Deep Soap: Two Weddings And A Potential Funeral

Here Come The Brides

Last week, two soaps kept me glued to the set with the greatest genre staple of all: the doomed wedding.  Guiding Light delivered what was flat out the best television I saw last week (yeah, half of primetime was in reruns), as Natalia realized she couldn’t marry Frank because she was in love with Olivia.  Days of Our Lives, after months of boring me, kept me guessing about who was going to interrupt Nicole and EJ’s wedding.  Both shows seem to have reconnected with their identity in the past month.  GL is once again an intelligent, multi-dimensional family drama.  DOOL has opted for the “popcorn” route, with over-the-top, two dimensional plots with lengthy set-ups that suddenly become entertaining as they hurtle towards their denouements.

Many others have already praised the beauty of the Otalia episodes.  The perfect blending of a contemporary issue (two women falling in love) with classic soap romance storytelling, GL showed that it has still has plenty of life in it.  The ill fated wedding was exciting, character driven, and genuinely romantic.  Olivia’s determination to “do the right thing for once in her life” and encourage Natalia to marry Frank was believable.  Intriguingly, it was Natalia’s deep religious faith that made her realize she couldn’t marry a man.   Soap characters often pray to God for strength.  Usually it makes me roll my eyes because of their propensity for breaking all ten of the commandments.  But Natalia actually walks the walk.  In her vows to Frank, she said that love was a gift from God.  She realized that being true to the tenets of Catholicism would mean ignoring God’s will.  When she fled from the church I was thrilled for her, yet heartbroken for Frank.  That’s the mark of good writing.  It would have been both satisfying and easy to have Otalia fall into each other’s arms.  But that would not have been believable for Natalia’s character.  She finally found the words to tell Olivia that she loved her, too.  That doesn’t mean she’s ready to embark upon a relationship.  As Olivia pointed out, Natalia is still ashamed of her feelings.  She needs to figure out a way to reconcile her emotions and her faith.  I’ve always thought there should be more soap storylines involving religion.  It informs so many of our beliefs, but is rarely addressed on television.  I assume TPTB are afraid of offending viewers by appearing to endorse a particular faith.  This reform Jew is enthralled by Natalia’s Catholicism.  I applaud GL for setting up a complicated internal obstacle.  Natalia must decide whether she can be both a Catholic and involved with a woman — and, if not, whether she’s willing to sacrifice her beliefs for romance.  It’s going to be a long time before Olivia and Natalia travel to Iowa to walk down the aisle together.  I’m hoping God gives them the miracle of a new home on cable so we can watch every step of their journey.

There aren’t any truly rootable characters at Days of Our Lives’ wedding.  Nicole is passing off Sami’s baby as her own.  EJ is a DiMera, which this week seems to mean that he’s a villain.  Sami is pretending the baby she thinks is her child with EJ is adopted.  The fun came from seeing how it was going to unravel.  Would Brady, who wants Nicole for himself, reveal her secret?  Would it be her sleazy doctor who forced her to let him attend the wedding? Maybe Sami would go through with her plans to tell EJ that Grace was his child in front of the entire wedding party.  It wouldn’t be a Salem wedding without Sami involved in some way.  The dialogue was unusually witty for DOOL, with Nicole worrying that Dick Cheney was about to join the list of wedding crashers and Chloe telling Brady that this wedding wasn’t going to end like The Graduate.  The B storyline of the DiMeras using the wedding as a cover for their plan to send a hit man to kill Philip was effectively interwoven with the wedding.  It turned out that it was teen Mama Mia who showed up to stop the wedding — perhaps as a red herring.  I’m actually looking forward to seeing how this all turns out.  It’s the first time in quite a while that I’ve felt that way about DOOL.

Both DOOL and GL’s wedding were low budget affairs.  They took place in simple church sets.  There were few guests, small wedding parties, and unspectacular clothes.  GL even left in a lot of shots that showed Jessica Lescia’s very pregnant belly.  These episodes showed that soaps don’t have to break the banks to deliver entertaining events.

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