The Lazy and the Jobless
People often lament the business era of soaps gone by and want it back. I don't. Yes, there were some juicy and shocking moments that came when corporations took surprising twists and turns. Yes it was really a major plot twist to see ATWT's Lucinda pushed out of her own company. Yes it was a very unique twist when Y&R's Nikki joined forces at Jabot. Yes those moments are incredible because of all the personal twists those major business changes cause. But I personally felt they were overdone. I mean everywhere you looked people, from the inexperienced to kids fresh out of high school, got jobs in companies that seemed to do everything. Money changed hands, people were always complaining about stocks and the like, but what do these people do? What do these companies do? I had a moment when I couldn't remember what GL's Spaulding Enterprises does when someone asked. Some companies have more clear objectives than others do. Days' Titan Industries involves itself in the fashion world as does AMC's Enchantment and B&B's companies while GL's Lewis Corporations does construction and oil. But the others seem interchangeable a lot of the time. What are the major differences between ATWT's Worldwide and AMC's Chandler Enterprises. With ATWT and GL clearly in the same orbit how is it that Worldwide and Spaulding never bump heads (can you imagine Lucinda against Alan or Alex)? Let's face it, the eighties business stories only survived because of the strength of the writers that were at the helm. They fell apart whenever you held a microscope to it and when those writers left, the novices who wrote in the nineties obviously couldn't make the implausible stick anymore. So why do I feel soaps have lost something since these stories have been dropped? Well, that's not really too hard a question to answer. It's simple, because people actually used to *work*! "Work," you ask, "what is work?" Well boys and girls, work is what we do everyday which is why we need to tape our favorite soap or tune into Soap.Net in the evening. Work is what was being done day in and day out in good, bad, and simply woeful business stories on soaps in the eighties. Work is the equation that has disappeared from soaps.
"Not so," you cry. Sure, we see people at work once and awhile. Doctors are always on hand when someone is shot, dying from the disease of the month, or is about to miscarry a baby (rarely the right doctor). Lawyers are always on the ready when our heroine murdered someone but doesn't have any memory of it. And there is always some teen that takes a job because their parents want them to apply themselves. Said job always puts he or she closer to their crush of the moment. But work is a nine to five, five day a week job and since soaps curiously never ever seem to show people on the weekend, work seems to only be done when the plot says so. And when people lose their jobs in some major plot twist, they don't immediately get another one and yet, usually their rent gets paid and they spend their days moaning about their lack of a job while eating out. Then there are those who are at work who are actually doing none. There isn't even throwaway lines about taking a break like their used to be, people just chat, fight, make out, and shuffle their children in and out of their place of work. There is only one job where people have that kind of leisure and it is the Mafia. That probably explains why so many characters on soaps are now in the mob.
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