The passing of As the World Turns
At least that’s what it feels like to me. I haven’t watched regularly in recent years, but I grew up with As the World Turns. My grandmother watched, my mother watches and I loved sick days so I could stay home from school, lay on the couch wrapped in a quilt, and watch, as my mother called them…her stories. I used to think I was introduced to the romance genre by Linda Howard. Now I know the truth. I was introduced to romance by Soaps.
What I watched was the titillating, the forbidden. Unlike mainstream television, in my mom’s stories women were sexual beings. People had affairs and premarital sex. Women bore children out of wedlock and even more scandalous, children fathered by men other than their husbands. Whoa!
My mom and grandmother would discuss the characters as if they were neighbors and friends.
“Did you see what she did? Oh, that Susan. If I were Kim, I’d…” and their discussions might last for hours. True love waited just around the corner, but there were obstacles and challenges and lies and betrayal, and there was always the villain to come between our two protagonists. In it’s heyday, As the World Turns was positively yummy!
Yesterday I shed a few tears. I knew the show was coming to an end so I made certain to watch the last few weeks. How sad. I know the prevailing opinion is that Soaps are passe, that their glory years are long gone. I disagree. I think that’s a bunch of crap. T’was bad writing killed the Soaps, not viewers.
Many thanks to Steph at fangs, wands, and fairy dust for the unexpected plug yesterday so I’ll plug her right back. She’s a True Blood and vampire devotee. http://fangswandsandfairydust.blogspot.com/
Also, thanks Susi, book blogger extraordinaire over at http://thegeekybookworm.blogspot.com/
and author Katalina Leon, http://www.katalinaleon.com/
ya’ll know why!
