Saturday, September 19, 2009

Good-bye old friends

I haven't watched Guiding Light in years, but as it ended today I had to feel a little sad. I was raised on Guiding Light. Secret Storm, The Edge of Night, Search for Tomorrow........all of them. Some of my earliest memories are of watching "the stories" with my mother. Rarely a family get together that we didn't speculate around the table about what would happen next with our favorite characters. Even in my 20's when I got my first VCR, I was most excited to be able to tape 3 hours of soaps and watch them all in about an hour each evening. I totally stopped about that time, and pretty much figured I would never watch them again, especially since we made a conscious choice to give up tv 15 years ago. Sometime last year a co-worker showed me how you can watch whole episodes of the soaps online and I thought i would check my old favorite As the World Turns to see who that i knew was still on there. Hooked. Been watching it seveal times a week online since. I love the escape of it all, the world where everyone who dies comes back and someone always has amnesia. I love that they anchor me to the most carefree years of my life. Some of my favorite actors on the soaps have gone on to become bigger stars- Christopher Reeve, Meg Ryan, Kevin Bacon, Meredith Baxter. I realize that the target audience for these daytime dramas no longer exists- women who were home all day needing a break from their chores and their mundane lives. Where else but a soap would you see a scene like this?! Good bye Guiding Light.

1 comment:

donna said...

I've barely watched a Guiding Light episode since 1996, but still find myself catching up by reading the weekly updates in the newspaper. Did the show end with Reva and Josh together? And I so, so remember The Slut of Springfield episode.