Did your grandmother watch her stories, or your mom her soaps? Mine did. My mom still does. I grew up with the characters from As the World Turns and Guiding Light. I even have a vague childhood memory of Dark Shadows - a wonderfully creepy Gothic soap which included characters like Barnabas Collins, an anti-hero-ish, angsty vampire, werewolves, ghosts, witches, warlocks, time travel and even a parallel universe.
What do soaps know about writing romance?
1. Happily married couples are boring. If a married couple is going to remain front and center, there must be conflict.
2. Men and women thrown together in dangerous, life threatening situations, ultimately give in to their passion.
3. Every pregnancy is unplanned.
4. Even the worst character, The Mustache aside, can be redeemed.
Oh, Sunday’s installment of A Game of Thrones was darkly brilliant!
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My grandmother got me hooked on Days of Our Lives as a kid. I don’t watch anymore. DH got addicted to A Game of Thrones while we were away this weekend. He watched in the hotel while I slept. He’s declared we’re recording this going forward.
I watched General Hospital. Young girls everywhere learned that rapists can turn out to be good guys. Ugh. Okay, maybe that’s not such a great lesson (Luke and Laura).
My favorite one was Passions, which didn’t last too long, but had the best sense of humor. And a paranormal thing going on, too.
LOL. My mother-in-law was a unrepentant soap addict. Part of me is almost grateful she didn’t live to see her favorite soaps cancelled. She would have been crushed.
My mom wasn’t a soaper, but we did watch Dark Shadows and loved it!! It was so different and fresh from the other soaps of it time. I loved the manipulative Angelic. I even had a Barnabas Collins doll and my older sisters had a Dark Shadows board game. My mom just loved the brooding drama of this show, and I hope it gets a re-VAMP as a movie. lol
XXOO Kat
Watching the video (above) I realized why the show was so daring. I was way too little to catch the Gay references in the plot, but wow, there they are right in the open. I think a lot more than blood sucking was going on in that house…
XXOO Kat
Okay, this is going to sound really weird. But my dad got me hooked on soaps. He used to work in the nights and would be home in the daytime and I guess he started watching soaps at one point and got me hooked on the Young& the Restless. We even used to watch it together…. until the day I asked him what “impotent” meant after a male character was injured and became such. That was the end of our soap watching days together.
Amber - last night’s episode was incredible! But then, I’m a huge GRRM fan! My mom and gramma are/were CBS soap fans.
Penelope - never watched GH, but who hasn’t heard of Luke and Laura? Rapists are always being reformed on soaps. Just like kids grow from infancy to adulthood (and having sex) in five years or so.
Kat - I know! All I remember about Dark Shadows is that it was dark and had a vampire and other supernatural creatures and then I ran across this little gem! Who knew?
Delilah…LMAO! Too funny! But so cute! My dad watches to see the beautiful women.
I use to watch soap operas when I was younger but that didn’t last too long…It is the one story that never ends….
I was hooked on Guiding Light. It got a bit weird with Reva Shayne time-travelling but I loved the actors-they really grew on me.
Don’t forget that soap operas believe you can never say “I do” too many times and it has to be at least twice to the same man. And dying is never “really” the end of a character.
I watched “Days of Our Lives” with my mom when I was a kid then into my adulthood. After 20 or so years they no longer respected the past and often times ignored things I knew to be true. I stopped watching then. I got into “General Hospital” in college during the Luke and Laura years, but never stuck with it.
It is sad in a way to see this part of our television history dying.
Savannah - I watched in fits and starts. If there’s a character I’m intrigued with, I’ll watch for a while. But only CBS. Now that ATWT is gone, I don’t really care.
Evie - no kidding! I know Reva Shayne has her fans, but I was never one of them.
Nina - you’re right - characters never really die and the best couples get married at least twice - to each other. I do agree they were way ahead of their time!
LOL - love your list!
Yesterday, I had the sad task of telling my Mom one of her soaps is being cancelled. It is amazing how long some of these shows have been around. I watched Days of Our Lives and Another World for a short time as a teen. I think I’ve always been too demanding about needing a HEA to watch Soaps for long. As soon as someone got a happy moment disaster always struck. I couldn’t stand it. I love that romance novels have a HEA - even if that means the story has to end with the end of the book.
Oh Charlie, what soap? CBS has pretty much canceled theirs except for Y&R and B&B. Yeah, that is the thing with soaps - happiness followed by tragedy. Happiness on soapland is very short-lived! But I have noticed that romance series involving married protagonists do seem to get boring.
I watched Another World w/ my Mom then when I grew up watched that, the Doctors, Ryan’s Hope, All my Children and GH. I am so ashamed. I did that until I realized what a life suck it was.
Hope OR was good I ate a Cadbury creme egg and ate it today. my first ever. Is there anything sweeter? It made my teeth hurt.
Oh, Steph, yes Cadbury creme eggs do make my teeth hurt. I eat one a year, but I usually have to scrape out most of the inside. Too sweet, but love the chocolate.
Never watched any of those soaps, but I always felt like Julianne Moore and I grew up together on ATWT.