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Greetings! Welcome to another edition of Snark Weighs In. (Two new columns in a row? I must be trying to set a record!) Today, (or if you're on the other side of the world, tomorrow), you'll get Mama Snark's impromptu take on the ABC lineup. But, first, a word from my new sponsor, Soap Opera Weekly.
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. A CONVERSATION WITH MAMA SNARK
Yesterday morning, my mother was sitting in the computer room, as usual. (She gets up early on Saturday morning to update her grade reports and other various teacher stuff.) I was in my bedroom, when I heard her say, "Well, time for the week in review."
For a few seconds, I didn't know what she meant. Then, I came out of the room, and yelled, `'Let me spare you-Tad, David, and Dixie!"
"Is that all that was on this week?"
"Isn't that all that's on every week?"
She laughed, and we began to make fun of the show. Aside from GH, Mama Snark no longer watches or tapes any soap opera, and only reads re-caps on the official websites.
First, we talked about AMC's unique penchant for only showcasing one story at a time.
"Since it looks like Libidozone is winding down, the only question is who will dominate next? Before this, it was Adam and Liza."
"Well, at least it's not Hayteo. I guess with her working, they won't really be front-burner."
"She (Kelly Ripa, Hayley) is pregnant too."
"That's true."
Next, we waded our way through the Libidozone story itself.
"They just don't want to have happy couples," I said. "They spend all this time building up these supercouples and getting the audience involved, and then it's like `Oh no, we didn't want them to get that involved', and then they wreck them."
"Right," she said. "They shouldn't have broken up Tad and Dixie in the first place. Even Cady McClain has said she has no doubt Tad and Dixie will get back together again, because they're Tad and Dixie! If Cady McClain had to leave, they should've just had Dixie in Pigeon Hollow taking care of a sick relative. You know Dixie wouldn't leave until ol' Aunt Bessie or whoever was one hundred percent."
"Yes. And I can't believe that Cady McClain wouldn't have been open to the occasional holiday visit."
"Or when Michael E. Knight needed a vacation, they could just say that Tad is visiting his wife."
"Right."
"And David-why is he still on here?"
"You know why, or at least you think you do?"
"Okay, okay," she said, wanting me to shut up. Mama Snark is not a fan of David, and believes he should never have come back after his initial three month stint. At the time of his return, she theorized that someone behind the scenes had the hots for Ol' Dave, and just had to bring him back, no matter how ludicrous it was. Mama Snark also theorizes that Adam keeps fathering babies because some woman on the writing staff harbors fantasies of being pregnant by David Canary.
"I," I continued, "found David and Dixie mildly interesting when it was obviously a mommy fixation on his part. But, the writers obviously swerved into something that was over their heads. So, they went to Affair Town."
"Yep. It' s all getting to be the same. Big romance, angst, angst, angst, big wedding buildup, and then-what? The writers think the couple has to sit around at breakfast every day."
"And they don't. Take Tad and Dixie. Tad's had so many interests. Dixie's shown interest in being a teacher. They have kids. The writers think everything has to be about a married couple being joined at the hip, and it doesn't."
"Right. And they always have to have secrets. Like, take-and I know you're hit and miss on this one-Nikolas and Gia."
Nikolas and Gia are a young couple on General Hospital, a show which is definitely hit and miss viewing for me.
"Yeah. I much prefer Gia to Nikolas. She's such a blatant schemer."
"Exactly! And she really doesn't try to hide it! And Nikolas knows she does sneaky stuff, calls her on it, and she admits it. But, they still get along."
Yep, I thought, they get along like bunny rabbits.
"But now," she said, "there was the Deception party recently. Carly spotted Laura and Scotty out on the roof. She told Gia, and basically said all Gia had to do was lock the door."
"Why didn't Carly lock the door her damn self?"
"Thank you. Anyway, Gia locks the door. Well, nikolas figures it out, and tells Gia, `I know it was you. You disappeared for a while, and, etc, etc, etc.' Any other time, Gia would've been like, `Yeah, and what of it?' But, now she's lying, acting like she didn't do it. Why start lying now?"
I shook my head. "Mama, mama, mama." I did an immediate bunny hop to my left, and said, "Old regime equals old, refreshing Nik and Gia." Then, I bunny-hopped to my right, and said, "New JFP regime equals new, retarded Nik and Gia."
My mother put her head in her palm. "Oh damn! Damn, damn, damn! I totally forgot she was over there now! Geez! Well, that explains it!" After a pause, she continued. "Well, that's like-Luke was searching for the Ice Princess. Well, he didn't get it, but he found these two cd's. And he takes the cd's. But, he doesn't just take them. He just happens to have two cd's on him. But the Cassadine cd's have information on them, and his are jazz!"
I started laughing uncontrollably.
She continued. "And I'm sitting there, like, Luke is on this dangerous caper, and he's got jazz cd's on him?"
"Luke does love his jazz."
"And-don't cd's have some kind of marking on them, so you're not constantly putting in cd's, saying, `Is this the right one? Is this the right one?' Wouldn't they have known immediately the cd's were switched."
"Perhaps Luke uses blank cd's and downloads off Napster."
"He probably does. But, he's using the same cd's as Helena uses? Luke strikes me as a Best Buy kind of a guy, and Helena doesn't."
We then commented on how JFP and McT would work their magic again on GH.
"You know," she said, "earlier this week, I was in the shower, getting ready for work as I normally do. And the night before, I had been considering putting OLTL back in the VCR timer now that JFP's gone."
"I wouldn't recommend it," I interjected. "They've got a long way to go before it's Must-See TV again."
"Well, anyway, I thought about it, and didn't really decide anything, and forgot about it. Then, the next morning, I'm in the shower, and all of a sudden, it hits me: `Yeah! How could Todd have faked being catatonic the day Kevin stabbed him? That was just stupid!'"
"You're figuring that out now?"
"I think it was my mind telling me, `Don't put yourself through that again, girl.'"
Mama Snark is an intelligent, analytical viewer with a long memory, and sitting in the second half of the demo. In short, she's exactly the type of hardass ABC Daytime is trying to get rid of. And, they've pretty much succeeded. But, what ABC has failed to do is bring in enough younger, "go-with-the-flow" (read: stupid) viewers to replace her. First of all, the younger demo is not nearly as stupid as TV execs think they are. Apathetic, yes; stupid, no. If they wish to watch mindless garbage, then they'll watch a show that admits it's mindless garbage, like Passions. They won't watch mindless garbage that still tries to pretend it's relevant, quality drama, as ABC does.
Secondly, soap viewing has become an American tradition. It is passed down from generation to generation. Very rarely do you hear, "Yeah, not one person in my family ever watched soaps, and I just happened to catch one on the TV, and, man, I'm hooked!" People get hooked watching with their mother or grandmother or older sister or even a babysitter. If ABC Daytime succeeds in getting rid of the people they're seemingly so desperate to get rid of, they're also cutting themselves off from a large chunk of potential younger viewers as well.
Just look at ABC Daytime's numbers. They're in freefall, with AMC and GH down close to a point in the past year. (Luckily, OLTL and PC were already so low, they didn't have to fall that far.) Even if you buy into the theory stated by analytical message board posters and alleged industry insiders-the one that says all these viewers went to Soapnet-ABC is still in a mess. Soapnet was touted as ABC Daytime's method of getting back lapsed viewers, and bringing in new ones. It was NOT meant to split the already low number of viewers who were watching ABC in the afternoon. If Soapnet is getting its' viewership from the daytime audience, and if it continues to take from them, ABC's daytime ratings will be quite low indeed. This may not matter to ABC the network. But, it will matter to ABC's affilates. They never liked the idea of Soapnet in the first place, and had to be sweet-talked into not fighting it. While ABC can add up the daytime numbers and the Soapnet numbers, and claim they're doing great, if a soap is doing bad locally, the local affilate won't be able to sell ad time. This could lead to ABC affilates dumping the ABC lineup. (As they've done to Edge of Night, Loving, Port Charles-long before there was a Soapnet.) Is ABC really ready to produce their soaps for a primarily cable-based audience? Saying that the missing viewers have gone to Soapnet doesn't let ABC off the hook.
That's enough of me for this week. I want to thank everyone who has sent me well wishes this past week. I assure you that I continue to recover a little more each day. Finally, whether you care to discuss this week's column, or you're someone from Soap Opera Weekly, and you wish to schedule an ass kicking, the address remains the same: snarkieposter@yahoo.com