Soap opera rapid aging syndrome

Soap opera rapid aging syndrome (SORAS) is the practice of accelerating the age of a television or film character (usually a child or teenager) in conflict with the timeline of a series or the real-world progression of time. This allows, for instance, storylines around a pregnancy and birth to be relatively quickly followed by storylines around the travails of that child as a teenager or young adult. although in some cases the character is not shown onscreen, only mentioned, until after they have been "rapidly aged".

The process originated (and is most commonly used) in daytime soap operas, though it is also sometimes used in prime time shows. On sitcoms, a newborn infant character is sometimes aged quickly into a kindergartener, for greater comic potential, as was done with the character Chrissy Seaver on Growing Pains in 1990.

The term was coined by Soap Opera Weekly founding editor-in-chief Mimi Torchin in the early days of the magazine, which began publishing in 1989. It is now widely used with regard to the practice in soap operas and is sometimes used as a verb as well ("the character was SORASed"). Torchin has jokingly called it "my one greatest contribution to the world of soap operas." In As the World Turns, Tom Hughes was born onscreen in 1961. By 1970, he had been to college and fought in the Vietnam War. A 1993 secret history storyline on All My Children established that lead character Erica Kane had been raped immediately before the series' 1970 debut. In this retcon, Erica represses all memory of the assault until 16-year-old Kendall Hart, the child conceived during the rape and put up for adoption by Erica, appears in 1993.

Jersey Boys uses SORAS for Frankie Valli's daughter, Francine. Through the first three quarters of the musical and film, she ages in real time with the narrative, then jumps several years ahead while the story remains in the late 1960s, to the point that her 1980 death occurs at roughly the same time of the narrative as Valli's 1967 hit solo record "Can't Take My Eyes Off You".

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