Daytime "Soap Operas" I have enjoyed...

Daytime Soap Operas (excerpt of U.S. soap opera list from Wikipedia)

this is the list of the programs I watched:

·         Search for Tomorrow (1951–1986)

·         The Edge of Night (1956–1984)

·         As the World Turns (1956–2010)

·         General Hospital (1963–present)

·         Dark Shadows (1966–1971)

·         One Life to Live (1968–2012, 2013)

·         All My Children (1970–2011; 2013)

·         The Young and the Restless (1973–present)

·         Ryan's Hope (1975–1989)

·         Texas (1980–1982)

·         Loving (1983–1995)

·         Port Charles (1997–2003)

Quite a list, eh?  Those are just the ones I used to watch…. As you can see most of them are no longer in production.   ---I will attempt to take this in the order of which I viewed them. ….I am a critic, that is to say that I will be completely honest, in so far as I recall these programs, about what I think of the stories I viewed and (sometimes) the stories that followed the times I viewed these programs….  I miss most of these shows, I bid a sad and sorry farewell to so many characters I enjoyed, …and so many actors I appreciated….  I will name but a few herein:

The first daytime soap opera that I remember watching was actually Dark Shadows. I was a bit young, and I will freely admit that there was an attraction because these programs were considered “forbidden” –although my parents never tried to stop me from watching anything on television….(not meant as a judgment, because when I was child television was heavily censored, so the folks were not worried about what I was watching.)

I do not really remember much,…my (older) nieces talked about Dark Shadows, and they gave me their old copies of teenybopper magazines (16),…. So I knew that I was “supposed” to like David Selby (Quentin, the werewolf) and Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins).  It seems very strange to me now, thinking about my child-self reading the fluff pieces on these two actors, and the rest of the cast of Dark Shadows.  I don’t even think of this as having watched a soap opera—I think it is included in that category simply because it was aired in the late afternoon (in Chicago), during the soap opera portion of the television day. It was on at 3:00 in the afternoon, so I rarely watched it, because I had to be sick to be home at 3:00pm… (school let out at 3:30pm).  My main memory is of pretending to be sick around 2:00 in the afternoon, so that maybe I could go home a little early to watch Dark Shadows (usually on a Friday afternoon). 

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Most often I will say that the first soap opera I watched was One Life to Live.  This is because, by this time I was old enough to recognize it as a soap opera.  It was 1971… I was a little young for this kind of story I think…. I happened to see one episode in which Meredith and Danny were held hostage by bad men with guns.  I wanted to know what happened next, (the hook was set!) so the next time I had the chance I tuned in.  In this way I was introduced to Larry Wolek (Michael Storm) and his brother Vinnie, and to Wanda.  And then there were Victoria Lord (Erika Slezak) and Dorian Kramer (various actresses over the years).  And powerful story lines about love and hate and abusive relationships (Dorian and her lover, Mark Toland –Tommy Lee Jones!)  This was during a time when Joe Riley was missing…

Nancy Pinkerton as Dorian Kramer and Tommy Lee Jones as Mark Toland

Erika Slezak as Victoria Lord and Lee Patterson as Joe Riley

Fond memories of Asa Buchanan (the inimitable Phil Carey), and all of the Joeys --because they changed actors faster than we could keep up, but most memorably Nathan Fillion, (of whom I predicted, "we will be watching that young man for a long time to come....and so we are....Firefly, Castle....).

I watched One Life To Live until the day it went of the air.  Still the first "soap" that comes to my mind.

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The next soap I watched was The Young and The Restless.  I did not want to watch it, but my cousin turned it on, and once again I paid just enough attention to set the hook…. Whatever would happen between Jill Foster (Brenda Dickson back in the day) and Katherine Chancellor…. Phillip Chancellor (the elder) portrayed by Donnelly Rhodes. was still in the story, not yet having perished in the automobile accident.  And there were the Brooks girls, Leslie, Lorie, Chris, and Peggy… and Snapper Foster…. Long before the days of Victor Newman, and the former stripper (that’s right, not “dancer”, stripper) Nicki Reed…. Early on Victor was married to Julia and in their basement Victor had a jail cell built to contain a man he mistakenly believed that Julia was having an affair with….the storylines seem so preposterous now! At one point Nicki drugged Victor, climbed into bed with him, and “voila” not long after she was pregnant with Victor’s baby.  (My mother found this hilarious! “If he was drugged and unconscious he couldn’t… you know,….make a baby with her.”)  Mom let me watch Y&R after she learned that her favorite Chicago television personality Lee Philip and her husband were the geniuses behind the soap.

The long time feud between Jill and Katherine was what kept us tuning in to Y&R for over 40 years…Katherine Chancellor, “The Duchess”, Kay…. portrayed by the inimitable Jeanne Cooper.  A fascinating character, Kay was an alcoholic, “stole” Jill’s betrothed –a man much younger than Kay and married him!, Kay interfered in the lives of her friends, ran Chancellor Corporation, had a maid named Esther (the viewers love Esther- Kate Linder), Kay’s son Brock (Beau Kayzer) called his mother The Duchess.  I may not remember all of it exactly as it happened, but it was a wild, and fun ride….

Jeanne Cooper

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During one summer I started watching a lot more soap operas…eventually filled the day, from 11:00 am until 4:00pm for while…. In the mornings there were several soaps I watched, changing the station every time a commercial interrupted… Y&R, Search for Tomorrow, and Ryan’s Hope, for several months…. This always confused my mother, who only occasionally came into the room. 

Nothing about Ryan’s Hope really stands out in my memory, except for the antics of Delia, and I remember her being in love with Roger.  I guess I don’t remember it well, because I was only watching it for a few minutes at a time.  (Ilene Kristen and Ron Hale)

Delia and Roger

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Search for Tomorrow I remember, because there was a character called Susie, and she was about my age,…[ Cynthia Gibb (Susan 'Suzi' Martin Wyatt)]  Susie was married to Cagney McCleary (Matthew Ashford), and when Susie was killed I cried.  The character was near to my age….. the show went off the air not long afterward, but they had time to create a lovely ending, and Jo (Mary Stuart) bid the viewers “farewell”.  …and they all lived happily ever after…. Yeah right, in the soap opera world chaos reins…. But it was a nice thought.

Those were the 3 programs (Y&R, RH, and SfT) I remember watching “at the same time” by changing channels during the commercial breaks.

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And I watched All My Children….that Erica! But our favorites were Tad and Dixie,… Tad the former bad boy (Michael Knight) who had his heart melted by the naïve country girl Dixie (Cady McClain)…. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine….” They broke our hearts.  One of my favorites was Jackson Montgomery (Walt Willey) who tried to be the voice of reason for Erica.  And one of the funniest times was when Erica was mad at Adam Chandler (the wonderful David Canary) and she was throwing breakable objects at him….how we laughed!  Nina and Cliff, and Bianca- Erica’s daughter…. And all of the Martins, even the one who went up to the attic to get his skis and was never seen or heard from again…. And, Phoebe, and Donna and Chuck,…. Oh the memories!

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I don’t really know when I started watching General Hospital… but I remember Steve Hardy, Audrey, Jessie, and Lee Baldwin (Peter Hansen),.. Scotty Baldwin as a child! Yikes!! Diana, and Heather Weber…. And of course Luke and Laura (Anthony Geary and Genie Francis) –“The Left Handed Boy” wow, they sure had us tuning in every day to figure that one out! (by the way, the viewers never saw the left handed boy until after it was revealed who/what the left handed boy was)…. And Luke never raped Laura, that was a recreated backstory –because they always, ALWAYS, rewrite history to suit the current story line…..

Later on there were The Quartermaines…and oh my, what a hoot that family was, when they were all there, in the Quartermaine living room, sparing with each other…. And the time Alan married Lucy Coe and the red wedding dress….

Stuart Damon as Alan Quartermain and Lynn Herring as Lucy Coe

And later the death of BJ Jones….they broke our hearts when Tony said a tearful goodbye to his little girl.

And Robin and Stone…. If you weren’t watching, I cannot really explain… young love, AIDS, death….love, so much love for a boy with AIDS. Heartbreaking.

Kimberly McCullough and Michael Sutton as Robin and Stone

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Well, I have been writing this for a very long time… pausing to research some bit of information, or find the correct spelling of an actor’s name…. I wish I could mention all of the actors names, and go into greater detail about what I remember,…and embellish with what I have read in the research….

I did not write about all of the soap operas I watched over the years…. but here is where I finished:

It was the last night of a television channel called SoapNet.  The show was General Hospital…. Our beloved Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough) was returning to her estranged husband, she stood   on the doorstep –she rang the bell, her husband Patrick Drake (Jason Thompson) opened the door…

…and with a great sense of release I knew that I was done. 

Finished watching daytime soap operas forever….  

.....have I turned the television on and tuned in to Y&R or GH since that day? Yes, but there is no investment for me –I can take it or leave it completely and totally behind me… so much so that I do not have television coming into the house…. No cable, no satellite, no antenna… I like it that way.  Soaps are not what they used to be, and I have wonderful memories……