‘What If’: ABC Takes a Crack at the Soap Opera Mashup

What would the old-time soap manufacturers who created the soap opera think of this newfangled thing called “the internet”? ABC is going to try to answer that question by airing a 10-episode web series that asks the question “what if characters from the three ABC Daytime series; General Hospital, All My Children, and One Life to Live; crossed over into each others series and interacted with one another?”

Beginning this July, this is exactly what is going to happen. Directed by One Life to Live executive producer Frank Valentini and airing on Soapnet.com and ABC.com, shorter versions of the episodes will also air on ABC and SOAPnet. This will be an interesting experiment on whether this will promote click-through to the longer episodes online.

The soap opera fan community has traditionally been extremely open to web series. The 1st Annual Indie Soap Awards honored several web dramas including Compulsions, Anyone But Me, and Buppies. Web series that feature soap stars end up with voraciously loyal fans, such as Poor Paul has experienced with having Kevin G. Schmidt (Noah Newman on The Young & The Restless) a part of the series, not only as an actor, but as a writer, producer, and director.

Clearly it’s no surprise that ABC would be willing to take on this ambitious crossover experiment. According to Soapnet.com, the following are the pairings soap fans will get a chance to experience:

All My Children‘s Greenlee Smythe (Rebecca Budig) and General Hospital‘s Jason Morgan (Steve Burton)

General Hospital‘s Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) and One Life to Live‘s Viki Banks (Erika Slezak).

All My Children‘s Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) and General Hospital‘s Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard).

All My Children‘s Ryan Lavery (Cameron Mathison) and General Hospital‘s Carly Jacks (Laura Wright).

One Life to Live‘s Tess (Bree Williamson) and General Hospital‘s Dante Falconeri (Dominic Zamprogna)

One Life to Live‘s Todd Manning (Trevor St. John) and General Hospital‘s Damian Spinelli (Bradford Anderson)

General Hospital‘s Maxie Jones (Kirsten Storms) and One Life to Live‘s Rex Balsom (John- Paul Lavoisier)

All My Children‘s Angie and Jesse Hubbard (Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams) and One Life to Live‘s Starr Manning (Kristen Alderson)

One Life to Live‘s Blair Cramer (Kassie DePaiva) and All My Children‘s Tad Martin (Michael E. Knight)

One Life to Live‘s John McBain (Michael Easton) and General Hospital‘s Sam McCall (Kelly Monaco)

Personally, I want to see Erica Kane and Sonny Corinthos meet in a Laundromat, where they will discuss their sordid pasts over frozen yogurt and then inexplicitly break out into song, but that’s just me. Share your dream soap opera star mashup situations in the comments below.