The Drama of Days...

In an effort to try to pick a show that no one else will, I will reveal my little-old-lady like tendencies and do a soap opera. I grew up with a grandmother who always watched her “stories,” and so soap watching was always something that I associated with the being old (not just grown up, but old). One day, about a decade ago, I was at home on a school holiday and happened upon the premiere of NBC’s Passions. The next day, I watched again, and by day 3 I was hooked! Over the years, when I was able, I watched Passions, and quite often the last couple of minutes of the soap opera that aired before it, Days of Our Lives. By the time Passions went off the air, it seemed natural to just switch and watch the full hour of Days, and with the advent of Tivo, I don’t even have to keep my afternoons free to never miss an episode!

Days of Our Lives takes place in the fictional town of Salem, somewhere in the Midwest. As an ensemble production, the main characters are arranged in families: the Bradys, the Dimeras, the Kirakisis family, the Hortons, and a plethora of minor characters. The characters rotate through having main storyline, and each has been featured at some point during the show’s lengthy history. The main characters of the moment are Sami Brady, who is dating Rafe Hernandez, the FBI agent who protected her when she was in witness protection after having witnessed the murder of the mayor of Salem. During that ordeal, Sami was pregnant with her ex-husband, EJ Dimera’s baby, but she hid the pregnancy from him because his father is the town bad guy. Well, EJ’s wife Nicole, who was also pregnant, experienced a miscarriage and happened upon the knowledge of Sami’s hidden pregnancy. After the baby was born, she traded the baby of a teenage girl whom she met through a shady doctor with gambling problems for Sami’s baby and passed it off as her own. Sami invented a story about having adopted the baby she brought home from witness protection, and it later died of meningitis. EJ found out about the deception and thought that his baby with Sami had died. Eventually, the truth came out that Sami and EJ’s baby was the one that Nicole claimed to be hers. Nicole was arrested for the baby switch, but Sami’s half-brother, Brady, who didn’t know why Nicole was arrested bailed her out of jail, and while out, she went to the Dimera mansion and found the baby alone in the study and kidnapped her. Eventually Nicole felt remorse for the kidnapping and called home wanting to bring the baby back, but as she was on the phone with Sami, a mystery woman knocked her out from behind and kidnapped the baby. Weeks later, we learn that EJ orchestrated the kidnapping of his own child as revenge against his father for conspiring with Nicole, and Sami, whom he is still in love with and wants to separate from her current love interest. To say it is complicated is an understatement! And that is only two of the characters! There is also Bo and Hope Brady, a “power couple” that have been together since the 80s. Sometime in the 90s, Hope was kidnapped by Stefano Dimera and presumed dead, and Bo moved on with a new love, Carly. When it was revealed that Hope was still alive, Carly married another man and left Salem. And that might have been the end of it, but not on a soap. Two decades later, Bo and Hope’s daughter Cierra is kidnapped and they disagree about how to handle the demands of the kidnappers. Hope wanted to pay them off, but Bo thought they needed to follow police procedure (he is the police commissioner). Well, Hope moved out…and then Carly moved back into town. And this was after killing her husband over his threats to her daughter that she gave away years before after an affair. Her husband’s aunt Vivian, who tried to bury her alive a couple of decades ago, chased her back to Salem and wants revenge for her nephew. She found out that Carly’s daughter was in Salem and wants to kill the daughter as revenge. Problem is that daughter, Melanie, is dating Philip Kiriakis, the baby that Vivian stole as an embryo and incubated for 9 months, because she was in love with his father, Victor. Well, now she has a cozy relationship with Victor again, and is trying to be a mother to Philip (she’s a bit of a loon). So only time will tell if she will marry her “son’s” fiancé in order to get her revenge.

Obviously, this show is fiction. Thank goodness! Since it first aired in 1965, it has made some positive contributions to the destruction of sociological barriers on television. The show began as a family drama centered around the Hortons, and incorporated the hospital into much of the storylines. The show has shown tackled such heavy topics as rape, cancer, divorce, medical and psychological problems. Days of Our Lives was the first soap opera to tackle interracial marriage and artificial insemination. And they have had their share of out-there science fiction storylines. Days of Our Lives is constantly trying to create a culturally diverse cast while maintaining the “family” formula that they began with. They have recently introduced new Hispanic characters, Raphael, Arianna, and Garbriella Hernandez in an effort to be able to reach a new audience. They have also stayed current with storylines such as having a major character, Philip, join the Marines post-9/11, and be discharged from service after losing a leg in an explosion.

The show might be ground-breaking at times, but it just as easily falls into the trap of stereotyping certain groups. While I applaud their not using the African-American characters as criminals, they did create a mafia-style family with the Italian Dimera family. The Greek Kiriakis family is into shipping and running the drugs in the town (at least until they just sold that part of the business to the Dimera’s). And the Bradys, the Irish family, own a pub. But since this is a soap opera, the drama is mostly about relationships and medical issues, which are colorblind. I think it often presents women in such a manner that it seems that they are a little too co-dependent on the men in their lives, and spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to “catch” their true love, but I think it is less frightening as a teaching tool about relationships than the Twilight Saga. At least these women move on when things don’t work out, rather than sinking into severe depression.

I love this show, and all its characters. Plus, I think that it is a wonderful way to put the drama in my life into perspective. No matter how crazy things are going for me, at least I don’t have drama on the same level as these characters! And while some of the storylines might be a little heavy, I appreciate being able to watch it with my children home and not feel like I have to shield them from the TV. Too many of my other favorite programs are too violent or too sexual to watch casually in a house with kids!