Over the nearly four years I’ve been posting my blatherings on the Internet – not only here at “The Show,” but also at my Fred Sez blog – I’ve recounted both a wide range of personal minutia and offered up a hefty amount of unsolicited opinions, much of it centered on aspects of the pop culture of the past fifty years. Comics, movies, music, the tube, bat invasions – I’ve shared it all.
Well, ALMOST all. There is one little portion of my day to day life I’ve been consciously holding back. Holding back, that is, until now…
Confession time, friends: I regularly watch a daytime drama.
You know – a soap?
I’ve been reluctant to cop to this fact for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that, by admitting I faithfully follow a daily sudser, it pretty much negates my ability to convincingly strike a critical pose regarding any OTHER corner of the video landscape. Look, I don’t care all that much for reality programs, for game shows, for forensic and/or police procedurals, for trumped up wrestling match scenarios, or even low-grade sit-coms, but well, how can I possibly criticize ANY of these genres with any sort of presumed intellectual authority once my soap addiction has been entered into the equation? I mean, how could I, for instance, possibly badmouth any of the CSI programs (putting aside for a moment the mildly relevant fact that I’ve never actually SEEN any of them) and expect to be taking seriously?
“Aw, what’s HE know?”, folks will sneer, “HE watches soap operas!”
T’wasn’t always the way, effendis, but it has been for long enough now. To follow, then, an explanation of how such a thing came to be, and the somewhat surprising manner in which it affected several of my later key prime-time viewing decisions (and what I happen to think is a pretty nifty piece of trivia bringing this episode of “The Fred Hembeck Show” to a stunning conclusion! Yeah, yeah – I’m overselling, but how ELSE am I gonna get you to wade through all of this?…)
Ahem. Well, back to our subject.
My mother watched the soaps. She called them her “sketches”. If memory serves, Another World, Days of Our Lives, and the long-defunct The Doctors – NBC productions all – comprised her regular daily slate when I was growing up. Whenever I was around and they were on – summers mostly – I generally ignored the drone of the melodramas piping out of the tube, focusing instead on reading my beloved comics while mom’s attention was riveted on the video serials. Of course, while I maintained a silent contempt for mom’s viewing choice, the funny books I was immersing myself in – sixties’ Marvels most prominently – were little more than spandex-suited soap operas themselves, with the emphasis leaning a tad bit more towards the action than towards the romantic angle. So, looking back, it comes as little surprise that I eventually became hooked on the television equivalent of one of Stan Lee’s multi-issue epics. But it wasn’t one of my mom’s sketches that did it…
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Norman Lear’s controversial syndicated soap-opera satire debuted in the fall of 1975, but not, as luck would have it, on any Buffalo, New York television stations. That’s where I was living at the time, finishing up my college education while sharing a ramshackle off-campus two story house over at 280 Stockbridge Avenue with five other fellows (new gal pal Lynn was also seen frequently in the environs). Although I had been a loyal viewer of much of Lear’s previous ground-breaking output (most especially All In The Family), there wasn’t much TV watching going on in that edifice in those days, so initially, the lack of access to this increasingly popular new show was hardly noticed.
Until one especially boring Saturday night, when a bunch of us were gathered around the tube, flipping through a far more limited array of channel choices than one is afforded these days. Suddenly, we stumbled upon the pig-tailed visage of star Loise Lasser, and out of curiosity – and frankly, because nothing else good was on – we backed away from the knob (no remotes for college students in those days, gang), sat back, and watched in fascination as Lear’s repertory company subversively turned soap opera conventions on their head – and better yet, offered viewers a sitcom with NO LAUGH TRACK!! Listening to each line, trying to pay close attention so as not to miss the absurd payoff to a typically banal conversation – this was just the kind of edgy entertainment that hip college students (and brother, that was us!) was looking for! Who knew we’d also get hooked into the serial viewing habit along the way?
(Y’see, MH2 was being broadcast from a Canadian border station, running the daily half hour show twice a week, with two episodes late Friday, and the remaining three on Saturday. Since we came in mid-story – and it wasn’t just me and Lynn watching, though we were probably the most loyal pair of viewers in the house – when news came that a Buffalo station would FINALLY be picking up the program and would be running it from the very beginning, the move was roundly applauded! The only drawback came later, when, in an effort to get on the same page with everyone else nationwide as the show’s second season commenced, they blithely skipped over Mary’s nervous breakdown on The David Susskind Show and subsequent stay in a mental health facility. I’ve always regretted being denied that heralded sequence, as well as a far less well known one: the final weeks of the retitled Forever Fernwood – revamped due to Lasser’s exit – which never played on their flagship New York City station (we’d moved downstate by early 1978, y’see) as the series Herculean 325 episodes drew to a close with little or no fanfare. Nearly thirty years later, I STILL wonder about the source of Mary’s daughter Heather’s visions that she was having down at the town gazebo, a dangling plot point the WNEW didn’t have the decency to allow hardcore viewers like myself to ever learn. Bah. And YOU thought my head was just filled with meaningless comics trivia! Hah! Little you know!…)
Naturally, since I’d found something I liked, I needed more. Lear himself provided it when, shortly after MH2 took the country by storm, he offered up “All That Glitters”, another five times a week soap satire, only this one had an extra helping of social commentary and fantasy heaped upon it: the premise here had all the women characters in positions of power, and all the men in subservient ones. In other words, a complete role reversal. The show was well done, and had a stellar cast – Gary Sandy, pre-WKRP In Cincinnati as the office boy toy, Linda Gray, pre-Dallas, as a transsexual, hunky ex-LA Dodger Wes Parker, and, in the role of the needy if somewhat slovenly “wife”, Chuck McCann!! – but the joke got pretty tiresome pretty quickly, and the show didn’t last past its inaugural season.
(Yes, I watched Soap too, the sitcom that brought Billy Crystal to prominence, but I don’t consider it quite the same thing, as only a couple of dozen episodes of that show were produced each season. It’s the unrelenting quantity as much as anything that marks the true soap viewing experience. And I never became a regular viewer of any of the prime-time sudsers (save for the latter seasons of Melrose Place) like Dallas or Dynasty – though many of the serialized night-time dramas I have watched – Hill Street Blues, ER, Gilmore Girls, Desperate Housewives, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer – all have undeniable soapy aspects.)
January 1980 saw a final, non-Lear, attempt at a satirical soap: L.A.T.E.R.. Here’s something that baffles me – I sometimes have to think twice to determine just what S.H.I.E.L.D., U.N.C.L.E., or T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stand for, but L.A.T.E.R.? Life and times of Eddie Roberts, naturally! And the thing only lasted three months! Geez, talk about your useless information….
At this point, there was only one sure way to feed my insatiable hunger for serials (as opposed to for cereals – mmm, cereals…) – turn the TV on during the DAY! Lynn was going to grad school at the time, and had a flexible enough schedule to take off a half hour around lunch to cozy on up alongside her cartooning hubby to tune into the daily trials and tribulations of ABC’s Ryan’s Hope.
I’m not sure how we settled on this particular series – it was never one of mom’s sketches – except that it was one of the few half hour soap being broadcast, and it had garnered a fair amount of praise for storylines tackling more contemporary issues than its video brethren. Revolving around an Irish family and their NYC bar, we soon discovered this essentially meant that something plot-worthy would happen to one or more of the regular characters one day, and then, for the next week or so, the OTHER characters would sit around the bar, discussing the possible implications of what had just happened! And then something ELSE would happen, and the cycle would be repeated! Given the genre, it wasn’t a bad show, really, just a whole lot slower than one might’ve liked. Which might well be why it was canceled back in 1989…
(Funny thing about the actors who appear on daytime soaps – you just never know how their careers are going to turn out. Shortly before he achieved sex symbol status on LA Law, Corbin Bernsen was saddled with the thankless role of being a third tier buddy on Ryan’s Hope. He played the police officer partner of one of the show’s ostensible heartthrobs (who always struck me as a big galoot, but hey, what do I know from beefcake?…), and his job was simply to sit in the patrol car and provide an ear for the star to unload about his romantic problems. Corbin’s character had absolutely no back-story, had no other interaction with the remainder of the cast, he was simply there to give the hunk a forum to emote. A year later, Bernsen was a prime time star, and the only other time I saw his one time uniformed buddy was in the opening minutes of an episode of Lois and Clark, as he ran cravenly into a dark alley, only to be gunned down by gangsters, after spouting maybe two lines of dialog! Showbiz sure is funny – you just never know…)
So anyway, we settled into our Ryan’s Hope habit, but the one thing I was determined not to do was to slip into watching a whole afternoon’s worth of soaps. Lynn wasn’t quite so adamant, though, and began to leave the tube on after RH closed up shop for the day, spurred on no doubt by the teaser scenes broadcast everyday during the serial’s final commercial break. That’s how she began watching All My Children…
Me? Well, I resisted, honest I did, but I saw the commercials too, and even though I got up and left the room immediately after my daily visit with the Ryan clan concluded, our place wasn’t all that big at the time, the drawing board wasn’t all that far away, so while I may not’ve seen things, I sure HEARD ’em! Oh , the things I heard! Was Brooke’s mother REALLY the evil crime-boss Cobra? (Yes – though we also found out it wasn’t REALLY her mother…) After awhile, just to make conversation, I’d casually ask Lynn, hey sweetie, so what exactly happened on All My Children today, hmmm? Initially, she dutifully filled me in, but eventually, she just tired of the daily recap sessions and point-blank declared, look buddy, if you’re so interested, why don’t you just watch the show yourself?
And so – God help me – I DID…
That was way back in 1981 – to give you some perspective, diva icon Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) had only been to the altar twice by then, though she was currently involved with a married man with the quintessential soap moniker of Brandon Kingsley – and I’ve been watching ever since! Twenty-five years, a full quarter century! Five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, one hour a day (though that latter total is essentially shaved down to a more manageable forty minutes per episode thanks to the miracle of the VCR – a miracle that, beginning in the spring of 1983 meant the Hembeck household NEVER had to miss an episode again!!) (But just try watching a week or two’s worth in one or two sittings after you’ve returned from vacation – if things are at a hot point, plot wise, you’re in pretty decent shape. Otherwise, it’s the video equivalent of driving the New York Thruway from Buffalo to Long Island – wholly necessary to get from point A to point B, but barren and mind numbing nonetheless…) – that’s a LOT of All My Children!!
And those of you who never developed a similar habit probably have one question screaming in your mind right about now:
WHY?
Well, I’m not really sure. Truth is, for the first five – maybe even ten – years, AMC seemed like a really good show to me! Honest! The characters (and actors) were interesting and appealing, while the melodramatic situations seemed clever and well conceived. Whether or not this was the actual truth or just the fact that the genre’s many cliches were new to us, I can’t say for certain. However, over the last dozen years, with the numerous improbable resurrections of long “dead” characters, the myriad of heretofore unknown sons, daughters, and half-siblings popping up at an alarming rate – not to mention murder mysteries that drag on for weeks, with the prime suspect ALWAYS found innocent during his or her trial – things have gotten a tad bit wearisome. But still I watch.
WHY?
Habit. And it really is the television equivalent of comfort food. There’s something reassuring about seeing the same characters day in day out, some of whom have been with the show for decades. (Despite being there since day one – years before me even – I’ve never cared much for Lucci’s Kane character, finding her more annoying than entertaining. Long term-wise, David Canary’s (Bonanza‘s Candy) meglomaniacal billionaire, Adam Chandler (and his sweet, simple minded twin, Stuart, who’s been criminally under used in recent times), is reason enough to justify tuning in.
Never off center stage (save for the occasional fortnight vacation) since joining the cast in 1983, his memorable portrayal has justifiably earned him a half dozen Leading Man Daytime Emmy Awards. I always got a special kick out of it when circumstances called for him to play Stuart pretending Adam, or vice versa – or that one unforgettable time he played Adam playing Stuart playing Adam! Okay, reading that sentence may’ve well made your head hurt, but if you’d seen him pull it off, trust me, you would’ve been impressed too! Michael E. Knight’s Tad Martin is another old friend I’d sorely miss if I quit watching…).
Let’s make something clear here – for me, the soaps aren’t really about the romances. Oh, I like me a good love story as much as anyone, but you’re far more likely to find a truly emotionally affecting romance in a movie. There have been some sweet couples on AMC over the years (Tad and Dixie USED to fall into that category – but then she came back form the dead, and well, you can just imagine the rest…), but I think the real appeal of following a daily soap boils down to two things:
Secrets and confrontations.
Everyone on a soap – unless you’re Corbin Bernsen – has a secret at one time or another. And while that secret is sometimes known to the viewer right from the outset, while other times it’s only slowly revealed to the audience at home, it’s a certainty that the character who’s MOST effected by said secret (like the mother whose baby was switched at birth, let’s say – hey, it happens!!…), they’re always the LAST ones to find out, after virtually everyone else in Pine Valley knows the bitter truth! And that leads inexorably to part two of this equation – the confrontation!
WHAT exactly is the mother who fell victim to the baby switch going to say when she confronts the guilty infant snatcher – just coincidentally her erstwhile best friend, natch – when she finally learns the truth? THIS is the moment you’ve been primed, Pavlovian-like – to anticipate for months on end, and when it finally arrives, well, you really, really hope there’s no breaking news story to deny you the important stuff, dig? (I STILL don’t know why Julie Chandler left for the Far East years ago, thanks to Peter Jennings interrupting the festivities at just the wrong moment, and as the future Mrs. – and later ex – Jim Carrey’s exit was more low key than most, Lauren Holly’s 1989 departure was never, ever mentioned again! ANOTHER dangling plot thread taking up crucial space in my slowly atrophying noggin! Damn you, ABC News!)
Yeah, I know – this all sounds pretty lame. And it probably is – but as addictions go, save for a few eroding braincells, happily, one’s health isn’t compromised! Sometimes, it’s just fun – in a rueful sort of way for loyal viewers – to simply sit back and mock the absurdity of it all. And in a crazy way, it even makes you appreciate other TV more. Check this out – a lot of folks labeled the second season of “Desperate Housewives” as substandard, but to these eyes, it was Masterpiece Theater compared to the thirty-sixth season of All My Children! And I’ve heard plenty of wailing about the perceived illogic of my beloved “24”, but friends, next to the wildly careening plot turns taken by the denizens of Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, the antics of Jack Bauer and company make plenty of sense to me!
One of the outgrowths of watching AMC over the years has been the way it’s affected my OTHER TV viewing. First and foremost, it taught me never to watch any other soaps, as Id likely never be able to stop, but it’s also pointed me towards several prime time programs I might’ve otherwise passed on (and no, LA Law, which I’ve never watched, wasn’t one of them – I didn’t even realize who Bernsen was until I stumbled across his soap credit somewhere).
Sarah Michelle Gellar joined the cast in 1993 as Kendall Hart, the grown daughter Erica Kane didn’t know she had (quite a trick – and Ms.Kane even more recently discovered a son she didn’t know about as well! As to HOW that was possible, don’t ask…). When she left to do Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I tuned in simply out of pure curiosity. wondering how a soap vet was gonna turn a little regarded horror flick into a weekly TV series. I didn’t even figure I’d be coming back for the second episode, but once I saw the debut, I was almost immediately transformed into a life-long Joss Whedon fan, and I’ve followed everything he’s done since!
Another actress in that role and I’d’ve most likely passed entirely (it didn’t seem, on the surface, my sort of show), probably wondering these many years later, what the fuss was all about. Far less the critical darling, but still a lot of fun, Las Vegas wouldn’t’ve even have been a blip on my radar, despite Jimmy Caan starring, if it weren’t for AMC’s ex-Leo, Josh Duhamel , being featured right alongside the Godfather vet as Danny. And even though I always found Kelly Ripa’s Hayley Vaughn either too shrill or too self-pitying, I couldn’t resist checking in to see how she’d make out sitting alongside Regis back when they were having on-air auditions to replace Kathie Lee Gifford several years back. Much to my surprise, I found her engaging, witty, and genuinely amusing, all the things that had never came across in her AMC work, and when she finally settled into the co-host seat five years ago, I became a regular viewer of a show that had gotten along just fine without me entirely for decades! the last time i had watched Reege was when he hosted a short-lived seventies gossip based game show, The Neighbors – who knew he was such a character? (I also watched Ripa’s sitcom, Hope and Faith, which I considered a well performed but dumb comedy, not something I would’ve otherwise followed, and shed no tears over its cancellation after three seasons…).
So yeah, I watch a soap – and you might well say, if it weren’t for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, I never would’ve watched Firefly! And you might well be right…
Let me leave you with this curious little bit of cross-network trivia. As stated above, Sarah Michelle Gellar went directly from playing Erica Kane’s daughter, Kendall Hart, to playing Buffy. At the same time she was on AMC, future Buffy cast mate – who would play a heretofore unknown younger sister to the Slayer (actual magic was used to accomplish THIS oddball plot point, making it slightly more credible than typical AMC plotting…) thrust into the mix midway during the series run – Michelle Trachtenberg was also a cast member on the soap. She played Lily Montgomery, the autistic step-daughter of long-time (and perennial Kane paramour) cast member (and comic fan!) Walt Willey.
She was more of a plot device than a fleshed out character at the time, however, and Jackson Montgomery (Willey) was involved with her birth mother, and nowhere near the then current Erica-based storyline, so the Gellar and Trachtenberg characters never crossed paths during their time spent simultaneously in Pine Valley.
Then, a few years back, as is often the case, a new actress was brought in to assume the role of Kendall on AMC, and maybe a year later, another one to take on the task of bringing Lily from out of the halls of the special (but never seen) school she’d attended for nearly a decade off camera (her mom, y’see, had been killed awhile back). Jackson and Erica – who’d been on and off for nearly two decades, but who’d never actually tied the knot – FINALLY got married about a year ago, meaning that – just like Gellar and Trachtenberg on Buffy – the two characters originated by the aforementioned actresses, Kendall and Lily were now sisters too!
Ain’t that something? Aren’t you glad you read all this way for THAT? Hey, my head’s filled with useless information, no argument there, but I’d like to think that at least some of it is INTERESTING useless information!!
Well, gotta go. Lynn’s calling me – it’s time to watch today’s episode. I wonder when Adam’s gonna find out that his daughter Colby didn’t perish in that boat wreck (the one that served as a capper to her extravagant Sweet Sixteen Birthday party, shortly after she lost her virginity on board to Erica’s step-nephew!) and is instead hiding in the secret tunnels at the Chandler Mansion, listening in on everyone’s secrets? Hey, forget about how Marvel’s Civil War is gonna turn out – THIS is what I wanna see!..
May Rao help me…
Hembeck.com – c’mon over!
-Copyright 2006 Fred Hembeck
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