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The Soaps

What shows have you followed?

  • All my Children

    Votes: 3 9.1%

  • As the World Turns

    Votes: 1 3.0%

  • Days of our Lives

    Votes: 7 21.2%

  • General Hospital

    Votes: 4 12.1%

  • Passions

    Votes: 2 6.1%

  • Guiding Light

    Votes: 2 6.1%

  • The Bold and the Beautiful

    Votes: 3 9.1%

  • One Life to Live

    Votes: 2 6.1%

  • The Young and the Restless

    Votes: 4 12.1%

  • Some now defunct show

    Votes: 3 9.1%

  • Prime time soaps for me, Mister!

    Votes: 4 12.1%

  • I took a shower yesterday and used soap. Does that count?

    Votes: 15 45.5%

  • I'm not smart enough to actually follow soaps

    Votes: 2 6.1%

  • My superior intellect looks down upon those who watch shows other than Masterpiece Theater

    Votes: 1 3.0%
  • Total voters
    33
  • Poll closed .
Maister

Maister

Chairman of the bored
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NEWS FLASH!! Soap opera viewers are not all married women who lounge around the house all day in a bathrobe eating bon bons while their husbands bring home the bacon….. But you knew that already. Why? Because YOU happen to be one of those people who doesn't fit that old stereotype. Admit it, most of you either now or at some point in your life follow/followed a 'soap' (and folks from the UK need to fess up too - ever hear of Coronation Street?).

Daytime soap viewing has declined over the years, prime time soaps, however, have increased in popularity. Shows like Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon's Crest in the 80's and Beverly Hills 90210 or Melrose Place in the 90's introduced the genre to new demographic groups (namely males). Not only were new audiences introduced but production quality improved at the same time too. Most daytime shows are taped with low quality video and use unsophisticated lighting - and for that matter generally unsophisticated script writing! Prime time soaps use state of the art production.

Prime time soaps are still essentially serial episodic story lines focusing on character development and personal relationships, but have improved in quality so much so that we often don't even think of them as being 'soaps'. Recent shows like Lost, West Wing, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy come to mind in this respect.

What shows do/did you follow?
 
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You forgot this option -

Don't watch, Don't Care, Don't even read about them.
 
Embracing your inner chick, Maister? First you bump the four-years dormant "embrace your inner chick thread", and now this...:-D

Echoing JNA, you left off the "what are these soaps of which you speak?" poll option.
 
When I first started dating my wife almost 8 years ago, she recorded and watched Guiding Light, and I watched with her quite often. I was an expert on every storyline, although I couldn't match my wife's knowledge, as she had been watching GL since she was little, thanks to her grandma.

As the years have progressed, she still TiVos Guiding Light every day, but she probably ends up watching only 2 episodes every week. As such, I pick up tidbits here and there as I'm doing other things around the house, and I'll occasionally ask her to elaborate on a storyline for me. I still know the names of quite a few characters.

Oh, I almost forget. I was addicted to 90210.
 
Bubba said:
Echoing JNA, you left off the "what are these soaps of which you speak?" poll option.
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That's what the 'shower soap' poll choice is intended for.

Bubba said:
Embracing your inner chick, Maister? First you bump the four-years dormant "embrace your inner chick thread", and now this
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Laugh if you will, Bubba. We all know you were breaking out the tissue When Luke married Laura on General Hospital!;-)
 
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ofos said:
Right on , right on! Not day time, not night time, not no time!
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You never watched Hill Street Blues? St. Elsewhere? Private Practice? Cagney & Lacey? Ugly Betty? West Wing? I'll bet at some point you've watched a prime time soap and just never considered it to be a 'soap'. What passes for a soap is pretty nebulous this day and age.
 
My mom has watched As the World Turns as long as I can remember, and we sometimes watched it with her when we were kids.

In high school and college and for awhile afterwards, I was hooked on One Life to Live, General Hospital, and All My Children. And one now long gone, Ryan's Hope.

And yes, I called in sick on my first post-college job to see Luke and Laura get married...:-$
 
when i was little my babysitter was a faithful viewer of Guiding Light. i still have a special place in my heart for Reva and Josh. don't really watch it much now.

in college most people watched Days of Our Lives so i've gotten sucked in to that one. i don't watch it regularly but if i'm home on a weekday and don't have anything to do i will turn it on. plus like any soap, it is pretty easy to catch up with the story lines in about 20 seconds.
 
Maister said:
You never watched Hill Street Blues? St. Elsewhere? Private Practice? Cagney & Lacey? Ugly Betty? West Wing? I'll bet at some point you've watched a prime time soap and just never considered it to be a 'soap'. What passes for a soap is pretty nebulous this day and age.
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Repeating v....e...r...y s...l...o...w...l...y for emphasis, Not Day Time, Not Night Time, Not No Time!!!!! Never did, never will. I have a life.
 
I grew up on All My Children, cause my mom was into it since forever. Then in college I got into Days of Our Lives. Even the guys on my dorm floor were into it. Now I can honestly say I haven't watched one minute of a soap in 10 years.
 
I was a soap watcher. Here is my story...:-$
After my parents divorced my father moved to Denver and remarried. During the summer when I would visit for a month my step mother would let us watch anything we wanted as long as she got the TV so she could watch YR and The Bold and the Beautiful. Since I did not have any friends in Denver I started watching. This started in the 7th grade. Every summer through high school I watched YR until my second year of college. I stopped my my fraternity brothers would not let me live it down and I realized it was much easier to wake up for 10 am classes.

The funny thing is when I look at the soap magazines in the checkout line the actors and characters and story lines are the exact same...10 years later!
 
Ever since we got a DVR, my wife records them ALL and watches them when she gets home...

luckily, I read in the other room at that time, out of earshot. :r:

Funny, when I hear Soap music, it reminds me of being sick... I guess because those were the days when I was home and inside as a child, and the TV was tuned to the Soaps for the adult who was watching me. The taste of 7-up does the same thing for similar reasons... :victory:
 
Yeah, when I was little, my mom was very into All My Children, even going so far as to record the episodes when she went back to work and then watch them at night. So, since it was always on, it was hard to not follow the show. But she gave up on keeping up with it sometime in the late 90s, and thus I have not kept up with any soap for the past 10 years or so.
 
Maister said:
Laugh if you will, Bubba. We all know you were breaking out the tissue When Luke married Laura on General Hospital!;-)
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Yes, the "he sexually assaulted her while he was drunk and then she married him" story line was a real tear jerker. :-( Oh soaps.

Since I was a few months old when L&L got married, I can only confess to watching Days of Our Lives, first when I was really little, it was on during my afternoon naps and my mom would watch it. I would sneak out of my room when I woke up and sit on the balcony that overlooked our TV and watch. Then it was on in the late afternoons when I was in Elementary school, during the whole Carrie/Sammy fighting over Austin storyline. Then Marlena was possessed by Satan and I stopped watching, that was a long time ago. It takes too much devotion to watch an hour a day, although you can usually stop watching for a year and find out that only an hour has passed in "soap time."

I loved me some Veronica Mars, it was pretty soapy. Heroes is like that, too. I'll watch shows with the serial soap opera element if there is a puzzle to figure out, like Veronica Mars and her mysteries or Heroes and the whole sci-fi puzzle. Stories with convoluted romantic entaglements, like ER, Grey's, etc., I don't care at all. I hate it when a show's only hook is a character with ten potential mates. Lame.
 
I actually design the palatial spred for Laura of General Hospital. Her real name is Genie Francis and she is or was at the time married to Johnathon Frakes (number 1 from the second generation of star track).

She is stark raving mad and use to come running out of the house throwing dishes at the general contractor for no apparent reason ( i do believe his slipping her the contractors special)

The only soap i ever watched was the series SOAP with Billy Crystall and Fernwood tonight. Do those comedic takes qualify as legit soaps. How about any series with a continual story line (much more common now but in the day a relative novel concept for prime shows.)
 
craines said:
I actually design the palatial spred for Laura of General Hospital. Her real name is Genie Francis and she is or was at the time married to Johnathon Frakes (number 1 from the second generation of star track).

She is stark raving mad and use to come running out of the house throwing dishes at the general contractor for no apparent reason ( i do believe his slipping her the contractors special)

The only soap i ever watched was the series SOAP with Billy Crystall and Fernwood tonight. Do those comedic takes qualify as legit soaps. How about any series with a continual story line (much more common now but in the day a relative novel concept for prime shows.)
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She now lives just a little south of me and I think runs a high end gift shop or something like that

Fernwood Tonight - yes!;)

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

I started watching Search for Tomorrow when in the 6th grade, with my Mom and then moved to Y & R in the 7th grade and then B & B when that started up later on - I don't tape them or TIVO but if I am home sick or home with a sick kid, I do watch it:-$

nighttime was St Elsewhere, Dallas, Dynasty, Northern Exposure and then I dropped out of it for a while

now I do watch Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters and that's it
 
In college, my roommates and I scheduled our classes around General Hospital, but I haven't watched it since.

DH and I watch Rescue Me, which I definitley thinks qualifies as a soap.
 
Totally forgot about St. Elsewhere which was off the hoof as yesterdays youth would say. How about Hill Street Blues...........I was so in love with the Female lead in that show, Veronica Something..................
 
Does "My Name is Earl" count as a soap?

Not a serious question, just "Maister Baiting".
 
Hmmm, what about some of the HBO series.

I really miss Deadwood, Carnivale and Rome. Would they fall under the soap opera category?

Dang, I should have made my handle Hooplehead instead of Graciela.
 
Maister said:
You never watched Hill Street Blues? St. Elsewhere? Private Practice? Cagney & Lacey? Ugly Betty? West Wing? I'll bet at some point you've watched a prime time soap and just never considered it to be a 'soap'. What passes for a soap is pretty nebulous this day and age.
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Just because a show has character development that goes beyond what you get on the Law & Orders of the world does not mean that it's a soap, imo.
 
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