The shows must go on

In high school I used to watch two soap operas, Days of Our Lives and Passions. I can’t even begin to tell you how epically bad Passions was in particular. But it was oddly satisfying to spend my teenage time incredulously watching these ridiculous stories unfold. If I’m remembering right, I think Days was on at 1 and Passions at 2. My senior year I didn’t have a seventh period class, so I often got home in time to catch Passions. Or sometimes I’d tape it. Yep, on a VCR. And then purposely watch it later with friends in my free time.

Pandemic time has been ripe for soap operas. A few of note have been Crash Landing On You (opening the world of K-dramas to me), Nashville (a rewatch), and Outlander (falls maybe a bit more on the historical drama side, but still very soapy. Must watch edited). This week I binged Virgin River, which was 10x more egregious than anything else I’ve watched this year, but no magic talking puppets or witches, so, more in Days territory than Passions territory.

Anyway, I have a running bit whenever Matt walks in while I’m watching a soap opera, which is to explain to him exactly what’s happening on screen in that moment in as much detail as possible. Literally every time he’s walked in this past week during Virgin River there’s been an entirely different story with different characters. This game is extremely amusing for me but Matt informed me tonight that it’s not as funny for him. Well just because he couldn’t care less that Charmaine is having Jack’s twins (twins!!), Muriel is putting the moves on Doc by taking him for salsa lessons, Brady pretended to kill Spencer but actually put him on a bus to LA with Maxine and the baby, Lily had a secret pregnancy and then left her baby on the doorstep of the health clinic, Lyddie isn’t managing her diabetes properly, Hope had a heart attack, Mike is about to bust the fentanyl ring wide open, Mel cauterized Calvin’s gunshot wound using only an extremely hot pocket knife, OR that Paige accidentally killed Wes who is a dirty cop, Preacher got rid of the body and then Wes’s identical twin brother Vince who is also a dirty cop, showed up looking for him (surprise!), doesn’t mean I’ll stop.