Will daytime ever get the respect it deserves?

  A little over a month ago the entertainment community collectively went “Huh?”  when it was announced that James Franco would be appearing a 2 month long story arc on of all things a Soap Opera.  “This must be a joke” and “It is for research” were thrown about fairly often as possible reasons why JF would have chosen to leave his ivory tower in Hollywood and walk amongst the commoners.  Because when you get right down to it that is how the industry chooses to view Daytime, as commoners.  Someone not worthy of their respect.  Someone to laugh at and mock.  Daytime is so low on the totem pole that some people are even quiet about the fact that they watch them at all because of the laughter that it might illict.  Granted not everybody has been negative in their response to the news, for the most part it has been a range from startling disbelief to a kind of way to go JF.  But still it got me to thinking why doesn’t Daytime earn more respect?

  Some say that soaps are just one long story that keeps replaying itself over and over again.  They say that each story line gets more outlandish than the one before.  Remember the Possesed by the Devil story on Days of Our Lives?  Or perhaps Dixie coming back from the dead for perhaps the millionth time on All My Children?  Plus we aren’t even going to get into the Who’s the daddy? story arcs or the myriad of romantic entaglements that are the crux of the daytime world.  So I guess I can see their point, to an extent.  Because honestly what makes Soaps any different from Primetime or even the very top of the Ivory Tower, Movies?  Can the naysayers honestly tell me that Primetime doesn’t have outlandish storylines?  Can they honestly say that shows like Grey’s Anatomy or Gossip Girl are more respectable for their romatic entanglements than say The Bold & The Beautiful?  Or shows like Fringe and The X-Files are more grounded in reality than say no longer on the air, Passions?  Or why The Sopranos deserves more respect than General Hospital?  The truth is they can’t say any of that because the only differences Primetime and Daytime have are the amount of money the networks are willing to spend on them and and one runs one night a week and gets up to a 3 month hiatus and the other is on 5 days a week and has no hiatus.  And no being blacked out for two weeks, holidays, and weekends do not count. 

   Or it could possibly be the fact that only second rate actors are on Daytime, while all the “real” actors are on Primtime?  Oh wait a minute that can’t be true because Daytime is proud to be one of the few venues that has churned out some of the best actors of the past couple of generations.  What other venue can honestly say that?   But despite that fact Daytime is still considered to be either the place where younger actors get their feet wet or older actors go when they have no other options.  Because as we all know Primetime has no bad actors.  Hey I know how about anyone who feels that Daytime is the blackhole for talent I dare you to go up to Betty White and tell her she doesn’t have any other options or tell Bradford Anderson that GH will be his last stop.  Oh wait a minute I have an even better dare for you.  I dare you to go up to Jennifer Aniston and tell her that the man who plays Victor Kiriakis on DOOL is a bad actor.  Go ahead we will wait because I am sure those of us who are fans of Daytime and those of us who work tirelessly to bring it to fruition could use a good laugh at your judgemental expense.

You know what nevermind Daytime doesn’t need your respect nor do we want it.