Bless the mediocre masses

As a general rule, I don’t care for daytime TV. It’s the soap operas, really. Perfectly made-up rich people who have nothing better to do than worry about their love lives. The setting is irrelevant. It’s all they’re wired to understand. Then, when writers want to make a storyline “progress,” one half of the couple either dies or dallies.

I’m not being funny: I honestly don’t understand how this can be appealing to anybody. Housewives are intelligent people (not to mention admirable multi-taskers). I can’t imagine them finding any of this stimulating.

Which isn’t to say I don’t like soap operas at all. Au contraire. I’m a faithful Coronation Street fan, like many British “Northerners.”

I once told a friend how much I enjoyed Corrie, and he had the snootiest response. “I can’t stand shows about the mediocre masses,” he said. Butcha know what? That’s what I love about it. Romantic entanglements figure into the plots, but mostly, characters worry about making rent, keeping their jobs, and how the kids are getting along. They dress according to their means, and apparently, their budgets don’t include a line for superfluous glamour. Some are fat. Some are ugly. And they’re all so blissfully real.

Remember the original Degrassi? We, as teenagers, loved watching other kids with acne, thick glasses, braces, and awkward mannerisms. Sure, we can escape with the 90210s of the world. But when the show’s over, we just want to connect. Mediocrity helps with that.