Talk:Soap opera/Archive 1

Archive 1

Deletion of The Flying Doctors

I have deleted reference to Australian series The Flying Doctors from this page because it was a drama series where each episode has a self-contained story and one-off guest stars, so not a soap opera. I moved the details from the deleted text into the new page I created for this series, then added lots more info. MinorEdit 21:36, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

renamed Soaps in Australia to Australian Soap Operas

I have renamed "Soaps in Australia" to "Australian Soap Operas" because the section is not really about what soaps are shown in Aust, what soaps are popular in Aust, and where in schedules they appear. The section mainly described Australian PRODUCED soap operas no matter where they are shown. It should be noted that we do get UK and US soaps here; the original section name would have been accurate only if the section described where, when and how those international soaps are shown in Aust, but it does not do that. MinorEdit 01:11, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

"All My Children" picture

Is there any particular reason why the "All My Children" picture is continually being removed? I don't want to start an edit war or anything, so I thought it would be better to simply ask why it is being removed before I revert the picture. Cyclone49 08:39, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

I think the person who originally uploaded the pic is now deleting it from the soap opera page (though not actually deleting the pic itself from wikipedia) because someone complained about him/her uploading it, making some sort of reference to copyright violation. However I can't see what the problem is or how this pic is any different from the many other screen caps all over wikipedia. The soap opera page has several screen caps, and the Coronation Street page even more. If we can have the odd tiny screen cap from these show and others (like Big Brother Australia) I don't see why we can't have a single AMC pic. MinorEdit 10:42, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Neighbours Image

Why is neighbours the only UK soap with an image not to have the title screen as its image? I'm not complaining, but out of consistency, wouldn't it be better to have a title page for neighbours too? If people want to look at Lara barely clothed, they can do it on the Neighbours article. Timsheridan 20:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

There is a Neighbours title image on Neighbours, and it should be placed over here instead of the bra picture. Mike H (Talking is hot) 23:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Post Modern Soap Operas

Someone should include a listing of "post modern" soap operas that don't come on in the daytime; i.e. Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, Party of Five, The O.C., etc...

There's a whole section called "American soaps: for the evening, too." Mike H. That's hot 10:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Another slab of deleted text

I removed the long rambling slab of text. Some bits might be useful - though these sorts of descriptions might be better on entries for the individual shows. Even a quick skim through the first para reveals a duplication with discussion of Luke and Laura's exploits that have already been mentioned elsewhere on this page. It also contains POV stuff. Asa01 04:22, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

- In order to really understand how some of the most popular soap operas have survived for twenty, thirty, forty and in Guiding Light's case, fifty years, one must analyze some of the most popular daytime storylines. One popular storyline would be Billy Clyde burying his ex-prostitute and wife, Estelle alive on All My Children. One Life To Live went all the way with Todd Manning and Margaret Saybrooke, when Marty was brutally raped by Todd Manning and then he turns around and saves her life after a car accident. General Hospital took Luke and Laura on several adventures of being trapped in a mall all night, searching for statutes to bring down a mobster, saving the world from the evil Cassadines, bringing down Frank Smith in Puerto Rico and being on the run for almost twenty years. Days of Our Lives took us on several mysteries with Vivian Alamain buring her nephew's wife alive, stealing her nemesis' embroyo and implanting it into herself, and Marlena Evans becoming possess by the Devil. The Young and the Restless has taken us through character driven,plot devices such as Katherine's battle with alcoholism, Victor's plane crash, Dru learning to read, Sheila's rampage to destroy Lauren and the business wars between the Abbots and Newmans. As the World Turns did their best story with Barbara Ryan, the good girl that was always the victim of ex-husband James. Barbara quickly lost her good girl routine after being in a boat explosion and being nearly burned to death. After months of reconstructed body surgery, Barbara vowed revenge on everyone that ever done her wrong and went on a rampage to get revenge. - - Soap Villains and Psychos are the best. All My Children's most evil was Billy Clyde Tuggly. Billy Clyde was a pimp that prostituted Donna and Estelle. He tried to bury Estelle alive, killed her lover Benny Sago, kidnap Dixie, "killed Tad" in a bridge explosion, and caused his daughter to suffer a miscarriage after falling down a flight of stairs. All My Children's Ray Gardner raped and stalked sweet Ruth Martin, tried to blow up Ruth's family house, sexually abuse his daughter Jenny, through his son, Tad out of a moving car, abused his ex-wife Opal and tried to kill Estelle. - Ironically, villains can be heros at time. Billy Clyde proves this after saving Estelle from being killed by Ray. Yet some villains are never heros, such as Days of Our Lives' evil Stephano Dimera. This man has tortured everyone in Salem. He has kidnap almost every character in town. He has kidnapped Marlena several times, he's "died nine times," he's tried to kill Roman, John, Bo, and several others several times. He planted a brain chip in Hope Brady and John Black's head to make them into his mercenaries. He wiped out John's memory and implanted Roman Brady's memories in his head. He held Marlena and Roman on an island for years. He kidnap Carrie and Mickey. He has also turned all of his children, Peter, Kristen, Tony, and Lexie as evil as he was.

Slab of deleted text

I have just deleted the text included below. Seems to be way too much detail on individual shows that should be put into the individual articles on those shows (if anywhere). It all seemed to swamp this article, which had previously been quite manageable and useful. Asa01 06:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Today, Desperate Housewives is a huge, successful primetime soap opera. Yet, there would not be a Desperate Housewives, if not for the popular Dallas. Dallas is the most famous soap opera of all time. The show reached its peak in the early 80s, as the 1981 season ended with a shot, "Who Shot J.R." The "Who Shot J.R." episodes were some of the most watched episodes in television history. Over 80 million people in the United States and 300 million around the world stuck glued to the television sets to find out "Who shot J.R." The episodes were so popular that even President Ford could not deal with the suspense. He tried to convince one of the actors of Dallas to tell him "Who shot J.R," while playing golf. On November 26, 1981, America discovered that it was Kristen Shephard, J.R's psychotic, sister-in-law that pulled the trigger. Ellie Ewing had three sons; J.R., the eldest, scheming villain of the show; Gary, the alcoholic; and Bobby, the sweet, heroic son. J.R. was married to Sue Ellen, who he cheated on with 81 other women. Bobby was married to Pamela, who was the daughter of the Ewings' rivals, the Barnes. Gary was the black sheep that was married to Valene, a country girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Lucy was the youngest of the clan. She was the product of Gary and Valene and raised by the Ewings after J.R. forced Valene out of Lucy's life.

Each season, Dallas dealt with storylines of love, romance, scheming, backstabbing, affairs, intrigue, and shocking cliffhangers. Cliffhangers that kept fans on the edge of their seats included: Pamela's fall and miscarriage, Sue Ellen's car crash while pregnant with John Ross, J.R. getting shot, Bobby getting shot, Cliff's alcoholic overdose, and Pamela's fiery car crash.

From 1978-1991, Dallas kept millions of fans on the edge of their seats. The show was so successful that it led to a popular spinoff, Knots Landing.

Knots Landing was a spinoff of Dallas that took the recurring characters of Val and Gary Ewing from Dallas to Knots Landing, California. Val and Gary had enough of J.R.'s constant scheming against them, so Bobby built a cul-de-sac in Knots Landing and Miss Ellie bought a house for Gary and Val's wedding present. In Knot's Landing, Gary and Val faced new problems, such as multiple marriages, cheating, and alcoholism. Yet they found faithful friends in Karen and Sid, Ginger and Jeff, and Laura and Richard. Much like mother soap, Dallas, Knots Landing had its lead vixen in Abby. Donna Mill's Abby, the sister of Sid, joined the soap during its second season as she schemed, manipulated and stirred up tons of trouble in Knots. Abby's schemes included multiple illegal business transactions, stealing, lying, cheating, and stealing Gary from Valene and then stealing money from Gary. Abby's belief, "When it comes down to choosing between men and money...money always wins." For 14 seasons, Knots Landing took us through many love stories, triangles, shootings, adventure, murder mysteries, cheating, lying, deceit, social issues and lots more.

Falcon Crest was Jane Wyman's baby. Falcon Crest starred Ronald Reagan's first wife, Jane Wyman. Oscar winner Jane Wyman played a power hungry vixen, Angela Gioberti Channing. Angela's family, the Giobertis ran a wine company, Falcon Crest in the Napa Valley of California. For seasons, Angela tried every trick in the book to hang on to complete control of Falcon Crest as it nearly fell into the hands of many of what she considered "outsiders," such as her nephew Chase, her son Richard and her feisty grand-daughter-in-law Melissa Aggretti Gioberti.

Each season Falcon Crest would end in the top of the line season finales, including a fiery plane crash nearly killing the entire cast, an earthquake hitting the Napa Valley, Julia's attempts to kill her family, yet she killed her cousin's.

Falcon Crest was one of the few primetime soaps that dealt with constant action, adventure and danger, especially the mob and underworld organizatons. For seven seasons, Falcon Crest utilized suspense to keep its large fan base on the edge of their seats every Friday night on CBS. Yet, in 1989, almost the entire cast had left the show. Almost all of the most popular characters had been killed off, such as Chase, Melissa and even Maggie. The show was not as highly rated as Dallas and Dynasty, yet there is still a fan base of Falcon Crest fans that will always remember, as Jane Wyman quoted, "To you Falcon Crest and long may you live."

The only ABC hit soap opera of the 1980s was Dynasty, a soap opera that dealt with oil, money, power, glamour, and the rich. The soap was based in Denver, Colorado with the rich and powerful Carringtons. Blake and his wife Krystal struggled to survive a happy marriage with constant outside interferences from Blake's scheming and conniving ex-wife, Alexis. Dynasty distinguished itself by dealing with glamour. Dynasty was also one of two of the four popular soaps to utilized popular black characters. Knots Landing brought in black characters in the mid 80s. Dynasty created a role, Dominique Deveraux, played by Diahann Carroll and her husband played by Billy Dee Williams.

Although Dynasty managed to hit the number one spot against rival, Dallas, on occasions, it did not last as long. In 1989, Falcon Crest did not go out alone, as Dynasty joined it in cancellation. Primetime soaps were the huge thing of the early and mid 80s, but the popularity faded in the late 80s as comedies became huge, such as NBC's Thursday night line up, the Cosbys, Golden Girls, and Roseanne.

Query about modern US shows

This article in Soaps for the evening too lists several shows that it described as "soap operas". I know that Melrose Place, the only one of these shows that I have watched more than a couple of episodes of, is indeed absolutely a soap opera. However I have seen three or four scattered episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 and it seemed to me that, though in general the character development occured episode-to-episode and eps definitely could not be screened out of sequence, really the stories were self-contained to the episode. Is this assumption correct? And what about Dawson's Creek, Sex and the City, Queer As Folk, The O.C. and Desperate Housewives? Self contained stories or on-going narratives? Asa01 20:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Sex and the City is not a soap opera, it's sitcom without a studio audience. Many US sitcoms have episodes that seem to connect later on in the run of the series (Friends for example).--Attitude2000 03:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The new point form format

The new point form format is horrible. The changes seem to make the article much more US-centric as well. I am changing it back - the earlier format was much better. Asa01 06:03, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Please do change it back. Some of the changes with the points aren't even correct, and omit a lot of important information about how soaps started. Mike H. That's hot 06:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah glad you agree. Lots of detail got omitted in that change. Also the point form format made it seem like all soaps have that particular list of attributes. Not the case at all. The poiht form info seemed to only describe US daytime dramas, not all the other types of soaps. Asa01 06:16, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

What? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.126.83.4 (talk) 13:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

More radio history please

As this article deals almost exclusively with TV Soaps, perhaps a separate article is needed to discuss radio soaps, as they establised the form. What was the first radio soap opera? What was the first BIG radio soap opera? Which series established the conventions/cliches? And so on. "Blue Hills" from Australia deserves a mention. Design 05:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I think some of the big early radio soap operas were Today's Children and Ma Perkins. The Guiding Light came later. I know that for certain things, such as what occupations were featured with characters, Irna Phillips' The Road of Life pioneered the use of a hospital as a setting and a doctor as a main character, which would be used later in radio and on many TV shows. Mike H. That's hot 01:48, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I have added a section on the UK radio soap The Archers into the radio history section (first broadcast in 1951 and still going strong). It duplicates some of the info in the UK soaps section, but as the world's longest running radio soap it deserves an entry in the history section (which seems very US-biased) as well. Monique34 14:20, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Soap Opera or Not?

Is Gilmore Girls a soap opera?

Depends on who you ask =)

There's actually established conventions for what a soap opera is -- Star Trek [mentioned below] is NOT a soap opera, because it is not necessary to watch episodes in order; most episodes are tied up neatly before the next episode. There are no significant dangling threads throughout a season, no big season-end cliffhangers. Every soap opera could be ended with "To be continued..." at the end, but commonly has a run-down (by narration or clips a little longer than a montage...) at the end of an episode of all the episode's cliffhangers to remind you to look forward to the next episode ["Will Billy find his lost cocker spaniel? Will Wilma sleep with Barney? Are Joe and James going to get married, or are they really first cousins?"]. Star Trek does have the dramatic pauses at commercial breaks, but that's common in most concurrent TV series. What is a missing soap opera, and notable in its own way, is Soap. It is a parody of the genre, and closely follows soap opera convention. It was a weekly soap, played in the evening. It only ran for 4 seasons, but its use of many-threaded plots running concurrently and poking fun at the convention of testing non-mainstream subject matter on the audience (such as having gay characters, or a character abducted by aliens...) make it worthy of mention. It had to exaggerate soap opera cliche and technique to poke fun at soap operas. If you can comfortably tune in mid-season to a single episode, and not need to call your next door neighbor to find out what happened to Babbi's illegitimate pregnancy after all, it's not a soap opera. The Crisses (talk) 22:15, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletion: Longevity

DELETED TEXT: "Something that sets US soaps apart from most of their UK and Australian counterparts is longevity. Of the nine soaps currently on the air, seven have been around for more than 35 years, four for more than 40 years, and two for more than 50."

REASON: I feel it is redundant to state this in these terms. The article lists show duration throughout. It is also like weighing apples with oranges as UK and Australian soaps (apart from a few shortlived examples in earlier decades) are all evening soaps, and so are not really comparable to US daytime soaps. As I have tried to explain in the article, Aust and UK soaps seem to occupy the middle-gound between US daytime and evening soaps. Not as cheap and studio bound and slow moving as daytime dramas, but still on video and not quite as slick or as fast moving as US evening soaps. And with this middle-ground theory indeed the program duration seems to fit into the middle-ground. Of the Aust and UK soaps (made for the evening) few have been around for as long as the US daytime serials, but many have longer runs than US evening soaps. Asa01 02:31, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Time Magazine image

A "deletion proposal" tag was placed on this page regarding the Time Magazine image back on February 25. The discussion has long since disappeared (the link goes nowhere). The image has obviously not been deleted so presumably the tag should be too. I don't know if it's proper to do so, yet. The Image page itself currently contains no reference to IFD. 23skidoo 21:10, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The picture ended up meeting all the fair use requirements, and nobody contested keeping it. I removed the tag. Mike H. That's hot 21:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

References

Please could someone cite where they got the info from ? It would be very useful. Cheers !

A lot of this is just from watching the soap operas themselves. Could you tell me what you find contentious? Mike H. That's hot 01:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The citation mark surely doesn't need to go over the entire article. Anything contentious should be specifically marked with {{Fact}}. What are you saying, that "The Young and the Restless" hasn't been on since 1973, that it doesn't feature Victor Newman...? Most of the programs mentioned in this article have their own pages anyway. Asa01 19:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Demographics

I think there should be a point about how the key demographics for soap operas are women, yet other demographics watch as well. I'd type something up, but I don't want to just go all willy-nilly adding things that people may not agree with.--Attitude2000 03:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Definitely note teen demographics, which has kept Days of our Lives and Passions afloat, and originally held viewer interest for Dark Shadows and Love is a Many Splendored Thing (see article). Older demographics are mainstays of CBS soaps, and helped do in Another World. I don't know of many solid male demographics for soaps, except for The Edge of Night. Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 03:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Needs Splitting

I don't know if this has been brought up before, but it just came to me: this article needs to be split up. You have American soaps, European Soaps, Austrailian Soaps, History, Primetime, Spoofs, and anything else I can't think of.--Attitude2000 18:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't really like splitting the articles into "American soap opera," "British soap opera," etc etc. If you can give a good argument as to why it should be split, maybe I would be persuaded. Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 18:26, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

When I started to put on the template for "this page should be splitted," that put it over the suggested page size. --Attitude2000 20:52, 5 June 2006 (UTC)