So i just read that General Hospital has over 60 seasons and the longest airing show ever is Guiding Light at 72 seasons.
So like are each season consistent with the last? Do they reference something that happened 10seasons ago? Do they use the same actor/actress for all seasons? Is soap operas just a dramatized version of real life?
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Everyone else has covered it, but I wanted to throw in – you mention things happening 10 seasons ago, but it’s worth pointing out that time gets really *funky* on these shows.
Firstly, the show proceeds more or less in real time, so the first episode of 2020 takes place in early 2020. But, episodes tend to cover very short periods of time, a whole week of episodes could take place over a single day. This tends to lead to a “year” on the show feeling oddly short. If you read a description of one year of storylines on a soap opera, it’ll probably take place over about two months of time.
The other big driver is [SORAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera_rapid_aging_syndrome) – Soap opera rapid aging syndrome. Children of characters will regularly be aged up at the first opportunity, going away to boarding school one year and coming back as a 20 year old. This leads to scenarios where a character might give birth when they’re 30 and have a 20 year old son when they’re 40. If things get really out of whack, a character’s child might end up dating one of their friends.
Or my favourite quote from the SORAS page Wikipedia page, “The repeated use of SORAS on Days of Our Lives led to characters Tom Horton and his great-great-grandson Scotty Banning both working as doctors in the same hospital at the same time.”
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