Susan Lucci has been on All My Children since she was 17 years old I think. Can you imagine being in the same job doing the same thing every day for 40 years? I can’t and most of my generation does not and we are in our 40′s ourselves but most of our grandparents did work in their jobs for 25, 30, 40 and even 50 years. For our senior citizens, working in a job for 40 years is normal, expected. In fact they often comment about how young people change jobs today, there is no loyalty to a company nor a company to employees. Our seniors remember when they started a job, usually family owned at the age of 15 sometimes younger to help support their families and stayed at that job for 25 years or more. Many female senior citizens didn’t work and were stay at home moms so soap operas often appealed to them in a way that was not only entertaining but kept them connected to the outside world.
For example when Erica Kane started as a 17 year old she gave her television mother such a hard time, running around causing trouble and getting involved with the wrong men. Women at that time were in the process of becoming more liberated and those 40 something stay at home moms would often watch Erica out in the world doing things sometimes they dreamed of but knew they never could. Just the thought of cheating on a spouse or switching a baby at birth seemed so outlandish at that time that soap opera drama was exciting and kept you on the edge of your seat sorta speak.
Nowadays with Maury Povich having a show on everyday about who is the baby daddy, followed by Jerry Springer’s episode of who is cheating on who and with who, sometimes gay, sometimes straight and then followed by an episode of Jersey Shore nothing really seems to shock us anymore or even interest us. Soap Operas lost their ground breaking story lines when reality hit the scene. To think that Erica could be married 10 times does not interest us anymore. We have the Sister Wives now where a man is married to 4 wives at same time and it is portrayed as normal. Not long ago Daytime Soap Operas were given awards for tackling such groundbreaking topics such as domestic abuse or alcoholism, nowadays I wince and close my eyes during an episode of Law and Order SUV. The realistic portrayal of rapists and murderers anymore is too much for me. Every show has to be bloodier and portray more realism of the crime than the last one. And I am still not sure why in real life I have to be subjected to hearing a real life 911 call, a real one.
Unfortunately soap operas today cannot shock fans or interest them like they used to. See in the old days a shock was Erica is having an affair with whom? or it was an interrest like will Angie recover from her blindness soon? You cared about the characters, their stories and their lives. Almost so much that they became real to you, real family. At least this is what I hear from our senior citizens.
I hear that they have watched Erica from day one. They can tell you every evil thing Erica did to her mother, how she has evolved the different men she married and they can relate to her being a grandmother. They have spent many holidays with her and the Pine Valley family. Seniors will tell you not to call them during their soaps, they will talk about the characters as if they are family member. Yesterday someone shared with me that she went to see her mom or grandmom and the woman was crying and the person said why are you crying and the lady said Mary died. The woman who asked thought it was a family member and said Mary? and the elderly women said yes Mary from Pine Valley, All My Children.
The loss of soap operas is devastating for our seniors. Many of them are housebound and these characters are the only visitors they have. Senior put on soaps to watch the characters come into their homes and visit with them. Soap operas are easy for the seniors to watch because they are slo slow and stories take long to develop whereas half hour sitcoms and hour long dramas are often quick and you have to process information quickly. We used to have an old joke that if you missed All My Children or any of soap operas for like 6 months even a year you could probably start watching again and you really wouldn’t miss anything.
It is really sad situation for everyone. Our seniors, us who grow up with family members who watched it and you watched it with them, the actors, the camera crew, the costume designers, everyone on the sets. I don’t know where these actors are going to find work, everything is reality television anymore. I wish there was someway to convince ABC to keep one of the two of them and maybe somehow combine them or something. Losing both at one times seems like such a huge hit for everyone involved.
I don’t know what our seniors are going to do for those two hours now. My guess is we might see a rise in depression and memory impairments. I am not saying the cancellation will cause this, I just think the breaking of the routine, the nothing to stimulate the mind or follow plus the loss of what seniors saw as good friends – the characters is not going to help anyone.
The saddest thing is there is nothing we can do about it. We can complain but that will get us no where. My only hope is that maybe Oprah will find a way to resurrect it and take it OWN network. I am not an Oprah fan by an means I have probably watched her show 5 times in 25 years but as far as her ability to make things happen and get it done, she is the one who could probably do it and frankly even if she shot 30 minute versions of AMC and OLTL with half the characters and half the staff she had a million people watching it. What do you think?
