Dropping the Soap (Operas)

Most kids my age grew up watching shows like Captain Planet or Power Rangers. I grew up watching Days of Our Lives.

It wasn’t by choice. Frankly, when I was a kid I liked watching commercials. It wasn’t until I was in the second grade that I realized you flipped the channels to find a television program, not to find an ad to become a medical student in just six months.

But no mater what I was watching, my nana would hijack the TV everyday at precisely 12:59 so she could watch her “story.” I’m not sure Days of Our Lives was an appropriate program for a child, but I grew up watching it on nana’s couch anyway.

My mother followed suit as a Days of Our Lives fan, although she’s at work when the program airs. She gets her fill when she’s on vacation, and sometimes she has to call nana to find out why so and so is pregnant with a married man’s seed, or plotting a kidnapping, or hiding in a cave.

My Aunt Rhonda went astray; she watched Passions before it was cancelled years ago. My cousin Jonathan would tell me about the evil midgets and puppets from him mom’s show, and most of the time I thought he was making it up.

Then there’s me, the third generation. Although Nana gave me a proper Soap Opera induction, I don’t spend my days off catching up on Days of Our Lives drama.

Apparently a lot of other people aren’t either because TV stations are dropping the soaps: Guiding light was cancelled in 2009 and As the World Turns aired its final episode last week.

But while Soap Operas are going down the drain, reality television shows are popping up like zits on a teenager. I can’t tear myself away from excellent programming like Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Like Soap Operas, the cornerstone of these shows is sex, but in this genre it’s “real.” If you see Snookie and the Situation hooking up in the hot tub, it’s more exciting than a General Hospital love scenes because it actually happened. And if the dialogue is bad, or the scenario is unlikely, it’s because the cast members are usually dumb, desperate, and drunk, which makes the show even better.

Who needs to watch Days of Our Lives when real people’s lives are on TV, complete with the same far fetched, overly dramatic, sexed up plots that were once only portrayed by Soap Opera characters?