Passions

This is one of the best decisions I've made in recent memory: I've started watching the soap opera Passions. It used to be aired on one of the networks, NBC I think. But was canceled a year or so ago. Fortunately for me, it's now being run on the DirecTV channel 101 a couple of days a week. Unfortunately for me, it's apparently being cut from even DirecTV later this year. But it's great! I've never been all that big on soap operas, although I did go through a Guiding Light phase not that long ago. But all the weird things about soap operas--the weird pacing, the mixed-up relationships, the melodrama--Passions kicks up a level that becomes camp but also a kind of spoof of the soap opera, it seems to me. And I'm so disappointed that just as I'm getting interested, I find out that the last episode is scheduled to air in August. BTW, Wikipedia has an interesting article on the program. OK, so this is how I got started, I was flipping through on the TV, and I stopped on a scene in a room at a hospital. The doctor is telling Pretty that she's pregnant. The father of Pretty's baby is Luis who is engaged to Pretty's sister, Fancy. (Later, I learned that Pretty is faking the pregnancy.) Anyway, Fancy and Luis are in the room with Pretty and the doctor. And Fancy asks the doctor something like, "So are you permanently back on staff?" And the doctor explains, "No, they only called me in to reattach Julian's penis." And really, any production that asks an actor to deliver that line with a straight face is my kind of production. It turns out that Julian's penis has been reattached upside down / backwards because the doctor was drugged by her son, the nurse, before the procedure. So who thinks up this stuff? When I watch soap operas, which I admit isn't too often, it always seems that there's not much thought given to a plot arch or a character arch. It just always feels like the writers write themselves into some ridiculous, melodramatic situation and then write their way out without much long term planning while writing in a little more drama along the way. I'm always kind of mesmerized by this approach. I really, really wish it were available on DVD so that I could start from the beginning.