Another one bites the dust. No one is surprised that soap operas are in decline. After all, ratings have been dwindling for years as more and more women work outside of the home, and besides game shows and talk shows are produced more cheaply than daytime serials, which also makes the soaps less attractive to the networks. But, who would have thought that the soap world would abandon Erica Kane before she decided to take a curtain call? The Erica Kane character is iconic in the soap world and has become known even to people who don’t watch the genre. Susan Lucci who plays Kane finally got her Emmy after 18 unsuccessful attempts, and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but even being dubbed Daytime’s Leading Lady has not been enough to save All My Children from cancellation after 41 years on ABC.
I probably haven’t seen an episode of a soap opera in over 20 years, and All My Children was never in the mix for me anyway, but I can’t say that I don’t carry some nostalgia for the genre. When I was a little girl, my mother and sister and I frequently visited the Cleveland County farm in Western North Carolina where my mother grew up. Sometimes my father was with us, too, but usually it was just the girls, especially in the summer when we had breaks from school and could spend long days helping out with chores and building playhouses outside and reading lots and lots of books.
My grandmother was like many farm women. She worked from dawn to dark keeping house, cooking three meals a day, maintaining vegetable and flower gardens, putting up food for the winter, making quilts and clothes, and helping out with the cows during the years my Pamma and Papa had a dairy farm. There were pigs to slop, and chickens to feed, and sick people to visit just lots and lots to cram into the average day. But, after the lunch dishes had been washed, there was one hour to sit in the air conditioning and shell peas or break beans or do a little mending. There was one hour to relax a little and share the challenges and triumphs and scandals of the Hughes Family in As the World Turns. The long-running serial had a lot going for it, and one of the most important things to my family was the bold and cunning character of Lisa played for 50 years from 1960 until the show’s cancellation about a year ago by Eileen Fulton who was born not too far away from Cleveland County outside of Asheville.
I don’t remember many of the characters or the storylines, but the clothes and accessories and hairstyles seemed elegant to me then, and I remember when I started sitting in the den with Mama and Pamma after lunch and watching the show with them that I felt remarkably grown up. Soon I knew all of the characters and heard about the storylines from years gone by in Oakdale, Illinois. Hard to imagine now, but then this fictional town seemed so exotic to me. We talked about about Chris and Nancy Hughes, and Bob and Kim Hughes, and Jon Dixon, and – of course – Lisa. She was married a lot and divorced a lot and flirted a lot. I looked it up. Her character’s name with all the marriages is: Lisa Miller Hughes Eldridge Shea Colman McColl Mitchell Grimaldi Chedwyn. My great grandmother had a first cousin named Peggy Dickie Catherine Billie Bitty Beautyshine Green, but I never heard that she was married more than once, and I’m sure she didn’t have anything on Lisa Miller Hughes Eldridge Shea Colman McColl Mitchell Grimaldi Chedwyn.
Over time I came to see the soaps as a bit silly and as a huge waste of time. On some levels, that is true, I guess. But, maybe I need to relax, like we did in those hours after lunch on the farm, relinquish my critic’s gaze for a moment, and refrain from scolding judgment. Over the years these stories have provided a narrative glue that helps link communities, and that’s not all bad. The people viewers gossip about are characters who can’t be harmed by idle conversation. Would I rather that people bond over the op-ed pages of major newspapers or international films from famous directors or award-winning stories broadcast on NPR? Sure, but maybe it’s not terrible to engage in some frivolity. After all, aside from aesthetics, I’m not sure it’s a huge leap from All My Children or As The World Turns to Parenthood or Desperate Housewives. It’s not hard for drama to edge into melodrama with or without recognizing the transition. So, for this week, I’m going to remove my critic’s hat and offer a half-salute to the venerable soap opera. My Pamma would approve, and I’m sure my mother and sister, both of whom still keep up with the soaps, appreciate that I’m suspending judgment for a week.
