Monday on The Bold & the Beautiful, Steffy lamented to Wyatt, “Honestly, I just really want a summer of
fun and romance and love and adventure.”
Wouldn’t we all, Steffy? Wouldn’t we all?
While, initially, soap-operas were created to sell products
(and to entertain – in that order) housewives and stay-at-home moms
year-round, by the early 1980s, they’d become summertime must-see-TV for kids
home from school and college.
It all began with General Hospital’s Luke and Laura on the
run in 1980. She was married to a nice, young lawyer (yes, latter-day fans,
Scotty used to be the nice one), he was presumed dead after escaping his own
marriage to the mob, they had a stolen book of clues, there was a left-handed
boy, and a hit-man dressed in drag, and farmers, and a blanket between their
beds and you really had to be there, because it was glorious.
The following summer, no longer married (not even to each
other), Luke and Laura embarked on an even grander adventure, stowing away on a
luxury yacht to an island where an evil mastermind was planning to freeze the
world using synthetic diamond dust (Mikkos Cassadine tried to warn us about
global warming, but did anyone listen?). This time, there was a dashing,
Australian super-spy (a.k.a. Robert Scorpio, known to most fans now as Robin’s
dad… or Emma’s grandfather), a spoiled movie star, Days of Our Lives Tony
DiMera under another name, the original Baltar from the original Battlestar: Galactica,
tropical fevers, and a very, very obvious password to stopping the doomsday
machine that all of us at home were yelling the entire hour it took Luke to
figure it out. It was even better than the previous year’s caper.
With the explosive success of GH’s summer adventure, other
shows quickly followed suit. DOOL had Bo and Hope fighting communism… on ice
(details, here),
and Kimberly and Shane dealing with drug-dealers in Florida (must see video of
the cast in full Miami Vice mode, complete with Phil Collins soundtrack, here).
All My Children’s Jenny and Jesse fled to New York City, and even the more
traditional soaps ventured outside of small-town America. On As the World
Turns, Tom and Margo, after battling South American rushing rapids and snake
bites, found themselves in a castle booby-trapped with explosive, poison darts
in themed rooms referencing Alice in Wonderland, among other literary classics.
Their torturer was a drug-dealing, evil dwarf. For the record, the entire
storyline kicked off with a little girl putting on the wrong hatband.
Meanwhile, over on Search for Tomorrow, Travis and Liza
faced danger in Hong Kong, where evil people of indeterminate agenda (possibly
more drug dealers) were intent on stealing Liza’s jade necklace, for equally
indeterminate reasons. The only thing known for certain was that this was SFT’s
big summer, adventure storyline. To drive the point home, they made sure that
Travis sported a blond perm identical to Luke’s on GH.
Clearly, summer was the time when soap-opera producers were
intent on hooking young viewers, who might then grow into lifelong fans (this
was back when soaps weren’t being cancelled right and left, so you really could
watch one show from cradle to grave).
And to go behind the scenes with some of soaps' best summer - and year round - storylines, check out Soap Opera 451: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama's Greatest Moments. Response was so terrific to me making the book FREE to borrow on Amazon, that I've decided to extend the freebie for another month. Don't miss getting your copy, today, here!
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