Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for September 08, 2022

You can float a Soap indefinitely. If it’s made of Ivory. 8^ )

20 years is nothing for the weather report either.

My old mother has been watching B&B (Beautiful here in Italy) since the first episode.

Arlo le critique d’art

Alas, not for Dark Shadows.

I watched All My Children for the entire run.

The most interesting, and generally longest running soap opera is called life.

On Sep. 12 “Days of Our Lives” is moving from NBC to Peacock after 57 years.

This strip is channeling Bill Watterson.

So true Janis, so true

What was amaizing was how many times Marshal Dillon could be shot and not die. Doc. must have been really great at EMS.

Series actually do make it up as they go. Writers typically write 2 or 3 episodes, and a general story arc. Then they peddle their idea and if Netflix or Disney+ or whatever is interested and lets them produce a pilot then the writers start writing episode 4 and 5. I have friends who are writer for tv-series and one time they were convinced that their series would be cancelled after season 1, but lo and behold! The company decided to fund a second season! and the writers had no clue whatsoever how they could continue their story line, lol! :-D

And she brings it right back to his original complaints.

And a good movie is becoming a scarce thing. No one wants to write a good plot in 2 hours.

A lot of those old tv shows had good stories and tight plots. But even Alfred Hitchcock and Twilight Zone would have filler—watching someone climb a hill or something.

But you can miss a week of a soap and not miss anything.

I used to like “Longmier” but then realized that that part of Wyoming was more dangerous than Detroit or Chicago

When arcs became a thing, I stopped watching TV mostly. Many will never end and others get cancelled before anything is resolved. If a show is really good and it ends, I get the DVDs and binge watch it like Breaking Bad. I love listening to the commentaries too.

They clearly DO make it up as they’re going along. Then, when the ratings go down, they’re cancelled, leaving all the story lines hanging and unresolved.

It’s all ultimately unsatisfying.

I like panel 2, I guess Arlo does have shoulders (unlike Janis)

That was why I quit watching Downton Abbey. Not only did they start relying on implausible plot twists, but they started throwing in a half a dozen of them in every episode. It just got stupid.

A classic TV network on my cable recently started running Gunsmoke starting with the first episode. What I didn’t know was the first years of the show the episodes were 30 minutes long. It was in year 7 when they went to the 60 minute episodes. Almost seemed like a totally different show at 30 minutes then the 60 minute episodes that came later.

That’s because modern TV shows have “show runners” instead of hiring professional writers like they did in the old days.

“Gunsmoke” was a western soap opera.

Two words: Dr. Who…

I used to laugh at the inconsistencies when watching MASH.

And soap opera are exactly like Arlo’s description of streaming series.

On a soap opera a woman can be pregnant for two years, in labor for a month and give birth to a premature baby.

They could turn the TV off.

If I don’t like a show, I don’t watch it! Why would anyone watch a show they are not enjoying??

OTA tv for me no streamin steamin crap… mostly we watch all the old shows and Johnny Carson…..

My wife will be age 70 in couple weeks, she watch the soaps back on the farm when she was a young teen, now she is still hooked on some of her old soaps 57 years later. talk about loyalty!

“Like sands through the hourglass…”

Unlike real life, where we take things as we go along, with some plot twists to keep things interesting.

Are you being Meta?

Arlo is not wrong. One of the problems with streaming is the need for content to fill out a network means less quality productions. Another problem is that many modern film & television producers have contempt for writing and writers (from an interview I saw), instead wanting to rely on costuming or special effects.

One problem with series which were on before cable TV took old shows into continual reruns is that there was not as much continuity in the story lines as is needed now. With constant rerunning of old series over and over – errors in the story line which no one would remember in the old days show up now.

Husband never liked “The Waltons” (as an example). He would not watch it. Now he watches it – daily – for something like 8 hours a day. And they are in the middle of “an every episode marathon” so it is 24 hours a day – and changes/errors in the story line show up like crazy. He is even planning a trip to the where it was supposed to take place in VA as they have things from the show, the house setup, etc to see it – when we can travel again.

He is also reading the book “Spencer’s Mountain” the original version of their story which was a movie in the 1960s by the same person who writes the Walton’s show.