Word: soaps
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Which may be just what we want to hear. In essence, these shows say about the famous what soap operas say about the rich--that they're no better than we are, probably less happy, possibly less moral. Audiences today have a love-to-hate relationship with Hollywood and the media; we've supported Beavis and Butt-head's meta-media sarcasm and David Letterman's roasting of TV bigs. It's a short step from a late-night joke about CBS chief Les Moonves to the name dropping that has become easy punch-line fodder on even bland fare...
Forget "Another World": the truth is more soap-opery than fiction. And it's incredibly distracting, to boot, because journalists love "inside baseball." The Washington Post and the Boston Globe featured dueling columns on whether hiring Eskew was a good idea. The New York Times printed a top-of-the-fold interview with Squier...
...family played such a sustained, gaudily heartbreaking role in America's fantasy life--the longest-running political soap. Eventually--after the LIFE magazine spreads that spun Old Joe's golden children into myth in the '40s and '50s, after Dallas and the keening over Camelot and after Bobby--at last there set in the disillusioned revisionism: all the dark-side stories about Jack's satyriasis and the loathsome way the brothers treated Marilyn. And the myth developed a twin, an antimyth of cheap fraud, of a tribe of photogenic hustlers...
...supporters (typical refrain: "I admire you so much as a person") and for the fears and hatreds of her many detractors (HILLARY GO HOME signs sprouted wherever she went last week). There are legions on both sides, and neither can quite believe she is actually going to bring her soap opera to their state. But bring it she will. Where a lesser person might be having a post-traumatic breakdown right about now, Hillary is having a campaign--and, it would seem, the time of her life. Is this politics, psychotherapy, or a little of both? Whatever the answer...
...riveted with suspenseful tales. But Reilly's gift, colleagues say, has as much to do with his skill as a technician as it does with his being a good raconteur. "Jimmy has perfected the art of not being predictable," says Lisa Hesser, the show's executive producer. "Most soap opera viewers know they have to watch on Fridays and Mondays, but Jim can have a blockbuster event on a Tuesday." If that event should involve a reincarnated Dodi, well then, all the better...