Soap Operas Again

A fourth-generation viewer lathers up

Photo by Victoria Aleksandrova on Unsplash

So my daughter has, at age 34, started watching soap operas. Like her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother before her, she’s finding glacially paced stories of beautiful people who do not manage their lives particularly well to be compelling and irresistible. She’s mentioned General Hospital, which I used to watch back in my college days, and The Bold and the Beautiful, which didn’t exist back in my college days.

Honestly, I didn’t know that any daytime soaps still existed. I thought they’d died out. The one I watched with my parents when I was growing up, As the World Turns, stopped turning in 2010, according to IMDb. No more bad decisions for the Hugheses and the Stewarts. The Guiding Light has also been turned off. All My Children have moved out, and One Life to Live has run out.

Yet General Hospital still survives, and new soaps have bubbled up, and from what my girl has told me about the plots, nothing much has changed. The good people are still dumb, the smart people are still evil, the good people still fall in love with the evil people and will not disbelieve their lies no matter how loudly you scream at the screen. I’ve advised her that no character is ever really dead unless you see them placed in the ground, and even then there are loopholes. Also, absolutely anybody can have a previously unknown identical twin.

I have no interest in getting back in the soap game. I rinsed that all off years ago and don’t need any more scummy buildup. But I am kind of jealous of how easy soap viewers have it now. Hard to imagine that back in the day, if you missed an episode, you missed it, no VCR-ing, no streaming, no On Demand, gone. You could buy a soap opera magazine and find out what happened in the general plot, but … aw, you know, it took like five weeks to finish a conversation, so you probably didn’t miss much.

Have you ever been a soap watcher? Are you now? Will you be again? Share in the poll and in the comments.

This week on the Parenting Roundabout Podcast

We had fun revisiting an old episode on reality or game-show type challenges for parents. I think our idea of timing how long a mom can go before interfering when her kids are trying to do something has potential. Could you stand by quietly and watch your little kid make a bed, clean a room, navigate a social situation without inserting yourself? Could you watch your adult kid make a bed, clean a room, navigate a social situation without inserting yourself? Balance a checkbook, cook a meal, drive a car? The situations are endless. Only problem would be the speed at which the challenges would be over, because yeah, moms gonna mom.

What’s making me feel old this week

The cast for the new season of Dancing with the Stars has been announced, and I’ve heard of four of the thirteen. Of those, one is 72, one is 68, and one is 51 but with an entirely aftermarket face. I will absolutely throw Reginald VelJohnson and Eric Roberts votes out of old-people solidarity, but Tori Spelling … girl, what did you do? I usually vote for her partner, Pasha, but I don’t know, man. Any chance she’ll win me back with personality and gamesmanship? Regardless, I’ll probably be rooting the hardest for the youngest person I’ve heard of in the cast, Stephen Nedoroscik, better known as Pommel Horse Guy, who I recognize from his delightful performance in the Memelympics. All those other athletes and reality-show stars are on their own.