It's however quite somewhat amusing to watch these shows if you do so with a little distance. Take "The bold and the beauty" or whatever it's called. My grandma used to be an avid follower of this show, telling me things like "Oh, that guy is so mean!" and "You better watch out for that woman, she's dangerous!" with a serious and often very indignant face on behalf of the poor victims on the screen. It was almost so I wondered if she was aware that it was just a television show. And a not too good one either, imho.
So, what's going on in a daytime soap? Well.
- There's always secrets and underlying alliances going on. (well duh!)
- When two people talk about a secret, you can be damn sure that there will be someone overhearing that conversation, and this person will either be a) the person the secret is about and who's not supposed to know about it right yet, or b) an evil person who's so gonna use this newfound knowledge to his or her own adventage. (cue: closeup montage of either a teary, bigeyed, shocked woman or an evil smirk that just tells you 'uhoh trouble incoming')
- If someone becomes pregnant, you can never be sure who actually fathered the baby - usually it's not the one the woman officially is dating.
- Everybody is dating everyone. Even doubledating. Or trippledating. A lot of recycling going on :p
- The innocent victim is always helpless, got huge puppy eyes and always crying (think Krystle from Dynasty). Don't forget oh so innocent.
- The evil antagonist is never trustworthy. If for some reason this person should happen to speak the truth for once, noone will ever believe or help him/her until it's too late.
- There's a lot of crossediting. A lot. It's like, hey, let's dwell five seconds at this situation, then show five seconds of another then go back and show another five seconds of the first situation and allow one setence to be uttered before going back to the second situation and so on and so on. Personally I think it's because they doesn't want to spend too much on too many scenes, so they try to milk the few scenes they got for whatever it's worth. And they think the viewers really loves to see the actors breathe only. Or watch the cute, little tear slowly emerge from the corner of the actress eyes before rolling down her cheeks. Suff like that.
- There's a lot of monologues uttered by people completely alone. It's as if the writers either thinks that people actually do speak out loud for themselves or they doesn't bother finding actors able to communicate such things silently.
- It's not rare that these monologues happen while the actors are holding a picture or a letter or something in their hands. Like, "Oh why oh why did I ever let you go.....I promise, by God, that I'll never ever do the same mistake again!"
Anyways, I'm aware that these are like, well used concepts (or rather, clichés) in any show on television, but somehow it just seems so.....well....easier to catch in daytme shows...it's so...obvious and not as subtle...than in other sorta.
And no, this still doesn't mean that I'm actually watching these shows...I'm just sayin cause it bugs me how easy it is to find such clichés in these :p
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"But the bad news," he said "Girl you're a dandelion."
Dandelion. Hey I need to think about that.
-Tori Amos