Confessions of a Recovering Nighttime Soap Fan
Recalling Dallas, Falcon Crest and Knots Landing
I am nearing completion of my second watch of the complete run of Falcon Crest.
You can find it yourself on FreeVee.
When I watched back through it a few years ago, I was struck by just how much I remembered from seeing it first-run in the 80s. It was always my favorite of the nighttime soaps.
After I finish this time, I think I’m going to make a go at Dallas. I know I watched many seasons of it back in the 80s, but I remember it much less.
Both shows are on Freevee.
Dallas’s 14 seasons is more daunting than thinking of Falcon Crest’s 9 seasons. Dallas was on from 1978-1991, which means it started when I was in 3rd or 4th grade and lasted til my junior year of college. Seasons of the nighttime soaps ran pretty much along with the school year with anywhere from 25-29 episodes a season. It’s a much different way of storytelling than what we see now with streaming shows.
When Dallas premiered, Jimmy Carter was president. When it ended, we were only a year away from electing Bill Clinton. Reagan and George I were in between. Knots Landing, the Dallas spin-off about the Ewings in California, ran from 1979-1994. That is, from the end of Jimmy Carter to the middle of Bill Clinton’s first term!
I have often wondered about my fascination with the nighttime soaps. The serialized nature appealed to me as a younger person and that’s certainly the case now. Those old shows have certainly informed my writing, namely The Distant Horizon, and the comic book serials I wrote in high school.
It’s something more than that now, though.
Dallas and Falcon Crest were a Friday night ritual. Watching them puts me in touch with weekends at my grandmother’s house — a refuge for me in those years. I can see her sitting on her couch with a cup of coffee, and she would often doze off while we were watching. I am sure she was exhausted by the end of the work week from her long days of manual labor in one of the furniture factories in town. But she didn’t go to bed until the 11 o’clock news started.
I can just smell that coffee and I can see one of the specific cups she liked to drink from. In my memories, of course, most all of my family was still alive. Now it’s just me and my Aunt Barbara and my dear cousins who are all so dear to me.
I don’t discount the nostalgia factor.
I never got into the daytime soap. My mom didn’t care for them and had other things she liked to do to stay busy until she got a job and, later on, a career. My grandmother watched, I think, The Young and The Restless but only after she took early retirement in 1986. The daytime soaps didn’t appeal to me on summer breaks from school anyway.
I did try to make my way through Dark Shadows, which I love in theory, but which moves along way to slowly to want to binge watch. If, say, I wanted to watch it in a more spread out fashion, remember that daytime soaps had five episodes per week. I can’t think of that kind of commitment to a TV show at this time in my life.
In other news, I am slowly getting my bearings with The Rising River.
Generally, I can think of plot in very broad terms until the characters start coming to me. Today, I was driving home from the daylily farm and a new character came to me. She is Libby Phipps, caregiver to our 110 year old protagonist. Libby used to be a Licensed Practical Nurse but she lost her license. That’s all behind her now and she’s become a valued member of the family of characters. A main character aside from the protagonist is Josh Bennett, the same Josh Bennett you met in The Distant Horizon, but we will see a more mature side of him.
Have a good week everyone—and drop me your recollections of the nighttime soaps. Or your experience with re-watching them more recently.
My favorite 1980s nighttime soap.
The most iconic of 1980s nighttime soaps.
You can expect periodic updates from me until we begin issuing episodes of The Rising River starting on Thursday, April 4 at 6 am and weekly thereafter.
A soap opera has neither lather or song, but here we are wanting drama to erupt for the strangers on the screen! I watched “Days of Our Lives” for years; it was gossip shared by fans who followed the stories. The fact that it was fictitious made it ok, unlike dishing about the neighbors or family where someone could get hurt. Get to work!😽