Love, Money, Witches And Beach Grass

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

With hope and a dash of contrarian good sense, this writer recently revisited the world of daytime soap opera, reasoning that like so much else in our postmodern culture--Las Vegas, fondue, Rob Lowe--afternoon dramas might have transitioned into hip. Little research was needed to prove this theory false. Sets still seem to draw their inspiration from the simulated Americana of a Holiday Inn lobby in Colonial Williamsburg. And on almost any given day, the chance of making it through the afternoon without hearing someone say, "I don't need any DNA test to prove that you're my son" or, maybe, "You slept with your daughter's husband, Olivia, so don't give me that I'm-so-devoted-to-my-children routine," remains as alarmingly low as the chance of making it through a whole episode of Friends without ever seeing Jennifer Aniston's navel.

That soaps have failed to evolve their formula for melodrama is surely one of the factors responsible for their diminished ratings. During the past five years, the number of women ages 18 to 49 who watch daytime dramas has declined 36%. Comparatively, the number in that group who watch prime-time network television has dropped 27%. Certainly women are more time-pressed than they were even a few years ago, and they are spending more of their spare time with cable TV and talk shows. But it could also be that their soap opera needs are being met elsewhere: not just on C-SPAN and Jerry Springer but on most nighttime dramas (and many sitcoms too), which now feature ongoing, relationship-focused story lines with will-they-or-won't-they cliff-hangers but, happily, very few incidents of amnesia.

There are currently 10 soaps on daytime TV, but a successful one has not been launched since CBS's debut of The Bold and the Beautiful in 1987. It might be considered an act of courage, then, that NBC, home of Sunset Beach, the lowest-rated soap on television, this week unleashes a lavish daytime drama, Passions. But soaps continue to be made and broadcast because, when all is said and done, they continue to generate a good deal of money--$50 million to $60 million a year for a successful one. NBC's new hour-long series, centered on four families and set in the fictitious New England seaside town of Harmony, runs right after the popular Days of Our Lives in most areas, replacing Another World, which went off the air last month after 35 years.

The network's main hope for Passions lies in the show's creator, James Reilly, a 50-year-old medical school dropout bestowed with the kind of outre imagination for which the world provides few professional outlets. A veteran daytime-drama writer, Reilly was brought to NBC to revive an ailing Days of Our Lives in 1992. During his five-year tenure as head writer, the show became the most-watched daytime soap on television among the genre's target audience of young and middle-aged women. It also became one of NBC's five most profitable shows in any time slot.

What Reilly brought to Days of Our Lives was story lines with paranormal elements, which makes sense, given that he claims to have once helped deliver a two-headed baby. Reilly had the show's heroine, Dr. Marlena Evans, undergo demonic possession followed by an an exorcism, all to impassioned audience response. In 1996 the network gave him free rein to begin creating something of his own.

The result will also incorporate the bizarre. In fact, one of the characters will not really be a human being at all, but a doll who comes to life as a sounding board for the local witch, Tabitha Lenox (Juliet Mills). She will occasionally ride around town with "Timmy" (Ally McBeal's Josh Evans) on the handlebars of her bicycle. "I needed someone for this crazy person to talk to," Reilly explains, "and all of a sudden I got this idea. I said, 'No, no. You're being silly. Time to go and have dinner.' But I kept on coming back to it. And I'd start telling the other writers I was working with, and we'd all break into laughter." Reilly will have another character, Grace Bennett (Dana Sparks), levitate through her French doors.

Were it not for these instances in which a call to Agent Mulder might seem in order, Passions would appear indistinguishable from almost any other soap opera. Marxism may not find much expression in contemporary American pop culture, but it certainly still thrives on daytime serials, where conflict often revolves around a town's monied Protestant dynasty and its less privileged newcomers. Here, we have the Cranes vs. the Lopez-Fitzgeralds. In typically unseemly soap opera fashion, it is Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald (Lindsay Korman), Hispanic and the daughter of a maid, who is the gold digger who goes after Harmony's wealthiest young scion. The African-American family in this essentially racially balanced cast ("I want to entertain everyone," says Reilly. "I want people to look at the show and identify with it") receives somewhat more enlightened treatment. They are a happy and prosperous lot; we know this because in the first episode they play tennis.

None of this is to say that Passions is devoid of promise. Indeed, there are flashes of a certain kind of genius in the first episode alone, which has a self-exiled Sheridan Crane (McKenzie Westmore) in France visiting Sacre Coeur every day to mourn the loss of her best friend. That best friend was Princess Diana, who we now learn was on her way to visit Sheridan when she met her ill fate in that Parisian tunnel. The show doesn't make clear why this information never surfaced on Hard Copy.

Reilly grew up visiting an Irish grandfather who kept him riveted with suspenseful tales. But Reilly's gift, colleagues say, has as much to do with his skill as a technician as it does with his being a good raconteur. "Jimmy has perfected the art of not being predictable," says Lisa Hesser, the show's executive producer. "Most soap opera viewers know they have to watch on Fridays and Mondays, but Jim can have a blockbuster event on a Tuesday." If that event should involve a reincarnated Dodi, well then, all the better.

--With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York

With reporting by JEANNE MCDOWELL/LOS ANGELES AND WILLIAM TYNAN/NEW YORK