30 Days of TV: Day Seven

Least Favourite Episode of My Favourite TV Show

Days of Our Lives (2009)

Chloe and Daniel

Two years ago these two turned me off of the show for a long while. Dr. Daniel Jones is basically a manwhore, having slept with all three women featured in the video above (the first two being a grandmother and her granddaughter). Chloe Lane is one of the biggest sluts in town, having cheated on both of her last two husbands. Seriously lady...pick a man and stick by him! They've all been wonderful to you, so what's your complaint?

Watching these two suck face day after day disgusted me to no end. It felt dirty...and not in the good kind either (as opposed to watching EJ DiMera and Sami Brady). EJ and Sami are like that extra piece of chocolate cake sitting right in front of you after dinner. It's so bad for you...but you can't resist it. Daniel and Chloe? Like that disgusting feeling you get when you haven't washed your hair for a week. 

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30 Days of TV: Day Six

Favourite Episode of My Favourite Show

Days of Our Lives (1995)
Dr. Marlena Evans: Possessed by the Devil

Now the problem with soap operas are that one story usually lasts anywhere between six months to a year, depending on its popularity and the ripple effect it causes throughout the show. So with my next two posts it seems more fitting to be focusing on my favourite story on my favourite show, rather than just a single episode.

I remember being glued to the TV when Marlena Evans was possessed by the Devil. It had never been done before in soap opera history and Deidre Hall was magnificent! She was the perfect actress for the role and watching her slip in and out of being possessed was chilling. At the time her soul mate John Black was a priest and he was there for her every step of the way, eventually performing the exorcism that saved her. 

The funky eyes. The deep booming voice. The evil laughter. Everything about it was groundbreaking and seriously edge of your seat stuff. It was a risky move by the show, but head writer at the time, James E. Reilly, was a renowned for his often wacky stories and used this to boost the ratings of the struggling show. 

Marlena being possessed epitomised the classic early to mid 1990s under Reilly. Another popular, yet highly controversial story was the insanely good "Carly Buried Alive" story in 1993, which is in my Top 3 best stories on Days of Our Lives. 

But that's for another time...

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30 Days of TV: Day Four

My Favourite Show Ever

Days of Our Lives

 

As you might have already noticed, I love me some soap operas! Far and away Days of Our Lives, DOOL as it is affectionately called, is my absolute favourite of all the soap operas I follow. In my household, it's always been called Roozaia Zendegi, and it was watched every day without fail. Mum would get so cranky when I would forget to tape DOOL and The Bold and the Beautiful, which, let's be honest, was quite often.

Days of Our Lives holds a special place in my heart because I've grown up watching the show and it's characters have been a constant in my life since I was in the womb. I love good soap and, for the most part, DOOL has delivered tenfold. From Marlena's possession to Sami and Lucas scheming to come between Austin and Carrie to Vivian burying Carly alive DOOL has always been the craziest of all the soap operas...and it's been a hell of a ride following along. 

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30 Days of TV: Day One

A Show That Should Never Have Been Cancelled 

American Soap Operas

It's hard to say what show I'd like networks to desperately bring back. As an avid soap opera watcher, I'd like to reserve the right to group all cancelled soap opera shows together as my "Show That Should Never Have Been Cancelled". 

There's something about sitting down with the women in your family and watching your stories. It's something that was passed down from my grandmother to my mother, and hopefully, if the survivors stick around, to my daughters. Soap Operas are about family, love and life in its essence and it's about setting aside the dreary doldrums of life for an hour or two to watch the characters on your favourite show. It's about following along with the show's decades old family circles as they got married, broke up, had children and we all watched those children grow up within the show's context. I grew as they grew.

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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).

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