That's right. At least 20-24 minutes of commercials, the rest for asinine flashbacks.
You know what else is 29 minutes long? That's right, EastEnders. Which doesn't, as you may have gathered, use dozens of useless flashbacks.
American soap producers seriously must think their audiences are the daftest folk, or they employ the use of the flashbacks so that they don't have to produce as much original material. Either way, it's rubbish.
Oh, and a conversation that would take about a minute to work itself out on EastEnders or even Corrie would take about six minutes on Days because... have I mentioned American producers think the audience is daft? Everything is overexplained.