Small Town State of Mind

Nearly every soap ever created has tried to create that small town image. You know the image; the signs outside of the town all saying the population isn't past the ten thousands. Everybody knows everyone else, gossip is rampant, families are institutions and their reputations hold strong roots in the community. If you are from a prominent family in these towns, your whole life is mapped out for you. So many soaps were built on this small town, grass roots, and family friendly suburbia atmosphere. For at least two decades soaps really stuck to it too. Everyone knew everyone else, family status or being a new resident severely effected how a character was received by those in good standing in the community, etc. Then around the late seventies, hitting a feverish peak by the mid-eighties, this disappeared. Writers began changing soap town landscapes. These were small towns, Middle America, where you probably didn't even have the amount of people crowding up Bronx, New York living there. And yet, major corporations, nationwide newspapers, and not one, or two, but several major business moguls all of the sudden put down roots or company offices in these dinky little towns. Huge business wars that would span the states if not North America and the world would be pitted, when any town with two major business rivals in a town like that would not be small. Well, maybe if the companies were both factories that employed most of the town residents that would be likely, but not if the business is advertising, fashion, major brand name products, or the stock market. People with that level of ambition don't put down roots in towns like the ones in soaps and if they do, they don't attract nationwide news with their problems. Am I the only one who is constantly stuck when soaps in one minute address how small a town is and then in another talk about things small towns on average just don't have?

So many things about how soaps want to have their small town cake with a big town crime and backstabbing rate just doesn't work. But let's forget all of that for a moment. Why do so many writers have trouble keeping in perspective just how small a town is supposed to be instead of expanding and shrinking the town to fit the whim of a story? It's funny, I always assumed that the best soap and best soap stories have that small town appeal. I mean, wasn't that attraction of Peyton Place? Small town sin is often much juicier and has much stronger legs than urban crime and strife. When the environment of a soap is so tight-knit, then every moment, every action, every eavesdropping moment sends ripple effects throughout the community. At the very least a small town would buzz about an affair, if nothing else. Have you ever seen the A&E show City Confidential? What makes that show so intriguing is that is about small, nondescript, quirky towns where everyone is kind, crime is low, and then smack dab in that supposed oasis there is a mass murderer on the loose or a bizarre political sex scandal. Soaps used to thrive on things like that. In a big town where there is a Starbucks on every corner, who pays attention to some rich socialite on the other side of a town with over 100, 000 residents being accused of murder? But if she is the only rich socialite in town ... get my drift?