A View from a Soap Whore

Ok so I have been watching soaps from the womb basically. My earliest memories were watching Days of Our Lives with my mother, followed by The Young and the Restless with my metzmums (grandmas for those Armenian challenged). To top all that off, all four of us would sit down and watch The Bold and the Beautiful in the late afternoon. I grew up watching soaps. Soaps were, and still are, my only constant in life. I have lived and breathed soap opera and I am not ashamed to admit it.

It was watching soaps with my metzmums that I fully realised the power of soaps to engage with their viewers. These two elderly women knew next to nothing English and yet they would still be able to explain to their little enthusiastic granddaughter exactly what was going on just based on purely watching facial expressions. Dialogue aside, they could explain who was sleeping with who, who was carrying another persons baby, which character was blackmailing another...every plot point was explained in perfect detail. How is that possible? How is it possible for two women who knew no English to be able to understand a whole show and its characters. 


I see this as the universal language of soaps. The ability of soaps to reach all viewers, all people. Perhaps one could argue that when one is schooled on the history of soaps and has watched it for many many years, soap conventions become like a second language. My grandmothers knew no English, I barely knew Armenian, but they knew soap and they taught me soap (as did my mother but she knows English so it was a much easier with her, but I digress).

As a soap whore I know soap conventions. I speak soap. I understand what has to be done. No couple can be happy when on the show. It's boring. You have to mix it up. You have to give them challenges. These challenges are what bring them closer together, what bonds them forever, what makes them a supercouple. The ups and downs are so much more interesting to watch than happy sunshiney coupledom. It's these obstacles that hook us viewers into the storyline, that makes us form such attachments with these characters. 


I remember vividly those afternoons my mum would laugh at me when I would yell at the TV while watching Days. Damn Austin Reed, oh so hot and yet oh so dumb. I'd be yelling for him to get his head out of the sand and stop bowing down to Sami Brady's every wish and go be with his true love Carrie Brady, Sami's half-sister. And yet, I would never stop watching. No matter how much it hurt me to see the conniving duo of Sami and Lucas keep Austin and Carrie apart, I would watch faithfully every day. 


It is a part of the human condition to ship a couple or a character. I believe that. We cannot watch a film or TV show or even read a book and not support and rally for a character or couple to triumph. It is what it is. Don't try and fight it, just go with it. So no matter how much the direction of the storyline has pissed me off, I have always tuned in to see what happens. I have tuned in, but that does not mean I have not complained, yelled, fast forwarded or bitched about my show, its writers or its storylines. That is just what you do.

There are some people who say, "if you don't like what's happening on the show...don't watch it at all and don't come around bitching about it either!" To criticise does not mean that you do not support the show or a particular storyline. In fact, to even bother to write about it or talk about it means that you are an invested fan. Invested fans are what soaps rely on. Not all criticism should be taken as a sign that you are ready to give up the show. In fact, as fans of the show we must all do our duty to speak our minds, because essentially if you really think about it, nothing will ever change and you will never see the storylines you want to see if you don't speak up. If you don't complain, The Powers That Be (TPTB) will never know what you think about the direction they are taking with your beloved characters.

It is the very essence of soap to have angst and have fans talking about that angst. These ups and downs are what keep the fans enthralled and stop them from changing the channel. However, it is not fair to say that you as a viewer should just sit back, watch what happens and not have anything negative to say about it. As a soap whore I have seen many different couples come and go, many different soap conventions been done and redone ad nauseam. 


So for this soap whore to turn around and say "Hey Guiding Light, I think you made a wrong choice with this pregnancy scare for Otalia and really should consider digging your way out of this mess," it's a pretty big deal. I have seen this done before, but honestly, ask yourself...was it really necessary for Natalia to think she's pregnant? Is it worth the angst factor? I for one don't think so. Yes it is a classic soap convention, and if Olivia was an Oliver, then we'd have another round of 'Who's the Daddy?'. But folks, she's not. Do we really need a baby involved in any capacity to amp up the angst and to send Jessica Leccia on maternity leave? When is it time to stop this mess of a plot device and retcon?