Soap opera fans sometimes feel disheartened when they look at the TV landscape.
The golden age, when every network had at least three soaps, is long gone. When NBC moved Days of Our Lives to Peacock in 2022, that left only three on broadcast TV.
But as bad as it looks, it’s nowhere near over for our favorite genre, and it never will be.
Soap Operas Are The Building Blocks of Drama
People like to make fun of soaps, but the truth is that they aren’t the low-quality dramas they are accused of being.
Most of the time, anyway.
Some storylines are real clunkers (yes, I’m talking about every ridiculous supernatural storyline on DAYS!), and soap operas sometimes engage in the same tired tropes over and over, like bringing dead people back to life or ridiculous, contrived love triangles.
Still, without soap operas, there would be no nighttime dramas.
When I was a teenager and a high school teacher said that primetime dramas were “really soaps, but we pretend that they’re not,” I was enough of a TV snob to think she was completely off-base, but now I get what she was saying.
Soap operas are built on raw human emotion: jealousy, anger, love, hate.
Primetime dramas might have characters deal with these emotions in a more realistic, less visceral way (sometimes), but they’re also about people feeling deep emotion and doing extraordinary things because of it.
Also, half the time I can predict what’s going to happen next on a primetime drama because I’ve seen it on a soap opera.
Medical dramas use the same tropes about last-minute recoveries and heartbreaking diagnoses, and anything romantic is easy to predict if you’ve watched a soap opera or two regularly.
That’s why I don’t think there would be the other shows we love without soap operas. They give us the basics of storytelling that all shows use.
Soap Operas Fulfill Our Deepest Fantasies
I’ve given a lot of thought over the years as to why we love soap operas so much.
I’ve watched Days of Our Lives on and off since I was eight years old and came back to it for good in 2013.
There are several reasons soap operas are attractive — I was sucked back into DAYS when JJ Deveraux came to town and was the closest thing to a character who felt the way I did as a teenager — but I think the most powerful one is that we can live vicariously through these characters.
This is especially true of American soaps, where most of the characters look like supermodels, and some work in that industry without being exploited.
Many soaps also feature rich, powerful people who are portrayed as being just like us, except they can pour themselves a drink from their home bar at 3 pm in the afternoon and can basically do whatever they want.
Seriously, though, even if the lifestyle of the rich and idle doesn’t appeal to you, who among us hasn’t wished we could go off on our worst enemy without repercussions?
Even more importantly, who among us hasn’t wanted an impossible-seeming love relationship to work out?
Through soap operas, we can engage in a little harmless wish fulfillment.
We can cheer on Sami Brady or other soap divas when they slap their worst rival in the face in the middle of the town square… and then pray for whomever we think is their true love to forgive them for it.
Soap Operas Have Become More Important Because Family Dramas Are Dying
Most soap operas are about family in one way or another. People meet, fall in love with improbable partners, overcome family disapproval, and have children of their own.
The most popular and common soap trope involves teenagers fighting with their parents.
Soapland is full of overprotective moms and dads, teens who resent a parent’s interference in their lives and fights with kids who won’t accept their parent’s new partner now that their biological mother or father is dead.
That’s not an accident, nor is it a coincidence that many soap stories are about family members being there for each other no matter what or standing up together to attack someone who is messing with a beloved relative.
Television audiences are starved for this type of content. We love stories about families like ours, even if those families are doing things we would never do or are in completely crazy and unrealistic situations.
Sadly, family dramas are nearly dead elsewhere in the TV landscape.
The closest thing we had to one is Blue Bloods, which is being canceled for absolutely no good reason, and people are heartbroken because that means no more scenes of a family having dinner together.
Soap operas fill that gap.
Days of Our Lives long ago started a Christmas tradition that many fans have continued in their own lives: the hanging of ornaments on the tree that have each family member’s name on them.
That’s an example of the kind of family stuff that soap operas have been known for since the genre first began.
Scenes like those Christmas scenes not only remind us of our own families but make us feel like the people we are watching are part of our extended family.
That need for family connection with fictional characters is underrated. It’s one of the big reasons soap operas will never die out.
There are so many lonely people out there who are able to feel loved for an hour a day when they turn on their favorite soap and “visit” with their fictional best friends.
Soap Operas Are Especially Important Right Now Because They Give People Hope
The most important soap trope is the one where good always wins out in the end.
Some soap opera plots are like thriller miniseries, with people being kidnapped by someone who is obsessed with them or by super-powerful bad guys who don’t want to do anything but cause pain.
I still remember the original Orpheus story on DAYS, which I saw when I was about eight. In it, Orpheus tried to get revenge for his wife’s death by kidnapping Marlena and forcing her to play mother to his twins.
It was brilliant, and I’m sad that no Orpheus story since has been close to its quality.
But in that story — and in all others on soaps — evil NEVER wins in the end.
The villains rarely go to jail, instead escaping town until the next time they’re ready to wreak havoc. But they are soundly defeated each and every time, with family members working together to stand up to them and get their loved ones back.
That might seem like an overly optimistic message if you’re someone who the world has beaten down or who is dealing with the aftereffects of trauma, but it’s also an important one nowadays.
There is so much chaos, hatred, and division in the United States right now, and people are scared.
They need stories that reassure them that evil is impotent and that the good guys always win in the end. They need hope, and soap operas give it to them in a way no other type of TV show does.
Over to you, soap opera fanatics.
Why do YOU love soaps?
Hit the comments and let us know.
