Can we get a moment of silence for the soaps?
This week, the cast and crew shot “Guiding Light’s” final episode in New Jersey and then memorialized the 72-year-old soap at a nearby church, the New Jersey-based Courier News reported.
The last episode airs Sept. 18.
And it’s not looking so good for “Guiding’s” programming peers. The number of network daytime dramas dropped from 18 in the early 1970s to about seven today, according to Nielsen data cited by Bloomberg News.
Hey, stop that giggling. This is serious.
Maybe you think only your mother (and for sure, my mother) care that soap operas are almost extinct. Perhaps you think it’s about time we phased out programming that centers on secret twins, eye patch-wearing villains, repeated resurrections and dramatic fight scenes where hair is never mussed.
But even my most pitiless of peers must realize that many of the shows and movies we love today owe their essence to soaps. We owe a debt of gratitude to “Guiding” and others for the following legacies:
Overacting
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There would be no Tyler Perry movies, “90210,” or (gasp) “Twilight” films if soaps had not made it OK to engage in over-the-top acting. Address your thank-you notes to scene-chewing characters including, but certainly not limited to: Erica Kane (“All My Children”), Tabitha (“Passions”), Drucilla Winters (“Young and the Restless” during her street-urchin days) and the terrain-named, perfectly coiffed Ridge Forrester (“Bold and the Beautiful”). The Meisner technique, it’s not, but lifetime lessons in scowling, tear-free sobs and longer-than-necessary pregnant pauses put food on a lot of tables, likely including that of “Law & Order” alum Vincent D’Onofrio.
Ri-damn-diculous relationships
Soap opera characters date their own step-kids, hook up with their ex’s siblings or end up at the altar with their real fiance’s evil twin. And that’s on a slow day. Such shenanigans certainly numbed viewers to the future foolishness of the brief Joey/Rachel “Friends” pairing, the heated Tommy/Janet/Sheila “Rescue Me” triangle and, of course, almost any episode of “Gossip Girl.” XOXO.
Convoluted plots
Raise your hand if you know what the hell is going on in “Lost.” Oh yeah? Well, consider yourself invited to my house every week this fall. Now, for the other 99 percent of the show’s viewership, I hope you understand this dense, constantly shifting plot wouldn’t be viable if it weren’t for the ancestral antics of some of the silliest soaps. Even the muddled, magic-centered “Passions” probably paved the path for myriad monsters in “True Blood,” which, by the way, hit a series high this week with 4.4 million viewers.