Red Room Where the Writers Are

I came across the following description of Irna Phillips’ storytelling Ruth Warrick attributed to Ted Corday: “an uncanny ability to tie the largest number of knots in the shortest possible piece of string.” The textile analogy is apt: the more texture, the better an item looks and feels – and the more it costs. The price of Persian rugs increases with the number of knots per square inch; 1000 thread-count sheets cost more than 400.

Historically, soap operas have been tightly-woven tapestries of interlocking and overlapping characters and stories. But the threads have slackened over the years; these days both Guiding Light and As the World Turns more resemble a loose macramé wall hanging than the intricate tapestries of old. And tempting though it may be to point the finger at slashed budgets, lack of money is not where this problem began. This shift actually began with the finger we use to operate the remote control

I’m old enough to remember a time when changing the channel required a viewer to get out of their chair and walk across the room to the television set. While some people had remotes, most didn’t; so soap fans tended to watch the entire show. It was the mid-1980s before VCRs became affordable. Of course with VCRs, not only could viewers change the channel by pushing a button, they could fast-forward through, not just the commercials, but characters they didn’t like and storylines they found boring. 

This technological evolution has been a mixed blessing. I don’t think I’m overstating the case when I say that the soap opera would not have survived to this point were it not for the ability to time shift, beginning with the VCR, and now with DVRs and YouTube. But, the flip side is that technology – remote control to YouTube – has changed soaps, and in many ways, not for the better.

Patrick Erwin was absolutely correct when he pointed out the advantages of Guiding Light sans remote control. Watching soaps in full helps viewers to become, “more invested” and provides “more context to what characters are saying and thinking,” Many years ago, longtime soap writer, Megan McTavish, (and yes, I recognize the irony) made the same observation, complaining that because viewers FFed through storylines they didn’t like, they often didn’t know what was going on in the other storylines. That was back in the 90s, when viewers depended on VCRs. With the advent of TiVo, DVRs, You Tube and Hulu, the situation’s only escalated.

In his self-explanatory titled, “My Laptop, My Shows: Online TV fits our multitasking culture,” Boston Globe TV critic, Matthew Gilbert, has a lot to say about the differences between watching shows online and on an actual television. Here’s his bottom line:

For me, watching TV in the den on a TV set is a fuller experience, and I try to save the best-written shows - "Rescue Me," "Breaking Bad," "Lost," "House" - for that room, even while they are available online. I am in an entirely different pose in front of a designated TV screen, literally and figuratively. I am more able to become engrossed, to let the story and its visual elements work on me. If a show is top-notch, it can reward full consideration. I know, I know: Watching TV is far from a sacred act. But the more engagement we offer good TV shows, the more we reinforce quality work by their writers and producers.

 Of course, soaps were designed precisely not to require viewers to be fully engrossed in every episode. And in reality, it’s the rare day that most viewers wouldn’t sooner chew glass than watch soaps without a remote close by. While TPTB could address this by writing stories that more fully integrated more of the characters, that task is made ever more difficult by escalating budget constraints that reduce the number of actors per episode and leave shows looking more like tattered macramé than tapestry.

The situation is particularly acute on Guiding Light, where soap boards are filled with posts from new GL fans who watch Otalia’s relationship unfold on YouTube Post#18378, without having to bother watching the rest of the show. While it’s not just Otalia fans – on the TWoP One Life to Live board, posters talk about “compartmentalizing” and watching storylines “in a vacuum” – the Otalia phenomenon seems to have taken on a life of its own. Many of these new fans have never watched soaps before, and seem surprised (not to mention, irritated) when the duo interact with other characters, in particular, Frank. Other posters are generous in explaining the ways of soaps. What really concerns me is what they will see if and when they do turn into the rest of the show. Give TPTB points for trying to do what they can with what little they have to create connections among characters and storylines – James’s Ponzi scheme extends beyond the Spauldings to include the Boudreaus, and baby Henry connects the Lewises and Coopers – but those stories feels rushed and thin, particularly in contrast to Otalia’s fully textured storytelling. One can speculate, but at the end of the day, it always comes down to the money.

 2009 Lynn Liccardo 

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