The Oddities of Passions

In 2006, I was in my late second trimester and the only TV I had was from bunny ears. The afternoons would drag on and on, because after Jerry Springer there was nothing on but soap operas and I am not the soap opera type.

My house was clean, the laundry was all folded and put away. I'd already gone for 2 walks that day and I just wanted to relax. I did not feel like watching a DVD, so I flipped around through an infomercial, 2 soap operas, and then stopped on something absolutely peculiar. It was 2 in the afternoon, and this oddity was on channel 3 (NBC). I could have sworn only soap operas were on at this time, but this was... it couldn't be! What was this show? Was it a daytime movie?

An adorable litle blonde girl had just wiggled her finger and conjured up a mermaid. Now an older lady and this little girl were arguing over this mermaid. The older lady was insisting she be sent back where she came from, but the little girl seemed to win this argument. I continued to watch this show, oblivious to the fact that I was in fact watching a soap opera, called Passions. Since I was unaware, I started watching this show everyday.

It wasn't for another week that I realized this was a soap opera. By then, it was too late... I was hooked. It may have been the introduction of the "other characters" and those plot lines, that screamed out the obvious to me. By then, I didn't care. I wasn't watching a show that's always following the same plot lines like the stereoptypical soap opera. Or was it?

The mermaid was seducing men, by singing a 'mermaid song', and once she seduced a man into bed, that man could never be with another human woman again. This was causing a problem for another female character because the two men that this mermaid was targeting happened to be the same two men that she was torn between.

Okay, okay. Long story short I realized that this was a soap. My reaction was very conflicted. I would verbally pick on myself to my husband, that I was now officially a 'pregnant woman'. My husband, trying to comfort me, asked if I would like some bon-bons.

Unfortunately, I did fall into the soap opera addiction, and after a while it wasn't just because of the witches and mermaids. It was because I really want Theresa to tell Ethan that little Ethan is his son... I've been waiting so darn long for that to come out. (FYI, over a year later this plot is still being stretched out. I believe Theresa will be telling Ethan any day now, or on the series finale.)

I have watched this show everyday since that first episode that caught my attention. I may have missed an episode here or there due to appointments or other conflicts, but even while I was in the hospital after giving birth to my son... my son has joined me in the daily activity of watching Passions. (He's got a thing for Endora.)

I've had fun with this show. When my husband continued to tease me about watching a soap opera, I threatened that he wouldn't 'get any' until I found out who the blackmailer was. (If I had kept this secret, we both may have qualified for reborn virgins by the time the truth was revealed.)

Harmony does not fail to keep you intrigued, and yes the soap opera drama is very obvious to me now but I don't care. I'm involved because I think that this person should be with that person and I can't wait for that person's secret to come out just like I can't wait to see what this person will do next. The secrets, the twists, the surprises (predictable and unpredictable... I've been placing bets on both!) are just all too good to give up.

Now here's what really gets me. My biggest, deepest secret (what? I can have one too!) is that I tried to watch Days of Our Lives. I figured "Hey, maybe I am the soap type after all. I watched enough episodes to try to pick up the plot... and that's it. I could get into it. I'm fine without it. No show has hooked me into a daily addiction the way that Passions has.

I was there for the end of the show on NBC. I was lucky to have already had Direct TV, and I was addicted enough that I would have switched to Direct TV if I hadn't already had it. I have not been there from the beginning like many other viewers, but I have dug around into the past of the fictional town of Harmony enough to know what I need to know. Partly because I have no life, partly because I am eager to find good spoilers so it was necessary to learn who Alistair is.

Talking dolls, spells and love triangles aren't the only thing that seperates Passions from the other 'day time dramas' anymore. The biggest controversial plot is only getting bigger... and that would be Vincent (the true identity of the blackmailer.)

This show has had a few cases of incest, and the very disturbed Vincent is a recurring member of these acts. Determined to destroy his unkowing siblings, he seduced his own brother into a secret (gay) affair to destroy his sister. (This plot is too complicated to describe.) It was revealed that Vincent is not only a man, he is a 'he-she' (though this was revealed through the blackmailer before his true identity was revealed.)

The confusion here was not enough. On the last episode of Passions that aired on NBC, it was a huge reveal that Vincent was in fact Valerie (a female character who had been on the show for a very long time before his arrival.) Valerie had in fact been both a disguise and an alter ego of this dysfunctional being. Valerie had also been one of the many 'partners' of Vincent's father... again reflecting on the incest.

The biggest (so far) in the Vincent scenario is yet to come. Spoilers are now revealing that in November, the she-male Vincent will discover that 'it' is... pregnant! Who will be the father? Could it be the grandfather or the uncle of this poor child? In either case, it is plots like these that you can't get anywhere but Passions. So even if you don't think you're the 'soap type', you might surprise yourself. This is nothing less than a fun show to watch.