So, at a very tender age, I became an ABC soap fan, until breaking the habit in college. After accepting a job in charming, if not exciting suburban Indiana, I came back to soaps, but converted to CBS when I realized none of my friends watched my beloved General hospital! So I acquired a taste for the slower, but more character driven Young and the Restless.

I didn’t really have to add that extra hour to my TV schedule, but I think of soaps a little like a Quentin Tarantino movie…although I love Pulp Fiction, I liked talking about it, a lot more than I liked watching it. So the best part of the soaps for me, has always been after the episode ends.

If only message boards existed back then; I could have stayed with GH and I never would have come to the realization, that I too, a decades long soap fan, just like so many writers, whom I have grown to despise, (the type who long to do more “relevant” work for Indie films or HBO or primetime drama, while treating soap fans with disdain)…hate soaps.

Ironically, it was an argument about one of my favorite Y&R soap writers, Lynne Marie Latham, that triggered this awareness. So as a soap watcher who got hooked watching Y&R during it’s “dark period”, I couldn’t really understand why veteran viewers seemed to hate her, and I often found myself in cyber wars of words with them (http://daytimeconfidential.com/2009/04/review-tom-casiellos-first-episode-of-yr).

Soaps remain the most exhaustive character exploration we see in visual media. Viewers have come to expect the character’s motivations and actions to maintain a consistency that speaks to the character defined. While I know this intellectually, I admit, I loved it when Lynne Marie Latham broke up everyone’s favorite couples, changed the narrative thread and ethnicity of key characters, and killed off or decimated legacy families. I thought that was great story, and I still do. Don’t laugh. Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize, it was not great “soap”, and for me to cheer on a writer who pretty much broke every rule in soaps, while claiming to love the genre, rings a bit false.

So a very balanced analysis of ratings (http://markhsoap.blogspot.com/2009/04/y-ra…eadwriters.html), showed me how an unfettered LML without legacy writing teams, did lose significant viewers for Y&R, and how the current writer, Maria Arena Bell, has actually grown Y&R in a declining soap market.

Unfortunately, for newer viewers like me, this traditional writing style means adjusting to much slower pacing in story telling, with a short-lived, but significant pay-off. Watching Y&R now is a bit like watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie. A very long drawn out crescendo, with a payoff that’s great, but you’re not really sure if it was worth the time it took to get there.

Through my caustic and unrelenting criticism of Maria Arena Bell, and simultaneous praise for Lynne Marie Latham, I have always felt that the talents of both writers, presented a compelling way forward for soaps; character driven stories, with faster pacing and modern sensibilities, and writers/executives who embrace fans and harness their passion to grow the genre. The analysis of ratings, proved this to be true. The “worst soap writer in history,” actually grew Y&R with her legacy writing teams, but lost viewers when she remained unchecked. I believe what started as an argument, became an invaluable lesson for me to always seek first to understand something, before you criticize it, which I didn’t.

Nonetheless, I think the fact that “the worst soap writer ever” was able to grow soaps for a time, after a precipitous decline in years prior, also serves as a valuable lesson for the future…Growth will not come from maintaining the status quo, and even short term failure, may net positive lessons on how to grow and save this genre, which I think all soap fans (and I count myself as one) both new and old want.