HMS Daytime Continues to Sink

The Daytime Emmys are as big of a joke as daytime soaps themselves have become. The nominations were announced today and just confirm that this entire industry is content to run itself completely into the ground while maintaining the status quo.

Both Scott Evans and Brett Claywell were pre-nominated for their AMAZING work on One Life to Live (largely because new rules allowed them to submit themselves and not have to be pre-nominated by their fellow cast members), but neither received an actual nomination. In fact, One Life to Live, easily the best soap on the air over the last few years, was not nominated for Outstanding Drama Series or Outstanding Writing Team.

This is just a complete travesty and proves that the medium is dying for a very good reason. A show takes the time to write an incredibly groundbreaking story; they write it beautifully, they hire two outstanding actors who portray the characters perfectly; they hold nothing back, in fact, and give us a perfect example of what soaps could and should be like.

The end result? The network kills the story, fires the actors, brings in a hack like Jean Passanante to 'help take the soap in a new (read: old, tired, and badly written) direction', and the people who are supposed to at least reward the outstanding work of their peers completely ignore the entire thing, not even bothering to hand them a single nomination.

Brett Claywell himself had this to say on twitter today:

We tell a story that was groundbreaking and powerful, then lose my job and am overlooked for a nomination. Daytime is such a joke.

Way to fiddle while Rome burns, daytime.