Tuned In: ‘Revenge’, ‘Scandal’, And The Lost Art Of A Good Soap
Why do soap operas these days lose the plot so soon?
Tuned In is Junkee’s fortnightly TV column. This particular instalment makes a few references to Revenge, Scandal, Melrose Place and the O.C. — but only spoils stuff you’d be insane to not see coming.
–
Realism, believable characters, human drama and relatable dilemmas; they’re all well and good, but sometimes you just wanna watch hot people scrap it out.
Enter the soap opera: a much-maligned genre that everyone indulges in secret. Tell me you have never gasped in shock at the revelation of a secret child or a clandestine alliance, and I will call you a filthy liar, and then slap you, throw a martini in your face, and pull you to the ground for good measure.
The daily soaps — Bold and the Beautiful, Young and the Restless — have graced our screens for decades, if ‘graced’ is the right word for stories that bring murder plots into our homes each day. Their capacity for twists, backflips and unlikely disclosures seem endless, and churning through casts the way the rest of us use toilet paper means that there are always new secrets to spill. They also have titles which bring an extra pleasure to the viewing experience, by allowing you to idly wonder which of the characters are young, for instance, and which are restless.
But my real love is the weekly ‘high-class’ soap, born of a misspent youth watching Melrose Place. Mine is a generation whose concept of meant-to-be is based on Alison and Billy; a generation who picture Jake Hansen at any mention of a chiselled jaw; who implicitly understand the power dynamic of being referred to as ‘special guest star Heather Locklear’, despite being a core cast member. I have, I kid you not, purchased an entire apartment in part because the building bore a strong resemblance to the eponymous Place; all it was missing was a pool in which to drown ex-lovers.
Melrose Place also typified a problem which has sadly become synonymous with soap: a killer first season, and an inability to retain that glory going forward. Desperate Housewives, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, The O.C. – while some managed to remain enjoyable, most faltered early, and many fell hard.
Revenge ends its four-season run tonight, and Scandal airs its season four finale later this week (and is set to return for a fifth). These two moreso than any of the above demonstrate this dilemma: after delicious debuts, their second seasons were a sloppy mess.
Why do soaps so often, both literally and figuratively, lose the plot?
In the case of both Revenge and Scandal, the simple answer may be that secret assassin organisations are pretty dull if their only mission seems to be to cover up their own existence. (Take a bow, B6-13). The longer answer is a little more complicated. Of course the ‘difficult second album’ is a problem across most artforms; a first series’ story has probably been percolating in the mind of a writer for years, while the second is hatched in a month before shooting starts, after said writer has spent a summer learning about what life is like when you can afford cocaine.
But unlike Y&R and B&B, weekly soaps these days tend to stick to the cable TV conventions of season arcs and a core group of characters. The central mystery keeps the viewer coming back: Why did Mary Alice kill herself? Will Emily Thorne get her revenge? What political secrets are Olivia Pope and co. trying to cover up? And a connection to these characters maintains an emotional investment that keeps these shows addictive. (I only allow myself to watch soaps at the gym on an iPad, which means if I want to find out what the suitcase full of cash is for, I have to hit the treadmill. Many a season has ended with me staying on a cross-trainer for three hours straight, desperate to know the fate of imaginary people. By the time The O.C.‘s Ryan and Marissa FINALLY had sex, even I couldn’t walk for a week. This practice also increases the tension exponentially; if you gasp in shock when someone with a heretofore unseen agenda takes a lamp to their supposed-friend’s head, imagine witnessing the same act when your heart rate is already 150bpm).
There’s a reason legal and medical procedurals comprise at least three-quarters of TV drama: crime and punishment are fantastic story engines. As the Law & Order franchise nears its fiftieth season, and CSI its fortieth, they have solved thousands of murders and there will always be more, albeit in increasingly desperate circumstances. (If you fancy imagining one of the most depraved scenes in this world, mentally place yourself in the writers’ room of Law & Order SVU, spending every waking hour trying to imagine a new and ever-more-shocking rapes. I genuinely wonder what kind of sex they are having in real life. Then I need a stiff drink).
Procedurals allow the characters to wipe clean in a way that the heroes and heroines of soaps just can’t: murder and betrayal is more than just a day job for them. They inhabit their own lives and stories, and are active participants in the drama, not simply bystanders. If one were the kind of person to bring gender politics to everything (and this one is), one could theorise that the raw investment of emotion in the traditional soap is why it has always been somewhat demeaned as a feminine genre, as opposed to the steely reserve of professional problem-solvers like police, who occupy shows that are more often pitched at a male audience. Soaps never feature characters who stay silent for no reason; anyone holding their tongue is inevitably actually twins trying not to blow their cover, or two steps away from a mental asylum, or a figment of someone else’s imagination.
But if you are central to the action, and not just observing, there is a limit to the stories you can live through; a person might solve hundreds of murders, but can’t really be expected to commit more than a handful, if only due to time constraints. Once you’ve uncovered one body in a backyard of Wisteria Lane, how many more can you expect to find? Scandal spent its first season hiding a scandal, and Revenge‘s first series followed Emily’s mission to get revenge. But… then what? More scandals? More revenge? As with broken hearts, they never sting as much as your first. (Although it does remain enjoyable to watch both Scandal and Revenge and yell out the title of the show whenever one or the other occurs on-screen. A name that works like this is one of key elements of a great soap. Why there has not yet been a show called, I don’t know, Disaster! or How Dare You, is a mystery the greatest minds of our civilisation [execs at The CW] should really ponder.)
So now that Emily has gotten her revenge (along with a hell of a lot else that will mean nothing to you unless you are similarly addicted), it’s time for the show to call it a day before it careens around pointlessly for another season. There actually could be an interesting show made about someone who has geared her entire person and life toward revenge and who is trying to grow and find meaning outside of it, but it’s not this one. There’s been too many secrets, too many lies, too many deaths faked and lovers swapped and mental institutions for anyone to believe or care about the only real human drama that truly exists: a person trying valiantly to change their world, and their selves.
–
Revenge and Scandal air on Channel 7. The O.C. and Melrose Place both no longer air on free-to-air TV in Australia, but all are available on iTunes and Netflix. Don’t start watching any of them unless you are willing to commit to staying up all night until it’s finished, and I say this as someone who watched all seven series of Melrose Place in three weeks.
–
Maddie Palmer is a writer, broadcaster, TV and digital producer. Her work has appears on The Feed on SBS2, and she talks about TV with Myf Warhurst on Double Jay. She tweets from @msmaddiep.