After over 50 years on air, the CBS soap opera that launched the careers of Meg Ryan, Marisa Tomei, and Julianne Moore finally closed shop. Today was it's 13,858th and last episode. Happy endings for everybody!
CBS actually dropped the ax earlier today so by the time David Faber talked to Moonves, he'd probably already heard the show will end next September. But it was probably a call from his wife, Jenny: Jenny Faber's mother is Marie Masters, who started in the role of Dr. Susan Stewart in 1968. She left the show in 1979 only to return in 1986. She still plays the character occasionally today and even served as a writer on the show at one point.
This morning CBS announced that it would be canceling the soap, which has been on air for over 50 years. Earlier in the year, it ended the longest-running soap of all time, Guiding Light. Are soaps dead?
Eric Burns, NOT pictured, plays dreamy police officers on soap operas like All My Children and As The World Turns. To unwind, he sometimes likes to spend some time relaxing at a club — say, after a few cognacs and four shots of vodka, as was apparently the case one night in August at Club Mansion. Then, around 4:50 am (!), some real cops came along and things took a decidedly unsexy turn, police told the Times:
The Times noticed something about the soap opera As The World Turns, which has featured three oh-so-groundbreaking gay kisses in the past year: It is the only soap opera that has gained young viewers over the past seven months. All the other soaps lost young people and are basically left with olds and adult diaper commercials. Sure, maybe forbidden gay love will energize soap operas the way class tension used to, as the Times suggests. Or maybe As The World Turns is just the latest show to learn what Ellen DeGeneres figured out so long ago: introducing a gay subplot is a great way to keep an otherwise weak show on life support, at least in those increasingly rare genres devoid of homosexual storylines. [Times]
Luke and Noah, the young gay couple on As The World Turns, finally got to kiss again. They had a landmark make out many months ago, but then endured a long dry spell that had fans on the edge of their wicker seats. Speculation (or, you know, fact) abounded that Procter & Gamble, the show's sponsor, had put the kibosh on any further 'moments when outraged "Family" groups threatened product boycotts and the vengeance of an angry, irrational god. Of course, the network denied that any pressure from bigots and zealots had anything to do with the apparent no-"Nuke" kissing policy. And then yesterday afternoon! A shocking, "steamy" kiss! And somewhere in Naples, FL a fifty year old gentleman fanned himself and stepped out on the lanai to get some air. Take that, Procter & Gamble and crazy Christians! Two men kissed once, for the first time in months, on a show that's all about kissing! Video after the jump. (The actual kiss is about six and half minutes in.)
Much like on Will & Grace, where Will was scared of pee-pees and never wanted to see (let alone touch) one, As The World Turns geigh couple Noah and Luke never want to kiss. OK, to be fair, they have kissed, in "groundbreaking" fashion, making them the first gay men to kiss on a daytime soap. But the last time they sucked face was like months ago and fans want more. Online petitions have been passed around and a website created, all pressuring the network, and by extension sponsor Procter & Gamble, to make it happen again (and again and again and again!)
