A friend of mine recently made me do something I swore I would never do. She made me start watching a soap opera.
No, she didn't tie me to my chair and command that I watch. Instead she asked me to tape her show since she didn't have cable. So I did. At first, I'd just tape the show with the TV off. I never watched. Then one day, I left the TV on and BOOM! I couldn't turn away. They were so--well, so funny.
I mean, come on. The women all have really huge hair that is glued in place with Aqua Net--it's either that or their heads are abnormally small. And the men? Not one of those men spent any time at all watching football or eating KFC straight from the bucket on the living room couch. These are fantasy men, all right.
But the worst part is, one day it didn't seem so odd to me that a world famous supermodel would live in Port Charles and date a man whose father came back from the dead to try to take over the world and kill them both in the process.
Yes, I was addicted.
It was an ugly addiction. I started with one soap. Then I noticed myself drawn to another. Pretty soon, I was spending three hours a day watching big-haired women cope with their lives and loves. And through my haze of addiction, I noticed certain rules about the soaps.
First, nobody, and I mean nobody, is ugly in soap land. If someone is ugly, it's because he was scarred when he tried to save the world. Of course, he's only scarred until he falls in love with the heroine who is really a world famous plastic surgeon. She performs a miraculous operation to make scar man into gorgeous man just minutes before giving birth to their triplets. Isn't true love grand?
Unfortunately, true love only lasts until the next ratings sweeps. Anybody who is happy and married in soap land will be divorced in six months--or in time for the sweeps, whichever comes first. Sometimes they remarry--actually, they usually remarry several times. To several different people. Or the same guy. Several different times.
And the love children? Well, honey, those triplets grow at an astonishing pace. Did you think your child was amazing when he grew four inches last year? Hah. Soap opera children are born and age to about ten in the first year. Then, they whiz through puberty in about a month and are married, then divorced with triplets of their own by the second year. All growth is perfectly timed with the sweeps.
There isn't a heroine on a soap who has not had a child switched at birth. Please. Wouldn't you start using a different hospital?
Everybody has a job, yet nobody seems to work. Unless there is a murder. Then all the lawyers come out and try to defend the woman who killed her (pick one): a) husband; b) lover; c) father of her child; d) spouse who came back from the dead; or e) all of the above.
Oh, and the men are all police officers, doctors or incredibly rich business magnates. Not a wage-challenged guy in the bunch--even the cops, who are really rich business magnates who are so bored they turn to police work for excitement. Well, sometimes there is a poor guy around. But only because he doesn't know he is really the son and heir of the richest guy in town--he'd been switched at birth, of course.
Then there are the bad guys. Now the villains in soaps are really evil. They aren't just your normal, everyday, mean people. No, these are villains who want to take over the world by freezing it. Or an evil business magnate that takes over the poor heroine's struggling lingerie factory and then forces her to marry him and bear his triplets. Naturally, after Mr. Evil Magnate takes over the factory and marries the lingerie lady, they fall in love, only to divorce after they discover that the triplets were (gasp!) switched at birth.
It's all terribly sad and terribly addictive. But I'm not watching anymore. No, I have turned off the TV. Well, maybe I'll just take a peek at it today. Just to see who is getting divorced or having triplets.
And then I will turn it off. Really.