I wanted to start off with the upbeat musings of a seriously hooked Port Charles fan for obvious reasons. But I suspect I am in very good company.   There has been so much Port Charles bashing going on the past thirteen weeks plus, and rightly so, that I feel like those drums Ricky has been attempting to play.  The writers took the best soap out there and turned it into a bloody mess with Superstition.  We’re all tired and battered and bruised from it, (can you imagine how the actors feel) and  its time to let it go, just let it go and move on . Don’t want to, nor do I have the energy to go back there.    So… the beginnings of Torn have pulled me out of the funk of Superstition.  Dare I hope that we are back to the PC of old.  The PC that hooked even jaded soap watchers like me, made me believe once again, against my better   judgement  I might add, that soaps, this soap in particular, are the best drama on network television, surely the most fun to watch and obsess over. PC dragged me kicking and screaming back into the fold, and now I have two VCR’s going, just to make sure one doesn’t break and I miss an episode.  How did I get to this sorry state… I’ll tell you how.

Port Charles is the little soap that could.  It has the most talented  cast around.   It has the best writing and storytelling around.  Ok, so we had a momentary lapse on the radar here, but it’s much improved already.    It can grab you and throw you into its fantasy world and make a romantic dreamer out of the most stubborn of  us all.  Isn’t that what we watch soaps for.  I don’t want to see reality up there every day, I get enough of it in my own life thank you very much.  Course I don’t want stupidity either and we do get that all too often.  I want beautiful relationships with beautiful people and I want their trials and tribulations and travails solved in record time.  The 13 week story arc is brilliant – everything gets wrapped up, more or less, in a neat, tidy little package at the end and we move on to the next adventure, crisis, whatever.  Those endless stories that get dragged out for years is what turned me off of soaps in the first place.  Never  any resolution to anything.  Port Charles resolves story lines and transitions from arc to arc effortlessly, smoothly.  And aren’t they the clever ones in setting us up every 13 weeks for a payoff at the end.  The anticipation alone keeps me watching, I don’t care that I’m being manipulated.  I’m thoroughly taken  with this soap, its characters and its actors, and you won’t get any apologies for it from me. Ever.

Ode to…the magic of  Rafe and Alison…the gorgeous and talented Brian Gaskill, need I say more…Rafe’s chain…Livvie’s evil manipulations…Kelly Monaco’s stamina at playing this through to its conclusion…Alison’s pure heart…Jamal’s beautiful eyes…Kevin and Lucy…Rafe and Lucy…Chris and Julie…a sexy Irishman…an old barn that can be transformed at the drop of a hat…a bottomless knapsack…dancing lights…Rafe’s journal…Rafe’s monologue outside the barn …making love …vampires and angels…and spies…heaven and hell…Ed and James…conscience calls…dreams…true love…whispers of ecstasy…a symbolic wedding…a smile that melts your knees…a kiss in the park…a shirtless Rafe…a beautiful soul…fantasy and fun.

That’s how I got to this sorry state. 

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Email me  musings@soaptownusa.com