Do you miss the daytime soaps?

OP certainly isn't Cecile de Poulignac!

Santa Barbara!

I was OBSESSED with AMC in the 90s. The whole Natalie twin down a well story. Omg those were fun days

Another World and Santa Barbara, so great in their prime.

I miss all the soaps. For me there's a nostalgia that came with continuing drama on the TV daily. And Characters you knew and could check in with. And its an art form that began in radio. I always wonder if there is some way to bring it back in the modern platforms. No one has just figured it out yet. Through some of the 70s thru the 90s soap were oftentimes more lucrative than prime time shows,

Passions was one of the worst shows that has ever been on television but my Lord the men on that show made me cum.

If you gave me Guiding Light, As The World Turns, One Life To Live and All My Children anywhere I'd watch.

Born in 1980. I watched Another World, All My Children, and General hospital with my grandmother growing up, and Santa Barbara at some point because I do remember it. Got heavy into AMC and OLTL in the early/mid 90s, then Passions until it was cancelled. Then back to OLTL until the very end, which remains my favorite soap. I even watched the reboot. Man, I miss those shows. And my grandmother. I tuned in GH the other day and they all look as old as shit.

I still watch DAYS and used to watch AMC, OLTL and Passions

I was lucky because in my city, Philadelphia, back starting in the 90s, the NBC affiliate started airing DAYS at 12 noon in stead of 1, so I would watch campy, supernatural 90s DAYS on NBC from 12-1 and then go to ABC from 1-3 for AMC and OLTL

Soaps need to be rebooted.

Everyone grew up with soaps way or another. From a grandma to college kids

I refuse to believe that the genre is completely dead... it can come back in some way.

R12 AMC is in the process of coming back as a weekly primetime soap

I think that'll be the future

I miss As the World Turns. But by the end it was so bad it was almost a mercy killing.

What r14 said. It all came apart when Douglas Marland died. P&G made each of its shows so intensely awful, it was impossible to feel anything but gratitude when each went off the air. I stopped watching ATWT sometime after Lisa sued Johnny Boy Dixon, forcing Andrew to testify against his father, and picked it up again when Luke came out. What a waste of time and talent.

Luke's is the worst gay story of all time, except perhaps some scrawlings by JT Leroy or Brent Easton Ellis.

A really good soap opera on Hulu or Netflix would do well - lots of shirtless men, lots of camp, lots of current hot topic storylines like a modern day Agnes Nixon show.

Soaps had such popularity in their prime, in part, for reasons that do not exist today. In the 80's, many more households were still single-income, which often meant someone was home alone watching TV during midday while the other spouse was at work and the kids were at school. Also, before cable television became common place, households only had a few (3-5) network stations to choose from, which put more eyes on the same programs.

Today, with most households being dual income instead of single and with literally thousands of programming choices verses only four, Soaps will never regain the status they once enjoyed.

The Secret Storm!

Look at what Belle has done to Amy today!!

R13 is La Lucci going to be part of it?

Sunset Beach; #1 hottest guy in all of soap history - Timothy Adams as Casey.

Other honorable mentions include Dylan Bruce in ATWT, and also Bailey Chase in ATWT, both as Chris Hughes.

Aidan Turner in All My Children, Eric Winter in Days of Our Lives as Rex, and James Hyde back in the day as Sam Bennett in Passions.

I don't miss the soaps because what they've become has the style of fan gurl fan fiction and truly sucks mothballs. But the moment I got my laptop, I downloaded pretty much everything I could and put them on discs. I have almost everything that's been out there before they took them off of YouTube so I do go on binges on occasion, mainly with The Doctors, but lots of GH, EON, AW, GL, RH and snippets of Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow and ATWT. I have a select group of favorite actors I watch over and over (McKinsey, Dusay, Sorel, Charleson, Elliot, Kibbee, Gabet, Shaffer, Towers) and am glad to see these any time I want.

One life was the best of the bunch and I hope it gets rebooted!!!

I watch Days regularly, because it brings back fond memories, and keep an eye on what the other three are doing out of habit. Soaps used to be fun, but the audience changed and now the writers are caught between the trash crowd and the woke crowd. These shows used to be proactive and fun twists on morality tales. Now they exist to service fanbases and to not offend. There was recently someone on Twitter trying to get the writer of Days fired because he said that in his mind a sexual relationship between two characters wasn't rape.

R23 exactly, the fanbase is extremely old fashioned and they WANT the same rehashed storylines

I couldn't believe the outrage from women over Will and Sonny, a gay couple, ON DAYS, many cried because "because of the gays, I can't watch my soap!"

But rapists and murderers, even serial killers like Ben on DAYS being shown as heroes are fine....

I still love them. They are current day nostalgia with characters you’ve known for decades and memories of watching with mothers, grandmothers, friends. I include in my list of favorite actors those who I first saw on soaps.

I'm an oldster who watched (and loved) only The Edge of Night.

Never watched soaps, have never known another gay man who did. DL is the only place where I see gay men who are soap fans.

How old are you R27, that might have something to do with it.

I'm in my forties. And even gay guys I know who are older than me don't watch soaps.

Soaps were something that my friends' stay-at-home moms watched when I was a kid. And of course like the above poster explained, it's an outdated genre.

R27 r29 So fucking what?

AMC was “my” soap, but there were eras of GL, AW, ATWT and Santa Barbara that I also enjoyed for a time.

I watched the others from time to time if I was home and they were on. There were storylines that interested me here and there, but was never really that into OLTL or any of the ones that are still on.

After college, AMC was the only one I watched every day, right up to the end. It had sadly gone downhill by the end, thanks to that piece of shit Brian Frons. They did bring in some of the great former writers in the last few months and it was much better—but it was too late. If the Hulu reboot had been a year or two later, it would have been successful. It felt like the old AMC. I enjoyed it.

In my circles, watching soaps was rather basic and common.

I used to stay home from school on the regular as a kid. I was an only child and super smart and school bored the fuck out of me so I would often fake being sick so I could hang out by myself at home, and my mom would indulge me. I loved daytime TV back then. I'd start out with morning reruns of sitcoms, then talk shows, then soaps. All My Children was the first, in either 78 or 79, and I would try to watch OLTL but I never really liked it. And in 1980, I discovered GH and became obsessed. I was a die hard GH viewer for three years until the summer of 198 when I got into the CBS soaps. Then I would flip back and forth between GH and GL. I went to an all boys catholic high school that only went from 8am-1:30pm so I was always home by 2pm, which meant I could watch As The World Turns and then GH/GL every day.

By the mid-80s I got bored with them and I started doing more stuff after school. I think I dropped everything but As the World Turns, and even that was intermittent, though I jumped back into it full time once I was in college because my roommate and I would tape it every day and watch it at night. And then I just didn't care anymore. Though I did try to watch Ryan's Hope when Soapnet starting airing it about 15 years later.

I personally don’t watch soaps anymore, but I’m living with my parents and my mom watches General Hospital.

I swear, it’s become a recycling bin for stars of other soaps. In the past several months I’ve seen:

“Tad” from AMC

“Phyllis” from Y&R

“Annie” from GL

“Carly” from ATWT

“Kimberly” from OLTL

“Todd” from OLTL

I still miss OLTL. Every day.

R34 soaps always used stars from other shows. With only 4 on the air now there’s just less place for them to go.

R34 DAYS is worse

we have Dixie from AMC

Pete from AMC

Cassandra from AMC

Ned from GH

Paulina from AW

Carly from GH

Ned from GH

Lola from OLTL

Blair from OLTL Soon multi soap vet Linda Dano (AW, AMC, OLTL and GH) will be joining

My life would only have meaning again if I could tune in every day to see the prune eating sleestak.

[quote]And of course like the above poster explained, it's an outdated genre.

That's ridiculous. Empire, This is Us and Brigerton to name a few are all variations of the soap opera genre. The soap opera genre is still thriving even though they're not in daytime anymore.

I'm actually surprised that one of the major networks hasn't attempted another five times a week nightly prime time soap opera a la Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

r39 the daytime soap is very outdated.

E39 AMC is in the process of coming back as a weekly nighttime soap called Pine Valley

And yes, soaps are everywhere in primetime

I’ve been watching Daysfor over 35 years since I was a little kid...I still love it. Especially now with the hot hot hot Jake! When he wears his black undies... yum! The man is hung like a horse!

DL's soap fans are an odd bunch, I wonder if they never had active social lives or busy careers. I truly have never known another gay man who watched soaps, even back in the 90s. I suspect they're the same crowd who is still watching marathons of shitty tv shows from the 70s and 80s (like all of Aaron Spelling's garbage) and still having conversations about them. Those threads are all over DL.

The daytime soap popularized the idea of the continuing storyline. Since pretty much every show on cable and streaming uses that element, I would hardly say its outdated. This alleged golden age of TV owes a great deal of gratitude to the afternoon soap opera.

TV dramas used to be Playhouse 90 type shows or Defenders/Perry Mason things, where each week it was a new story. You wanted to watch storylines and character unfold over a period of time, you watched a soap.

I used to *swoon* for Don Diamont on Y&R. He still looks great.

I was a big fan of all of the CBS soaps, at one time or another (the only time I ever watched a soap on another network was when “Edge of Night” jumped from CBS to ABC during the mid-70s), grew up watching “The Guiding Light”, “As the World Turns” and “Search for Tomorrow” with my grandmother during the late ‘60s. I got re-hooked oh “Guiding Light” while I was in high school in the ‘70s, when the central story was about Roger, Holly, Ed and Rita, and continued to watch until the ‘80s, when it became “The Reva Show”. I started watching around 2003-ish, when Jonathan and Tammy were the hot couple, but tuned out out of pure cringe when, after they’d already hooked up, the writers decided to reveal that they were really cousins. (Ewwww...)

I also watched “As the World Turns” right up until it left the air in 2010.

"Secret Storm"!

I agree with the poster above who described ATWT’s cancellation as a “mercy killing”. I watched it right up to the bitter end out of loyalty (and because old favorites like Bob, Lisa, Kim and Lucinda were still on, albeit, frequently as glorified extras), but the writing was astonishingly bad during the last few years. Such a shame that a show with 50-odd years of history, and so many of its original cast members still present, couldn’t have had their last few years be more memorable.

I started watching soaps as a young gayling in the 1970s. First I started with Ryan's Hope. Then I started watching All My Children, which was really the first one I got into heavily. By the late 1970s, everyone in my school was hooked on General Hospital thanks to the Luke and Laura storyline. It's amazing how huge that became. I'd watch One Life to Live but only intermittently.

In college in the mid- to late-1980s, it was amazing how many people worked their class schedules around their favorite soaps. I got into As the World Turns in the late 1980s as my sister-in-law watched it when I was around her during the summer, so I found myself getting into the storylines. After I got out of college and started working full-time, I lost touch with them. The first time I tried to watch soaps again after that, I couldn't believe I used to like them. I've never been able to get back into them.

Soaps started to go downhill fast around 2003... the ABC ones all sucked from that point until their cancellation. Ironically I would have given the axe to GH first

Paul Telfer's ridiculously hot body is literally keeping the soaps alive.

[quote]I got into As the World Turns in the late 1980s as my sister-in-law watched it when I was around her during the summer, so I found myself getting into the storylines. After I got out of college and started working full-time, I lost touch with them. The first time I tried to watch soaps again after that, I couldn't believe I used to like them.

It wasn't you, r49. It was them.

In the late '80s, ATWT was one of the best television programs, any daypart. We didn't have the internet, Mimi Torchin had yet to impose spoilers on us (she kind of ignored ATWT, mostly), and Douglas Marland was headwriter (RIP 1993). It (mostly) maintained its excellence through 1995, when Lisa sued John Dixon, but turned to crap, thanks an endless series of subpar writers, producers, and suits.

It was responsible for the worst gay storyline in the history of gay storytelling.

I miss seeing soap opera guys with naturally hairy chests: untrimmed, unshaven, unwaxed. Sigh.

This thread pops up here quite often. Soaps are trashed because they are seen as disposable entertainment for women that lacks the budget and polish of primetime and film. But the continuing story has been around forever and will continue to be around in some form, long after we're all gone.

Soaps have played an important role in entertainment and society as a whole since the beginning of the form on radio. They've been used to highlight important issues and in some cases have even pushed for progressive change. It is a form of entertainment that has a strong focus on women.

While nothing that is 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year is perfect, when soaps are at their best they are pretty damned good and a great way to just to check out and be entertained by characters that you know like family.

Some of my fondest memories are summers with my Grandma or my Aunt, just watching the stories. I know they are not for everybody, but I will watch Days until the very last episode.

One of my favorite soap memories is about AMC.

It was in 1988 or1989. I was in college and stopped at the student union for lunch. Normally the huge tv was just sort of on in the background, but on this day it was tuned to AMC, and the bulk of the episode was Adam and Tom telling Brooke that little Laura had been hit by a drunk driver and was dead.

I had never seen that student union so quiet. Students and the staff were all mesmerized. Athletes, nerds, foreign students, frat boys, different races...everyone was glued to the tv. There were even some people crying! It was like watching some “real life” tragic event.

It surely had much to do with Julia Barr’s performance. I know she won 2 Emmys, but I still think she is very underrated.

It's a great form of theater. My favorite was "How To Survive A Marriage" because of the cast: Brad Davis, Armand Assante, Fran Brill, Joan Copeland.

I miss seeing soap opera guys with naturally hairy chests: untrimmed, unshaven, unwaxed. Sigh.

R53 Tune into Days this week and you can see the kilt-clad Paul Telfer and his hairy chest.

Not really ... While I miss seeing certain actors associated with American daytime soaps, I get more than enough (daily) serial drama from shows like EastEnders, Hollyoaks, and the Welsh soap Pobol y Cwm (People of the Valley). And right now, I also really like Telemundo's novela, 00 Dias Para Enamorarnosa (100 Days to Fall in Love). .. Then, there's other serial drama of the weekly kind or limited series (e.g. Casualty, All the Sins). .. I also watch edited clips of gay storylines from a few other foreign soaps (e.g. Emmerdale, Neighbors) .. In short, my "soap card" is chock-full, and I find most of what I'm currently watching far more entertaining than the old, now-cancelled American daytime soaps I was still watching when they were in their death throes.

I miss the sex scenes on soaps! the hunks in speedos/bikini's! the kinky may/december sex hook-up relationships (i.e older mature horny woman with a young built stud half her age!)....

The only ever soap opera I ever watched was AMC and that got boring very quickly. Repetitive story lines, two dimensional characters, fake drama, cheap production. I really son't understand how people can watch something so low brow for decades.

I miss this daytime soap most.

Only old people watch em

Go the FUCK away Serial Asshole!

Much missed. But would only want them back if they were similar to what they were in the 80s/90s. Real people, real stories, 30 minutes a day (to account for shorter attention spans).

Daytime soaps aren’t coming back - they are only going away.

My mom loved Y&R and GL and came home over lunch to watch them on work days. She died just before Guiding Light was cancelled and I remember thinking how PISSED OFF she would have been to finally make it to retirement age, only to have her soaps cancelled on her.

I can answer this question based on research conducted as a gayling in the 90s:

I ranked the top 3 soaps based on the number of hot guys. In my mind, it went:

3. Days of Our Lives 2. The Young and the Restless 1. As the World Turns

I appreciate daytime soaps for what they were and I got to watch them during the Golden Age (1970s to early 1990s). I started watching them in grade school. All My Children was my favorite for a long time. General Hospital was must-see-TV for kids in junior high and high school when I was a tween/teen. Luke and Laura were a phenomenon. I mainly watched AMC and GH. My sister-in-law got me into As The World Turns and that became my favorite for a while in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Plus ATWT was opposite One Life to Live, an ABC soap I could just never get into despite being sandwiched between AMC and GH.

In college, a friend convinced me to watch Days of Our Lives with her, but I thought it was a huge GH rip-off (Shane = Robert Scorpio; Bo and Hope = Luke and Laura; the DiMearas = the Cassadines). I went back to AMC after a few weeks.

In the late 1970s/early 1980s, GH had some great storylines. Of course there was Luke and Laura, Robert and Tiffany, but Bobby Spencer had some good storylines, the Monica-Rick-Leslie triangle with Alan trying to kill Monica and Rick for a while, the murder of Diana Taylor for which Heather Webber tried to frame Anne Logan, virginal Anne Logan and Jeff Webber. Just lots of good storylines beyond Luke and Laura.

In the early 1990s, I started working full-time after college and didn't bother to tape my soaps. I didn't see them for a long time. Then one week in the mid-1990s, I got the flu and was home sick the whole week. I tried to watch my old soaps (AMC, ATWT, and GH), but I found them terrible. I couldn't believe I used to be an avid viewer. I'm not sure if it was a quality drop or what, but after that I never saw another one again.

R68 you got to see a great part of ATWT for sure

Another vote for Santa Barbara. It's the only American soap I watched, mostly because of A Martinez' tight jeans.

You could see AMartinez cock outline through his jeans. Yum!

A Martinez made me MOIST.

So did Todd McKee's hairy chest.

A few years ago, I watched the whole Days of Our Lives 1983-84 slasher storyline, starting with the murder of Renee Dimera at her engagement party. While obviously cheesy in parts, I was enthralled as the whole scenario played out for eight months.

Still the finest piece of ass ever to grace a daytime soap.

Not at all. I'm the youngest of my two other siblings, by 7 and 6 years respectively, which means I had to stay at home with my mom for several years while they were off at school and my dad was off at work. My mom had these on every day. I can't stand them.

I wish I could stream episodes of GH and Days from the 80’s and 90’s. Does anybody know where I can get some Semi decent quality DVDs of old taped episodes?

Passions had absolutely the hottest men no question

I miss Grant’s KONG dong!

Bold and the Beautiful. I know it gets rightfully trashed on DL, it had terrible but addictive writing and the production values were so slick it made it the easiest show on the eyes by far. I remember when Dionne Warwick was singing the B&B theme song, that was around 1998. The show peaked exactly at that moment, after 5 pretty consistently good years and it hit a high, and never returned to form again. I remember Barbara Crampton and Andrea Evans were both in the cast as regulars during that time. Trashy fun.

Shut up Serial Scholar asshole you dumb fuck!!

R74, the path Robert Tyler’s life has taken is fascinating.

R77.... i would agree with you.. OVERALL "passions" had the most eye candy male cast and most importantly they PURPOSEFULLY shown thenm off more than any other soap opera i can think of! ADD in it was FAR AND AWAY THE MOST HOMOEROTIC even downright pervy kinky soap opera of all time and well there you have it!

IF ONLY PASSIONS WAS STILL AROUND AND THEY HAD SHAWN CHRISTIAN AND PAUL TELFER AMONG THE CAST! OH LORD, THE DIRTY SEXY PERVY KINKY HOMOEROTIC SCENES THOSE TWO COULD HAVE BEEN IN BLOWS THE MIND! (as well as other things!) talk about smoke coming out of the TV!..

THANK GOODNESS for my dvd recorder is all i can say!...

Jim E Fatso Reilly was a homo so he only hired eye candy for Trassions. Worst soap, EVER.