Rebooting: What Did It All Mean? What the Soap Opera Was About and What We're Losing: Family

I'm rebooting this from last year as it seems relevant with the potential reboot of AMC and, hopefully, OLTL.  Let's hope this is what we get:

I'm having a particularly difficult time this week, so I thought it might be the right time to be reflective.  I'm not sure what everyone else will think, but I do truly believe that this genre we all seem to love is in its final stages.  And, as it limps to its death, I think it would be particularly fitting to give it a eulogy, so here goes.  Part One.  What made soap operas mean something? There are so many things but let's start at the beginning.  The family.

The essential element of the form is the importance of the family.  It began as the center and, as the shows evolved, it receded into the background.  But it was always there. If it wasn't the shows were lost. I'm looking at you, GH.  Getting rid of the Quartermaines and the Webbers was the death knell, it would seem. What they did to the nice, Stepdad Rick Webber who loved Leslie is reprehensible.  But, that's what they think of family, I suppose.

I take this topic most to heart as my love for soap operas is all wrapped up in memories of my family and always will be.  I grew up watching All My Children and One Life to Live.  My cousins and my mother and my aunt and my sisters, we all watched together.  We would spend every summer at the beach and at Noon, we all went up to the house to eat lunch, watch AMC, and- in the middle of OLTL- our food would be "digested" and we could go back and swim in Lake Michigan and play in the dunes. Soaps were a part of our wonderful summer experience and something we shared forever. We would talk about Erica Kane at Thanksgiving.  The only thing my sister and I had in common as we grew up was AMC and it even now, although we're estranged, I wish I could call her and talk to her about what Tad did today.  My cousins babysat me and made me watch Dark Shadows and scared the living hell out me. But, to be honest, I liked getting their attention. It made me feel as if I was part of the "cool" older crowd.  Even though I was the one crying!

You see, soaps are all about families.  In terms of how we watched them, they were handed down from generation to generation.  It was a way we spent our time together. It gave us touchstones to communicate with each other.  We could all find something we had in common even when there was nothing else.  There was always the characters on the show.

Soaps needed families watching to remain vital over time but they also needed the families on the shows to maintain their connection with that audience.  Traditionally, soaps were centered on strong family ties.  For example, All My Children was about the Martins and the Tylers.  They were strong families, like the Martins, or fractured, like the Tylers.  The Martins were the quintessential soap family to me.  I loved each of them for various reasons. I remember loving Tara and Jeff but I was so young, I wasn't connected to them.  I was more aware of the secondary tier, meaning Tad and Joey/Jake.  It was when Tad became a Martin that I was fully aware of what family meant.

Joe and Ruth Martin, as well as Gran, Kate, were a tight family but not in the sappy sense.  They fought and strayed and questioned one another, but they were a family.  They were far from perfect.  I remember loving Ruth's devotion to Tad, even though he wasn't her biological son, and not very "Martin" in the moral sense.

Yet, as the years wore on, I became so enamored with the Tad and Joe relationship. Although I would argue that Michael E Knight could have chemistry with a lamp post, his scenes with Ray MacDonnell as Joe were some of the most tender moments ever seen on that show.  They were so real and I'd like to think they were based in a real life affection, but I don't know about that.  The loving scenes with Tad and Kate, where she taught him what it meant to be in a family, still make me cry.

At one point, AMC did family better than anyone.  They weren't like P&G soaps where the families were more sappy or at odds.  AMC had what I thought were "real" families.  The only scenes I ever enjoyed with Erica were with her mother and it was with Frances Heflin that Erica became likable and real to me.  She was a nasty piece of work to her mother and Mona's aggravation with the girl was something we all can understand.  But the genuine, unconditional love was there, as well.  And Lucci's only really good scenes, in my opinion, were when she was with Heflin or spoke of her after Mona's death.  She was one character who really showed how even though you're an obnoxious child, you will always need and love your mother.

Brooke's relationship with Aunt Phoebe was touching, as well.  Ruth Warrick and Julia Barr had a wonderful rapport and the show made Phoebe softer with Brooke than she had been with her children, Anne and Chuck.  She showed Brooke more kindness, as she'd mellowed as she aged, and Brooke returned the affection.  Even though not her child, Phoebe's love for her "Benjamin", her driver, was almost as special.  The way he treated the "Duchess" with love yet layered with disdain was perfect as he made her human and down to earth. 

There are too many family moments to mention them all.  Even in later years, Knight and Ricky Paul Golden's wonderful Tad/Jake relationship made their scenes work, even with the craptastic material.  The relaxed rapport they shared was how I would want all brothers to act with one another, loving yet strong and always enjoying each other.

 I never got the "Kane Women" thing, as it seemed like a cheap rip-off of the Cramer Women on OLTL.  The Cramers, which was how I saw the women in my family centered around a large group of females, were always troubled.  Like us, they each had their "ideas" and "issues", but when push came to shove, you'd like to think they loved one another and would be supportive- even under protest.  But there are moments.....

I've waxed poetic about the Todd/Viki relationship on OLTL, so I don't feel the need to go there again. Yet the last scenes with them and Tina made me smile uncontrollably, as they were such a real family. Todd and Tina were being children and Viki, the put upon older sister, mitigating the childish behavior of the siblings, was not only real, but fun.

Yet Tina coming through for Todd at the end made it all seem okay and it made me mad that I never got more Evans/Howarth interaction as it flowed so easily.
 
But rather than focus on the battling Lords/Mannings, I'll mention that no one did family better than Robert S. Woods as Bo Buchanan.  His scenes with Clint and Asa were always about affection and exasperation and love and hatred to some extent.  But under it all, we saw that they were a family who tried to understand even when it wasn't possible.  Although I was not a Richie fan and I could take or leave Phil Carey, I could see the family issues on Bo's face always, as he tried to understand his father and, later, his brother.  He was the heart and soul of the Buchanans and you don't get a better 'good' guy than Bo Buchanan.  He puts the rest to shame.

You see, that's what soap operas are about- finding love and understanding in your family. That's what they are based on and why we watch them.  We may not have that in our real life, but we want it in our "reel" life.  We want to see them fight and lash out and then, in the end, be there for one another.  We want to see Tad lean on Jake and Todd fall into Viki's understanding embrace.  We want to see Blair and Kelly try to make sense of what they have together and work out their "issues".  We want to see Erica talk to her mother and ask her for advice, even when she can no longer answer. 

You see, many people we love are no longer here or they've disappeared or let us down.  But mostly, soaps were always there. They were a constant in our lives.  You see, I come from an Alzheimer's family and I watch people I love slowly disappear while still in standing in front of me.  I've learned that nothing is forever as people can fade away even while they're still physically present, without you even realizing it's happening.  Yet soaps, a tangential family member, would still be there. And still be the same. I may be losing my aunt and my mother, but I still had something familiar from my past.  Until I didn't.

Losing the family focus made shows go astray.  They lacked a center and without that structure, they fell apart.  GH is the best example.  There is no real stable "home" on the show.  There is nothing you look at and say "that's GH" as we looked at Viki or Bo or Tad or Erica.  There is no one left.  What we don't have in real life, we want in our fantasy life.  And if I'm losing my mother and aunt and my cousins and my sisters, I still want Viki.  But if Sonny or Jason or Carly is all you have to offer, forget it.  I'd rather have nothing. They're disgusting and no family I'd ever want.

When I was in college, I wrote a paper for a pop culture class that said that I often watched The Brady Bunch because it reminded me that I existed.  That's the point.  Soaps are about relationships and love and who we are.  We grew up with them and the families become part of our families.  Without those soap families, it's all strangers.  And, in the end, we don't exist in that world.  And it's all gone.  Except for the memories.  Let's hope we can keep them.