Confessions of a Former Soap-aholic

When I was a little kid, my brother and I were babysat regularly by a teenager who lived on our street named Cheryl.  Cheryl was actually only about 5 years older than me, but when you're 10 and she's 15 it's a pretty decent difference in maturity level.  Between Cheryl and her older sister Connie, their family provided babysitting duties for our family for quite a large chunk of my childhood.  My parents divorced when I was 7, forcing my mom into the undesirable territory of single mom-hood, and the necessity of good after school babysitter became quite apparent by that point.  Cheryl filled the role quite nicely and dutifully.

When I was 10, I started to weasel my way into watching daytime soaps with Cheryl, her mom, and sometimes our other neighbor friend, at Cheryl's family's house.  Before that I had never been allowed to watch soaps at all, and had always been pushed out of the room whenever anyone (Cheryl or otherwise) had them on the t.v.  But I guess by the time I was 10, they started to get sick of telling me "no" all the time when I would beg and beg them, and they eventually kinda gave in and let me start hanging out while they were watching them.  Specifically the two soaps they were into were General Hospital and Days of Our Lives.  I never got super into General Hospital, but Days of Our Lives quickly became a daily obsession for me.  That may have had to do with the fact that it was on later than most of the others: 3pm.  I think the key was that it may have been on just late enough that I was able to regularly catch some of it when I would get home from school.  Though I honestly don't recall if my regular soap watching started during the school year or the summertime.

Anyway it didn't take long for me to become hooked like crack.  I was quickly sucked into the world of romance (and probably more simulated t.v. sex than I should have been watching as a 10 year-old), danger, and high-octane melodrama.  This was during the days of the classic 80's Days couples: Marlena and Roman, Bo and Hope, Jack and Jennifer (and before that I think it was Frankie and Jennifer?), and my original favorite couple: Patch (Steve) and Kayla.  The combination of Steve's eye-patch and glorious late-80's mullet made him quite the dreamboat.  I don't remember much about Kayla but I do remember her storyline being dramatic enough that I was super into both of these two as a couple.

Later, I got into Jack and Jennifer, Carrie and Austin, etc.  I watched Days pretty religiously for an entire decade of my life - from the ages of 10 to 20.  Now, this was before the days of TiVo, and using VHS tapes to record stuff every day was a pain in the ass, so during the schoolyear, I wasn't able to watch very much (and once I was in jr. high, school didn't even get out till 4pm).  But every single summer I would go back to watching it daily, and catch up on everything I had missed over the schoolyear.  I remember getting hooked on it hard enough that I was extremely stressed out one summer when I was 14 and we took a big family road trip vacay through several states over a couple-week period, including a visit to the Grand Canyon, and I realized that during this vacay, I was going to be missing a VERY riveting plotline on Days.  I seem to recall it involving some sort of yacht or cruise ship accident (a bomb maybe?) and Jack and Jennifer then being stranded on an island somewhere.  Exciting!!  I think all I could do was to try to catch it whenever I could at whatever little motel room we were staying in each day, but I can't imagine that was very successful given that we were out doing things in the middle of the day every single day.  It was terrible - I was like a heroin addict being forced through detox, and it gave me the shakes.

By the time I was in college, the storylines on Days got too ridiculous even for me to be able to handle.  Once Marlena got possessed by the devil, that was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for me, and I swore it off for good.  Though I did end up watching Another World for a year or so after that because I got into a couple on that show (Josie and Gary).  Then that storyline must have fizzled out pretty fast because I stopped watching that by like 1997, and it got canceled not too long after.

Anywho, all of this is to basically say that to this day, I have a theory that my soap obsession during my formative years has turned me into a bit of a sucker for t.v. storylines with a little teeny bit of a "soapy" twist to them, even as an adult.  Look, I don't want anything TOO ridiculous, don't get me wrong.  I don't watch crap like Desperate Housewives or even Grey's Anatomy, which I've always found to be cheesy and terrible whenever I've seen episodes of it.  I need my t.v. shows to be quality entertainment, BUT ... throw in a little twist of some slight melodrama, a wacky plot, or a "will-they-won't-they" romance, and it's not gonna be incredibly hard to reel me in hook line and sinker as long as I really like the characters and the actors.

And when it comes to romance storylines ("will-they-won't-they" or otherwise), if you REALLY want to get me, add in a splash of DANGER for the characters.  Put them in peril and ratchet that drama up by an extra thousand degrees, and I am yours for the long haul.  Hence my love for the aforementioned Jack/Jennifer boat accident storyline.  Don't get me wrong, the danger element is not a must by any means, but it will often elevate me from "I love this show" status to "I am obsessed with this show to an unhealthy degree" status.  I'm not even entirely sure if I can blame my early soap exposure for this either, because it could just be that I already had this in me, and watching soaps simply made me realize it early on.  It's a chicken and egg situation, and I'm not sure which came first.

One example of a fairly well-respected show (a non-soap) that did quite a good job of incorporating wacky and slightly soapy plotlines into the show without losing its overall quality and charm was The Practice.  Well, I should say that they were successful at this for the first 3 or 4 seasons.  The show went downhill after that and I stopped watching.  I haven't watched a David E. Kelly show in over a decade, but he was kind of a master at this craft in the 90's and early 2000's.  He was able to walk that fine line of using some campy storylines while still keeping other essential elements of his shows true to real life and very relatable for the audience.  One of my favorite story arcs on The Practice was the one involving a psycho nun-killer who Lindsay won an acquittal for even though he was guilty, another psycho dude who was obsessed with Ellenor, and a dude dressed up as a nun stabbing Lindsay almost to death.  Then the characters had to figure out who tried to kill Lindsay and why.  Oh and I think Bobby proposed marriage to Lindsay at some point in there too, so the romance angle was present too.  Sounds pretty damn wacky right?  Somehow they managed to pull it off with just enough camp to be fun but not so much that it overwhelmed the story.

Now, with that said, the thing that got me thinking about my soapy past was that one of the current t.v. shows I watch just finished its season with a great romantic ending for the "will-they-won't-they" couple amidst some possibly slightly soapy or cliche storylines.  I'm actually kind of conflicted because the show itself has some pretty significant weaknesses, and yet I love the "couple" on the show so much that I tend to forgive all its other problems (which I probably shouldn't, but I can't help it).  So I was thinking that I would do a list of my favorite TV romances and examine/rate the romance storyline, the show itself, and whether there were any soapy elements present to affect my opinion.  Then we'll see how they all stack up.  This blog entry will be way too long if I try to do that in this post, so I will do a separate post for each.  So lookout for the first one of those in the next post (I say this to all my loyal readers, who include me, me, and me, and occasionally my husband).  Try to avoid dying from desperate anticipation in the meantime.