Passions is moving to DirectTV! Curses!
Anybody who’s a fan of the supernatural and super-awesome soap opera Passions is probably already aware of this, but after being dumped by NBC, they chose to move to DirectTV instead of going away altogether. I’m happy about this, especially since most of the cast is moving along with the show, but couldn’t they have gotten onto TBS or something else a little more accessible? I do not plan on buying DirectTV just so I can watch one lousy channel (“The 101″), and they’ve already said they won’t be hosting episodes online, so thank god for BitTorrent.
A lot of interesting stuff has been happening lately on the show, and of course they’re saving all the good twists and revelations for after they move. Now that Pretty has come to town (yes, there are characters named both Fancy and Pretty) and Vincent’s diabolical secrets have been revealed, and of course now that Sheridan has turned eeevil, there are so many possibilities, and I worry that I’ll never know what happens. Then again, I could be using all that energy for something more constructive, like reading Russian literature or taking an Indian cooking class. But dammit, there’s something so fascinating about watching all those witches and demons and drunken millionaires!
As Passions is a show that likes to make fun of itself, the characters often comment on the fact that their lives are nothing but a series of negative experiences. In the other soaps, the characters rarely seem to realize that they are inhabiting some sort of ridiculous, unrealistic world where the timeline makes no sense and no marriage, pregnancy or execution can ever go off as planned. But in Passions, there’s a very good reason for all the misfortune: a witch named Tabitha controls everyone’s lives in order to ensure maximum unhappiness, as she was, until recently, employed by “the dark side.” Now there’s this whole good witch/bad witch reevaluation going on, but that’s more of a nod to Broadway’s Wicked than anything else.
They make the ridiculous plots work by amping up the absurdity, as in a classic plot twist where Sheridan was dating two brothers at the same time, Luis and Antonio. Innocent Antonio approached her house and looked in the window just as she was banging Luis, and he uttered “Oh my God!” just before the cliffhanger ending. Then when we returned to the scene, he finished the line: “Oh my God! I’m blind!!”
Or there was the time that the Mayor summarized the absurdity of soaps in general by lamenting, “What kind of town did I get elected to? Houses being sucked into hell, demons attacking, two brothers in love with the same woman!”
Good luck, Passions. I hope you never get cancelled, again.
