with her college best friend, Irene Manning, doing the deed! Ha!

This sent Viki into a tailspin and caused her to develop her split personality Niki.

In 1995, the story was rewritten to include several more personalities of Viki’s, and the true cause of her disorder was the fact that her beloved father, Victor Lord, MOLESTED her as a child!!! OUCH!

This revelation TRULY showed just how unbelievably and extraordinarily talented Erika Slezak is playing SIX different characters!!! And two of them were male!!

And Erika Slezak has won a total of SIX Emmy’s for her amazing work as Victoria Lord Gordon Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson Banks possibly Buchanan again when OLTL ended in 2012!

So, to say I’m a Erika Slezak fanatic is an understatement!!

But I digress.

Soaps also brought us pure fantasy and things that people would consider “jumping the shark,” a phrase I HATE! It’s a damn TV show, so what the hell do you expect?

Um speaking of… look at the pic below. Guess who this is and what is happening and which show this is from? Tee hee

Soaps went from being conversations that centered around the kitchen table over a cup of coffee; all the way to underground cities; heaven; hell; being pregnant and going over a waterfall and surviving, both mother and child; and even going back in time!! 😂😂😂 OLTL was the main culprit of all this!!! 😊😉

Yes, hunty, OLTL took Viki to heaven, Dorian Lord to hell, Viki to the Wild West to bring Clint back, and yes, Viki and the gang even went to the underground city of Eterna, buried underneath a mountain!

Tina (Andrea Evans) was the one who went over the Iguazu Falls in Argentina, pregnant! She survived and then she later found out her baby survived too! Oy!

I must give honorable mention to the Casey space alien story GH undertook in 1990. Yes, little Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough who LITERALLY grew up before our very eyes on the show!!!) met an alien from outer space!!

Honorable mention to:

The Kay/Marge storyline starting back in 1989 on Y&R! Kay’s double, Marge, took over her life back then! LOLOL Years later Marge came back not to hurt Kay this time, but to beg Kay for her help. There was a mixup and Marge died in an accident, but everyone thought it was Kay!! 😁 Anyway, Jeanne Cooper portrayed Katherine Chancellor Sterling from the beginning of the show (1973) until her death (2013). Katherine (and Jeanne) kept that show on its toes!! And the Kay/Jill feud! PHEW!!!!

Mac (the stellar heavyweight Douglass Watson) and Rachel (the incredible Victoria Wyndham) and Iris (the FIERCE Beverlee McKinsey) from Another World!!! Iris did NOT like the fact that her beloved father, Mac, married much younger, former troublemaker Rachel Davis. Talk about DRAMA! It was the whole daddy-married- an-evil-stepmonster-that-I-hate triangle! It was also done on OLTL with Victor, Viki, and Dorian.

The tortured, yet very adventurous love story of Luke and Laura (Genie Francis) from GH. And don’t get me started on how TPTB of ABC and GH RUINED their story later on!!!

And the tortured love story of Doug and Julie (played by real-life couple Doug Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes) from the early days of Days of Our Lives – DOOL.

And Oh. My. God. MARLENA’S POSSESSION TWICE ON DOOL!!!!! And you don’t get any more revolutionary than that! Something straight out of The Exorcist!

I am quite sure Deidre Hall had fun with that one!! (And later being a serial killer on Days, too!!!) Pictured here with sexy AF Drake Hogestyn as John Black.

And who can forget about the great, romantic SUPERCOUPLES?:

Luke and Laura. Luke and Laura’s wedding brought in over 30 million viewers on November 17, 1981!! Yes, Laura married her rapist!!! 😱😱😱

Bo and Hope. (Peter Reckell and Kristian Alfonso) from DOOL!

Clint and Viki.

Mac and Rachel.

Josh and Reva!!! (Robert Newman and Kim Zimmer) from Guiding Light!

Angie and Jesse. (Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams) from AMC!

Greg and Jenny. (Laurence Lau and Kim Delaney) from AMC!

Cord (sexy John Loprieno) and Tina from OLTL!!!

And of course, I cannot leave this post without mentioning the grande divas of daytime – Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) from AMC and Dorian Cramer Lord (Robin Strasser) from OLTL!!!!!

And the soap themes!!!!! This may be John’s top soap themes, but they are not necessarily Derek’s top themes, in that order that is. But just to take us down memory lane. Haha!

In memoriam:

Sadly the soap world lost the amazingly talented and popular Jacklyn Zeman (who played Bobbie Spencer, yes, Luke’s little sister) from GH. Jackie had been on that show since 1977! Her character Bobbie went through a whole helluva lot on GH! Bobbie was a former teen prostitute who turned her life around and eventually became head surgical nurse at General Hospital and even married a doctor!

Andrea Evans (THE Tina Clayton Lord Roberts) from OLTL.

And John Aniston (yes, Jennifer’s dad), Victor Kiriakis, from DOOL.

Now for THE big scene featuring Judith Light (Karen Wolek on OLTL), when she testified on behalf of Viki Riley for murdering Marco Dane, which Viki didn’t do. And in testifying for Viki, Karen admitted on the witness stand that she was a prostitute for Marco!!! And her poor husband Larry (Michael Storm) and sister Jenny (Brynn Thayer) were sitting in the courtroom to hear this!! To say she shocked all of Llanview was an understatement. Well, Viki found out earlier that Karen was a housewife turned hooker for Marco Dane! 😊 Skip to 45:30 for the drama and the big reveal.

Please tell me what you used to watch in the comment section below.

Now before you go, click on the banner below to get your grub on – DOORDASH!!:

There is sooooooo much to write about the soaps that there is NO WAY I could cover it all in just one post. I am sure that down the road, I shall revisit this topic again.

At any rate, that is it for now. Next time, it is back to the harder subjects. Coming up soon, it’s going to be about rejection!!!!! Stay tuned…

Until then, please be safe and mentally well!!!

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

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