Seven Deadly Daytime Sins

"I broke off with Mrs. Scott, God help me ... and her . . ."

"I'm frightened, Dr. Bauer ... so frightened . . ."

"I don't feel anything just now . . . except dead inside."

Such are the arias of soap operas, day in and day out, on daytime television, the last outpost of the knitting brow and the purling organ. Once, nighttime TV was the only phase of programming that interested sponsors and networks; today, television executives are laughing on the other side of their phases.

Daytime TV now reaches about 140 million women a week, women who are in the money--and in the market for detergents, beauty aids, foods, baby products and hundreds of other advertisable commodities. But the 25-inch screen offers them little more than sodden, sorrowful soap operas, plus situation-comedy reruns, game shows and old movies. Save for the sell, it might be 1956; except for the pictures, it could be 1936 and the heyday of daytime radio.

Relations & Romance. As in the old days, the housewife is bombarded with programs whose aim is to exploit at least five of the seven deadly sins. Avarice and gluttony are the main components of such game shows as Let's Make a Deal, where husbands and wives bicker as they try to guess the prices of lawn sprinklers and diet bread, and Supermarket Sweep, where grocery shelves are swept clean by tense men with shopping carts racing against a clock. Envy, too, is an important ingredient of the game-show recipe. The housewife who abandons diaper and vacuum cleaner to watch Jeopardy or You Don't Say! sits red-and green-eyed as other women--coifed and dressed in their finest at midday--win money and refrigerators and play charades ("lie, czar, rust . . . Lazarus!") with real, live, ever-popular, never-to-be-forgotten celebrities such as Alan King, Tom Poston, Morey Amsterdam, and what's-his-name.

But it is lust that wins the viewers' closest attention. Once the radio soap operas seemed as spotless as if they had been scrubbed down by the sponsor's product; now the TV actors seem to need their mouths washed out with it. The girl who wondered if her parents knew about her abortion used to be put off with a sigh; now she is told outright: "No, they think you have ruptured ovarian cysts." Confidential for Women presents melodramas of domestic relations out of Albee by Metalious. He: "I hope our daughter doesn't turn into a dried up, emasculating . . ." She: "Oh, shut up! If you don't like it, get out of here!" He: "For 23 years you've stripped the manhood right off of me, and I needed you." She: "Wanted, not needed!" Whereupon a "human relations specialist" instantly pops up before the cameras to analyze the situation as "a breakdown in communication and too much dependence on romance."

Fun & Games. For variety, the housewife can tune in on As the World Turns, the doyenne of daily dramas, where the actors still say "You mean . . ." and "It can't be true!" and regularly face death, disease, violence, alcoholism, attempted suicide, amnesia, rape, malpractice and child-custody suits. The viewer can be forgiven if she becomes a victim of another deadly sin--pride--at having a family who, no matter what their vagaries, must seem to be the epitome of middle-class morality compared to the atrocity-ridden citizens of World, Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, and Guiding Light.

All of which leaves daytime TV with only two sins untouched: wrath and sloth.

And as the shadows begin to lengthen on her lawn and the commercials for virile laundry detergents (Boost!, Blast!, Fist!, Kick!, Sneer!, Guts!) ricochet around the homemaker's uncleaned living room, sloth can easily be accounted for. As for wrath, that depends. Will she one day wax wroth when she suddenly realizes how many sunlit hours have been spent before the tube? Will she rise and turn off the set? Or is she trapped forever in the flickering world of vicarious fun and games, scandal and sex? Tune out tomorrow.

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