I spent an afternoon at a friend's house (something I don't often do) and somehow we wound up watching TV soaps (again, a nonexistent activity with me, these days at least). We couldn't resist the temptation to throw mental tomatoes on some of them for having a stupid plot, actors who don't fit their parts or bad house decor. While we were switching from one mushy scene to another I thought of all the television soap operas I've ever watched in the past and I tried to think of things they all had in common and all the things people did to react to what they were watching.
Soap Operas' Common Characteristics
1. The plot revolves around a love story; it may be the main thing or just the sideshow.
2. The hero and the heroine are goodlooking, the bad guys and girls might either look horribly ugly or just have raised eyebrows or too much make-up.
3. The plot often has the mushy "Cinderella" story line: girl is poor, guy is rich, girl has villains around her,or the guy's family looks down on her, both fight for the relationship, the story goes through twists and turns, the bad people do something to hurt the girl, guy reacts/rebels, something happens that make the guy's parents change their mind and accept the girl, the couple get married and end up happy together.
3. We say that a soap opera plot is bad when events like accidents, rapes, death of characters etc. happen for no plausible reasons.
4. It's also bad when characters change attitudes as fast as they change underwear.
5. Some soap operas have such silly mushy names.
You know you're watching too much soap operas when...
1. You adjust your work schedules just to be able to watch every episode. ( My college classmates and I once found out a professor guilty of this!)
2. You cry when the protagonist is being slapped, beaten up, hung, shot by firing squads, burned alive...
3. You get sooooo angry at the villains that you forget it's just a soap opera and you plan you beat them up if given the chance.
4. You can discuss the plot, episode by episode.
5. You don't get sick of reruns.
6. You sue the TV station for allowing A to get married to B in yesterday's episode when you want A to marry C.
7. You go to a salon or barber shop and ask for an actor's hairstyle because you saw it on last week's episode.
8. You feel your day isn't complete when you miss an episode especially when you know that something BIG is going to happen.
9. Your remote control burned down because of switching from one soap to another.
10: FACT: Men also get glued to soap operas, only they won't admit it. But they can tell what happened to A, B, and C in case grandma asks because she missed an episode.
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2 comments:
Haha!! I watch soaps on The Filipino Channel because a) my mom has it playing 24/7 in the dining room, and b) I just love torturing myself with their plots and subplots and sub-sub-plots, which ALWAYS involves someone rich falling in love with someone poor (or the other way around).
Where have all our young, talented, new blood writers gone?? When are we gonna see THEIR work??
I watch some TV soaps myself. I don't think there's anything wrong with watching soaps naman. Pero 'yung tipong you change your schedule or masyado mong dinibdib ang lahat, that's a little off rin.
Pero, doon sa You know you're watching too much soap operas when... mo, hindi ako maka-relate sa lahat ng items. So, I guess, I don't watch a lot of soaps. Hehe:)
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