Trying to Explain is a Waste of Time

My Soap Opera Addiction

            “You sound like my father.” That was enough to shut him up. My husband hates being compared to my father.  But really, he sounded just like him. Dad’s favorite thing to say to me when I sit down to watch my soaps is, “How can an educated, intelligent woman sit still for such tripe?” Shawn had just said much the same thing to me.  My usual response is, “Because I like them.”

            And that’s what it all comes down to, basically. I’ve tried explaining that they are like novels that never end and that continually introduce new characters.  I’ve tried explaining that they make me laugh with their ridiculousness at times. I’ve tried explaining that they are my “down time” during the day, when I can just be mindless and I don’t have to be smart or “on” (that one never works because everyone who knows me knows that I expend a great deal of mental energy analyzing the storylines and character development. And since I’ve published before on the soaps, that argument doesn’t usually go over very well.) After nearly 40 years of watching these perpetual novels, though, I have given up trying to explain it to those around me who do not understand. I now simply say, “I’m watching. Deal with it.”

            I know all the marks against them. I know that their storylines can be downright ridiculous. I know that the characters are often baffling, and that the acting is sometimes really bad. I once made a list of those things that drive away the Disbelievers, those unschooled in and/or unaccepting of the vagaries of Soap Opera Land, or those who simply reject the basic premise of the genre:

• Convenient attacks of amnesia, and recoveries timed to coincide with ratings “sweeps” periods;
• Melodramatic death scenes, often that are over-the-top; also, many, many (some would say too many) instances of characters who disappear after an accident, are declared dead, and return later (usually after Pilot Season in Los Angeles is over);
• Convenient moments of eavesdropping,  hearing the absolute wrong thing, and then acting on misinformation that often leads to misunderstandings (at best) or tragedy (at worst);
• Dramatic pauses, timed for commercial breaks or weekends;
• Weddings interrupted at the altar with last-minute confessions;
• Constant paternity questions; often, on a single soap, there might be no child ever born who was conceived of two parents, AFTER marriage, who loved each other and were in an exclusive, loving, supportive relationship;
• Constant near-confessions, followed by , first, a commercial break, then an interruption (phone, doorbell, whatever), then, a change of heart and lame-sounding (to everyone except the person on the screen listening) excuse to cover up and mislead;
•  Lies, lies, and more lies (no one in Soap Opera Land every tells the truth the first time);
•  Character who “die,” only to return later (no one ever really dies in Soap Opera Land). This is separate from the annoyance described above about unrecovered bodies because when the story was actually written, the character really dies; many years and change of head writers later, though, and the character is mysteriously brought back to life for another round of shenanigans;
•  And time that stretches and changes to accommodate a storyline; for example, a pregnancy that lasts for months, or a school year that begins in October (this one was famously spoofed by that wonderful satire from the late 70s/early 80s, Soap).

My friend Robin and I began calling it Soap Opera Land to distinguish it from reality. Things happen there that are not possible in Real Life. Soap Opera Land is a place where the Physical Properties of the Universe Hold No Sway.  (We did the same thing for watching “Star Trek,” only we called it “Definitions,” such as,  a “Class M planet” means: “Looks like California.”)  In order to watch and actually enjoy soap operas, therefore, one must have no qualms or hesitations about indulging in a healthy dose of what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the “willing suspension of disbelief.” Men in general (who are represented here by my husband and my father) and all those other non-believers out there are missing this key ingredient, without which it is impossible to enjoy the genre. 

Next time: My evaluation of the re-booted ABC soaps, All My Children and One Life to Life, in their new incarnations as online-only shows.