#the soaps

First of all, I’d like to discuss the intro. I believe fully this show could be improved by also adding the character names to the corresponding actors during the intro. I need to memorize names and faces!

So here we go into the episode, picking up with Nikki finding someone placed the murder weapon she used to murder JT (which I assume was months ago), in her house. I, personally, was shocked! Nick runs in (apparently he’s in the house, just hanging out) and we’re treated to a real delight. Nikki gives a brief rundown to Nick of the events leading up to Nick’s death. This is good news to me because I wasn’t watching the show then, so Nikki is basically explaining it to me as well. Thanks Nik!

Meanwhile, we go across town (maybe not all the way across. I don’t know this place. We go to a new location, okay?) to who I call “The new kids on the block.” This is Ray’s house (the cop/detective). He, of course, isn’t there, but his wife (who’s name I can’t remember and have dubbed “New Girl”) and his brother, Arturo (who’s basically the only name I can remember) are. New Girl arrived into town about the time I casually started watching the last 30 minutes of the show. So we’re both new, but she seems to have picked up the show a lot quicker than me.

Anyway, before the new kids on the block came to our fair city, they had their own share of drama. New Girl cheated on her husband with his brother (a classic in the Soap world). So now there’s that tension. PLUS Ray almost had a thing with blonde girl #1, Sharon and his wife, New Girl, isn’t convinced he’s not still into Sharon. Take a breath. I guess New Girl’s heat isn’t working and Arturo has come to fix it and now she’s seducing him. This is a super condensed version of what happened, but it’s the basics.

So where’s Ray? Well he’s sharing a very small motel room with Sharon because their car almost slid off the road during a particularly treacherous night. New Girl has found out about this through various circumstances and now she’s convinced Ray is cheating on her. Which is why, I believe, she tries to kiss Arturo.

Yeah, woah!

You should know at this particular point I really want Blonde Girl #1 Sharon and Ray to get together. They’re both good looking. Needless to say I’m not a fan of New Girl.

Alright so let’s check back in on Nikki and Nick. This murder mystery has me more involved than an Agatha Christi novel. Who has access to the house? Who’s blackmailing everyone? Is it JT??? It was at this point I wondered how many people have murdered or been murdered on the show. For supposedly a “small” town, the murder rate has got to be suspiciously high.

Also, Victor is in jail. That’s it. That’s where he is (shrug).

I guess it’s the next day because suddenly it’s daylight outside and also everyone changed clothes. Cool.

I made a mental note that Arturo is dating Abby, Blonde Girl #2. I feel like they may be getting engaged soon. In fact I thought it would happen today but then things appeared to take a turn for the worse before coming back up in the end. Their conversation (although short, but spread out through several scenes) was a true rollercoaster ride for me today.

Speaking of Abby, she is a complete mystery to me. I don’t really know any of her background so she’s someone I’ll have to pay attention to.

Ray comes clean to his wife, New Girl, about spending the night with Sharon and claims he’s done with the drama. But oh Ray, you’re never done with the drama. Obviously they can’t stay together and be happy because they’re on a Soap so I can’t wait for that to implode.

Final Thoughts:

If Abby and Art don’t get engaged soon they will have wasted all of our times.

One episode of this show is like a complete movie. I’m trying to keep up and remember who is who. I feel some big twists coming.

This murder mystery/blackmail situation is really something else. Can’t wait to see how they tied this up.

Let's start this with it so it you're a little bit crazy to go into acting today, and all the time before. What I was going to talk about was the danny dyer around about how we saved cells in crazy. I don't think he's four of them a lot of them paper too.They character and almost become a character, let's talk about the twenty fifth anniversary of the thirties anniversary special on graham norton

. And danny dyer, it is a scorpio moon with an I leo sun. So whatever he did in the soap, he was going to make a bad I know because I have this hook up myself, meaning the sun square moon 🌙

. Well, I think he's right, I've seen it on been really talked about act tours and actresses. With Joe Rogan with because he used to be on a t v show wave andy dick dick, and that's Hollywood says great 10 times worse, and it's over here. But he said, danny dua, that safe does a mad, leave them in the street like crazy, and I think when he was probably on the t v show of eastenders, even though you get people like Jessie Wallace, who he really didn't get along with, along with Steve McFadden and a few others, when you see the Graham Norton special, you can see the ian is a bit of a hater, too.

Which. I wasn't surprised by so and then you see people like Patsy farm all these temples office in this julie a goodyear, and you see the public Big Brother. Now you see the true personalities, the matter all that happened. Her Kim would and u v the kim may rest in pace, kim may rest in peace. He seems like a very unhappy woman o she even went on lose women and college reserve, but they work very now they weren't that getting are all letting her talk.

I think they're all a bit weird.Jacqueline, josa, it's with someone out of tower who supposedly cheated on her loads of times this is what I mean, they expect very little of other people, but at the same time, they can be menaces, and a lot of the time people have been sacked Jessie Wallace has been sacked so many times embers, but because she's a Slater, and I guess I am guessing the slate is the most popular family on eastender is otherwise, who have you got the brannings of the mitchells, but it can't be us slater

And then there was the incident when Barbara Windsor told of Whitney's character in real life, Shona McCarthy.

But. She was still a young girl. I always also think Barbara Windsor is a bit nuts or was a bit an answer. It's funny because Rainey's got with her ex toy boy husband, and I wonder if when they were unset together. She thought, "Oh, i'm gonna have that man one day, always flirty, I'd love to really know what you like in real life. Or maybe they just fell in love by being around each other on tv or in some other's form of content. Or maybe there was always a spark there when she met her through bar bro.Maybe I don't know, but lynn, who played lynn slater or lynn hobbs. She had an affair on where one time June Brown was outside her dressing room and she had to try and get rid of her because the man she's owing an affair with who is like a set designer within there and they just like finished hanky panky and she was allegedly jealous of all the slated, sister's looks I found something ages back. That it's like a blind item on this whole situation. But in real life, she's like best friends with kathy, which gives the more brownie points for her because kathy is an icon.

SHIRLEY CARTER

Shirley Carter. One of the best characters in British soap ever, she brings in a sort of dangerous energy while also seeing her hidden depths of being a mother who ran away.

And why did she run away? You see her deeper mothering side as well; she’s funny, she’s a laugh, and she’s loyal as you’re close to this friend, the dog.

She was a so we’re a good mom to Jay and Ben, Phil’s eldest. She also helped with the businesses and was the only equal partner he ever had. Because they were honest with each other in most ways. He just didn't love her as much. In relationships is often the way there’s always one person who loves them more than ever. And even when he’s about to marry Sharon, she still holds the torch 4 him. She was gonna marry him herself until she found out that he had his own affair with Glenda, his mother-in-law. EastEnders is a very incest show in that way. Anyway, I think her character is so good because you can say believe this person exists and there are a lot of shirleys out there.

And when her best friend Heather is having problems with men because she’s overweight and a bit geeky, she is loyal as a dog again, whenever it comes to Heather she doesn’t let **** whenever it comes to Heather she doesn’t let **** go down.. even if it means hiring somebody. Just for her to be happy for a moment she'd do anything for her friend.

Even when Ben murders Heather, somebody who’s also been like a surrogate auntie to him. She treated him really well. Maybe she stuck her foot in a few times with Ben. and this is what happened. She had some knowledge that he didn't want to get out.

Hello and welcome to my new blogging adventure.

There’s always been a stigma around the words “soap opera.” Soap Operas are shallow, unrealistic. Plots involving murder, affairs, surprise pregnancies, people coming back from the dead, children aging seemingly overnight, and (gasp!) secret twins! If this were a primetime show it might be described as thrilling or exciting. But soap operas are just outrageous. It’s been a running joke in society to poke fun at those who watch the Soaps. But couldn’t we argue that Soap Operas gave us our first true fandom. Magazines have been published detailing what’s next for your favorite characters through actor interviews. Today we have websites, branching off the success of its forefathers in print, to continue the gossip of what your favorite characters have in store. Articles dissect each characters motive and speculate about their fate. For a short time, there was an entire television network dedicated to syndicated episodes of fan-favorite soaps.

My grandmother watched them since the beginning and my mother joined in as a teenager. Their soaps of choice included the Guiding Light, Bold and the Beautiful, occasionally All My Children, and of course, the Young & the Restless. As a result, the Soaps have been part of my life since I was born. If you were in the living room in the morning to mid-afternoon, the TV was on whatever Soap Opera it was time for. In fact, I remember being a child and being able to picture Victor Newman’s face as clearly as my own father’s face.

My mom watched them almost religiously in the afternoon when she took on the stay-at-home-mom role while I was growing up. I usually played dolls on the floor, creating my own Soap Opera.

Fast forward many years. She’s retired and I’m a recent graduate. So we both find ourselves in front of the TV quite often. As daytime TV is limited, I settle for her favorite soap opera (and one of few who survived) the Young & the Restless. Although times have changed, with more women entering the workforce and our TV lineup now including thousands of channels, somehow this soap opera (amongst few others) have managed to cling onto their space in the daytime TV world. Sandwiched between talkshows (only good if the host is funny), local TV news programs (boring), and gameshows (my other personal favorite), soap operas seem to offer a bit of dramatic flair to the otherwise plain-on-purpose daytime lineup.

I just started watching the Young & the Restless within the last couple of weeks, and let me tell you, those storylines are no joke (literally). People can make fun of Soaps all they want, but I’d like to see them keeping up with eight different storylines in one hour-long program (most likely 48 minutes with commercial breaks). This is the Agatha Christie of daytime TV.

Despite my earlier claim of Soaps being on TV during my youth, I’ve never actively watched them until now. I didn’t try to keep up with storylines and character development. Now I’m jumping in to this well-established, extremely long running TV program completely blind. There’s no way humanly possible to start the series from the beginning and catch up. This bothers me because I’m of the generation where I basically can’t watch a TV program unless I’ve started from the beginning. I thought I could possibly maneuver around this by doing a quick Wikipedia read (as I’ve done with most things I’m interested in). I soon found out that even a synopsis of these characters was a novel to read. There have been 11,000+ episodes since the premier, and most of the main characters have been there for years (like 30 years). Needless to say, they’ve had their share of storylines.

I can barely remember everyone’s names (from my Wikipedia read) let alone relationships to each other (both family and romantic). So that’s where the blog comes in. I’m sure there are others out there who have decided at one time to start the Soap Opera, only to spend weeks (if not months) catching up. This is half the fun. Instead of knowing character names you have to rely on looks (blonde girl #1, not to be confused with short blonde girl #2).

For this blog, I will be bringing you on my journey of watching the Young & the Restless for the first time. I’ll be recapping each episode as I see it. Maybe not in the most professional or glossy way, but with humor and real touch. I’ll be writing for the casual fan, but mostly for myself.

Try to keep up and I’ll see you in Genoa City.