Wednesday, September 17, 2014

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: WEIRD (SOAP OPERA) SCIENCE

Looks like the Days of Our Lives coma we described last week is about to come to an end for John, as Kristen's miracle cure is promising to have him up, around, and eyebrow raising in no time. And just what exactly is in her magical elixir that none of the doctors at Salem Hospital have ever seen before but that Kristen swears will totes work? Oh, you know, chemicals... vitamins... minerals... a little eye of newt, perhaps? When it comes to soap opera science, the details are very often fuzzy, while the results are... unprecedented, to say the least. (Maybe they hesitate to reveal the complete ingredient list for fear people might start whipping up batches of coma cures in their bathtubs?)

Meanwhile, over on General Hospital, Freeze Tag is the name of the game as the heretofore presumed dead are brought back to life thanks to a vague process which involves freezing and unfreezing via a complicated formula developed by Robin. Once again, we don't know what exactly is inside those test-tubes she stared so meaningfully at for months. My money is on diamond dust. If it was good enough, back in the early 1980s, to power an evil weather machine constructed to frost over the entire world (Mikos Cassadine was proclaimed a villain for his efforts, but don't you wish he were around now to give global warming a bit of a shove in the other direction?), then it's good enough for Mikos' brother, Victor, to use on their not quite dearly departed family members, and everybody's favorite brain-damaged hitman hero, Jason.

But if you think that's soap opera science at its weirdest, then you ain't seen nothing yet!

Soaps' tenuous grasp on the world of physical sciences may range from the near divine diamonds with the power of Lazarus, to the more banal BeLieF formula on The Bold & the Beautiful that keeps haute couture from wrinkling. But it's in the fields of medicine and applied biology where writers really let their imaginations run wild.

Go to: http://community.ew.com/2014/09/16/weird-soap-opera-science/ and read my latest for Entertainment Weekly about all the times soaps went Dr. Frankenstein.

No comments: