Deep Soap: Clichés And Homages

By Sara A. Bibel
Fancast.com

This Paralysis Needs No Analysis
It’s Stock Soap Scene #4574. After a fall or car accident, the doctors perform a battery of tests on the patient. All seems well until the patient reveals that he – gasp – can’t feel his legs. He’s paralyzed. Soap paralysis is currently affecting both All My Children’s Taylor and The Bold & The Beautiful’s Rick. The audience knows that, unlike real paralyzed people, Taylor and Rick will be able to run marathons within six months. Rick has already regained the ability to stand. Taylor will surely learn to walk again with Jake’s help, with her injury serving as a way to bring the characters together and keep her from returning to military service in Iraq. Soap paralysis is the functional equivalent of real life mono: something that knocks a person out of commission for a little while but rarely does any permanent damage. Because these stories are so predictable, it’s difficult to muster up much sympathy for the afflicted characters. Occasionally soap paralysis can lead to romantic complications, as the paralyzed character, pushes away his or her love interest. If the character is a schemer, he may continue to fake paralysis after recovering for nefarious purposes. That seems to be the path Rick’s headed down. But soap injury storylines consist mainly of characters being alternately brave and self-pitying until their miraculous recovery. Temporary paralysis and blindness have become soap clichés on a par with amnesia. I can’t remember the last time I found one of these stories engaging. I have become so jaded that I am surprised when primetime soaps portray these injuries realistically. Friday Night Lights’ Jason Street and Desperate Housewives’ Carlos never recovered from their respective paralysis and blindness. FNL’s underlying theme is that bad things constantly happen to good people. (Maybe that’s why the show isn’t a hit.) Street’s paralysis fits in with the often bleak universe of Dillon, Texas. He is but one of many characters whose dreams did not come true. But I was sure that Carlos would regain his sight when DH jumped forward five years. Instead, the show chose to show how his blindness turned him from a high-paid executive with a felony conviction to a lower middle class masseur. Watching these stories unfold made me realize that daytime soaps are missing out on interesting plots by making all injuries temporary. It’s also unrealistic and insulting to viewers who have personal experience with spinal injuries and blindness. If a show wants to give a character a debilitating short term illness there are a couple of thousand real-life maladies that will work. But I’d like to see a soap dare to permanently disable a character, and General Hospital’s Jason Quartermaine’s transformation into Jason Morgan does not count.

30 Rock of Our Lives
Last Thursday’s season premiere of 30 Rock included an unexpected treat, a hilarious soap opera parody. In the storyline, Alec Baldwin’s character Jack is sexually harassed by NBC’s new CEO, a huge soap fan who has taken over the job from her comatose father. At the beginning of the show, she’s watching soaps on her computer, and is furious when a coworkers attempts to interrupt her. Jack, who has been demoted the mailroom, delivers her copy of Soap Opera Digest. He decides to sleep with her to advance his career. When he explains his predicament to Tina Fey’s Liz, he assumes Kathy wants to sleep with him because she’s a soap fan saying, “Aren’t soap operas all about sex?” Liz semi-accurately replies, “No. The best parts of soap operas are when someone’s twin interrupts a wedding or somebody pulls a gun at the fitness center.” She stops Jack from becoming Kathy’s sex slave by interrupting them and ad-libbing a soap scene while an actual Chloe and Phillip scene from Days of Our Lives, that looks rather pornographic out of context, plays in the background.

Jack: I thought you were at the fitness center with your twin. Liz, it’s not what you think. Kathy and I were just working together. You know my lover, Liz.
Liz: That better be true, Jack. Or else I’ll make both of you disappear, just like I did with Vivian and Patch.
Jack: Don’t be ridiculous, Liz. You know you’re the only woman I’ve truly loved. Kathy’s just my partner.
Liz: I’m sorry, Jack. I’ve just been paranoid, since that incident with the weather machine.

I think Fey, who wrote the episode, has watched some classic 80s soaps. I can’t fault 30 Rock for making the soap fan crazy and obsessed with stuffed unicorns because every character on the show is weird. The soap references worked on several levels. The plotline involving the comatose GE CEO was already soapy. Alec Baldwin got his start on The Doctors and later appeared on Knots Landing, so it was an homage to his soap roots. This was 30 Rock’s highest rated episode. While I’m sure it was because of all the hype from Fey’s brilliant Sarah Palin impression, I’d like to think that the soap references gave the show some good karma.

If you missed last Thursday’s 30 Rock, watch it right here on Fancast.