For many Americans the phrase great soap opera--like a great Douglas Sirk movie--will always remain an oxymoron. Pity the unenlightened: melodramas, like cheap beers, are not created equally--there are Rolling Rocks in the sea of Schmidt's Lights. For many of its 26 years on air, All My Children has been one of TV's best soap operas, not only because it limns believably impassioned lovers and cruel, cruel villains and tantalizingly suspenseful story lines, but also because the writers and actors have always recognized the inherent absurdity of the genre in which they work. Susan Lucci may not deserve an Emmy for...
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