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TV Squad Soap Report: Passions played out
by Allison Waldman, posted Aug 6th 2008 2:23PM
Perhaps the strangest soap opera of all time has come to an end now that Passions has been canceled by DirecTV. The gothic, modern psycho-drama set in a small Maine town replete with witches, elves, zombies and even some regular people, lasted nine years on the air. In primetime terms, that would be a hell of a run. For soaps, it characterizes Passions as a noble -- to some -- failure. I never cared for Passions. It turned me off in the first season, 1999, but it wasn't because of the outre elements. I was actually interested in the gothic stuff because I'd grown up enjoying Dark Shadows with Barnabus and Quentin and Angelique and all those horror classic reinterpretations on a next-to-nothing budget -- furniture provided by Stern's Department Store, as I recall -- including werewolves, Frankenstein's monster and The Innocents, and parallel universes. Dark Shadows remains a vivid, happy memory.
But Passions wanted to mix the bizarro storylines with real soap opera plots and the mix never worked for me. To its fans, and I know I'm going to hear from them, Passions was hilarious good fun. A hoot! A blast! Great entertainment. I just didn't buy into it.
Like I said, I was turned off in the first season, in one of the first shows when the character of Sheridan Crane was introduced. She was played by MacKenzie Westmore, and my antipathy for the character had nothing to do with the actress. Rather it was headwriter James Reilly's insensitive script. He presented Sheridan as a close friend of the late Princess Diana, showing her on the phone with Diana right before the Princess was killed in Paris. The idea of mixing a real life tragedy with a soap story was just exploitive and smarmy. I had a hard time getting past that effront, even as I conceded to the joyful goofiness of Tabitha and Timmy.
No matter how they tried -- and they did try -- getting more outrageous and non-soap only made Passions a more difficult program to enjoy. It was cartoon and The Carol Burnett Show at the same time. In small doses, a sketch is funny. In large doses, it's just tiresome nonsense.
And all this falls on James Reilly. Passions was his creation, his vision. He took the encouragement that he'd received while writing Days of Our Lives Marlena's possession story -- one of the all-time dumbest ever on soaps, in my view -- and sold NBC on a whole show filled with occult madness. When NBC canceled the Emmy award-winning, classy soap Another World in favor of Passions, I was ticked off. Perhaps that clouded by judgment, but believe me, I gave Passions a chance.
So now, I don't mourn the loss of Passions. It was a bad idea from the start and in the long run, its demise only adds fuel to the fire of those who'd like to wipe out daytime dramas completely. I feel for the actors and crew who worked so hard to get the show made. Lead by Juliet Mills, Galen Gering, Liza Huber, Lindsay Hartley, the late Josh Ryan Evans, Jesse Metcalfe, Ben Masters and Kathleen Noone, among others, they were game. I give them credit for that.
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