Long-Running Procedurals Are Just Soap Operas, But Nobody Wants To Admit It

Before I ruin how you look at your favorite procedurals like CSI, One Chicago, Law & Order, or Grey’s Anatomy by comparing them to soap operas, we need to get into what a soap opera actually is.

The most basic definition of a soap opera is “a television or radio drama series dealing typically with daily events in the lives of the same group of characters.” Though that sounds like the basic premise for every single kind of TV show, soap operas (or “soaps” for short) are characterized by melodrama, sentimentality, a revolving door of ensemble cast members, and the use of dialogue over action.

Sound familiar? That’s because Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Chicago Fire, Criminal Minds, CSI: Miami, and NCIS are all soap operas masquerading as procedurals. I can’t think of any other reason why my wife gets so irritated with me when I ask “hey, are you watching your soaps?” whenever she’s dialing into an episode of Private Practice.

The only reason procedurals aren’t called soap operas is because the series themselves aren’t sponsored by soap companies, which is how the genre they’re seemingly emulating was marketed in the first place: to sell soap to the daytime TV crowd (read: stay-at-home moms) while they’re watching their stories. Granted, “Mountain Dew Code Red and Draft King Opera” doesn’t have the same ring to it, so we just call their prime-time counterparts “procedurals.” Sponsorship semantics aside, modern procedurals feature many of the same genre trappings, so strap in while I break this down for you.

Procedurals, not unlike soap operas, run for so long that cast members come and go to pursue other projects. Steve “Patch” Johnson (Stephen Nichols) has been an on-again-off-again member of the Days of Our Lives cast since 1985, and we see something similar happening with all of our beloved crime procedurals that Wolf Entertainment has put out over the years. After long stretches of absence, beloved characters are written back into the storytelling, and the promotional content ahead of these episodes hype the audience up to get faces in front of screens.

When Rafael Barba (Raul Esparza) left Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in season 19 after a traumatic experience, we thought we’d seen the last of him. By season 23, he made a quick appearance in “A Final Call At Forlini’s Bar,” but this time wearing a full beard to let the audience know that some time has passed since we last saw him. And now that Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) has his own Law & Order Spinoff (Organized Crime), crossover episodes are a common practice in the universe that Dick Wolf has created.

Chicago P.D., one of many soap operas that calls itself a crime procedural, is not without intense action sequences, but most of the series’ conflict comes in the form of Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) butting heads with his various superiors as his against-the-grain police tactics get him into a heap of trouble.

With his gravely Batman-esque vocal delivery, he has too many emotional moments to count with members of his intelligence crew as they battle their own personal demons while keeping the streets of Chicago safe from criminal activity. After the commercial break, procedurals (like soap operas) offer an exposition dump just in case you weren’t fully paying attention to the plot.

I’m not hating on procedurals for boasting a number of striking similarities to daytime soap operas (I’m a fan of the genre), but I think we’re lying to ourselves when we say they’re something entirely different. For any series to run for so long, they need to keep the audience interested, and throwing some drama into the mix while bringing back fan-favorite characters is an excellent way to market a show when its season count reaches double digits.

I’m just waiting for Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) to return to NCIS wearing an eye patch, acting as if he had never left.