The Vets Vent Part Two
I've heard it several times from many fans; room has to be made for the younger characters. After all, wouldn't soaps be crowded if every character thirty-five and up was given their own storyline? Wouldn't trying to give every character on the canvas something to do tax a writer unnecessarily? Well, I've got something to say to that, it's a load of crap! Either long time viewers are highly adaptable or have selective memory and have honestly forgotten that in the past, soaps were able to manage balancing the elderly, the middle-aged, the young adults, and the teenagers. In fact, this is what gave soaps their family feel, their ease of movement, their ability to have one action effect the rest of the canvas. What long-standing soaps didn't start with families? GH, Ryan's Hope, Guiding Light, Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives, All My Children, they all had families. These soaps were built from the ground up and focus was given to the teenagers, their parents, and their parents' parents. Where is that now? I can't help thinking of stories like when Maureen Bauer died on GL. There was a story that effected the entire canvas, young and old. And that's just one, on GH Maxie's heart transplant effected the very young and the middle aged. On Y&R Katherine and Jill's feud has constantly fed storylines for those in their age group and younger. Sue me, I'm a soap fan that wants a balance in the characters seen on a daily basis. Old and young, new characters and old favorites, kind heroines and delicious bad boys, dramatic characters and characters there for comic relief. When the canvas becomes one note by only having a specific age group featured, I lose interest and grow tired of the characters on my screen day in and day out. I sincerely doubt I'm the only one. If I was very few critics and fans would whine about teen overload during the summer and early fall. Variety isn't only good, in the case of soaps it is crucial.
The problem with the characters over thirty-five, however, is not the same as the problem for those sixty and over. They still have storylines, they are still in the middle of many storylines, but the problem is the stories they are in the middle of and how they are being used. How many really smart and intelligent storylines have you seen in that group lately? While some smart performances are being made out of silly stories across the dial, the actually quality of the work is very poor. And nearly every one of those characters are suddenly in supporting roles. In fact, with the exception of Josh and Reva and Victor and Nikki, no true forty plus couple gets a generous amount of airtime and their pick of stories where they are the catalyst and not simply a device for some teeny bopper or silly contrived mix-up. The rest basically get remnants. Let's review what the forty plus regulars are doing right now.
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