Are Daytime Soaps an Endangered Species: Economic Reality or Self-Destruction?

Let’s face it – our favorite soaps are in trouble. They are turning into network endangered species. In the 90s there were reams of soaps on the air – more than 15, in fact. Now, we’re down to just four. It’s shockingly slim pickings for soap fans and you have to ask what happened. Some have theorized that networks are intentionally letting ratings drop to justify cancellations so they can fill afternoon time slots with much cheaper-to-produce daytime talk shows. And, while there may be some merit to that argument, it’s also evident that soaps are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot with sloppy (or intentionally bad) writing.

It seems every week there’s another dropped storyline or character revelation that will require a rewritten history. It’s one thing to bring someone back from the dead, introduce a heretofore unknown evil doppelganger or a long-lost relative (or spouse) that no one knew about. We’re accustomed to these tried and true soap story mechanisms, but when you call into question the entire fabric of a character, that’s a whole different – and very implausible – story. In addition to the altered histories, there’s dropped storylines where a character or story is gone like smoke on a windy day.

Soap fans are among the most loyal to networks and it seems like writers and show runners are letting down their fans almost on the daily. Here’s a quick look at one epic fail from each of the four soaps to serve as an example of this disastrous practice.

General Hospital – The Luke/Fluke story going on in Port Charles has several major strikes against it and is an insult to long-standing fans of the show. It was bad enough when Anthony Geary was playing look-alike cousin Bill Eckert (much to our dislike) but there was hope when Fluke showed up that maybe he was a Cassadine or other evil villain just wearing Luke’s face. No such luck. After all these years turns out the 60+ year old Luke has a major mental crisis and a whole different personality. Plus he has a mystery sister that’s come out of the woodwork. Sure Luke can be a jerk, but a homicidal maniac due to childhood trauma? Seems like if he did have DID, that would have turned up before now. And so would a mention of older sister Pat. This storyline has stretched out for so many long and painful months and rumor has it, there are months more to come. Love Anthony Geary, hate this storyline.

Days of Our Lives – Speaking of sloppy writing, how about Satanic possession? Marlena is the first (and only) soap character to be the victim of demonic possession (thankfully). It started with mind-altering drugs dispensed by Stefano DiMera and ended with a priest-provided exorcism. You can believe that a drug overdose might make someone act possessed, but no, that wasn’t enough. She was actually possessed. To be fair, the town is named Salem. It’s not the witchcraft Salem, but maybe that inspired this ridiculous storyline. They even had Marlena levitate. WTF? She had the scary eyes, the whole thing. It was like a soap opera redux of The Exorcist gone horribly awry. And this was just the first of many outlandish Days plots including the Garden of Eden and outer space twins.

Young & the Restless – The music box storyline created by Jill Farren Phelps is loathed almost universally. Not only was it long, but it was boring – not a magical combination. Starting from Katherine’s will reading and Jill getting the music box. That started her on a voyage of many twists and turns, reuniting her with Colin sparking a remarriage. Really, if Katherine wanted her to have the necklace, why not just leave it to her? Isn’t that what wills are for? Instead of being practical and normal, Katherine hid the necklace in a chandelier. Because that’s what people do, right? And even when Jill found the necklace (or rather the necklace found Jill) it had nothing to do with the mystery of the music box. And why hadn’t the maid dusted that chandelier in all that time? It looked like there may have been more but the writers may have dropped the story line because fans were bored/annoyed with it.

Bold and the Beautiful – Sure it was “courageous” of B&B writers to announce that Maya is a transgender. Too bad they didn’t read the character history before they did it. Maya had a baby that Dayzee helped her give up for adoption when she went to jail. Plus, Bill Spencer investigated her, found out about the restraining order and baby daddy Jesse who he then brought to town. B&B rewrote history this week and said that it wasn’t Maya’s baby but her BFF’s and she was just taking care of it, but that was a whole lot of drama for a baby she didn’t birth, right? Transgender shows are enjoying a heyday now (Transparent on Netflix, etc) but you can’t just retroactively slap a penis onto a character. They’re already rewriting history so it will be interesting to see how far they go back and how much they restructure.

It seems like soap writers and show runners are routinely insulting our intelligence and second-guessing our memories. These are characters we know and love, so we know their backstories and that means when they drop characters or try and reinvent them, we know it. What do you think Soap Opera spies?