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Death, love and cheese

Why I can't unglue my eyes from the soaps.

Published May 5, 2009

At first, when I tell people about soap operas, they seem to be amused. They're fascinated by a subculture unfamiliar to them, a genre of shows where believability is an afterthought. But the novelty soon wears off, and they realize that I'm not kidding. I can name every character and every relationship with ease. It's frightening.

The conversation usually goes something like this: "You see, that's Bianca, and that's her sister, Kendall. Bianca has been living in France for a few years with her girlfriend, Reece. They came back to Pine Valley a few months ago, right as a series of deadly tornados struck the town. Kendall got hurt and was in a coma for a while, and then she ended up needing a heart transplant. Otherwise she was going to die. By the way, the donor ended up being her half-brother who was killed trying to rob a casino for the money for her surgery. But anyway, Kendall woke up and found out that her husband, Zach, was the sperm donor for Reece and Bianca's baby, but he had never told Kendall about it.

"Anyway, Kendall woke up and was angry and stuff, but then she started suspecting that Reece and Zach were secretly in love. Well, you see, Bianca had suspicions too, especially when she found out Reece had been engaged before to a man and hadn't told her about it. So then, on the night before Reece and Bianca got married, Reece and Zach were caught making out, but Bianca didn't find out until after they got married, which led her to file for an annulment like the next day. That also was the night Greenlee drove her motorcycle over a cliff and died. Yeah, this last part literally happened on like one Friday; all the crazy shit happens on Fridays."

I am not making this up.

It started with the now-canceled "Passions." For those unfamiliar with this show, the acting was terrible and the writing was terrible. But that's what drew me to the show in the first place. It was so campy and so ridiculous that I became addicted to the unresolved love triangles and poorly kept secrets that haunted the characters on a daily basis.

People are shocked because I can rattle off all the appropriate hipster references that are expected of a 20-year-old college student. But, none of them expect to find me sitting on my couch everyday at noon watching "All My Children," wondering if J.R. will ever stop drinking. For me, it's too easy to get bored watching another story about a quirky lovesick boy who comes of age and falls in love with an even quirkier girl.

I'm hooked by the melodrama. Unlike many primetime shows that try to disguise their schmaltz with talented actors and pop songs playing in the background, soap operas embrace it. They are not afraid to pile it on to the point where it's almost predictable. Then, once you think you have it all figured out, they still manage to surprise you with ingenuity. Someone is struck blind, an illegitimate child appears or the dead come back to life. I wouldn't expect anything less.

The one satisfaction of watching soap operas is meeting people who are as thoroughly addicted as you are. Their eyes will light up as you enter a 10-minute conversation about the latest scandals and relationships. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who gets sucked into a world of never-ending melodrama.

Stranger still, this is not a recent phenomenon. My mom started watching soaps in college, and this past summer our conversations went like this: "Oh, it's Tad. I can't believe he's still on this show. You know he had a sister, Jenny, they were Opal's children. Although they had different Dads, and Opal had given up Tad for adoption, the Martins adopted him. Well Jenny died when her jet ski exploded, while Greg, her true love, watched on from the shore of the lake."

And she wasn't making it up.