Things that bug you about soap operas...

Cafe Society
1

Well in the “Things that bug you about t.v.” thread, soaps keep coming up. Some one even mentioned that we could do a whole thread on soaps alone. So why the hell not? I’ll start with the obvious annoyances…

  1. Most soaps are set in fictional suburban towns with a population of about 30 people. Yet all these small towns have international airports, major hospital faciilities, metropolitan-level newspapers, a four-star hotel, and all the other trappings of a city the size of NYC or Los Angeles.

  2. No one ever seems to work. Occasional references are made to such&such characters’ job, and characters are some times shown in an office setting, but no one does any thing except gab about their love lives. Except if they’re a doctor or lawyer. Then they will always be the one representing the hero/heroine in their murder trial, or operating on them in the life & death surgery.

  3. Every character, no matter how poor they are supposed to be, can afford to fly around the world at a minutes’ notice, can afford top-of-the-line label clothes, and has the money to operate their own restaurant, start-up company, nightclub, or what-have-you.

  4. No baby is born in a hospital. The woman is always “trapped” some where and an inexperienced friend has to deliver the baby. Nothing ever goes wrong with this delivery though. About six months after the baby is born, it is a toddler, one year after it’s born, it’s a five year old, a year after that and the ‘baby’ is a teen-ager!

  5. Every one is a shining specimen of physical fitness. Every guy is tall, buff and muscular. Every girl is curvaceous and buxom. Every one is tan, with unblemished faces, and beestung lips. Add to that, my own pet peeve that the vast majority of soap people, say like 90% of all the characters, are blonde.

  6. Although these shows all have cast of 25+ characters, there are at most two token blacks, no asians, a token hispanic (who is always hypersexual), no gays or lesbians, no physically disabled folks (except wheelchair-bound who will be miraculously cured in a scant few months), nobody even wears glasses!

What else bugs you about soaps?

2
  1. Time has no meaning. One episode, a baby is born. Within 2-3 years, he’s in college and, yet, the parents don’t age.
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  1. They wear makeup 24 hours a day and can do their hair like a professional hair stylist…even in the delivery room the women look wonderful.
  2. Many of the female characters have names like Hope, Ayesha, Sable, Layne, Taylor, Krystal, Kayla etc.
4

Uhhh…no gays or lesbians? Token black characters? Do you every watch all my children? Obviously not…

I can agree with the rest of your thoughts…Also, susan lucci should go ahead and do a spread in hustler, she is melting hot…

I hate the fight scenes…Man are they lame.
I get sick of evil twins and people comming back from the dead…

Soaps to me are all sappy as hell and I cannot see how one gets caught in the mire…

5

“The dramatic zoom-in.” It ends almost every scene and every episode on every show. Something 'dramatic" is said to a characer, a la “Your father is not who you think he is,” and then there is a zoom-in on a character looking serious, with ominous music swelling in the background. It’s just so cheesy and stupid.

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  1. There’s just something wrong with being able to watch a show once every five years and still feeling as if you haven’t missed ANYTHING.
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  1. Life is 10 times more eventful than in real life. In one week you’ll have 5 friends die(don’t worry, depending on the popularity of the character you’ll be seeing them again, and not in heaven), 10 deliver babies, 4 of them exit/enter rehab, and another 10 involved in some sort of violent/major crime, them usually being the perpatrator. And that’s a pretty slow week.
  2. People use words or phrases that people never use in real life. Dialogue must be over dramatic and sound like a shakespearean quote. “You’d take me for a fool if you had me think Jessica loves you and not I! Begone foolish mortal, before you cause me ire again and I bestow my vengeance up on you!”.
8

I haven’t watched soaps in years, but one thing about them (from the tiny amount I have seen) drives me nuts.

Who the hell turns their backs to somebody to talk to them? Especially when it is earth shattering news?! I know it’s only for the cameras, but that drives me nuts! NOBODY does that!!

And I really loathe the “just woke up from a night/weekend/decade of glorious sex” scenes where their makeup (lipstick included) is fresh, perfect, and completely untouched. Gimme a break! Unless they freeze their faces cryogenically during the night, nobody’s face looks that flawless after three seconds of sex, let alone a whole night. Plus, it is simply your skin’s death knell to sleep in makeup.

I hate the kids-growing-up-within-a-semester scenario, too. That’s just wishful thinking on the parents/scriptwriters-in-real-life parts.

9

…and it normally happens when a character picks up the telephone rather unassumingly, listens for a few moments and then suddenly they’re serious (as the music kicks in). Seems like telephones are used just to convey bad news or to deceive others.

And the “turning their backs to others whilst in a serious conversation” thing bugs me too.

10

Not on * The Young and The Restless. * I don’t think they’ve had a “normal” birth in years. Baby is always at death’s door.

Perhaps it’s soaps’ attempt at some sort of realism, but lingering illnesses have always irked me. For weeks, almost the entire cast is in the hostpital waiting room, crying and moaning. Tender scenes of family gripping the hands of the dying, and whispering their love to them abound. After about a week, you either see the Dramatic Death Scene, or the Miraculous Recovery Scene. If it’s the miracle, the ailing person will be right as rain in a few days, meddling in someone’s love life. If they’ve died, they’ll be back in a few months, in one form or the other. (Twin, ghost, it-was-all-a-dream, whatever . . .)

What are they dying of, you ask? Well, that’s a damn good question. Sometimes, nobody knows, or much seems to care, or to bothers to identify it. On Y&R, I can remember, years back, when several people died of some Mystery Illness. The character “Quan” was a good example. They never said what it was she was dying from, but croak she did. (Jesus, did that woman take forever to die! I can remember being over at my mother’s house when it was one one day. “Just * die * already!” my mother roared at the screen.)

Which brings me to the Dissapearing Family Member Syndrome. I must use an example to illustrate: The character “Quan” on Y&R was the long lost love of one of the main characters. He had impregnated her during the Vietnam War, but they were seperated. The main character finds out about this woman (whom before had never been mentioned) and his Long Lost Son, and is determined to find them. Fast forward a year or so, and the main character now has both The Love of His Life and Long Lost Son in his life. Hooray!

However, Quan is stricken by the Mystery Illness and dies. The main character and his son are heartbroken, for about a month or so. Then, slowly, Long Lost Son appears in fewer and fewer scenes, until finally, nothing more is said about him.

Several other characters have sisters or brothers who live in distant cities. They appear for about three months in a plotline, and then fade away, not to be mentioned for several years, and sometimes, never again.

11

Well… I do watch soaps, have watched 'em since the 60s (although I have gone for sometimes lengthy periods where I wasn’t watching, mind you! :)), and I may be going out on a slim limb (lol) here, but …

Soaps have gotten entirely too “sexual” in recent years, imho! TPTB seem to think that SEX = ROMANCE, and sometimes the sex scenes can seem like something out of a soft-core porn movie. Well, maybe not quite soft-core, but enough to really deserve the TV14 ratings that most of them get now. Frankly, I’d rather see good, old fashioned romance. I don’t mind romantic kissing, mind you, but I honestly think that they show too much in the sex scenes.

Unfortunately, one of my favorite shows has turned to the supernatural – Port Charles. So in addition to the entirely too sexual nature of the love scenes, I’m also treated to vampires biting and feeding, and bloody mouths … it’s more than I can stomach. I know I’m not part of their targeted “demographic” audience, but who the heck is?!? Do people actually enjoy watching this sort of thing? Find all that blood and gore romantic?! GAH.

There are many other things about soaps that are bugging me, but the last one I’ll mention now is that the writers (for all shows) are seemingly part of a very exclusive “clique” – they move from show to show, mostly wreaking havoc and usually just telling and re-telling the same old stories time and again. :frowning: It’s time to do away with that clique, to let new writers in, and to -NOT- give head writer jobs to the old ones who have already ruined other shows!

thanks for letting me blow off some steam. :slight_smile:

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And with all of those doctors standing around with nothing to do between life-and-death surgeries … seems like such a waste!

13

People do disappear, sometimes for decades. But then they will be mentioned 12 times in 2 days and the next day, they show up.

A woman (man) can do an illegal and insane act against a man (woman) and he (she) will end up falling madly in love iwth her (him). For example, on Days of our LIves, Sami drugs Austin (her sister Carrie’s financee), claims he had sex with her, gives birth to a son she claims is his (actually, it’s his brother’s Lucas’s). He finds out, marries her sister Carrie, But Sami breaks up the marriage and he almost marries her.

14

EVERYTHING. I have never been a fan of anything “fake” (the 80’s excluded), and well, soaps pretty much epitomize that.

15

I haven’t seen a soap in years, but I remember being struck by the amount of drinking that was done in them. There were always crystal decanters and buckets of ice immediately at hand. Drop a couple of perfectly clear cubes into a glass, splash on some amber liquid, sip, and chat.

My real-world friends and family drink on occasion, but the booze pretty much stays in the original bottle (or box o’ wine) and the ice comes out of the refrigerator door. More often than not, glasses are old tumblers or plastic cups left over from a party. I guess that’s why no one has ever made a soap about my life.

16

I only watch the worst of the worst (Passions by choice, Port Charles because our station airs it right before we go on), so I may be a little biased because I’m watching REALLY bad soaps (oxymoron, you might think, but trust me…some are worse than others).

I HATE how people who are plotting something will plot two feet from the person they’re against and the person will never hear them. A and B are going to cut C’s break line. They talk for ten minutes in normal tone of voice, five feet from C, and C’s completely oblivious. The same goes with thinking out loud. I’m amazed people don’t have to scream at one another in order to carry on a conversation.

The term “make/making love” for EVERY reference to sex. Yes, sometimes it is “making love,” but a lot of times it’s just plain ol’ dirty f*#king. Or just simply sex. But not in soap operas. “He got me drunk and made love to me. I never would have made love to him if I knew it wasn’t you.”

Character’s complete lack of a spine. In Passions there’s a plot where S was in love with L, got blowed up, lost her memory, met A, fell in love, went back to town, bumped into L again, regained her memory, and then found out L and A were brothers. A wants to marry her, she want’s to be with L, but despite HUNDREDS of opportunities to get out of it, ends up marrying A because she just can’t say “No”.

The way every doctor can perform any type of surgery, even if they’re just a GP. Someone got a brain tumor? Call Dr. Smith. Need a heart transplant? Call Dr. Smith. Kidney problems? Call Dr. Smith. Bizzare disease that attacks the digestive system? Call Dr. Smith. There are other doctors in the hospital for a reason, you know.

The way EVERYONE has to be a vampire at some time or another (okay, maybe that’s just limited to Port Charles, but still).

17

For some reason, the lighting used on all soap operas really irks me. You know, that kind of low-level almost candlelight look that makes everyone’s eyes seem glassy.

18

Blacks and Latinos are universally either cops or criminals.

No matter what is being plotted, no one goes to jail except the aforementioned Blacks and Latinos. evertone else goes to some sort of psychiatric hospital on the endge of town that has minimal security.

pretty much any offense- infidelity, murder, rape, you name it- can be forgiven, and the victims will often fall in love with their tormentors.

19

What struck me during my stay at home years when I watched soaps, was the over riding concern about paternity.

WHO was the father of the various offspring seemed to consume a huge amount of time.

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If my life centered solely around who’s screwing whom, I think I’d drink, too.

On Y&R, there are decanters of water instead of booze. Never seen people drink so much water in all my life. They pour a glass, and drink deeply during a Dramatic Pause.

  • Capri said: *

**

What’s always amazed me is how remarkably easy it is to get custody of a child which is not even yours. For example: “A” has a child with “B” and then marries “C.” “B” and “C” divorce, and “C” gets custody because he has been like a father to the child.
Another thing irks me about pregnancy on soaps: if a pregnant woman trips and stumbles, she will lose the baby. If, at any point in the pregnancy, she has a “twinge,” she will lose the baby, or nearly die in the delivery. The woman will be as thin as a rail, and then suddenly balloon up right before the delivery.

Things you’ll never see on a soap:

*Someone reading a book. Whenever reading is called for, they’re impatiently flipping through a magazine.

  • A competent detetive. No matter how obvious it is who the killer/kidnapper is, it always takes them just as long as the other characters to figure out whodunnit.

  • A character going to church. They use them for wedding, funerals and christnings, and there may be talk about how important religion is in their lives, but they never go to church without an event.

  • A dirty house. They might have had a party for 200 last night, but in the morning, the place is immaculate. Amazing, considering some characters have immense houses with only one maid.

*The characters actually * doing * something when they’re alone in the house. Instead of reading, vaccuuming, or watching TV, they spend all of their time alone wandering around their living rooms, staring at family photographs, looking out the window, or plain just standing there, waiting for the doorbell or telephone to ring.