Don't viewers matter anymore?

10 . 4 . 00

The following is something I wrote late on October 4th, a date we'll all come to remember with a heavy heart. While Manny thoughts continue to swirl and every emotion seems to come and go at will, I had an issue and wanted to ask an honest question. So I started writing and seemingly never shut up. I sent this to a few magazines. While I don't expect it to ever be printed, I think it's a question that deserves an answer.

I've watched soaps for a very long time and I've seen good writers come and go, I've seen actors and characters come and go, and I too have come and gone from Port Charles, Genoa City, Llanview, Pine Valley, Bay City, and Springfield amongst others. I understand the business aspect of the daytime medium perhaps sometimes more than I'd like to. This understanding allowed me to accept the losses of those writers, actors and characters without any bitterness or resentment for those who had to make such decisions. But that understanding ended on October 4th.

I've read enough Editor's notes and articles by "soap columnists" to know that while they quickly say that the fans are important, they just as quickly turn around and criticize those same viewers for caring TOO much. What kind of sense does that make? They want us to care in order to continue watching, and yet when we voice our displeasure for what is happening to the characters or show we care ABOUT, we're whining or impossible to please. That understanding I once had has since been abused and taken advantage of, and has now completely disappeared.

I have enjoyed heart-wrenching stories of breast cancer, child custody, and AIDS. I have smiled and laughed through bachelor parties, family parties, reunions and births. I have cried through killings, deaths and miscarriages. I have shaken my head at aliens, witches and impossible storyline stretches. I like to think I've seen it all. But the cornerstones of daytime drama are the things that kept bringing me back - families and the love story. The two most important issues that keep the viewers tuned in every day are the very things that producers and writers should take care of and nurture to the very best of their abilities. And yet, day after day, month after month, I see them being treated poorly, which, by extension, treats the very viewers who rely on those issues to draw them in, poorly as well.

Through the years, though my available time to watch soaps has diminished in general, it's usually been this seeming disrespect for me as a viewer that lost me in the end. In May of 1999 I switched over to Guiding Light, a show that I watched in the early 90s when it was the most compelling storytelling on television. I left for greener pastures (General Hospital) when the OJ Simpson trial moved GL to an unwatchable time for me. When I made the switch back, I saw a different Springfield than the one I left. Gone were some of my favorite characters - Roger Thorpe, A.C. Mallet, Bridget Reardon - replaced by some new faces that were equally intriguing. Namely, Danny Santos and the aged Michelle Bauer. I had turned during a commercial break from GH to find them in a shower - not in a hot love scene, but with Danny cradling her in his arms as she wept. Talk about powerful moments in daytime! That was all I needed to come back the next day, because I wanted to know more about them. And come back, I did; I returned to Guiding Light with eagerness and anticipation.

For the next fifteen months, until August of this year, I watched and followed this couple like I'd never done before. Every scene, every nuance, every touch, every look, every utterance of the other's name made an indelible mark on me - one that I pray never leaves. Believe me when I say that I realize that this all sounds like an extremely dramatic reaction to nothing more than fictional characters on a daytime drama. But isn't that what they're supposed to do? Aren't soaps supposed to take us away from our daily lives, while still firmly grounding us in a reality we never knew existed in ourselves? If not, I've been watching soaps incorrectly for years. During that time, through the weaving of their story and the performances of their portrayers, Paul Anthony Stewart and Joie Lenz, I was pulled into a love story that made me feel more in those fifteen months than I had in the past fifteen years of soap viewing. It wasn't an illusion, they were genuine feelings that touched me deeply and made me truly care about what happened to them. And that kept me coming back.

And honestly, isn't that what matters? That the viewers continue to care? That they continue to come back day after day because they care? So what happens when writers or producers decide to turn a once beloved couple into a bickering and bitter estranged twosome who say things that belittle the very history that we, the viewers, were supposed to believe in, were supposed to care about, were supposed to come back to witness again? I'll tell you what happens – we not only start to care very little for these now unrecognizable characters, but we feel the disrespect pulsating through our screens; we become disgusted and insulted and we leave. We turn the channel and we stop endorsing their show to friends, family and co-workers.

Sometimes I wonder if the people in charge truly understand the chain of events that occur down the line. Sometimes I wonder if, after proclaiming that they want to cultivate the "core families" and the "layers" of their characters, they sit back and laugh about how they proceed to do the exact opposite. Because I'm not laughing at what's been done to Michelle Bauer and Danny Santos and the love story they created. When word first broke that Claire Labine was joining Guiding Light, I was elated. I enjoyed her work on General Hospital and One Life To Live immensely and I told everyone who had reservations not to worry, that she would bring those core families and layers back to Guiding Light. And more importantly, for me, I hoped she would see the human potential in Danny and Michelle and write them in a way that would do justice to that potential. What's transpired since Claire Labine's team took over on August 4th has been anything but.

While I tried to see the truth behind Danny's actions and the justification behind Michelle's reactions, it wasn't until the announcement of Ms. Lenz's departure that I started to stop justifying and started wondering why they weren't trying to at least give us, the viewers, some closure on a couple in which we invested our time, money, and love. Soon after that announcement, a re-cast was named (Nancy St. Alban), which tells us that Danny and Michelle may still reunite. Any soap viewer (or soap executive) should be able to tell you that re-casts are a crapshoot. Some work, some don't. Joie Lenz herself was a re-cast and she worked. She became half of daytime's only legitimate supercouple. Fan reaction both on and off the Internet was unprecedented. It's been documented that Danny and Michelle were not meant to be a new couple when he came onto the canvas, but that viewer reaction to their pairing was so positive that they had no choice but to pursue it. One would think that the end of such a coupling would be handled with a little more respect for the viewers that created them. Instead, what we got was a couple who broke up in the first week of the new writing regime and continued to talk about the other as though the last two years never happened. In her final two weeks, Joie Lenz barely shared a scene with Paul Anthony Stewart and the venom that was spewed in the few scenes they did share was sickening. It wasn't true to what I had experienced between their characters and it wasn't appreciated. In fact, it was a figurative slap in the face to the people who watched and loved them every single day. We deserved more. It's as simple as that.

What happened in these two years to completely eradicate our voice or our opinion? When did we cease to matter to the people in charge? And why is this treatment of viewers becoming commonplace with almost every set of producers and writers with the exception of the Bells over at Young & Restless / Bold & Beautiful?

Editors of various magazines that I've read always have an answer – It's not easy, give them time to develop the storylines, the payoff will be worth it. Trust me, I've got the "been there, done that" routine down. I've been on the end of storylines that had me questioning things until I got to the payoff. In those times, I've always been able to recognize the characters I'm watching, and I've always cared about them, and I've always come back the next day to see what happens. But tell me what happens when those characters become people I don't care about at all? Tell me how much I'm supposed to support Danny when he becomes downright cruel to the love of his life and sleeps with another woman? What's the point of waiting for the payoff when the road there makes me want to end the journey altogether?

So I ask in earnest, when did our enjoyment of characters and stories become nothing more than an afterthought to personal favorites and writing preferences? Aren't they supposed to be producing these shows for us? Because if we stop watching, the decisions that they make will no longer matter, because there will be no show left to destroy.

Candy