The End Of An Era And A Day of Mourning

All My Children and One Life to Live were cancelled yesterday. (AMC and OLTL for those of use in the Soap Opera Digest know.) While this may not seem like a big deal to some, it’s the end of a very special era for me, and dare I say it, America.

I have never hidden my love of soap operas. Without them, I probably wouldn’t be the slightly dramatic, prone-to-hyperbole gal that I am today. My secret wish in life has always been to be a soap actress (preferably playing my own evil twin as well). I believe soap operas taught me as much about dialogue as any other writing. If you think about it, that’s all that really happens on a soap anyway.

I may not have watched a soap in years (I got too old for the drama. Once my couple is together, I want them to stay together), but that doesn’t mean my love for the characters or the genre is at all diminished.

Perhaps more important than my personal loss is what this means for television. Is this just another nail in the coffin of scripted television? Will our children grow up on reruns of Nancy Grace, Judge Judy and Jersey Shore? Will Maury’s paternity tests go on indefinitely? Will Cheaters be the default for tired moms folding laundry throughout the day?

On soap operas, despite the shenanigans, the good are eventually rewarded while those who lie, trick and manipulate are punished. Can I come even close to saying the same thing about any of the Real Housewives? No.

Even taking me and the fate of television out of the equation, who will teach the children? How will they know all that they’re missing?:

1. The L-Shaped Sheet: That special sheet used in post-coital daytime scenes to cover the woman to her sternum and the man to his waist.

2. How easy and inevitable it is for the heir from the right side of the tracks to fall for the girl from the wrong side of the tracks (most likely after a lifetime of playing together while her mother worked in the rich people’s home).

3. A kinder, gentler and generally more attractive mafia.

4. Is there a better memory exercise than keeping tracks of characters’ changing last names? I’m not convinced.

5. The aforementioned evil twins.

6. The common, everyday nature of long-lost siblings and children.

7. The inevitability of aging – how toddlers will go upstairs in the Spring and re-emerge as teenagers during May sweeps (usually just in time for Summer story lines to capture the teen demographic).

8. Hospitals run by three doctors that don’t need specialties because they have to treat every problem from pregnancy to trauma in a town of 40.

9. The real emotional toil of amnesia and multiple personality disorder.

10. Paternity tests limited to two candidates – one’s loving husband/boyfriend and the ex you accidentally slept with while thinking your loving partner was cheating on you.

11. How to run a city with only cops, lawyers, doctors, competing corporate magnates, models, the help and the staff of one restaurant/night club/coffee shop/country club.

I’m nervous about a world without Oprah, Susan Lucci or Erica Sleazak. Someone please hold me and tell me it’s all going to be OK.