Explaining Soap Operas to My Hubby

I watch 3 soaps and occasionally my hubby will watch them with me. In the beginning I told him the main families in each of the shows I watched, who was who, who was with who and so on. At first he asked many questions about the shows and characters, then as he watched more he became more familiar with the story lines. Finally we were able to watch a show without so many questions. Even after explaining soap operas to my hubby, he still gets there names and shows confused, but he is learning.

Soaps are not like regular TV shows, meaning an actor portraying a character on a soap can change at any time. Regular shows keep the same actors. This confuses my hubby. When Jason left General hospital the actor moved over to Y&R. It took the hubby some time to get used to the actor having a different name. I have watched soaps for so long, it doesn’t phase me at all.

A few characters from One Life to Live were written into story lines over at General Hospital. For about a year these characters were on General Hospital and then the “characters” left to go back to One life to live. For some reason General Hospital was unable to use the characters names that originated with One Life to Live but General Hospital wanted kept the actors. All of a sudden one day 3 characters we knew by name for the past year were now being called different names and were involved within the same story lines they left behind. Confused? Yes, so was my hubby.

Soap actors move between soaps when their contracts are up or they want a change. We learn to adapt to these types of changes even if we liked the person better on another show. Who knows, they may return to that role one day….and of course confuse my hubby some more.