The Best and Worst of 2002: Soaps© Sarah Lee
Dec 27, 2002
The Soap That Tried Too Hard: One Life to Live suffered this year from Gary Tomlin trying too hard. In the beginning of the year OLTL was the soap without a doubt that had the most promise to be the best soap of the year. Writing was tighter, acting was strong, storylines were steeped in history and the future was bright. Then, Gary tried too hard, starting with Live week. While Live week was one of the most innovative and entertaining weeks in soap history, after all of that effort into that one week, the show began to lose focus. It didn't help that Viki's DID story continued for months on in until people had already left bored and tired of the unbelievable storyline. Unfortunately nothing other than that story had much going for it either. Keri and Antonio's have stories that I still don't understand from their romantic vacation disintegrated into some stupid goose chase to this disgusting embryo switch stolen from Star Trek. A whole bunch of young people just stormed into town whose names I still don't have straight because they all look alike. And then there was still unfinished and unfocused stories involving Lindsay, Sam, and Nora, which frankly, still aren't done. All the promise that they will be finished and will make sense would be far more calming if the writer who is making the promise was the one who started it, not one whose picked it up in ruins. Then there is Todd, reduced often to being comic relief and otherwise nothing but a menacing figure. Gary should have stopped, thought, planned, and continued on after the huge success of Live week and the musical episode. Instead, too much thought went into the flash of those events and too little went into day to day episodes.
Most Destroyed Soap: It was actually a very tough choice, but in the end As the World Turns beat All My Children by a small fraction. While AMC is clearly is bad shape, the reason I chose ATWT is because it has more potential and had more potential at the beginning of the year. What ATWT suffers from is poor storytelling and that keeps it from ever truly improving because for whatever smart and promising story begins, in the middle the story goes sour and falls off the tracks. Granted the show seems cursed with the most fertile actresses on the planet and that doesn't help, but it is really the least of their problems. The show also lacks what I consider the founding blocks for good daytime drama more than any other soap on the air. The show has no genuine sense of family, warmth, friendship, or romance. There is not a single front burner couple with a promising future. There is no signature couple grounding the show. There is no slow developing honest, pure, and smartly written romance on the show. There is no family that is truly united or has more than one room of their house featured. They have a headwriter who has really misguided thoughts on what soaps should be and no one he respects is telling him he is wrong. And worse still he has the mistaken impression if he recast an "old favorite" and brings them back to the show, that will substitute for his lack of knowledge about the show's history and characters. The show has been stuck in loser storylines back to back to back all year. From Bonnie's swashbuckling wedding that I never was sure was supposed to be funny to "The Oakdale Three" running from campus to campus. It's like the writers can't come up with one smart storyline idea for the show. Nearly every single decision they've made has been either plain ridiculous or poorly executed whether it is Jack's rape, Jake's death, or Margo's liver cancer. No soap drowns itself in conflict more without any end in sight. I would love to say I had hope for this show, after all I certainly feel more connected to it than AMC, but there is no direction to this show. If something doesn't happen to whip their writers into shape, it will continue to tank.
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