March 1999

"We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds..." So began each episode of Another World when it premiered in 1964. Now NBC has announced that the World is coming to an end. Financially, NBC's decision makes sense: Brooklyn based World is more expensive to produce than L.A.'s Sunset Beach and Beach has a larger, and growing, international audience. Sadly, however, the decision also makes artistic sense.

The audience has known for months that one soap, either World or Beach would be cancelled to make room for the new soap from Days of Our Lives auteur, James E. Reilly. The Aaron Spelling-produced Beach has embarked on showstopping special effects plots like an earthquake and ensuing tsunami or outrageous stories like a forced artificial insemination with a turkey baster. Another World, on the other hand, has turned, as it has so often before, to pure imitation. The results have been disasterous.

It is difficult to pinpoint when exactly the death knell first sounded for Another World. It may have been the brutal murder of Frankie Frame Winthrop (Alice Barrett), a beloved character and a young wife and mother. The hour long assault on Frankie was incredibly violent and served little purpose in the ensuing story. The end may have begun a little later, when popular actor Charles Keating, who had played the reformed villain Carl Hutchins for over a decade, was unceremoniously fired, unraveling years of careful redemption. The fact that Keating's firing coincided with other cast departures, either because people quit or were fired, didn't help matters. Or AW's cancellation may been seeded as far back as 1989 when Douglass Watson passed away, and with him, the beloved patriarch, Mac Cory.

However, the death of Another World may have been inevitible from the beginning. Created as a spin-off of As the World Turns by the Mother of the Soap Opera, Irna Phillips, the show only rarely found a voice of its own. Except for a brief period in the mid-to-late seventies, AW was always an imitation of some other serial. Be it As the World Turns in the sixties, General Hospital in the eighties, or Days of Our Lives in the ninetites, the show always failed to achieve the respective successes of each other serial.

Most recently, AW has introduced a fantasy storyline involving the mysterious gargoyle, Jordan Stark, and his obsession with Amanda Cory. The story has been a colossal failure for myriad reasons. One, by trying to recreate Reilly's Days success with demonic possessions and underground cities, the show has turned its back on its fans who are accustomed to more down to earth stories. Two, it has immediatly shoved into the forefront a character who is not only covered in facial scars and tumorous lumps but devoid of life and humor. Three, the object of his obsession is not Rachel Cory (Victoria Wyndham), a fan favorite and the show's matriarch or the overwhelmingly popular Felicia Gallant (Linda Dano), but Rachel's bland, uninteresting daughter, Amanda, who herself has only been back on the canvas for a matter of months. This story, added to the still stinging firings and several other clunky plots has sent fans away in droves.

The saddest part of Another World's cancellation, however, is not the loss of one of daytimes Grande Dames, or the disappearance of some of its most interesting actors and characters. The tragedy is what this all means for the soaps in general. The medium has reached a point when William Bell's once shockingly sexy The Young and the Restless is the most traditional serial on the air. (And, also, the most highly rated.) With the exception of Bell's, the soaps are now run by committees populated by network executives who see nothing but demographics and advertising dollars. Of course, the medium has always been run by executives. Another World itself is still owned and produced by a soap company, Proctor and Gamble. But the power of visionaries like Phillips, her protege Agnes Nixon (All My Children, One Life to Live) or Gloria Monty (General Hospital during its Luke and Laura heyday) has dwindled and few new talents have risen to take their places.

There are certainly good things happening on daytime: Y&R continues to resurge, GH has found new earthbound resonance in the fantasy adventures of the past, and Guiding Light continues to innovate the form, albeit often unsuccessfully such as the recent cloning storyline. However, the success of Reilly's stint at Days has left many of the other serials flailing about, trying to mimick its success. All My Children, always the most realistic of soaps, faltered with a voodoo story in the mid-nineties. AW has also failed, most recently with the Jordan Stark mess, but also with an abortive storyline involving vampires.

Another World is dying to make way for Reilly's Passions, a new soap set in a small New England town. Whether it will resemble Days or have its own distinctive voice remains to be seen. This move also ensures at least a little more life for the two and a half year old Sunset Beach which, though often an unspeakable mess, distincts itself with high camp and self-mocking irony. It is a soap for the Scream generation, with characters who seem to know all too well the rules of their soap opera game.

Despite its follies, however, AW has often been great soap opera. The Rachel/Steve/Alice triangle remains one of the most popular in daytime history. Wyndham, Dano, Steven Schnetzer (Cass), Jensen Buchanan (Vicky), Mark Pinter (Grant) and most recently Lisa Peluso (Lila) among others have given indelible, legendary performances. For thirty-five years it has done exactly the job we as an audience asked it to do, it has entertained us and taken us into a thousand other worlds. And while the seeds of its demise may have been growing since its inception, it will be missed. So, to Reilly and Spelling, it must be said: Earn this.