Classic American soap operas

sadly these all blur together for me, in a haze of soft focus 70s hairstyles and indirect lighting

Days Of Our Lives in the late 90s was super weird, iirc, subplots involving like fire magic and psychics or something?

wiki: "The shocking and ratings-grabbing 1993 plot when Vivian Alamain buried Dr. Carly Manning alive (the first controversial storyline from head writer Reilly);[98] and the 1994–1995 storyline in which the town's Christmas tree burns down and Marlena becomes possessed in Exorcist fashion.[27][94]"

think maybe i was thinking of this

the y and the r

days a distant second

No Dark Shadows? I reject this poll!

Purposely left Dark Shadows out because a. it's too much its own thing and b. I didn't want to nerd-bait (no offense, I've watched and enjoyed it too). Also it has its own thread here:

https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=22266

AMC was my favorite in the mid 90s-early 00s. The whole “Libidozone” plotline with characters getting dosed with the aphrodisiac, the retcon with Erica Kane having been sexually assaulted before the series began and Sarah Michelle Gellar as her bitchy vengeful daughter, MFTV/DTV axiom Jack Scalia as “Agent Chris Stamp”, anything involving David Canary (two roles!), Marj Dusay camping it up. But after that it turned tedious, endless two-handers with people discussing their relationships or obsessing over Paris (everyone wanted to go to Paris), too much boring corporate intrigue over the perfume(?) company, way too much Cameron Mathison for my taste.

I got into One Life to Live for a while in '89-'90 thanks to a roommate who was dedicated viewer. That show was doing something wacky with a mysterious underground city at the time.

I’m old so I know nothing of these 90s plots but I was way into 70s OLTL with doctor’s wife/hooker Karen Wolek, played by Judith Light. Her courtroom confession is daytime TV legend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez79MbbIeFA

voted Guiding Light for my dearly departed Grandma Inie

I watched my share of DoOL during high school summers, late 70s. It was the soap of choice on the dorm lobby tv during my first 2 years of college, too.

Wow @ Judith Light's scene

My mom watched the CBS soaps (Guiding Light, The Young and the Restless, As the World Turns) from the '70s well into the late '90s, perhaps beyond.

I tried getting into The Young and the Restless a couple of years ago. There is some talent on the show (Eric Braeden and Peter Bergman to name two) but there was a kind of sad, chintzy feel to the whole show, with what seemed like the same three sets used over and over again even when it made no sense in context. And any scenes taking place outdoors looked totally ridiculous. I'm assuming budgets on soaps are much more limited than they were in the old days ('90s, say). I've seen a bit of current General Hospital and that also looks really low-budget.

The top soaps used to get Nielsen ratings of 9 or 10 (General Hospital was over 11 when it got hot in the early '80s). But there hasn't been a soap that's gotten even a 4 rating since 2007.

As a teenager, I watched General Hospital for a time in the mid-'70s. I'm not sure why. As an adult, as much as I loved it, I came to accept that Mad Men was basically a prestiged-up (that's a stupid term I just invented, but it seems more appropriate than arted-up) soap opera.

I was reading this earlier, which suggests as much re: modern tv adopting elements of the classic soap...

What Happened to Soap Operas? A Statistical Analysis

Looks interesting--saw mention of the O.J. trial and Twin Peaks right away, and a definite yes on both.

My sister and I watched Santa Barbara in the 80s for a couple summers. It had some quirky characters and a ton of humor, which was different for its time. Robin Wright got her big break there.

Missing from this poll is Passions, which I only saw a couple times while channel surfing in the early 00s. Storyline included a witch and her doll brought to life, Timmy. The bits I saw looked really weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPXutZmLsmA

Passions used to get shouted out on Buffy on the reg. It started as a more conventional Soap before making the hard turn into the Fantasy stuff.

When Dawson's Creek and shows of that ilk got big, the Days of... team decided to cash-in by instituting a Summer-timed retcon wherein all the small children (even newborns)in the cast were all suddenly teenagers fitting specific tropes, like a BMOC, an Emo kid, and even a temu copy of early-era Allyson Hannigan.

One of my favorite soap tropes is changing child actors to a teenager with a drug problem virtually overnight. “The part of Billy is now being played by Broderick Steele…”

in the UK we had Sunset Beach and The Bold & The Beautiful for a few years, then Sunset Beach was cancelled and we got Days Of Our Lives for a bit, but it didn't take off, and then the imported soaps became niche interests on channels that nobody everybody had. I think we had General Hospital for a bit?

Obviously Sunset Beach isn't here, so by default I have to go for B&B. Brooke and Taylor were two of the most beautiful people I've ever seen before their faces changed, and even Ridge's terrible haircuts couldn't mask those cheekbones. Late 90s Amber-Rick-Kimberly was also hilarious TV - just constant catfights over the most mediocre man whose head kept changing. And the scenery-chewing Sally Spectra might be the secret big influence of all modern drag performances.

Sunset Beach had it all though. Evil twins, baby swaps, cursed jewels, turkey baster inseminations, priests being defrocked by their sister-in-law, voodoo priestesses, capsizing ships, a serial killer island, amnesiac brides, and the self-awareness to know it was all nonsense but entertaining with it. I'd love if it made its way to streaming services. I'd probably have loved Passions too based on what I've heard about it, it sounds so tasteless and camp.

Feel I should point out that the Passions witch lady was Juliet Mills.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i watched quite a bit of Guiding Light with my sister in the late 90s, the Reva's clone and Taye Diggs era

the Days of... team decided to cash-in by instituting a Summer-timed retcon wherein all the small children (even newborns)in the cast were all suddenly teenagers

This was around the time I was watching and I was exactly the target demographic. I'm pretty sure they also did a slasher film storyline (also big at the time) where a bunch of characters were being 'killed off' and they were going hard on killer identity cliffhangers at the end of each episode

Older and longer-term viewers on web forums haaaaaated it

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91Tsl9Li09L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

lol

Well the good news about the votes is that the top two finishers are still being produced

I've just remembered this one year at summer camp (the bible type): I was maybe 12 and my cabin's teenage counsellor had brought a tape to play for us, which was an audio play where the characters, Chick tract style, cautioned against watching soap operas because they are sinful, and then the counsellor made us all promise we would not watch soap operas.

Promise broken within the year, see you all in hell

my only real experience was an occasional sick day where there was literally nothing else on (we had a three channel TV)... so some vague memories of the Luke & Laura thing on General Hospital but not much else. I'm always surprised there's any of this shit still on TV tbh, just seems like such a different era