Confessions of daytime addict & her growing disillusionment with the current state of daytime

by Kathryn Szelag

As I deal with the harsh reality that starting the first of the year Dark Shadows will be no more, as Sci-Fi pulls it from the schedule, I face the unpleasant task of trying to wean myself back into watching General Hospital. I've watched soaps since I was a child, and if I'm not watching at least one, I feel like there's something missing from my life. There, I've said it. It's not pleasant, but it's true. Which was why Dark Shadows was a godsend when I found it on Sci-Fi.

A few days before the end of December, last year, I moved cross country and when I arrived at my new home state, I didn't even care to watch my soaps. I had someone tape GH for me the week I would be traveling by train from the west coast to the east coast. When the tape arrived, I never even watched it. It was like because I was in someplace new, I no longer had the stomach to subject myself to the daily sewage these shows are putting out and calling entertainment. Then I finally found myself with access to cable. I'm one of those strange birds who never had cable until now, and one morning I was looking at the TV Guide channel and my eyes lit up with glee to see Dark Shadows advertised. Years ago it started playing on a channel in Michigan, where I was living at the time, but they took if off before I saw all the episodes, and the really incredible thing was they were showing the episodes at around the point they stopped showing them in Michigan, so it was like I could pick up right where I left off.

Watching Dark Shadows made me remember why I started watching soaps to begin with as a child. It gave me the things soaps used to give me, but no longer do. Things like good writing and good acting. When Sci-Fi didn't have Dark Shadows on for two weeks in October, I started going through withdrawal like I used to with the other soaps. I didn't get that sick to my stomach feeling that watching the current soaps give me. But, alas, I should have known it was too good to be true. Now I'm faced with somehow overcoming my repulsion and starting to watch General Hospital again.

I explained my problem to a friend, and she said I should watch As The World Turns and forget about General Hospital. She just didn't get it. She doesn't get that to a lesser degree their all the same. Sexism, ageism, favoritism, you name the ism and it's going on on all of these shows to one degree or another. On the old Carol Burnett Show she used to do a spoof of As The World Turns she called As The Stomach Turns. That's how they all make me feel. They make my stomach turn. I feel nothing but repulsion for every current daytime soap and it makes me physically ill to even think about even watching one of them. But I'm going to have to watch one of them, since at the first of the year I'm no longer going to have my sanctuary, Dark Shadows, anymore. And if I am going to force myself to watch one of them, it sure isn't going to be As The World Turns, which I personally loathe and detest.

ATWT's was never anything but a substitute soap for me. It was the soap I'd turn on when One Life To Live was reeking so bad I needed to take a break from it until the show got it's stuff together and became watchable again. There was one couple I actually liked on it, however. Jack and Carly. But the head writer, Hogan Sheffer, ruined them all to prop-up his pet character Craig Montgomery. Sheffer's love for Craig Montgomery got so bad the show should have been called As The Craig Turns. Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like Bob Guza and his Jason love? And over on Passions the head writer James Reilly had some sick fascination with the character of Teresa and there wasn?t any character he wouldn?t ruin to prop her up. That's what I mean. They're all the same.

Anyway, I tried to explain to my friend that the only current soap I could possibly start watching again would be General Hospital. I started watching it before I started fifth grade and it replaced the soap I loved first and most, the Edge of Night. And Sonny Corinthos is the only character left that I have any emotional attachment to.

Unfortunately, the reasons I stopped watching are still there, and they've only multiplied in my year-long hiatus from it. The only time in the past year I've been able to stomach watching General Hospital was the two weeks Sonny and Faith were paired, and when the show dropped them, I dropped it like a hot potato. Right now, the only thing that could make watching GH tolerable again would be if they did a Sonny/Faith pairing. Unfortunately, we're talking about Hacks Incorporated here and they don't believe in doing anything that could be good.

Sonny and Brenda were THE super couple of the 90's, and they shot up the GH ratings when Vanessa Marcil returned to the show last year and had people talking about the show with excitement. So what do Hacks Incorporated do? They drop them like a hot potato and do a Jason/Brenda/Jax triangle. Talk about the worst triangle in history. Two vapid blondes who think their perfect and can do now wrong and the self-involved twit their playing tug-of-war over. And now Hacks Incorporated have gone one better. They've brought back the one actress who actually made the character of Sonny boring and may be thinking of pairing them together again, while the pairing just screaming to happen, Sonny and Faith, is dropped and ignored time and time again.

And this is what I'm going to have to subject myself to starting the first of the year. A real pleasant prospect, isn't it? I tried to deny the people who proclaimed that daytime was dying, but I can't deny it anymore. Watching Dark Shadows and comparing it to the current daytime soaps has brought home the truth that if something isn't done fast, in the not-so-near future soap operas will be a thing of the past. The sad fact is, the episodes of Dark Shadows that are airing now as it neared its cancellation are far superior in acting and writing to anything any of these current soaps are putting out.

How did things go so wrong for soap operas? In a series of commentaries, I will try to explore what's wrong with the current crop of soaps. What they used to have, but no longer do. And why daytime drama is in danger of becoming as extinct as the dinosaurs now are.

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