With the surprise cancellation of All My Children and One Life to Live and the previous cancellations of As The World Turns and Guiding Light, many of us are still scrambling to come to terms with the changing landscape of daytime television. Soaps, after all, were daytime television for the last thirty years, and fans still yap about their favorite characters like they were gossiping about their friends, leaving many to wonder why this slow vacuum of soaps from the daytime terrain is even necessary?
We are told that soaps are expensive, with a large cast and crew of union members, some of which are well-paid vets, and multiple sets that need to be moved from storage and back repeatedly, while one-set talk shows are comparatively cheap. We are told that ratings are down, and that production of soaps are too costly for the return. Ex-Guiding Lighters even poked fun at the frantic and perhaps not-well-thought-out budget cuts in the soap industry with their own web parody, Steamboat. This brings me to my next point: online television.
If soaps are losing their place on daytime television, do they have a place in online television? Clearly the answer is yes. While networks haven’t exactly explored the possibility of moving soaps online, the soap vets have, producing several strictly-online shows, including Steamboat from Guiding Light‘s Michael O’Leary, Gotham from As The World Turns’ Martha Byrne, Venice from Guiding Light/Days of Our Lives‘ Crystal Chappell and Kim Turrisi, and Family Dinner from Young & The Restless‘ Lauralee Bell.
Many soap actors have also taken roles in strictly-online series including One Life to Live‘s Hilary B. Smith in Fumbling Through the Pieces, Guiding Light‘s Beth Chamberlin in Steamboat and Cell, As The World Turns‘ Michael Park in Gotham and Steamboat, and the cast of The Bay.
And fans are watching, tweeting, facebooking, which makes perfect sense. Watching soaps has always been a social experience, even before we knew the phrase “social media.” It would actually make it easier for viewers to chat about their favorite soaps if they can “share” the episodes with their girlfriends online with a direct link. Can’t you imagine “Oh my god, Lindsay just slept with Ryan! You have to watch!” all over Facebook? I can.
In a struggle to keep their soaps making money, networks tried to youthify their casts and create even more extraordinary storylines, which I believe missed the entire reason why the soap model was successful for decades. It wasn’t hotties with hard bodies, big hair, dramatic crescendos in music, and pensive ending closeups, although we came to appreciate a good set of hair extensions and abs and cliffhanger expressions. It was the two person high-conflict scene, the basic building block of the televised soap opera. Two people in a room going at each other. Each scene had an obstacle. The stakes were high, often life or death. Unlike primetime, soaps had very little action sequences and didn’t have flashy editing. In fact, for many years, soaps were shot like a theater scene, with multiple cameras catching the actions, mixed live. All you had were the relationships, and THAT is what hooked fans.
Here are two great vintage examples from All My Children’s Dixie, who was my favorite soap character as a kid. This is an example of a scene that gets to the conflict right off the bat. Brooke questions her pregnant and sick maid Dixie, who is feeling guilty over having an affair with Brooke’s husband. Dixie wants Brooke to get the hell away before her guilt causes her to break down and fess up. Brooke, a reporter, doesn’t want to leave until she gets the answers she’s looking for. Conflict. Relationships. Character.
Tad and Dixie have had some great fights (terrycloth robe, affair with Liza, affair with David, yes I’m a ‘holic!), but I couldn’t find them online! Urgh. So here’s a great one from Dixie and David. He’s a renowned doctor and has been playing small-town mom Dixie for some time, while she is trying desperately to hold on to her marriage to her husband and the love of her life Tad, even though the marriage is feeling exceedingly banal to her. In soap fashion, they are of course having this conversation at a gala with her husband in the next room! So she wants to get back to the party before she does something stupid, and he, an egomaniac, wants to prove he can screw her at the most inappropriate place possible. Conflict. Relationships. Character.
As a writer, this is a model that I have used heavily to structure my own web series, Downsized. Two person scenes, high relationship conflict, rotating storylines. Beth believes she’s being praised by management for her job performance only to find out she is being downsized. Connor is stressed by the lack of communication in his failing marriage only to find intimacy with a woman who can’t communicate with him. Astrid desperately needs to pay off her debt so she flirts with a married client who has a crush on her. Andy confronts his half-brother Lowell for plagiarizing the self-help program he’s trying to launch. Relationship conflict.
If we didn’t equate soaps with its shiny exterior and looked instead at its interior, we would see a story structure that was solid and simple and highly adaptable to online television in its infancy.
Also, remember: soaps made daytime television advertising highly profitable. They were called soaps for a reason. They were created to sell soap products, and they were created for the female audience. Can soaps do the same for online television?
What are your thoughts?
DARYN
You know my feelings on this one, Daryn. I’ll write more thoughts here later.
Every writer should read this article. It gets to the core of what every scene needs to contain, soap or not.