Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 151

C43 WO Soap Junkies Prepare! This latest potential drug on the market for soap junkies is either the best thing to happen to soap viewing or the worse since the invention of coffee the first daytime venture by the man who gave us such classics of the American TV prime-time theater as Hills 90210" and At last Aaron Spelling will bring what NBC calls to daytime TV The man who is to quality drama what botulism is to fine cuisine has created a one-hour daily continuing drama about life somewhere between the breaking waves of the Pacific and the bright lights of Los Angeles Sunset Beach is a small town of several thousand beautiful people young and old rich and poor home to police officers lifeguards newspaper reporters waiters business owners college students moguls and mogulettes They promise to be people who run the gamut intellectually from A to what I like about Spell- ing His shows always sound like but with a plot has what seems like a cast of thousands but it's actually got only 21 actors I wish they would ID the characters in these sagas the first few months Or better yet have their names on their clothes like basketball players If Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren can get away with it why not unknown TV stars? Spelling is the man who gave us Heather Locklear Jason Priestley Jennie Garth Luke Perry Andrew Shue Laura Leighton and of course his daughter the noted actress Tori Spelling This time his cast includes serious actresses such as Lesley-Anne Down who plays Olivia Richards the town media mogul and trophy wife of the high-powered silver-tongued attorney Gregory Richards (Sam Behrens) a born manipulator It also includes the winner of a nationwide undiscovered talent search (Jason George) Not to mention the good news: The show also features the return to drama of Randy Spelling He's playing Sean Richards the year-old high school student who holds a secret that could destroy his entire family his most important role since mpi As an actor Randy makes Tori look like Anne Bancroft To prove that his hiring of Randy is not nepotism Spelling also has in the cast Ashley Hamilton (son of George and Alana Hamilton) I seen the show yet (Boaps are better protected than atom bomb secret s) The scripts my sources say make no heavier philosophical comments than life is a beach Hopefully there will be a lot of swim suits and hunks and hunkettes on the beach to relieve the tedium of the long winter ahead My spies say it is the most enticing new soap opera since which scared the heck out of me in 1984 1 was thisclose to being hopelessly addicted to that saga of four families and an oil rig The show is produced by Spelling Himself along with Duke Vincent and Gary Tomlin Much of it is shot on location (Seal Beach in Orange County Calif) which is unusual for a soap NBC is spending millions promoting the show that BIG Will be more than just an expensive way to find another job for Randy Spelling? Will it be the soap that finally ends the decline of daytime soaps? Soaps survived the OJ Simpson case in 1995 and the rise of daytime confessional talk shows who wanted to watch a fictional story about adultery advanced sexual lifestyles abuse and evil twins when you could hear all about it in the hard news shows like and But can soaps survive latest Collection of beach bums and bumettes? Usually new soaps fail Soap fans are creatures of habit and take kfridly to new shows It takes patience Unfortunately for most new soaps TV executives have the attention span of the NBA shot clock NBC is determined to make this one work Besides pouring millions into production and promotion the network has packed the stories with sex and murder glamor glitz sleaze trash all the verities that have worked for Spelling at night Five hours a week of pure Spelling even impure Spelling could revolutionize the daytime soap genre writing this essay today as kind of a pre-emptive strike If I poke a little fun at it in advance maybe I will be stronger this time If only there were a Soap Operas Anonymous in case I get hooked a kind of halfway house where soap viewers could Bend themselves to get deprogramed To talk with the Executive Producer about your eoap opera problems or his by e-mail the new address is: netattnet ONE OF MY greatest fears right up there with triskaidekaphobia or fear of Channel 13 is becoming addicted to soap operas This is not one of your crazy irrational phobias A soap is something to be scared of You start watching one and then you can't put it down Statistics tell us that 55 percent of adult Americans are addicted to at least one soap a week They must know who is having whose illegitimate baby why Tiffany is or dying and if Brandon and John are really getting a divorce The addiction starts with one soap then spreads to two or three Soon you start canceling your appointments in the afternoon spending more quality time with your VCR at night than with your mate You have no idea how many lives soaps have destroyed One woman I know went into a hospital and started watching soaps She lost interest irf all her friends They had nuyor catastrophes their problems were boring She was a college student at the time and felt she had nothing in common with her friends but everything in common with people on soaps Mike Bauer in Luke Spencer in were her best friends relatives secret lovers whatever A soap ceases to be a show it becomes reality Soaps cause infidelity incest alcoholism No wait a minute getting carried away here But they do cause coffee drinking Who is in danger? Soaps can be harmful to middle-aged women adolescents neurotics unemployed men graduate students doing theses young mothers none of these but worried about soaps anyway My situation as a TV critic even worse than the average viewer Talk about life in the Garden of Eden I could watch soaps all ay long and blame it on my work and get paid for it Why I know some people who need any excuse to watch soaps second nature to them like running a vacuum cleaner a lot better than being a drug explained my friend Paul Seder of Merrick when I told him about my fear also could be a I tell myself no worse than having an interest in the theater or chamber muBic or having a transistor under the pillow to listen to a tape of that Howard Stem show These are just a few of the heavy thoughts that jogged through my mind while reading the press releases announcing the premiere of a new soap opera tomorrow at noon on NBC sounds habit-forming which his father also produced Arlene Grayman of Flushing NY is the 1st month's winner of Newsday's Credit Card Payoff Sweepstakes cc.