5 posts tagged “soap operas”

Some people like true crime shows because of all the delightful fact finding and craziness.  Some people like makeover shows because they like the feeling it gives them seeing people finally become happy about their own appearance.  And some people like the news because they are horrible masochists who enjoy watching stuff about all the murders, death, corruption and the occasional fluff piece about a rescued dog.  Me?  I love soap operas.   

My love for soap operas kind of started out weirdly.  I didn't like daytime soaps.  My mom lived for As The World Turns and Guiding Light.  I preferred Beverly Hills 90210 and then jumped ship to Melrose Place.  I was probably the only kid in my school who watched MP religiously and probably the only one who was watching when Dr. Kimberly Shaw took off her wig after returning from the dead.  Which was disappointing in that I didn't have anyone to talk about it with.  Because they were all watching, hell, I don't even know.  Full House, probably.

But then, I started watching Guiding Light with my mother and sister every summer and I got hooked on the Santos family.  Specifically Carmen.  She was everything I wanted to be.  Powerful, feared, bitchy and AWESOME. And ok, she was actually really evil and tried to kill her son's wife more than once, but still, AWESOME. Once she left the show, so did I. After that I stuck with whatever turgid drama I could get my hands on that wasn't daytime.

Then my best gal pal Lucy got me to start watching Days of our Lives right around the time that Marlena was revealed to be the Salem Stalker.  It took me a good week to actually understand any of what was going on, but once I did, I was hooked.  I started reading the internet soap fansites, searching for info on who was going to die next.  And that's I think the number one thing that I love about soaps: the format of soaps is so fluid anything can happen.  Literally, anyone can die, anyone can come back from the dead (for whatever stupid reason), anyone can take over the world with a weather machine, or hell, even 2 witches can cross magic beams and create an earthquake that causes a tsunami in New England.

So here's my list of reasons why I love soap operas:

• Anything can happen.  - Like I said above, plots can meander and sometimes be truly shocking.
• No matter what the crime, you can still be redeemed - It's true.  Look at One Life to Live: Todd basically raped women for ages and he's now kind of a hero on the show.  Or take Marlena on Days: She sort of killed 9 people and people in Salem still love her.  That's not something that can happen in everyday life.
• Plots move slowly - Miss an episode of Lost and well, you're kind of lost as to what's going on in the next episode.  Soaps conveniently remind you constantly of what happened in the last episode, sometimes recycling the exact same scene again.  And then flashing back to it five minutes later (this is especially true of James Reilly's days on Days).
• Plots that don't work? Re-written.  Characters that don't work? Recast or written off.  This doesn't happen in primetime because of the massive lead time needed to produce the bigger shows.  When a storyline ain't working on Grey's Anatomy, it could be 8-10 weeks before the viewers sees the episode where they change it.  Soaps don't have that problem.  They can re-write on the fly, recast seamlessly and still have the storyline work.  Sometimes (hey, I'm not blind...sometimes it just don't work).
• Self-contained storylines.  Don't like what's going on with one storyline, fast forward.  Primetime focuses on the ensemble, mostly, so all the characters tend to interact.  Not so with Daytime.

Ah, my woefully neglected little blog.  I think perhaps part of the reason I am so forgetful about posting here is that none of my friends are on VOX in real life, nor do they perhaps even know that I am on VOX.  My main reason for creating this blog was originally to replace the LJ that I was considering abandoning in light of my life meltdown that I went through awhile ago.  I wasn't considering deleting the LJ, but I wanted to distance myself from those people that were at the time not friendly towards me.  So, I started this VOX thing and it worked, but it's more graphically-difficult for me to use adequately.  So I stuck with LJ.  And then I decided to make this a more personal journal than anything, since none of my real-life friends read this.  But that failed because introspection isn't something I like to write down.  Plus, my life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it.  And I'd like to keep most of that from the internet.

Then I thought I'd use this as an alternative to the MySpace blog because I only ever to login to MySpace when I get a comment or a message.  But that didn't work either, since I forever forgot to update it.  And now I have this blog and I don't want to NOT use it, so I'm going to make it about soap operas and TV shows, since that's the only thing I don't have a blog for (actually that's a lie, I used to live-recap Days of our Lives and Passions when I was unemployed and it actually worked really well...except that nobody read them and then I got a job...).

So, I thought I'd start with an entry on why I love soap operas.  First, I must point out that I realize that soaps are NOT for everyone.  Some people can't get behind the plot contrivances, the deaths that aren't actual deaths and the sometimes confusing storylines that get dropped or convoluted so badly that you can't even grasp it.  However, soaps are the ultimate in fantasy television.  It's about family, usually, and the thing is, on soaps, no matter how badly a family member screws up or does HORRIBLE things, the family stays together and they love each other (this only applies to the good families.  The villain families, not so much).

Also, the people on soaps live out one of my fantasies: never having to work. Oh, occasionally we see them at some corporate office (almost always as CEO or VP), but most of the time, they are busy running around town, yelling at people or telling them some secret.  They also live in fabulously decorated penthouses and apartments and houses without any source of income.  I mean, Sami Brady on Days has lived in her 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment on the 3rd floor of a nice high-rise building in Downtown Salem for years.  And she only worked somewhere for like 2 years.  And even then, she didn't work so much as walk around plotting and scheming.  How does she afford that apartment?  And same goes for Marlena.  She's a psychiatrist, but hasn't had any patients since 2003.  Yet, she lives in a 2-story penthouse in Downtown Salem.  Now, for reference, let's assume Salem is the size of Dallas (a distinct possibility).  A downtown Dallas penthouse rents for about $3400 a month.  Now, that's a lot of money for someone with no patients and as many ailments and reasons to stay away from work as Marlena has.  But, I guess one could wank it to say that her husband John Black, owner of Basic Black fashion house, pays the bills.  Except he's been dead, alive, brainwashed and addicted to painkillers for the last few years.  Also, Basic Black seemingly hasn't had a new line out since 2003 when Bo and Hope were attacked at the fashion show, kickstarting the "Salem Stalker" storyline.

Anyway, that wasn't so much about why I love soaps, so that'll have to be the next entry.

So, work crush?  Mostly gone by now.  I've never actually talked to him up close to notice his facial features in detail, but I did today and omg, his mouth and nose are so out of whack with the rest of his face, I don't know how I never noticed.  And he lisps.  And not in a good way.  So, the crush is mostly gone.  Mostly.  Ok, so I still am madly in like with him.  But. I'm no longer wanting 2.5 Jack Russell Terriers, His and His SUVs and a condo in Turtle Creek. 

In other news, I haven't done much of anything this past week.  Unplug the phone, sleep alone, stay way out of sight.  It's not as depressing as it sounds. I just don't feel like doing anything.  I have plans with Lance for Halloween, but after that, I'm not really looking to do anything.  And really, I only agreed to go to the Halloween party with Lance because he's coming in from Fort Worth and I don't want to seem like a big bitch and say no, I don't want to go (which I do want to go...just not sure if I really want to go because it's a halloween party or if I want to go to have fun).  Either way, I'm going.  So there's that.

My mom and stepdad (I guess that's what I'd call him.  I mean, they married after I was an adult, so I don't know that he's really my stepdad, but it's easier than saying my Mom's husband) went to Corpus for the weekend, so I'll be all alone all weekend.  Which will be nice.  I have so much cleaning and laundry to do along with just wanting to sleep, lie in bed all day and cry as John on Days of our Lives dies. 

Despite what this entry sounds like (and I realize it seems like I have no life, which I don't), I'm actually very happy right now.  I have a few new friends, a few old ones still around out there somewhere and I really am happy.  Now, if only I could just NOT be single.  That would make me ecstatic!

So, the bigwigs at ABC decided to do another spin-off of General Hospital.  Great.  Love the idea that it's weekly and involves the same characters as GH, but the execution of the show?  Kind of lacking.

The first problem is that, while it has the same characters, the storylines don't flow from the mother show to the Night Shift.  First, Spinelli is so not in love with Lulu on NS, and Jason is walking around a free man, while on GH is charged with the murder of Lorenzo Alcazar.  And they don't even mention why he's walking around a free man.  Plus, there's Billy Dee Williams as some sort of custodian meandering about the hospital dropping insipid bon mots that really aren't necessary.  When they announced him joining the staff, I'd have though they would have put him in a better role.

The other problem, is that since it's a weekly show and not a daily show, I'd expect the storylines to move a little faster.  But Spinelli spent the entire episode being treated for a gunshot wound.  That doesn't happen on any other sort of medical drama.  Plus Patrick and Robin spent the entire shift whining about each other.

Of course, the comparison to the other spin-off has to be made.  Port Charles was a weird little show.  It was supposed to be about the new class of interns or something at General Hospital, but it took a turn toward the supernatural with all sorts of angels and vampires.  Like Night Shift, Port Charles supposedly took place in the same town as the mother show, but you really couldn't tell from watching the show.  Sure, characters from both shows were in and out of GH and Kelly's, but they were never around at the same time.  Like, you'd never see Luke run into Livvie at Kelly's, even though they were supposedly living in the same town.

While I can see where ABC and the General Hospital staff were going with this spin-off and in general, I do think it's a good idea, I just don't think that it really works as well as it should.  They should have had the storylines intertwine with the mother show just a little more, or they should have completely removed all the characters from GH and transplanted them to NS.

Gotta love the soaps

So, my original plan for this blog was for it to be about kind of whatever was going on around me and maybe that was why I didn't update for so long.  I don't think I really wanted anyone on the internet to read about what was going on around me.  I mean, I think between my last post and now (almost a whole year), a lot of things have happened.  I spent a night in jail, got rid of a few friends, changed my hair and most importantly began moving away from my old life.

After high school ended, I sort of ended up in limbo, mainly because I'm probably one of the few people who actually enjoyed every minute of high school.  The bitchiness, the cattiness, the gossip, the rumors, the vicious bitches and the overall everything that went on in high school.  I loved every minute of it.  Unfortunately, once you leave high school, everyone else kind of gets over that, because well, they hated all that stuff.  That's why I sunk into the world of soap operas, where that stuff still happens among adults.  So, college for me really sucked, because no one seemed interested in the backstabbing and rumormongering that went on in high school. So, I dropped out and went to work.  That worked until I got fired from a really good gig for being gay.  I told all my friends the reason was that they just didn't need me anymore, which was the official reason my old manager gave me.  But the real reason was that the wackadoo Christian bitch known as my supervisor found out that I was gay and couldn't deal with that, so she had me fired.  I felt just like Star Jones or Shannen Doherty.  It sucked.

Hence why I've enacted some changes in my life.  I've tried to stop inventing lies and stories to make myself seem more interesting.  It's ultimately done nothing but ruin my friendships with people I've been friends with forever.  Another part of my changes is that I'm trying to get out more from my friends from high school. I've sort of been leeching on to them in some sort of desperate attempt to keep myself in high school.  It didn't work.  So, now I've got to rethink my strategy.  I suppose honesty would be the best policy where that sort of thing is concerned.  I've also committed myself to being a better friend (mostly by not drinking so much booze when we go out).

So, the new point of this blog will be things that I stumble upon in the internets and also a few entries about my work and my personal life.  I'm trying to get out of LJ and try something new.  So here goes.