The Rise and Fall of the Supercouple in Soap Operas
Yet in the decades since their invention-most notably General Hospital’s Luke and Laura, who set the gold standard of supercoupledom-this soap staple has grown tired and stale. Soap writers and producers now try to manufacture
supercouples in the hopes of pumping up their anemic ratings while fans will often glom onto any couple regardless of their story potential for no other reason than that the actors happen to have chemistry together. In the end, the single-minded and narrowminded effort to find the next supercouple has eroded the genre, making it predictable and boring.
According to Wikipedia, a supercouple “is a romantic pairing on a program that becomes extremely popular with fans, captivates the audience’s attention, exceeds the network’s expectations and transcends the normal pairings on the show. Often, the supercouple will become a de facto symbol for the show itself.”
While soaps have always had supercouples in one form or another fitting that description (teen characters Jeff Baker and Penny Hughes on “As the World Turns” and Doug Williams and Julie Olsen on “Days of Our Lives” back in the 1950s and ’70s respectively were arguably the first couples to fit the definition), it wasn’t until Luke and Laura were paired during the late seventies that the staple rose astronomically in importance to the genre.
The Luke and Laura love story was not without controversy-the married Laura fell in love with her frizzy-haired anti-hero after he raped her in his nightclub. Yet despite the controversial and titillating aspect of the story, the couple became wildly successful, pushing “General Hospital,” which only a few years before was threatened with cancellation, at the top of the ratings heap.
Their wedding, which had been promoted in ways unheard of for daytime television, was the most watched television episode in daytime history (30 million people tuned in to watch the couple exchange “I dos”). People who would not normally consider themselves soap fans watched the episode, thus making Luke and Laura iconic figures of the 1980s. Along the popularity of the primetime soap “Dallas,” “General Hospital” hit a cultural zeitgeist, proving that not only were soaps a valid form of entertainment, but could also be profitable.
Following the success of the supercouple formula, every other soap created their own versions of Luke and Laura. A supercouple who competed and in some cases challenged “General Hospital’s” corner on the market was Quint and Nola on “Guiding Light” (“Guiding Light” airs opposite “General Hospital” in some markets). Unlike Luke and Laura, whose story began with the titillation of rape and an illicit love affair, Quint and Nola, created by legendary soap scribe Douglas Marland, were gothic and highly romantic.
Nola Reardon, the daughter of a poor boarding house owner, and Quinton Chamberlain, a mysterious and wealthy archeologist, went on various adventures that added romantic sophistication to their love story. Nola, a daydreamer and movie buff, would often fantasize her life story into the fabric of the movies she loved, offering a charming quirk to the character that differentiated her and her love story from others that were airing at the time. Indeed, though most soaps followed the late Gloria Monty’s footsteps (Monty, former “General Hospital” producer, not only created the Luke and Laura fan craze but revolutionized production values on daytime), they were also careful to individualize their romantic supercouples.
“Days of Our Lives,” which became supercouple central during the 1980s, boasting such fan faves as Bo and Hope, Jack and Jennifer, Patch and Kayla, Roman and Marlena (and later Marlena and John Black, who at one point thought he was Roman Brady – -long story!), among others, faced similar adventures and travails along the way toward romance, but these couples certainly bore little resemblance to “All My Children” supercouples such as Cliff and Nina and Greg and Jenny or Mac and Rachel and Cass and Kathleen on the now defunct “Another World.” Each soap crafted their supercouples to fit the specific circumstances of their shows, while creating stories for them that, albeit formulaic, enhanced character likeability.
By the mid-eighties, every soap could boast its own staple of supercouples. “Edge of Night,” which was cancelled in the ’80s, found a popular pairing in the sophisticated and urbane Sky and Raven Whitney, while “One Life to Live” scored with Max and Gabrielle and Vicki and Clint. On “As the World Turns,” teen lovers Holden and Lily became fan faves, while the “Young & the Restless” had Victor and Nikki, then later with Victor and Ashley. After Genie Francis, who played Laura Baldwin, left the show, the producers paired Luke with Emma Samms’ Holly, but her pairing with Aussie spy Robert Scorpio proved to be far more delightful to the fans.
“Guiding Light,” following its success with Quint and Nola, saw its ratings climb to the top in 1984 as fans followed the tortured exploits of teen lovers Phillip Spaulding and Beth Raines (Beth would later achieve another successful pairing with rough-around-the-edges Lujack, Phillip’s cousin) as well as the sultry, Tennesse Williamsesque couple Josh Lewis and Reva Shayne. Both couples, along with Tony and Annabelle and Billy and Vanessa, were created by soap writer and former actress, Pamela K. Long, whose wild, romantic, and passionate love stories became a signature staple for the show in the ’80s.
What made these couples popular wasn’t only the actors and the chemistry they shared with their co-stars (two very important ingredients nonetheless in the supercouple formula), but the stories that were created for them. Soap writers knew exactly how to titillate and thrill their audiences with anticipation as they threw one obstacle after another to keep the couples apart. As Agnes Nixon, who wrote for “The Guiding Light” and created “One Life to Live,” “All My Children,” and co-created “Loving” with Marland, once said: “Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.” Delayed gratification was the key to the popularity of many supercouples.
By keeping the couples apart for a long time, in some cases even decades, raised the level of anticipation in the audience for the moment when they shared their first kiss, first made love, and married. The obstacles these couples faced were believable and either came from the desires or flaws that were endemic in the characters or from external obstructions (such as villains, usually the mother-in-law, who moved heaven and earth to make sure the two did not marry).
Yet along the way, the supercouple formula developed serious flaws. One of those flaws is that the medium itself cannot support the albeit formulaic foundations that are important to any supercouple story. The soap opera genre is unique in that, unlike other genres or mediums, the stories are continual, meaning that there are no discernible endings to them. Rather, stories don’t end so much as morph into other stories or other obstacles that the characters must overcome. In this sense, there are no happy endings because there are no endings. The supercouple formula, on the other hand, demand a denouement. In fact, audiences insist on one.
What makes supercouples so successful (the anticipation that the couple will succeed and live happily ever after) counters the medium’s necessity for endless stories. At five hours a week, 52 weeks a year, soaps have the untenable responsibility to churn out stories continuously for the audience’s pleasure. Creating more and more obstacles for the couples is a sure fire way to churn out those stories, but once the couple unites and marries the question inevitably falls upon the headwriter on what to do with them next. Usually, the couple lives in relative bliss for a few months on the backburner, allowing the writer the chance to focus on other characters on canvas. But in this day of dwindling ratings, The Powers That Be (TBTB) running the shows are loathe to alienate the fanbase of a particular couple by keeping them out of the spotlight, for not only do they have to churn out those stories, they also have to make certain that fans are watching every installment to keep the ratings high.
The networks’ obsession with ratings and demographics have influenced the storytelling for these couples to the extent that they have changed the genre deleteriously. In the past, writers kept couples apart as long as they needed to, often taking years before uniting them, therefore keeping one continuous story thread in motion. But today, in the interest of pacifying ever fickle soap audiences, writers will quickly unite couples often in little more than a few weeks, thus putting themselves in the position of finding yet more obstacles to create the needed tension and stories for the couples. The number of ways and times a couple can be broken up and united again is then exhausted (and in shorter periods of time) and often exhausting fans of that couple in the long run. Whatever directions the couples or individual characters can be taken inevitably run out of steam.
The only likely solutions for the writer at this point is to either write the couple off the show or to break them up again. TBTB are cautious about writing couples off the show, especially if said couple is popular with certain advertiser-loving demographics. Yet, if the writer chooses to break up a couple rather than writing it off, the very predictability of the story, the fact that the writers intend to reunite the couples somewhere down the line, takes away whatever element of surprise and spontaneity that has always been the golden nugget of daytime. How exciting can the anticipation of a reunion be when you’ve already witnessed it a couple dozen times before with the same characters? With no other option available to her, the writer ends up creating more and more contrived situations to place her characters in, which in turn angers the fans who are certainly more sophisticated about what works and doesn’t work storyline-wise.
Josh and Reva on “Guiding Light,” for instance, is a prime example of the problems facing writers when dealing with popular supercouples. Since the early ’80s, Josh and Reva have broken up and reunited more times than most real-life couples outside of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton would care to experience. Their break-ups, such as when they divorced after Reva learned she was an island princess and was being pursued by her never-knew-she-had Prince of a husband, Richard, make the characters as infantile and silly as a pair of lovesick teenagers.
Recently, Reva was given a cancer storyline that could have elevated the characters involved and given them a story that transcended the “break-up-to-make-up” romantic storyline that is so prevalent among supercouples. Instead, the story is being used as a catalyst to create a new couple out of Josh and his sister-in-law and former princess, Cassie Winslow. Whether the writers intend to keep Josh and Cassie together, there is no doubt, given Cassie’s own history of being one half of a stereotypical supercouple, that whatever problems they face will be as equally contrived as most supercouple obstacles.
Despite their sophistication, soap fans do play a role in how supercouples are held hostage to the dictates of a formula that ultimately erode the genre. Some fans (though certainly not all) see in their couples only the most flattering attributes in them. Indeed, writers set these couples up to be that way. The moral of most supercouple storylines follows that only a love so grand and pure can overcome the most petty and evil tribulations that are put in its way. In order to have such a love, the individual characters have to deserve it, i.e., be good and perfect, or at least have attributes that fans can identify with, aspire to, and thus root for.
In the past, writers have been astute enough to supply their characters with enough flaws to make them interesting and provide them with the right amount of organic obstacles as they pursue their desires, but most supercouples today, no matter how flawed, find themselves in situations that are based less on their defects but on the defects of others. To write characters as being responsible for their own happiness often is met with fan disapproval, i.e., “this character would never do that.” While, granted, such complaints are valid, especially when it comes to real character destruction, which I will go into later, there are other times when characters of questionable moral attributes are written in such a way that ignores those attributes in favor of manufacturing a stereotypical supercouple.
One example is Jonathan Randall on “Guiding Light.” Jonathan, the long-lost son of Reva Shayne, rode into town in 2004 with an indignation and raw sexuality not often seen by anti-heroes in daytime. Determined to get revenge against the mother who unknowingly gave him away to an abusive adoptive father, Jonathan seduced his cousin, Tammy Winslow, under false pretenses, then crowed about his bad boy villainy to anyone who would listen. The revelation that the virginal Tammy had slept with her cousin nearly led her to suicide. At the time of Jonathan’s appearance on the show, both Kreizman and executive producer and Emmy-winning actress, Ellen Wheeler, seemed committed to the idea that Jonathan was supposed to be a villain, even pairing him with fellow scamp Dinah Marler and amping up his level of villainy, by having him trick his aunt Cassie into believing that they had had sex the night before her wedding.
But somewhere along the way, Jonathan was paired with Tammy and became a romantic anti-hero, much to the delight of his fans. While Jonathan’s pathology and willingness to resort to violence would have provided ample stories for the pair (some viewers wanted to see a domestic abuse storyline ), the writer instead chose to write them as an erstwhile supercouple, complete with mostly external obstacles to keep them on the frontburner. Jonathan and Tammy are written in a way that satisfies the flattering interpretation their vocal fanbase have of the couple. Indeed, the character of Tammy has been turned into such a suffering, self-sacrificing saint that when her boyfriend impregnants her former rival, she suggests all three move in together, then stands by him when he marries the girl so that the pregnant mother can get out from under the thumb of her tyrranical father.
In no way is Tammy even allowed to be upset, angry, or frustrated at Jonathan, despite the fact that he has used and abused her trust of him continuously throughout their relationship. Rather, the fans are meant to root for the couple because their relative goodness is seen in stark contrast to the hypocrisy and general wickedness of their elder Springfield residents. To tell stories that examine the demons of these characters would thus muddle the standard message in daytime that only good and deserving people can find the kind of storied romances soap operas profit in. In the long run, though, supercouples infantilize the soap genre, creating stories that might appeal to twelve year fantasies, but alienate a fan base regardless of age that prefers more realistic dramatizations of love and relationships.
Thus, denied the use of any internal conflicts that could fuel story, writers are left with creating external problems for the characters, as noted with the Jonathan and Tammy story. This is where the villain comes into play. Most villains, be it an evil father-in-law or a bad girl/boy who wants to break up the duo, are simply there to provide obstacles for couples to overcome. This has always been the case. Luke and Laura had mobster Frank Smith, who wanted Luke dead after he left Smith’s daughter at the altar to be with Laura.
The two went into hiding, thus providing one of the key romantic elements of the couples’ popularity. The fact that Luke originally raped Laura and that she was married to once good guy Scott Baldwin would have provided adequate stumbling blocks for the pair. But TPTB were aiming for comic book romance, not realism (during this same period, “Guiding Light” focused on the marital rape of Holly Thorpe by her villainous husband, Roger, with far more realism).
Today, when every couple on a soap is or is meant to be a supercouple, this means that any character that isn’t a part of a supercouple ends up being the villainous interloper to the annointed ones, whether that character was conceived to be a villain or not. One of the most vocal and persistent cries among many soap fans nowadays is the destruction of their favorite characters to prop up a supercouple. This character, previously a nice guy or girl, someone who has a history with the show and long-time fans, inexplicably begins committing villainous or even criminal acts to cause trouble for the couple (inexplicably is the operative word since fans note how writers often neglect in explaining how and why said character changed).
One perfect example of this is the uproar over the death of A.J. Quartermaine on “General Hospital” in 2005. A.J., son of long-time faves Alan and Monica Quartermaine, was killed off when he tried to kidnap his son, Michael Corinthos, from his union with Carly Benson. Fans objected to the story because they killed off a veteran character with a rich and memorable history on the show. In daytime, a characters’ and/or actors’ longevity builds up the kind of fan support and loyalty that is so important for their integration on the canvas. Newer characters have a harder time earning this loyalty, especially when their integration on the show means that veteran characters and actors will either be pushed on the backburner or written off altogether to make way for the writers’ and producers’ creations. Therefore, when A.J., an otherwise good character, was turned into a villain, fans interpreted it as an effort by TPTB to make Sonny Corinthos, one half of the show’s supercouple Sonny and Carly, look good by comparison.
Though Sonny and his portrayer, Maurice Benard, have been on GH for over a decade, the character’s dominence on the show has been a bone of contention for the fans. And the fact that Sonny, a mobster who at one point shot a woman in the head while she was pregnant, would otherwise be a villain, and therefore be undeserving of the type of love exemplified in a supercouple status, is written in such a way that exalts him over other veteran and established characters. And here lies the crux of the problem with most supercouples.
In order for characters like Sonny to remain different and edgy (a necessity today with TPTB as they face viewer erosion due to competition from cable) but also fulfill the romantic idealizations of the mainly female audience, it is necessary to provide them with villains who want to thwart their romantic aims, thus making them more sympathetic. Sometimes, unfortunately for fans, that includes destroying beloved veteran characters. As ad-rates fall due to the erosion of the daytime audience, and networks are forced to slash budgets, thus limiting the amount of characters/actors on a show, veteran and higher paid actors are often the first victims of these cuts, thus leaving their characters all the more vulnerable to being sacrificed for characters who supposedly appeal to the younger market. This is symptomatic of what is wrong with daytime. Stories thus become artificial, contrived, and emotionally dishonest, pushing fans further and further away from the genre.
While TPTB and the fans eagerly await for the next supercouple to take off, soaps have thus been reduced to the stereotype that has marred this genre since its inception. Traditionally, soaps have always been about community and family, particularly after Irna Phillips’ “As the World Turns” perfected the standard soap, focusing her stories on the desires and passions of individuals set against the conformist values of middle class morality. While soaps have always had that one unique couple whose love transcended all, most couples were ordinary characters dealing with the ordinary and sometimes extraordinary circumstances on their quest for love, happiness, and acceptance. In short, soaps excelled at telling stories about relationships.
Those relationships (and not all were based on romance) encompassed all phases of interpersonal dramas-from romantic courtship and marriage, to, in many cases, divorce. But along the way, those relationships changed, evolved or devolved, whatever the case may be. Kim Hughes on “As the World Turns” may have fallen in love with her sister’s husband, Bob Hughes, and would later marry him many decades later, but that didn’t prevent the writers from having her fall in love with and marry other men. Her divorces likewise did not stop the writers from showing how her relationships with her ex-husband’s still affected her life, most notably through her marriage and divorce to John Dixon, the father of her son. Ed, Holly, and Roger on “Guiding Light” formed an intriguing triangle back in the seventies, and continued to do so during the late eighties and early nineties when Roger and Holly were brought back to the show.
Though both Roger and Ed would have brief dalliances with Holly, neither would marry her again. Yet their tortured history continued to affect their present-day lives and relationships, much to the usual soapy dramatic effects. Rather than focusing exclusively on the romantic aspects of supercouples (which are in and of themselves brief since couples can only fall in love once), soaps need to return to writing about all aspects of a relationship, pulling organic issues that come from the characters’ everyday realities of work and family responsibilites, and drawing on their flaws and/or strengths to create the necessary tension to tell story.
While the supercouple is certainly a unique daytime invention and can, when done correctly, provide hours if not years of intrigue and entertainment to fans, their dominance on a genre that requires a broad canvas of stories to tell in order to fill up all those hours of airtime, have reduced soaps to telling the same, tired, formulaic stories that have driven fans from daytime in droves.
