Wash The Soap Away

So, yeah, I'm pretty much done with "As The World Turns".

Mind you, I'd only been tuning in to the Luke/Noah arc anyway, but...

Here's the thing. It's never easy to back down when you make a big, grandiose PR move, especially if you do it in the name of progress. When Marvel folded on the X-Statix/Princess Di storyline, it pretty much killed one of their best series dead. Why? Not just because they backed down, but because they went and made so much noise about it, about how provocative and edgy they were, and they turned tail with the slightest hint of disapproval.

Now, the fact that the Luke/Noah storyline never progressed after their second kiss all those months ago could have been attributed to slow-burn, a tactic that has always served soap operas well. But when you do a Valentine's Day episode in which every single couple gets to snog except the boys, you're not slow-burning, you're excluding. And that's a big, honking red light.

I'd been optimistic about precedents being set in the soap genre, but if this is as far as they're willing to go, I'd say more conservative minds have prevailed here. Pity.