The Month of Victoria's Arrival

[Gerard]

And don't forget that sometimes it was the dead of winter and characters would run around outside in sleeveless dresses.  Soap opera time, even though it's suppose to coincide with our own, regardless of the show, always has weird parallel-time going on.  As Uncle Roger pointed out, children age rapidly but pregnancies can last longer than an elephant's and other such sundry time-passage stuff.  It has to do with the story and plots.  On I Love Lucy, Little Ricky aged normally for the first years (yes, I know it's not a soap).  However, when the Ricardos and Mertzes went to Europe, he was three and in nursery school.  When they returned, he was almost six and a first-grader.  DS was great at just ignoring the passage of time.  When Vicki went to 1795/96, it was 1967.  In current time she was gone for just a few minutes but when she popped back it was 1968.  The writers didn't face that problem with having Barnabas (and Julia) travelling back to 1897; the plot coincided it day-by-day when it moved from past to present.  Parallel time did the same thing.  The 1840/41 plot did provide a coinciding problem when Barnabas, Julia and Eliot returned to the present, but some sloppy covering of it by having Elizabeth ask them (paraphrasing):  "Where have you been?" tried to keep the monkey-wrench out of the works.

Gerard

[michael c]

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I still watch one of the few remaining daily soaps. 'the bold & the beautiful'...


like DS and in typical soap fashion a single show "day" can last for weeks. however unlike DS they have a special Thanksgiving and Christmas episode every year. on the Thanksgiving show the entire cast gathers at the home of one character for dinner. on the Christmas show they all volunteer at a homeless shelter.

the get around the continuity bugaboo by making these "stand alone episodes" that can get inserted into the week on the correct day but doesn't really effect the overall progression of any of the storylines. the actors are "in character" but for the purposes of those episodes characters that normally cannot stand each other "put their differences aside" for the day and focus on their good works or the "spirit of the holiday". so regardless of what's happening with the plot they can produce these episodes and acknowledge the holidays without really throwing anything out of whack.

there's no "cliffhanger" and the next day they can all go back to lying to, hating and backstabbing each other.

[Gerard]

there's no "cliffhanger" and the next day they can all go back to lying to, hating and backstabbing each other.

Michael, I hate to correct you, but that's not The Bold and the Beautiful that you're watching.  It's Congress on C-Span.

Gerard

[DarkLady]

 

[MagnusTrask]

I've seen 1966 about 3 times now.  I got it in 2011...  What struck me was how the first months were devoted to covering the space of the first few days Vicki and Burke were in town.  I wondered when and how they were going to break out of that, and have time flow fairly normally.  They did, but I forget how.  I think part of it involved just pretending that Vicki and Burke had been there "forever", for months, instead of still being new arrivals.  That feels right for the casual viewer's who's been watching for months, but weird if you've been paying close attention to when each fictional day started and ended, as I was this last time around.  They'd stay on day one or two or three forever, and it seemed as if they'd never move on to the next day, sometimes.