Man, this is so embarrassing. I first heard about Passions at ThreeWay Action. Then it kept popping up on Buffy (Spike is a Passions fan), and then in Jessica's screamingly funny recaps of The X-Files. Seriously, you guys, she's the best recapper at MBTV, which is saying a heck of a lot. If you stopped watching the show because it got stupid, I suggest you start reading the recaps. But beware, because passages like this one will lead you directly to Passions:

If you're going to dig up a body, the big digging machine is really the way to go, in my opinion. Like, when Sheridan was buried alive on Passions after she faked her own death because French assassins were after her, she didn't get dug up for three weeks because the guy who was supposed to dig her up got kidnapped. So, she ended up having to be rescued by Sam and Luis and Ethan and once they all finally got to the graveyard, they dug her up by hand, which I thought was incredibly stupid because Sam is the chief of police, and you'd think he'd have time to call someone and have them send a digger thing to meet them at the cemetery so that by the time Ethan and Sam and Luis and Hank (the guy who got kidnapped) got back from the docks (because they were on a boat fighting off the kidnappers), the digger thing could already have started the exhumation. Anyway, the point is that Skinner is smarter than Sam Bennett, which isn't surprising since Sam is, like, two tacos short of a combination plate, which is not a particularly good trait in the chief of police. Of course, Sam's stupidity gets him in trouble all the time. For example, recently, his wife Grace fell down a huge flight of stairs and had a miscarriage after she overheard that he's secretly Ethan Crane's father, and now she hates his guts and he's just acting dumber than a bag of hammers about it. But anyway, Sheridan was alive once they finally got the coffin open, and they didn't have to take her to the morgue, which is where Mulder and his coffin end up.

So I had to check it out. And now I'm totally hooked. I tape it every day. If I miss a day, I read this guy's recaps. I've read the old ones so I know what's happening. This is the dumbest show on television. It takes every dumb convention from soap operas and really bad horror movies, wraps them up in low budget special effects and lots and lots of exposition, flashbacks, and recapping, and drags every storyline out for a year and a half. (Seriously, I just discovered that the entire time I've been taping it, about three or four weeks, was two days in soap opera time.)

This show really needs the MST3K guys.

So help me out here ... are you hooked? Are you intrigued? Are you vaguely horrified? Do you want to slap Teresa upside the head with the Troll Hammer? Discuss.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

Answers

I was a Passions watcher almost from day one. My friends and I used to run a Passions Haiku site. We were contacted by a writer from Soap Opera Digest or some such publication, but nothing ever came of it. Lately my viewing has been sporadic at best. Last time I watched was when Charity and Miguel had been sucked into hell.

Is the blind priest ever on anymore? One of my favorite Passions moments was early in the show when he pulled Tabitha's car over and said "I sense evil in this car!"

There are a lot of scary Passions sites out there, but here I give you my favorite: Donn Swaby, the guy who plays Chad. Be sure to check out his thoughts on feminism.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

Father Lonnigan was around during the sucked-into-hell storyline, but not since. He kept calling Timmy "the small creature sent by an angel," which is how I'd like people to refer to me.

Damn. Chad is a Camille Paglia fan. Who would have guessed? All I knew was that he reminded me of Lindsay on Angel. Only Chad's black, and he's not an evil lawyer working for a firm run by hellgods. Minor details.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

I liked his thoughts on honesty.

Telling someone that you have a fantasy about having sex with their sister while hanging from a chandelier is a no-no. That's why it's ok to be honest only 99.9% of the time.

Heh.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

I miss Timmy's costumes. Once he dressed up in a trenchcoat and was Matrix Man.

My favorite recent storyline was the one where Alistair and Julian couldn't let the story about Sheridan maybe being a murderer get out, because it would destroy Crane Industries and start a domino effect that would ruin the economy of the entire world. Hee.

-- Anonymous, May 24, 2001

Okay, so what was up with Ivy's really ugly wig in that flashback?

And how did Tabitha get Kay's soul, again? I just started watching. Help me out here.

Do you think they sell those Luis lookalike masks that will magically turn any guy who wears it into a gorgeous hunk of manflesh with a sexy voice?

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

I don't get to see Passions as often as I'd like, but it's okay, because I read "The Wisdom of Passions" segments that Corina posts at the end of her journal entries. This is a recent analysis:

So this guy simply puts on a rubber Luis mask, fakes his voice to be like Luis's, and voila! it's Luis! And the really hilarious part of all this is that when the actor was demonstrating his ability to fake Luis's voice they simply dubbed the actual Luis's voice over the line. And then when he put on the rubber Luis mask he turned away to the mirror, there was a noticeable jump in the camera work, and suddenly it's the actor who plays Luis. But see, he's not the actor who plays Luis, he's just the other actor wearing the rubber Luis mask and faking Luis's voice. Riiiiiiiiiiight. I liked it better when L.L. Cool J was playing Drew Barrymore playing L.L. Cool J.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

Beth - Kay originally sold her soul to Hecuba to get out of being caught in a big scheming lie. I don't know how Tabitha got her soul from Hecuba.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

Somehow Kay's soul ended up in a vial, and somehow Tabitha and Timmy got a hold of it.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

So what happened today? I think I forgot to set my VCR.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

Oh! Yay! I'm getting Channel 3 on my work TV! I can watch Passions right now. I am joyful and elated, and there's still 25 minutes left.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

Come on! You call yourselves Passion Freaks? Heh.

Hecuba got Kay's soul because she promised to help her get Miguel as her man. Of course, this was before the "I'm gonna get him to knock me up" scheme.

What I want to know is, who's read the book? Did you know there was a book? It was supposedly written by Tabitha's character and is called "Hidden Passions." I own a copy. Yes, I admit it. I didn't buy it though, it was a gift. Does it still count? I haven't read it yet. It's supposed to explain a lot about their pasts.
Anyone?

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2001

Yay! People to share in my embarrassing habit! Woo!

Re: The Passions book: I haven't read it, but I flipped through it at Borders when it came out, just 'cause I couldn't believe the producers of the show would have the huevos to actually spend the money for a book. And not just one of those Dynamite/TigerBeat cheap- ass newsprint paperbacks, either -- a real, hardcover book. What *really* cracked me up, though, was that they actually put a quote- unquote charm at the end that's supposed to make everyone forget what they read, thereby allowing Tabby & Timmy to get away with revealing all the dirty secrets. I don't suppose I need to even tell y'all that the charm was some hella-lame limerick piece of crap.

Heh.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2001

Are any of you guys still watching? Of course Teresa isn't dead, but does anyone else think she's pregnant?

-- Anonymous, July 30, 2001

Sorry, Beth, I tried for about a week... but the midget freaked me out.

If you ever start a GH thread (shutup Rudie) I will be -so- on that...

-- Anonymous, July 30, 2001

Oh, we have many secret GH watchers here. Feel free to start a thread.

And don't dis Timmy.

-- Anonymous, July 30, 2001

I have a strict one daytime soap rule and for years it has been As the World Turns. Given how much TV I already watch I just can't let myself get sucked into another soap; weaning myself off Guiding Light was hard enough (although the crap they've done with Reva made it easier). But I want to watch Passions so that when I kidnap James Marsters and force him to be Spike for me we'll have something to discuss.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001

Man. I hope no one can hear Passions through my office door, because Luis and Sheridan are making icky kissing/groaning sounds.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001

Eww. I hate that. I'll call my wife to report that they overused the "suckmike" in any given day's episode of GH. I swear, they build up to those make-out sessions for like, 3 weeks, then once everyone's juiced up for it, they have to overplay the scraping of her tongue vs. his tonsils!

Luckily, we don't make-out too often on GH, we just kill 'em off and bring 'em back from the dead ala cryogenic freezing. (i.e. we're -so- much more based on reality than Passions)

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001