How to Follow a Soap Opera Plot

Soap operas are the a guilty pleasure of millions of viewers. But for the uninitiated, following a soap plot is confusing. Characters behave scandalously and their relationships are hopelessly complicated. To muddy things further, soap plot twists are highly improbable. But these things are what make soap operas entertaining. There actually are rules that apply to most soap operas. They're just different from the real world. Learn them, and enjoy a little escapist melodrama every now and then.

Instructions

1. Pick a soap. Scan a few different soap operas and decide which one you like. Choose based on anything from characters, set design, or costumes. For the best chance of understanding the continuity of the plot line, choose a long running soap opera.

2. Identify the character who represents immortal evil. This character is often a man who is played by just one actor over many years. He will often come and go by “leaving the country”, falling into a coma, or some other completely plausible reason to take a break from soap life. This character may even “die.” However, this kind of character has the eternal power to come back to life, and inevitably does.

3. Find the character who embodies unblemished virtue. This character is usually a very young woman, since youthful beauty is an important indicator of a noble soul in the soap opera world. She is often victimized or besieged by illness, and is always in need of rescue. As she ages, she'll develop serious character flaws. She may be played by several actresses until she settles into a more interesting phase of her life. At that point, she'll move between phases of good and evil like most of the other characters.

4. Keep in mind the rules of soap opera familial relationships. Most characters at one time or another will discover that they have been switched at birth, have an evil twin, are the evil twin, were never really married to their spouse, or are the half sibling of their spouse.

5. Watch for spontaneously occurring personal tragedies. All soap opera characters are vulnerable to coma, amnesia, terminal illness, miraculous recovery from terminal illness and coming back from the dead.

6. Expect each soap opera character to have serious human failings. All characters are prone to infidelity, thievery and murderous tendencies.

7. Learn the relationships between characters. All characters are potential mates for all other characters. Almost no standard societal rules apply. Only blatant incest is avoided in soap opera plots, though the boundaries are tested.

8. Gather background information on your soap. When the past indiscretions and tragedies of your favorite characters' are important, clues will be offered in current soap opera episodes. Assume that over the years your characters have been married many times, have illegitimate children, have committed felonies, and so forth.

Tips & Warnings

• You don't have to watch your soap every day. Once you're acquainted with the main characters and the familiar plot complications, just check in every now and then. You can follow the plot by watching once a week. Monday's and Friday's are the best times pick up enough information to know what happened during the week.

• Watch for replacement actors. When a new actor plays an established soap opera character, an announcement will be made at the beginning of the episode. The announcement may be made for a couple of weeks. After that, it's up to you to figure out what happened.

• Beware of the sudden arrival of grown children or siblings who never existed in previous episodes. These characters sometimes arrive from out of town, from prison or from being assumed dead. This is a way to introduce new family member characters without having to grow them from babyhood.

Resources

• Soap Opera Central