Passions

Passions is the kind of show you can’t just flip on and watch for a few minutes before forming an opinion. Like all soaps, it takes a while to learn all the characters and whatever, but, beyond that, it’s incredibly uneven. Sometimes there’ll be weeks in a row of boring relationship drama, but sometimes, there’s zombies.

Basically, this witch named Tabitha controls everything in the town of Harmony. There are all kinds of people who have dramas of their own going on, but Tabitha works for Hell, so she has to keep everyone constantly unhappy, and also try to prevent good people from hooking up and creating powerful bonds with their sex power. She used to have a living doll named Timmy, but he died (spookily enough, he died at the same exact time his character died, even though they film months before they air).

They tried to fill the gap Timmy left with two other living dolls at first, but they were just creepy, and then there was an Orangutan named Precious for a while. That was probably the best part of the show, because the monkey was in love with one of the hunks and had extensive fantasy sequences. But then it left town, packing a suitcase full of bananas and liquor. Oh, that’s right, the monkey liked drinking. Now, Tabitha has a baby daughter who’s also a witch, and that’s pretty funny, but it’s no Precious. Oh, but the baby’s named Endora. Get it? Tabitha, Endora.

I could go on and on. Right now, there’s a character dating a mermaid. There are often musical numbers. Every time there’s a popular movie, they blatantly rip it off, most recently evidenced by their summer-long take-off of The DaVinci Code.

Honestly, I could relate dozens of hilarious plotlines and twists of the past, but that seems best saved for another column (I knew this would be a two-parter). The important thing is that you start watching the show now, before the sponsors get to it and take out all the good stuff. You know it’s going to happen.