by Rose Madeline Mula

How can so many women waste so much time watching ridiculous TV soap operas? Shouldn’t they be spending those precious, never-to-be-retrieved hours studying Sanskrit, cracking the corporate glass ceiling, volunteering for Habitats for Humanity, working to achieve world peace, or maybe just cooking dinner?

I would never, ever become a slave to the soaps, I always asserted, looking down my nose at my weak-minded sisters. Yeah, well never say “never.” It’s time for me to confess: My name is Rose, and I am a Soapaholic.

As with most addictions, mine began very insidiously. Unfortunately, working from home has been an enabler for me. I got in the habit of eating lunch every day while watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and sitting at my computer, fooling myself that I could simultaneously scarf down my sandwich, watch the show, and write — at least during the commercials. (Talk about non-productive multi-tasking.)

Unfortunately, one day my writing muse nudged me as Millionaire was signing off, and I started typing madly. When I looked up, All My Children had appropriated the TV screen; and I was instantly curious about what was happening. I’d watch just for a couple of minutes, I promised myself, to see if a woman named Erica Kane could escape from a shadowy kidnapper who was planning to snatch her from Bora Bora just before her wedding to Jack. Well, of course, before we could find out, the scene shifted to a different set of characters (I had no idea who they were at this point) who were in the midst of another life-altering crisis back in Pine Valley (AMC’s home town). So here was a new situation that piqued my curiosity. I kept watching (computer and lunch forgotten) for the rest of the hour, which (surprise!) ended with still another cliff-hanger.

That was several months ago; and now that the final episode of AMC has aired, I’m embarrassed to admit that not only had I watched it every day for the past several months, but I also programmed my DVR to record it in case something more important — like my life — required me to be away from my TV at 1:00 PM some day. And I’m even more chagrined to confess that I was hooked, despite the fact that the show was terrible! (Note to ABC: Plans to cancel All My Children were in place before I wrote this. If you still want to sue me for defamation, have your lawyers call my lawyers. Right, like I’ve got lawyers.)

How terrible was this show? Where do I begin? The preposterous plot lines? The unbelievable characters? The ludicrous dialogue? The over-the-top wardrobes … makeup … hairstyles …?

Since I was a relatively recent viewer, I don’t know any of the background details; but from what I gathered, everyone on All My Children (except the small children, thankfully) had once been married to everyone else — some more than once to the same person. Prime example — Erica (who, as the show ended, had been planning to embark on her eighth marriage) was wed twice to Adam Chandler, who had disappeared from the scene for a while but recently came back. But, then, everyone came back — even people who supposedly were long since dead but apparently were restored to life by the manipulative Dr. David Hayward (who even managed to revive himself after also having “died”). I’ll spare you the details of the little I know about most of the bizarre plots, subplots, and sub-subplots, but let me give you a brief rundown of just a few of the complicated relationships of the citizens of Pine Valley: Jake loved his wife Amanda (even after she admitted to having slept with JR), but he was also still in love with former wife Cara (which is why Amanda hooked up with JR). Cara had been madly in love with Jake but then fell in love with his brother Tad, who married her to save her from deportation to Mexico, where she had a price on her head. Tad thought he was in love with Cara — until his formerly “dead” wife Dixie showed up (courtesy of Dr. David Hayward), whereupon Tad realized he still loved Dixie. Marrisa, who was married to JR, recently decided she loved Bianca, so JR retaliated by beginning an intense relationship with Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker. Griffen loved Kendall, who was falling for him in return until, guess what, the reappearance of her husband Zach, who had gone down in a mid-ocean, plane crash, which apparently no one had survived. Ryan and Greenlee finally loved each other, after a series of disasters; but Greenlee feared that Ryan’s long-dead former true love, Gillian, would — you won’t believe it — be coming back from the great beyond some day soon. It was a real mess, I tell you.

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