Soaps By Remote

Total Recall

So yes, the news that A Martinez is joining OLTL may have sent me into a whirlwind of nostalgia which has resulted in me spending the entire evening watching old Eden and Cruz clips on You Tube.

I suspect that may lead to a longer post at some point, but there's two things that have become immediately apparent:

1. They totally stand the test of time. I've spent most of the evening with a silly grin on my face because while there was tons of drama - it took them three and a half years to get married! That would never happen now - one of the best things about them was that they were so much fun. Which should hardly be a surprise given that virtually everything about SB was fun, but it's still nice to be reminded.

2. I have quite a bit of recall about some of these scenes. Not total recall of the dialogue, but a lot of it feels exceedingly, pleasantly familiar. And I haven't seen this stuff for 20 years. I used to tape SB every day (with Days and Another World) and watch them when I got home from school, but I never kept any tapes of any of it - I didn't do that until the early to mid-90s glory years of GH - so at most I might have replayed some scenes a few times before taping over them a couple of days later. But it so much of it feels like I've watched it far more recently. And given how many brain cells I've killed with beer and studying law in the intervening years, that's quite gratifying.

I so wish they didn't have all the music licensing issues with this show so they could show it again. Though all that music feels so familiar too.

How do I love thee? Let me count the wAys.

Valentini & Co at One Life to Live are really trying to turn me into a dizzy fangirl worshipping everything they do like a cult member, aren’t they?

I mean, it’s not enough that they deliver good dialogue, drama, humour and stories across all the generations, now they go and cast A Martinez too.

Santa Barbara remains one of my favourite ever soaps, and some unnecessary story turns towards the end there aside, Cruz was always one of my favourite characters. Principally because Martinez did such a great job and is one of those perfect soap actors who would have chemistry with a rock (if not Eileen Davidson).

Plus, the wounded GH viewer in me can’t help but thinking “ha, now this is a way for another soap to show GH how it’s done”, this time in the “don’t waste great talent in crappo mob-tastic stories” category.

(via We Love Soaps.)

So much time…

…wasted?

SoapHunks has posted their 100 Most Memorable Moments in Soap History list.

An interesting list. Otherwise known as I have watched way too many soaps over the years.

The first thing that struck me was that I have seen a hell of a lot of those memorable moments live.

I guess that’s aided by GH and Days, the shows I have obviously watched most over the years, getting the most coverage. But still, I’ve seen quite a number of others and now have reasonably definitive proof that by virtue of Y&R showing straight after Days here down under for decades, I watched a hell of a lot more of that show that I would have first thought.

A quick count leads me to believe that I saw about 34 of the 100 live (or as near live as you get down here, which is to say in the case of GH watching a first broadcast of early 80s GH seven or eight years later. Which was by no means a bad thing). Not via clip libraries or You Tube or internet nostalgia.

We’ll not even get into the ones I’ve seen by those means.

That’s a lot of time watching soaps. Especially as I took over a decade off watching Days, and chunky breaks from GH forced by both unavailability and inclination.

Perhaps having watched a third of the list live just means that I had good watching instincts.

Anyway, head on over there, because the list comes with clips! More time wasting ahead!