In an AP News story that has been picked up more than 300 times since its publication, Professor Elana Levine highlighted the import of “The Young & the Restless” on the occasion of the show’s 50th anniversary, celebrated this Sunday. The soap’s continuity across generations of viewers, enabled in part by its international success, Levine said, are emblematic of the genre as a whole.
“What streaming TV has shown us is that serialized narratives and stories that continue from episode to episode are really appealing and engaging,” [Levine] says. “Soaps did that before anybody and are the maximum version of that because the story is going for decades.”
Professor Levine is the author of Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera & US Television History (Duke University Press, 2020).