Blowing Bubbles

Dopes in soaps

Will someone explain to me why people watch soap operas? I've tried to understand, really I have, but have failed miserably, like a Jack Russell trying to shag a Great Dane. Few things boggle me more than the collective national collapse onto the sofa at certain times of the week to witness fictitious northerners and cockneys screwing/ punching/ gossiping their way through their drab lives.  
It's not that I'm averse to telly. I watch bags of the stuff: Seinfeld, Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, The Apprentice, The Killing, Homeland, The Bridge and even the screeching insanity of America's Next Top Model. But soaps? Jesus, I want drama, glamour, idiocy and intrigue from my viewing pleasures, not fishwives caterwauling at each other over pints of stout.
Point is that if I wanted to see the grim lives that soaps portray I'd take a walk around the frigging block. Cheaply dressed, badly tanned, tattooed loons (and that's just the wimmin) are ten-a-penny in these here parts. I don't need a fistful of scriptwriters to show me what they get up to, ta very much. A Saturday night suicide run through town'll do it.
And what the fuck is it with these magazines about soap operas? Excuse me? Features about non-existent people and non-existent lives? You have got to be kidding me. Even as someone who adores reading fiction it is utterly beyond me that any sentient human being would buy one of these excuses for hacking down another tree. 
Perhaps I'm missing something big here. Perhaps I need to put aside the part of my brain that thinks and tune in for half an hour one evening. You never know, I might discover that my life is in serious need of a dose of wet cobbles or some light criminal Eastend activity. It could solve everything that makes me rage on here every 48 hours. 
Then again, if Ken fucking Barlow is the solution to my problems I'm even frigging madder than I thought I was. In fact, I'm probably beyond saving. Like that Jack Russell assaulting the Great Dane I may as well give up. Betty, love? Make mine a pint.