I hate to clean, but I heart soap

by still-vacationing tess

The unwashed masses sneer when I confess to my General Hospital addiction and inevitably they ask how I could possibly watch “that crap.” I’ll agree whole-heartedly that, just like every other show, it’s not for everyone. Although the soap genre has outgrown the housewife-eating-bonbons-while-ignoring-her-kids-who-are-setting-fire-to-the-dog fixation of the fifties, it’s not exactly Masterpiece Theatre either. Like millions of other soapies, I welcome often slipshod writing and frequently flawed performances. I embrace careless story-telling and implausible consequences. I accept inadequate lighting and uninspired costuming. I condone seemingly endless exposition followed by mind-numbingly idiotic anti-climax. I even approve of the stunning hair models and suave metrosexuals cast in lieu of actors.

General Hospital, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Most of all, I love that these characters, some of whom I’ve watched since my teens, feel like old friends. Because we invite these characters into our homes each day, soaps have developed the most vocal and devoted fans of any television genre via the internet, soap rags, hotlines, personal appearances, cruises, and conventions. It’s awe-inspiring that there are vast communities of on- and off-line fans who come terrifyingly close to waging minor wars over their favorite characters and/or couples.

I love watching characters evolve from callow youth, through the mistakes and re-takes of young adulthood, and into jaded maturity (which is followed in short order by a pink slip for appearing inappropriately old to the ever-younger, much-prized demographic).

I love how characters are permitted second (third, fourth, and fifth) chances. They instantaneously rebound from heartbreak, gunshots, cancer, brain surgery, addiction, child loss, mental illness (or any other calamity the writers can imagine) and return to lives unscathed.

I love watching completely unsuitable partners fall in love, or at least into bed, under the most absurd circumstances and for all the wrong reasons. In 32 years of soap-scoping I have yet to witness a wedding that failed to be interrupted by Someone with a Grudge Who Suddenly Felt Compelled to Share a Secret.

I love a good WTD (Who’s The Daddy) story. Those pesky DNA results can change anytime the writers have a new idea. You can always be sure of an upcoming WTD when the writers won’t even let the poor character shower between indiscretions; not only skanky but huge plot-pointing anvil. Only in soaps can wives fool their husbands and obstetricians into believing fake pregnancies with just a pillow and an oversized dress.

I love it that most characters give birth outside of the hospital under extremely dire circumstances like being accidentally shot in the brain by your ex-husband during a contraction. But when an actress reads that she’s giving birth inside General Hospital … queue up the Emmy submission tape now! The birth of a child within the walls of the hospital invariably leads to some seriously heart-wrenching story telling. And Emmy-nominated performances.

I love it that blond-haired, blue-eyed children improbably spring forth from the loins of dark-eyed, dark-haired couples. Babies (born in elevators, mine shafts, train wrecks, panic rooms, or car trunks) grow into troubled teens overnight via the condition referred to as SORAS (soap opera rapid aging syndrome). I love it that there’s frequently fewer than ten years difference between generations and each Spring we’re implausibly introduced to a new crop of rich, well-dressed, bratty teenagers who will carry the Torch of Angst for tweens and teens during Summer break.

I love it that the mob enforcer is the moral compass of the city and that in a huge hospital one doctor is personally responsible for everything from performing neurosurgery to treating ingrown toenails, but still has time to bed various nurses in the broom closet.

I love it that everyone always has enough money to live in great houses with 24/7 daycare. Even when characters have careers, they’re jobs that don’t actually take time away from their personal lives and loves. Jobs like chief of staff, consigliere, DA, corporate raider, mobster, magazine editor, police chief, hotelier, killer, CEO, FBI agent; you know “Joe-jobs” that don’t require a lot of time or effort.

I love it that characters from all walks of life (and in all kinds of shoes) hoof it through the city and inevitably collide on the pier. Strangely, the same characters who walk everywhere also have 24/7 access to private jets that whisk them away to private islands at a moment’s notice. But if there are two characters getting in their seldom-seen cars, a freak accident is about to happen which will no doubt result in amnesia and pregnancy-loss for one party and a quick cover up from the other.

I love it that designers dress actors in LA for a mythical soap town in upstate New York giving them two options: black with light gray or black with dark gray. Apparently immune to the climate, the characters spend all winter wearing 5” heels and tank tops while supposedly traipsing about in blizzards.

I love it that the bravest way to face urgently impending death is to suddenly have sex with another character. Because that’s real. Not that any character is ever definitely dead. He could come back at any time. And if he does somehow manage to cheat death, he may or may not have the same face. Death is like that – it changes you. Sometimes.

I love it when a character receives a new face, voice, and hair thanks to a new actress. It’s particularly satisfying when she remarks, “I just don’t feel like myself anymore,” or her lover comments on how great she suddenly looks: “Did you cut your hair or something?”

I love daytime’s ever-tightening budget constraints. Actors are forced to push through scenes after missed lines and flubbed blocking, but still make it work. Sets are re-purposed so that the bedroom of a cottage in one scene is identical to the family room of a mansion across town in the next scene. And a city chock-a-block full of millionaires and billionaires warrants only two restaurants (one for the filthy rich and one for the merely affluent) and two bars (one with a hot-looking, hard-drinking bartender and the other one).

Each week there is more bad news for soaps. Expensive to produce, shows are being chopped, salaries are being slashed, and actors are being axed. Game shows and talk shows are cheaper and can sell more ads. Soap fans know that it’s business, not personal. And we’re painfully aware that not everyone condones our investment of time and emotion in a town that doesn’t exist. But it’s entertainment: one man’s Danielle Steele is another’s Shakespeare. And this is the guilty pleasure that millions of us have embraced. We’ll miss our friends, our gummy bear mobsters and the women we love to loathe, the misunderstood sluts and the pompous philanthropists. Sadly Port Charles will go the way of so many other imaginary towns. I just hope she goes out with a bang (or SICE: Sweeps Induced Cataclysmic Event) rather than a whimper. But until that final farewell, my fellow GHers and I will continue to praise and criticize, cheer and jeer, but certainly cherish every single day we have left with our beloved buddies in Port Chuck.