12.30-4 pm

Before I get into the specific storylines of ATWT, such as Nuke, Janet/Jack, Parker/Liberty, Casey/Emily, and, oh my god, Lilden/Carly, I want to lay a few things out for those of you who may not be well acquainted with the soap genre.

1. There are currently eight bona fide soap operas on television: All My Children (ABC, 1 pm); As the World Turns (CBS, 2 pm); The Bold and the Beautiful (CBS, 1.30 pm); Days of our Lives (NBC, 2 pm); General Hospital (ABC, 3 pm); Guiding Light (CBS, 3 pm); One Life to Live (ABC, 2 pm); and The Young and the Restless (CBS, 12.30 pm). Passions, though still on the air on way-extended cable, doesn't count anymore.
2. Some soaps are still produced by the soap companies! ATWT, along with its sister GL, are still produced by Procter & Gamble Productions.
3. Perhaps because of (2), soap operas are a very conservative medium. There's little incentive to do particularly daring storylines because often more people are offended than is worthwhile. (E.g. the Luke Snyder/Noah Mayer storyline and the American Family Association)
4. Soap operas are produced five days a week for fifty-two weeks a year. The importance of this cannot be understated. In order to constantly come up with new situations, oftentimes they miss the mark (E.g. everything Sofie Duran ever participated in)
5. Actors constantly change. Because being a soap star requires an almost year-round commitment, and to keep up with the ever-present need for novelty, characters are constantly being introduced, SORASed (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome-ed), killed off, &c. Furthermore, characters are recast for a fresh face or to get a lower-paid actor in the role. (E.g. Martha Byrne's unceremonious dismissal from her longtime role as Lily Walsh Snyder)
6. Soaps revolve around huge families. ATWT has the Snyders and the Hughes. Days has the Blacks and the Bradys. These families form a complex web of marriage, sexual intrigue, and cousinhood. However, they firmly establish the baseline for the show and forge connections between the characters and the audience. There's something touching about seeing Holden Snyder (despite being embroiled in an illicit affair with his wife's best friend) taking the time to care about his sister Meg (who is the #1 suspect in the long-awaited murder of the aforementioned Sofie Duran.) The two storylines don't overlap, but the verisimilitude of Oakdale is established by the family ties. (This of course has nothing to do with the real life actors of Holden and Emily Stewart being married.) Luke and Noah may have drawn be to ATWT, but it's the families, in retrospect, that made me stay, even as Nuke drift off into meaningless drivel.

As I continue to analyse ATWT in the coming weeks and hopefully months, keep these things in mind.

NEXT: The obligatory post about why Luke and Noah have become so disappointing.