Those Wacky Soap Operas

When I was little, my sisters used to tape a ton of different things. And being the curious sort and wanting to tape over their stuff with mine, I got to look at a lot of it. One of the many different things that I saw was a certain soap opera. The plot was such that a group of people fell through a hole and found some long lost city underneath the ground populated by people (who knows how they got there). The plot was split between the underground city and the people above trying to rescue them. It was very weird.

Much later I would discover that this was not abnormal for soaps in the 80s, which did weird and wacky things in order to attract viewers. And I mean really wacky things; not just the "I slept with my relative who is secretly the father/mother of my baby" thing. I mean batshit insane.

For example, the soap opera which featured the wacky story I just mentioned was One Life to Live. I 1989 the story was called "The Underground City of Eterna" and here is a clip

And to think ABC's money was spent on that. The storyline was apparently polarizing (REALLY?!)

and it ended a few months later. I'm not going to go into the details about that because it would probably take a novel. 

By the time the 90s rolled around, wacky plots were out of date and tackling issues became the cause celebre for soaps.

In true soap opera fashion, I will leave a cliffhanger here. Why? Because tomorrow (or later tonight if I'm up for it" I will tell you about the ONE soap that really began the wacky trend. Until then.....