Ten Things Soap Operas Can Do to Make Their Shows Watchable

Since 1979, when I overheard my older brother talking to my mother about Karen Wolek and her problems on the soap One Life To Live, I've been a fan of soap operas. I've watched soaps such as All My Children, General Hospital, The Young and the Restless, Another World, until finally settling down to the long running CBS drama Guiding Light. For various reasons, I stopped watching GL in 1993, but, as with any lapsed soap fan, I followed it over the years until in 2004, when I decided to watch the show again. Largely, I was thrilled over the news that a new producer and head writer was taking over the helms and was interested in the plans they had for the show. It wasn't long before I was quickly disappointed by the results. Characters that I loved were written as pod characters, doing things and behaving in ways that made little sense. They had become chess pieces designed to simply push them around in whatever plot head writer David Kreizman had cooked up, many of which were not that terribly fascinating.