Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
SORAS or Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome (less commonly called simply rapid aging) is a term for when an infant or young child in a soap opera is aged very quickly by the writers. It is nearly always done by recasting the role after the character has been absent for a number of weeks, months or years, with the new actor of the age the character has been SORASed to. This is done to permit an older actor to portray the character and to involve the character in different - usually more adult - storylines.
The term was coined by Soap Opera Weekly founding editor in chief Mimi Torchin in the early 1990s.
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[edit] History
In the early days of the soap opera it was not uncommon to age a character right into his or her 20s; for example, this happened to the character of Tom Hughes on As the World Turns in the late 1960s. One day he was a preteen, and the next he was shipped off to Vietnam. (This caused the actress playing Tom's mother, Eileen Fulton, who was then only in her late 30s, to have it written into her contract that her character could never become a grandmother; a noteworthy by-product of this is parents of SORASed characters -- often portrayed by actors in their late 30s or early 40s -- becoming grandparents or even great grandparents.) However, in the past few decades as soap producers have introduced more and more teenagers into soaps in order to attract the lucrative teen audience, it is now common practice to only age a character into the mid teens, with 15 and 16 being the most common ages that a character will be "SORASed" to. Eight-year-old Sami Brady on Days of Our Lives was aged to a 15-year-old when she was reintroduced in early 1993 (played by 16-year-old Alison Sweeney).
Some child characters literally mature faster than others. For example, Billy Abbott on The Young and the Restless was born on the show in 1993, yet was 16 years old by 1999 (played by 21-year-old David Tom), while his niece Colleen Carlton (born 1991) was only 14 years old in 2001 (played by 14-year-old Lyndsy Fonseca), meaning that Billy had changed from being two years younger than his niece to being four years older. Perhaps the character with the biggest impact is Nicholas Newman. He was born at the end of 1988 and was sent off to a "Swiss boarding school" as a preschooler, only to return as a late teens/early 20s grown man only a few years later in 1994, and has since been featured as a prominent character. On the other hand, Phillip Chancellor IV, a child born several months prior to Nicholas remained at his real age until he was finally aged in 2000. Phillip however, was only aged by about two years.
On All My Children, Erica Kane's daughter Kendall Hart was retconned/SORASed at the demand of fans. When Kendall (played by 16-year-old Sarah Michelle Gellar) arrived in Pine Valley in 1993, she was a waifish teen, despite the fact that she was the result of Erica's rape at the age of 14, before the show even began in 1970, 23 years earlier. Fans protested, and so the show's producers immediately aged Kendall to "over 21".
On Guiding Light, Rick Bauer and Mel Boudreau's daughter Leah was born on-screen in 2004 but at the apparent age of 18 months was sent to boarding school in Switzerland and was brought back on screen 6 months later in 2006 having been aged to 14. This posed a serious problem with fans who not only remember Leah being born on screen 28 months earlier but had to suspend disbelief that Leah is now 10 years older than her "older" half-brother Jude, who was born in 2001 and is only 5 years old on the show. Subsequently, the character of Leah to only be shown on screen 3 times in three months.
On One Life to Live, Rex Balsom was introduced in 2002 as 17-year-old high school senior. By early 2006, he was aged to 26-years-old for the sake of his character being able to be a potential candidate in the storyline involving Dr. Paige Miller and the search for her long lost son whom she had given up twenty-six years prior.
On Passions Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald gave birth to Ethan Martin "Little Ethan" Crane on June 21, 2002. Over the next three years, Little Ethan would be aged to approximately 9 years old.
On EastEnders, two original characters, Ethel Skinner and Ian Beale have both been aged two years.
Very rarely, there are cases of SORAS in which a character's age is accelerated to be older than the actor or actress playing the role. An example is on Days of our Lives, when the character of Abby Deveraux was SORASed from eleven to 17-years-old and the role was recast with Ashley Benson. When she took over the role in November 2004, however, she was only one month shy of her 15th birthday. The character of Abby remains to be two years older than Benson is in real life.
One of the few American soap children allowed to age in real time was Patti Barron Tate on Search for Tomorrow, first played from 1951 to 1961 by Lynn Loring. Her character did not have any jumps in age from the first episode until the last (in 1986). Another was Amy Ames Brittain on The Secret Storm, played from 1954 to 1974 by Jada Rowland (although she was off the show from 1971 to 1973). Her character was eleven years old when the show debuted and thirty-one when the show ended.
[edit] Beyond Soap Operas
Rapid aging also occurs in other television genres, especially in situation comedy and science fiction series, usually to age an infant character to a four or five year old to allow a greater range of storylines involving the child. This transformation often occurs between seasons.
[edit] SORAS on other series
The phenomenon of SORASing can also apply to other television series, usually sitcoms, usually the rapid aging of babies to kindergarten age. However, since presumably the time-space continuum of television sitcoms and possibly dramas are close to that of the timeline in real life although not often acknowleged, the rapid aging of young characters causes discrepancies in character histories.
In certain television series, pregnancy and the birth of children become part of plotlines because the pregnancy was written into the script either to use for creative interest or rarely, because an actress was pregnant in real life. After awhile, however, babies are of minor comedic interest or little dramatic interest and often re-integrated into the plot the next season with someone a few years older than when the character was originally born. However, rapid aging can also occur with older children.
The following are a list of television series whose characters have aged rapidly:
- Boy Meets World: One of the show's many continuity problems revolve around the characters' ages. In the first season, Cory (Ben Savage), Shawn (Rider Strong), Topanga (Danielle Fishel) and the rest of their classmates are in 6th grade, around 11 to 12-years-old (though Shawn was a year and a half older) at Jefferson Elementary School while Eric was four years older at age 15 in 10th grade at John Adams High School. By the third season, however, Eric is a senior but no grade is given for Cory, Shawn or Topanga, but Cory and Topanga claim to be 14 and Shawn says he is 15. Cory and Eric's age difference decreased to three years. In the fourth season, they've skipped to 11th grade at age 16 and the Cory/Eric age difference gets reduced to two years. The ages stayed consistent for the rest of the series, but they spend four years in what should be a six year high school.
- At the beginning of the series, Morgan is five years old and is played by Lily Nicksay. By the middle of the second season, however, Morgan suddenly disappears and doesn't return until near the end of the third season, now age 10 and played by Lindsay Ridgeway. For the rest of the series, Morgan's age stays consistent.
- Family Matters: Richie, Rachel's (Telma Hopkins) son was an infant when the series began in 1989 and was played by twins Joseph and Julius Wright. By the show's second season, however, Richie wound up going from being an infant to being 5 years old (played by Bryton). The character's age stayed consistent until the show's seventh season when Richie was noticeably absent from the series.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Nicky Banks was born in early 1993 in an episode titled "The Baby Comes Out". The character was aged a few months by the fourth season and by the fifth season, the unknown child/children who played Nicky were soon replaced with Ross Bagley and Nicky was aged to five years old, as mentioned in a few season six episodes.
- Ashley Banks (Tatyana Ali) was nine years old in the early part of the first season. By the end of the third season, the writers sped up Ashley's age as Tatyana grew up during the season. In the second-to-last episode of season one "Just Infatuation", Ashley turned 12. In the second season premiere "Did The Earth Move For You?", however, Ashley aged one year over between the end of season one and the beginning of season two. Ashley's age remained the same until season four when it was revealed that she was 14. In season five's "It's A Wonderful Lie", Ashley was 15, but in season six's "I, Stank Horse", it is implied that Ashley is 17. In the episode, Philip asks Vivian to tell Ashley that she is too young to move to New York to attend a performing arts school, which Vivian responds saying "I moved out of the horse when I was 17" (Vivian was shocked to see a horse Hilary and Carlton brought home which explains why she said "horse" when she meant "house"). So in the six years that the show was on, Ashley aged seven years.
- Growing Pains: Chrissy Seaver was born on the show in early 1989. Much like Nicky on The Fresh Prince, Chrissy remained a toddler for the remainder of the season when she was born and the season after. However, in 1991, Chrissy was rapidly aged to five and the twins who played her (Kiersten and Kelsey Dohring) were replaced with Ashley Johnson.
- The OC: Marissa had a 10-year-old sister in the first season, but with few lines and a very minor role. After having disappeared in the second season, although referenced, the younger sister returned in the third season and aged to fifteen with Willa Holland taking over the role.
- Family Ties: The character of Andrew Keaton underwent rapid aging.
- Star Trek: Voyager: the character of Naomi Wildman rapidly ages from infancy to preadolescence, however in this case the rapid aging is explained as a genetic trait from interspecies parents. On the other hand, no explanation is given for the rapid aging of Molly O'Brien between her birth in the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and her in the following year of that show and on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where the character (played by Hana Hatae) is already several years old. Further, Worf's son Alexander was born on Next Generation in 2366, yet he appears as a young adult/late teenager in 2374 on Deep Space Nine, as a young recruit serving in the Klingon military (he'd be only 8 years old, though this could be loosely explained away by saying that Klingons age faster).
- Degrassi Junior High: Spike Nelson gave birth to Emma Nelson between the second and third seasons. By Degrassi High, Emma also rapidly aged into a toddler. However, by Degrassi: The Next Generation, the rapid aging seemed to have not happened.
- The 4400: At the end of season two of, the character of Isabelle (as of season three played by Megalyn Echikunwoke) instantly aged from an infant to a young woman approximately twenty years old.
- Angel: Angel's infant son Connor gets kidnapped to a demon dimension, only to return as a teenager later that season. This was explained as due to time running differently between the two dimensions.
[edit] Internationally
SORAS was traditionally not widely utilised on British soaps with their purported realist tone. In recent years UK soaps have increasingly begun to age its younger characters to their teenage years or for storyline purposes. This ocurred with Ian Beale on EastEnders who gained an extra year so that his character would be more mature in a plot involving his discovery that his wife was cheating on him and that his child was not his. His original birth year was 1970 and he celebrated his 18th Birthday in 1988, but this was subsequently changed to 1969 and he celebrated his 21st in 1990. Coronation Street has also used SORAS for storyline purposes, with the character of Mark Redman being aged by two years so that he could attend the school where his father Mike Baldwin's worst enemy Ken Barlow was a teacher. However, SORAising someone's appearance but not age is often done. The most famous example being in Coronation Street; Sarah Platt's actress aged physically quickly from Lyndsey King's younger looking preteen to Tina O'Brien's teenager needed for the plot that Sarah would become pregnant at 13. Rosie and Sophie Webster also changed to older-looking actresses. In Emmerdale in 2006 when the character of Victoria Sugden returned from Spain she was portrayed by a new actor and the character was aged allowing her involvement in adult-oriented storylines. Victoria's brother Robert had also been aged.
Australian soaps have recently begun the trend of SORASing characters for storyline purposes, although like their British counterparts they usually only age characters by two or three years as opposed to the five plus years that is quite common in American soaps. For example, in 1999, the character of Duncan Stewart on Home and Away was aged by two years. Recently, Duncan's niece Martha (who was a year older than Duncan) returned to the show. She too was aged, having originally been born in 1988, but coming back as an 18 year old in early 2005. 2005 also saw the arrival of Lucinda 'Elle' Robinson on Neighbours, who was now a 19 year old, even though her character would really have only been 16 in real time (while Elle was not born on the show, her mother Gail left the show pregnant with her and her siblings in 1989).
A few other Neighbours characters also had small leaps in age. Summer Hoyland (Marisa Siketa) went from being 10 years old in 2003 to being 14 years old in 2005, and Jack Scully (Jay Bunyan) who was about 23 or 24 when he arrived in 2002, was said to be 21 years old in 2004. However these small jumps are probably due to scripting or continuity errors and do not seem to be deliberate attempts to age the characters, and these cases have not featured the character being recast with a much older actor.
[edit] "de-SORAS"
A similar fan term, de-SORAS, occurs when writers make a character younger. One character that has been "de-SORASed" is Erica Kane on All My Children. When the show debuted in 1970, Erica's date of birth was 1954. In 1993, it was changed to 1956. And in 2002, the year was changed again to 1962. Actress Susan Lucci, who plays Erica, was born in 1946.
The General Hospital character Justus Ward has been de-SORASed as well. The role was originated in 1994 by former Cosby Show actor Joseph C. Phillips, born in 1962. Monti Sharp, born in 1967, assumed the role in 1998. In 2003, the role went to M'fundo Morrison. Morrison was born in 1974. Thus, if it is assumed that the character's age and the actor's age are approximately the same, then Justus has de-aged twelve years since first appearing on GH. Justus was later killed off by a mobster in 2006.
On One Life to Live; in the early 1990s, Rachel Gannon was said to be the same age as her college peers: Kevin Buchanan, Todd Manning, and Marty Saybrooke--all noted to have been born in 1970. In 1996, however, Rachel (now interacting less with the aforementioned characters) was noted to be twenty-one years old.
In 2005 on As the World Turns, the character of Carly Tenney Snyder, then assumed to be in her mid-thirties (portrayed by then 33-year-old actress Maura West) was revealed to be the half-sister of 17-year old Gwen Norbeck (portrayed by then 22-year-old Jennifer Landon). The storyline suggested that Carly was around seven years old when Gwen was born, thus making her 25. This now meant that when Carly's son Parker was born in 1997 (by which time, she'd already been married three times, and had given birth to a stillborn daughter), she was only 16.
A minor example of this occurred in the prime-time soaps The O.C. and Beverly Hills 90210 when the characters, who in the first seasons were implied to be juniors in high school, were allowed to spend an additional two years in high school.
From the '70s through the '90s, the character Mike Horton on Days of our Lives repeatedly returned to the show as a young man in his twenties. Even though he was born on the show in 1968, and had been married in the '70s, he and Carrie Brady (introduced as a child in the '80s) later supposedly grew up together as children.
An unusual de-SORAS occurrance happened when General Hospital's Maxie Jones was SORASed from a 16-year-old played by Robyn Richards to a woman in her early twenties. The change was so unpopular and criticized by fans and press (partly due to unliking the new actress and partly due to the fact that Richards had portrayed Maxie since childhood and through a very memorable heart transplant storyline) that GH de-SORASed Maxie back to her high school age and re-hired Richards.
Prime-time soap Knots Landing halted the clock on one character, Jason Avery, son of Laura and Richard Avery. Originally played by Justin Dana, Jason began as contemporary of Olivia Cunningham (played by Tonya Crowe). Recast with a succession of younger actors, Jason remained a child as Olivia grew into her teens and adulthood.
