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Famous long-running Soap Opera on TV which first began airing in 1956 and finally ended in 2010. It takes place in the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois. It mainly focuses on the Snyder and the Hughes families. Groundbreaking in that it featured the first American daytime male same-sex kiss and gay supercouple.
Tropes used in As the World Turns include:
- Abusive Parents:
- It has never been confirmed that Reid is from Texas, only that he lived and worked there. Fandom seems to have decided that Reid is from Boston.
- And Starring: Eileen Fulton as Lisa
- Armoured Closet Gay: Noah, initially.
- Ascended Extra: Katie, Vienna and Henry for starters.
- Jennifer Landon's Gwen was supposed to be a one episode character. She impressed producers so much that she was signed to a long-term contract, and went on to win three consecutive Daytime Emmys.
- Back From the Dead: James Stenback does this a lot.
- Batman Gambit: Often used to explain how somebody came back from the dead.
- Big Screwed-Up Family
- Black Comedy Rape / Double Standard Rape (Female on Male) / Rape as Drama: When a crazed Julia kidnapped her ex-husband Jack, held him prisoner, and eventually forced him to have sex with her (she wanted to get pregnant to replace the baby she's miscarried), the scenes were initially played as dark comedy, something that would never have happened had the genders been reversed. However, the scenes took a much uglier tone when she tried to kill him afterwards, and when he later revealed what had happened to his fiancee, she reacted with horror and sympathy and never once blamed him or insinuated that he was a willing participant.
- When Vienna may have done this to Henry, it's Played for Laughs.
- Bury Your Gays: Reid and Reg.
- But Not Too Gay: Noah and Luke actually had a fan instituted countdown in between their kisses. They went 211 days in between two kisses and it took them 514 days from their first meeting to get their first love scene. This is unusual, particularly in the Soap Opera media where romance and love scenes happen frequently.
- Luke and Reid never even got to have sex.
- Butt Monkey: Henry, so much.
- Camp Straight: Henry.
- Closet Key: Luke to Noah.
- Coming Out Story
- Continuity Nod: Done often usually involving milestones.
- Cool Old Guy: Bob.
- Cool Old Lady: Nancy full stop.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Lucinda, Dusty, Craig.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Luke as one for Reid, for example.
- Die for Our Ship: The Noah/Luke/Reid love triangle. Literally.
- Dr. Jerk: Reid does care deeply for his patients, but anyone who watched the scene where he was going on about how awesome a woman having a rare something was because he got to show his genius by performing a extremely experimental procedure, only blithely acknowledging that his failure would be worse for her (as in, she would either be a vegetable or dead) than it would be for him can be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
- Dysfunction Junction
- Elevator Failure: It is a Soap Opera, after all.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Katie was in on Vienna's plan to trap Henry into marrying her (Vienna). She drew the line at faking a miscarriage.
- Fan Sequel: The Reid Oliver Cartoon Saga.
- Which the actor playing Reid is aware of and has said he enjoys.
- Gay Aesop: Subverted in that the person who learned the aesop was the on who left the show as opposed to the gay person.
- Genre Savvy: Occasionally characters do seem to be aware they're in a bizarre, abnormal soap world, but that doesn't seem to stop the plot from getting the better of them.
- Happily Married: Tom and Margo. Kim and Bob, too.
- Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?
- Hide Your Gays
- Hospital Hottie
- Insufferable Genius: Reid.
- Invisible to Gaydar
- Jerkass Woobie: Reid fits this one to a T.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Reid.
- Karma Houdini: Craig.
- Killed Off for Real: Usually only happens when the actor died.
- Kissing Discretion Shot: Mostly done concerning Luke and Noah.
- Lampshade Hanging: One of Reid's best contributions to the show.
- Littlest Cancer Patient
- Loads and Loads of Characters
- Long Runner: It was on the air for 54 years.
- Love Dodecahedron
- Love Makes You Crazy
- Love Makes You Dumb: In particular, Lily Snyder and her son Luke spring to mind but they aren't the only ones.
- Love Makes You Evil
- Mama Bear: Lucinda, although she seems to handle things better when her grandchildren are involved rather than her children; many argue that Lily being so screwed up is due to Lucinda herself.
- Married to the Job
- Mistaken for Gay: Paul and Henry. Made all the more hilarious by the fact that they were in a lingerie store.
- Monochrome Casting: After Bonnie left the cast was all white.
- Morality Pet: Luke is the Morality Pet for Reid in a MAJOR way
- No Bisexuals
- Nobody Thinks It Will Work
- No One Could Have Survived That
- Not Quite Dead
- Offing the Offspring
- One True Pairing: Luke/Noah, Carly/Jack, Holden/Lily, and other Super-Couples.
- Only Sane Man: It seems generally agreed upon that Reid is an example of what would happen if a real person were ever to enter a soap opera.
- Pair the Spares: Done when the show ended.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Nancy was supposed to play a much larger role in Chris's transplant storyline but her actress (Helen Wagner) died.
- Retcon: Tends to happen when Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome is involved.
- Screaming Birth
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money
- Slap Slap Kiss: Reid and Luke.
- Smug Snake: Craig, Lucinda.
- Soap Opera
- Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome
- Stalker with a Crush: Craig toward Carly.
- Tangled Family Tree: Even by soap opera standards, the Snyder family is something to behold. One example: Super Couple Holden and Lily also uncle and niece because Lily is the daughter of Holden's adopted sister Iva, who was raped by an adopted Snyder cousin who later married Holden's bio sister Meg. Keep in mind there are six Snyder siblings.
- TV Genius: Reid.
- Undercover As Lovers: Luke and Casey, Ameera and Noah.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension
- We Interrupt This Program: The first bulletins about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy occurred during the As the World Turns telecast on November 22, 1963. Walter Cronkite broke in with the first (audio-only) bulletin as Nancy was telling Grandpa Hughes about Bob's inviting his ex, Lisa, to the family's Thanksgiving dinner. The actors were completely unaware of the news until after the second commercial break, when the rest of that day's episode was canceled and the CBS network went to continuous news coverage.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist
- What the Hell, Hero?: Everybody has been called out for something at some point.
- Why Couldn't You Be Different?
- Won it Playing Cards: How Henry came into ownership of Al's Diner.
- You Fail Your Medical Boards Forever:
- Antibiotics are useless against a viral infection.
- Noah's entire surgery and recovery. They didn't even shave his head.
- Dusty had that same problem.
- Reid (a gay man) donating his heart to Chris.