Soap

I watched an episode of a soap last week. I do this every now and again, well, because, they're just so funny. It's nice sometimes to know that things are all well in the world of soaps - people are still marrying their husband's brothers/cousins/fathers, getting amnesia, becoming paralysed and miraculously recovering, all while dressed as if they're off to a wedding, with hair and make-up to match - you know, average, everyday stuff.

This one, however, was a pearler (when last did you hear that word?) There’s this dude, with an eye patch (remember this, it’s an important detail, the patch). And amnesia. And he’s got some dreaded disease which has necessitated him being kept in quarantine (the nurses come in in space suits, seriously). He’s in this quarantine room, which just happens to have a big glass window through which all the other soapie characters can gape (and speak, through a nifty intercom), not unlike a snake cage at the zoo. Anyway, he’s in there with his wife of old (who he can’t remember). I’m not exactly sure how long-term his amnesia has been, but long enough for him to fall in love with someone other than his wife (who’s unconscious, due to the mystery-very-contagious-bug). She (the lover, not the wife), keeps coming to the glass cage and making whimpering sounds at him, putting her hand up against the glass so he can ‘touch’ her.

Meantime, he seems to be recovering his memory and, along with some other whingey characters whose exact relationship to them all I’m unsure of, have decided that only his love for his wife (and, possibly, the antidote from Canada, which is being fetched by another smoochy couple who are really too old to be smoochy… her eyebrows are just below her hairline from so much plastic surgery and he speaks like, well, he’s in a soap) will save her. Incidentally, there is a huge storm through which smoochy couple must fly, so they may not make it.

And then there’s his daughter, who he seems to be remembering too, who is convincing him that, indeed, the only thing that will save unconscious-mom/wife, is his undying love. They had this amazingly dramatic conversation which ended with his putting his hand up against the glass, and him saying, and I kid you not:

“Look into my eye, sweetheart, I will not let you down!”

Fuck me, who writes this stuff?