Last night, still getting over a fever, I decided to stay in. I wound up watching the 30th Annual Daytime Emmys. I got all misty-eyed watching a bunch of Muppets sitting around a piano, singing some of Mr. Rogers’s songs in a tribute to him.
The majority of the Daytime Emmys, though, are for soaps.
I used to be a big soap opera nerd. First there were the nighttime soaps. I started watching “Dynasty” when Krystle (Linda Evans) was kidnapped and replaced with a double. And I have childhood memories of hanging out at home on Friday nights, doing my childhood things — perhaps reading the new comic books I’d bought that afternoon, like I did every Friday after school — and occasionally popping into the den, where my parents would be watching “Dallas” and “Falcon Crest.”
In 1986, when I was 13, I decided to start watching “Days of Our Lives,” which my mom had watched forever. I’d tape it every day and watch it after school. I soon became engrossed in the adventures of the Brady clan: Roman came back from the dead, Kimberly’s newborn baby was kidnapped and missing for a year, Steve “Patch” Johnson fell in love with Kayla, Bo and Hope had a baby. I became obsessed. I drew a family tree. I memorized the order in which the cast members were listed in the closing credits. For a few weeks I even recorded each day’s developments on a separate index card. Yeah. Obsessed. I even got my brother to start watching.
“Days of Our Lives” led me to “Santa Barbara,” which was probably the most entertaining, creative, off-beat soap opera of the 80s. It was undeservedly cancelled in 1993 after only eight and a half years on the air.
During my freshman year of high school, a year when my life sucked, I finally wrote my own soap opera. I called it “Changing Times.” I made up a cast and a family tree and sketched out various long-term plot lines. I wrote three weeks’ worth of half-hour episodes, then stopped.
This all leads into my big soap opera story.
In the summer of 1988, my family went on vacation to California. Over several days, we drove down the coast from San Francisco. Eventually we got to Los Angeles, where we were spending a few days. We were at a restaurant, and my brother and I were arguing over something stupid. My mom told us to be quiet, and she pulled a letter out of her purse. She gave it to me to read.
It was from Susan Orlikoff Simon, one of the directors of “Days of Our Lives,” who’d gone to high school with my mom. Apparently my mom, without telling us, had written her, saying that we were going to be in L.A. and asking if it would be possible to visit the studio.
In my hand was her response, telling my mom that we were totally welcome to visit the studio.
It turned out we were going the next morning.
Well, I just totally flipped out right there. I couldn’t believe it. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. We were going to visit “Days of Our Lives.”
Early the next morning, August 4, 1988, we drove out to the Sunset-Gower Studios. We stopped at a gate. A guard checked a list and let us drive through. We parked the car. We got out of the car. We walked into a building.
To our left was a receptionist’s desk.
To our right was a loungy area, where a few people were hanging out, chatting.
Holy shit. It was Frankie (Billy Warlock, later of “Baywatch”), Adrienne (Judi Evans), and this other guy, just sitting there, chatting with each other in three-dimensional glory, just like real people. I nearly fainted.
It turned out to be an amazing morning. We got to see the sets in use for that day’s taping. We got to watch rehearsals. We got to see the control room. We got to see the place where they store the sets not in use. I got to see my dad chat about real estate with Victor Kiriakis, a.k.a. John Aniston, father of Jennifer Aniston (way before “Friends” made her famous). Judi Evans flirted with me.
I got to meet a bunch of the actors. In addition to the above, I got to meet Jennifer Horton (Melissa Brennan), Mike Horton (Michael T. Weiss, later of “The Pretender”), Shawn Brady (Frank Parker), and Justin Kiriakis (Wally Kurth, now on “General Hospital”). Unfortunately, none of the big superstars were in the episode being taped that day, so I didn’t get to meet Roman and Diana or Kim and Shane or Steve and Kayla. (My mom really wanted to meet Drake Hogestyn, who played Roman.)
But my dream had come true.
A few weeks later, the director sent us a script of the episode we’d seen them rehearse that day, signed by about 20 cast members. (I wonder how much it would fetch on EBay today.)
When we moved to Japan I couldn’t watch the show anymore, but during college I started again. My dorm’s cleaning lady watched it, too, and she regularly asked me if I’d seen “the story,” as she called it.
I haven’t regularly watched “Days” for a long time. Either it’s not as good anymore, or I grew older and more discerning. For several weeks a few summers ago I was into the ABC soaps, which seem to be where it’s at these days. After last night’s awards show, maybe I’ll start watching them again.
What is it about the soaps? What draws me in? It’s not primarily the attractive people, or even the romance. It’s partly the fantasy and the adventure. But more than anything else, it’s the sense of continuity balanced with change: the byzantine family trees, the complicated, suspenseful plot lines that go back years and years. In an ever-changing world, there’s some security in knowing that you can tune in every day and watch the same people, or their relatives, live out endlessly complex stories, all in the same town.
My name is Tin Man, and I am a soap opera nerd.