When you consider the definition of soap opera-- "A drama characterized by stock characters and situations, sentimentality, and melodrama"—plenty of admirable movies come to mind, including Oscar winners from the very first, "Seventh Heaven," through "Rebecca," "The Greatest Show on Earth," and "Kramer versus Kramer" to recent movies like "Chicago" and "Crash." "Peyton Place" is certainly a soap opera, but not an admirable film. <br /><br />The litany of flaws would take more than the 1,000 words IMDb allows, and anyway I'd use up every synonym for mundane, including conventional and corny. The characters are so uniformly muttonheaded that I inferred extensive inbreeding in Peyton Place. The cockeyed motivations of two particular characters-- actually, make that four-- serve as proof: <br /><br />First: Selena Cross is facing trial for murdering Lucas Cross, her sexually abusive stepfather. She begs Dr. Swain not to come to her defense by testifying that she had miscarried Cross's child years before. Her reason? She's in love with a soldier named Ted, and believes Ted's life would be ruined if her secret were revealed. She argues (get this) that she'd rather face life in prison than live without Ted. And Dr. Swain, as dim-witted a practitioner as I ever hope to encounter, doesn't think to point out that life in prison is also (duh) life without Ted.<br /><br />Second: Allison MacKenzie wants to be a novelist. She shows some short stories to the high school principal. He likes them but with reservations, so he wisely recommends college. But she doesn't want to go to college. She doesn't want to read stuff like Shakespeare. She wants to find out about writing for herself, at a typewriter. Her passion convinces him, so he takes her to the newspaper editor. Who hires her. So make that five cockeyed characters.<br /><br />So Allison goes on to write crap like "Peyton Place." The End.