My mother was a stay-at-home-mom for a good amount of time when my siblings and I were growing up, and during this time she got pretty invested in a few soap operas (if I’m not mistaken, they were All My Children and One Life to Live). I developed the cognitive awareness that soap operas were laughably bad excuses for entertainment at an early age. When my mother eventually got busier and had to subscribe to Soap Opera’s Digest just to keep up, I teased her. Nice lady that she was, my mother never similarly made fun of me for all the stupid cartoons I watched.
I’ve recently come to realize that I have quite a few of my own “soap operas.” That is, ongoing entertainment that I am somewhat embarrassed to be invested in. Many of them are shows, but the one I came to first was a webcomic.
Questionable Content
I started reading QC in college, back when the art was way worse and the pull was more about the indie rock jokes then the drama. I’ve stuck with it over time as it evolved its art, characters, timing, and plot arcs. A friend of mine refers to it as a hipster version of Friends (the social circle is tight-knit despite the romantic foibles and tensions, and all of the action happens in a coffee shop or one of two apartments). Recently, the comic wrapped up a major romance between two of the main characters. I checked the updates often and with anticipation. I texted friends: “What will happen now?!? This break up will change the whole social circle!!!” It happened slowly and over time, but with this recent develop, it’s become clear: QC is a soap opera for me. Jeph Jacques wrote a comic that I thought I enjoyed casually. Then, all of a sudden he started sneaking in complexity and depth, and now I’m getting all angsty about cartoons. Damn you, Jacques.
Glee
This one is significantly more embarrassing. This is a show that my mother DID question me about. “I’m really surprised that you like this. It seems really cheesy.” I will not try to deny this.
I got hooked on Glee when my time was spent either working retail or sitting around being depressed that I spent my other time working retail. Television was a warm blanket of distraction, and as far as distractions go, Glee is the most elaborate, over-the-top kind. When it came back around for its most recent season, I wasn’t sure that I would still be on the bandwagon. In its absence, I had forgotten that Glee is also clever and well-written. It’s bad television, executed in this way that’s skillful enough to keep me watching. There are enough ridiculous plot points or depictions to keep me complaining, but there are also enough Sue Sylvester one-liners to keep me hooked.
I do tend to agree with the critics who argue that Glee paints a ridiculously unrealistic picture of high school. The drama is candid: Santana is a nympho, and this is readily acknowledged and accepted among the group. The nerds and outcasts in the group are perfectly at home with the fact that they are routinely accosted with slushies, yet they still interact in a forthright manner with their tormentors. I’m sure I need not point out how unrealistic it is that Sue Sylvester is still employed.
Yet my roommate maintains that Glee‘s portrayal of high school isn’t that far off. I’m sure that this is in part because her high school may have been very different than mine, but she did point out that high school throws people into a completely weird, totally unique environment. Someone who may ignore you in the hallway may make a completely civil lab partner by sheer necessity of the situation. In many ways, high school is completely detached from reality. Perhaps it’s possible that Glee is more insightful and spot on than everyone thinks.
Plus it’s totally rad to hear covers of your favorite Billboard hits, amirite???
LOST
There came a point during my retail slump where the TV season ended. No new 30 Rock, Glee was taking a break, etc. I was desperate. As it happened, this was right when the final season of LOST ended: emotional news flashes popped up on my Facebook, bidding the show farewell. LOST had always been much talked about, and I had always been dismissive. I had no interest in a show that seemed to make its success from cliff-hangers, and the idea of spending a week dying to know what would confuse me next seemed like something that would make me resentful. But what’s this? The show is over? Nobody cares about LOST anymore, and the entire series is on Hulu? I decided to take the plunge. I didn’t have to wait for LOST, LOST waited for me. I was sucked in, and I took my boyfriend with me.
LOST is such a massive show, and I initially thought about blogging in depth about my experience watching it. But I figured most people wouldn’t care anymore now that the show’s over. There’s plenty on the Internet about LOST already, and honestly, it’s difficult to get into without going super in-depth or posting spoilers. However, I will say a few things:
- The show is way, way better than I’d expected. I thought it would be a lot of cheap tricks and taunting mysteries, but it’s really not. It’s really well-written, and, for the most part, not as over-the-top as I’d anticipated. Most of the talk about the show is deserved.
- Being able to watch and whatever pace I want is a massive benefit. The episodes that aren’t as strong don’t bother me as much as they no doubt did the people who had to wait a whole week to move on in the series. If there’s a particularly juicy cliff-hanger, I appreciate being able to watch the next episode.
- It’s to the show’s credit that I am so immersed in a series that honestly, has very few truly likable characters. Seriously. Sawyer is SUCH a dick.
- Ben Linus is the best character in anything, ever.
Of my soap opera’s, LOST is the best. It’s a soap opera because it relies largely on dramatic action for its plot movement, but it’s so huge and complicated, and the complex elements are, for the most part, really well thought-out. However, at the same time, the character action occasionally allows for me to yell things at my television like, “OH NO SHE DIDN’T!!!!” Thus –> soap opera.
Skins
Of my soap operas, Skins is easily the trashiest. You can tell it’s at least kind of trashy, because MTV is going to premiere an American adaptation of it in January. I don’t watch The Secret Life of an American Teen, but I’m assuming the best way to describe Skins is to say that it’s a British, R-rated version of that show. The premise is this: a group of young, attractive British teens finishing up their last few years of school do a bunch of drugs and sleep together. DRAMA!
I give Skins credit for not being purely exploitative. There are a number of moments that are truly sad, frightening, or jarring, and not in a glorifying way. It feels like Skins comes really close to making a statement about its young characters, but then decides at the last moment that it’s just as interested in showing attractive people go at it.
There are a couple of things that I find interesting about Skins. I like that the cast rotates every two seasons. I like that the writing and execution seem pretty intelligent – I can usually tell what the show is going for, but not because it’s intentions are obvious or overdone. I like that every once in awhile a hip band makes a cameo, and I like that the characters are likable, even though at times they do compromising or hateable things.
ALSO, in Britain you can curse and show nudity if it’s after like 11 p.m. If you watch Skins, you can see Dev Patel’s balls, and that is pretty awesome.
For the most part, I run through the episodes while doing something else. It’s easy to just follow the drama as it unfolds. Skins is another show that’s done just well enough to keep me invested. I’ll probably watch at least the first couple episodes of the American version, and I’m a little bit ashamed about that.
In conclusion…
If I could draw one common element between these four guilty pleasures, it’s that they’re all dramatic, and at least every so often, shamelessly so. The television shows that I regularly watch that I think are legitimately good (Community, 30 Rock) are comedy shows. I understand that I like them because they are well-written, well-timed, and deliciously clever. While all of the above pieces of media are also really well-written, they’re also often times cheesy and over-the-top. In the most recent episode of LOST I watched, at least two characters dramatically decided to take a course of action that could possibly destroy all of them, and the reason was at least partially because the person they loved possibly didn’t love them back. Ridiculous! I think I like the fact that, at least in some of these shows, I can see emotions displayed that are human and silly. I can recognize things that I can also see in myself, but I can also make fun of them. Part of me says, “Juliet, stop being such a finicky bitch!” but another part secretly understands where she’s coming from.
And I mean, where else can I find someone who understands what it’s like to do an elaborate song and dance performance down my high school hallway?
Tags: All My Children, Glee, Jeph Jacques, JJ Abrams, Lost, One Life to Live, Questionable Content, Sawyer, Skins, soap operas
