Everyday Canvas

Soaps and Telenovelas

Prompt: "The Young and the Restless" has just celebrated it's 11,000th episode. With that in mind, what are some of your favorite episodes of your life? You can talk about your bad ones as well. I look forward to reading your entry.

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I have never watched The Young and the Restless, not even one episode. The only American soap I watched was The Days of Our Lives for about three months in 1969 when my first-born was suffering from colic and wanted to be held constantly. So I held him and watched TV for lack of better things to watch. This was before cable TV or VHS was invented and all we had was a few channels numbered from two to thirteen.

Since my life has little to do with the soap episodes, I’ll instead talk about the soaps in my life, which are the Spanish telenovelas. I liked them better because an average telenovela came to its conclusion in about four months. Rarely it continued over six months, unlike the American soaps that go on and on till Kingdom Come.

I started to watch the telenovelas on Univision for the sake of language about twenty or more years ago. We didn’t have Telemundo at that time nor did we have all the other six or seven Spanish channels we now get. Telenovelas were made in different South American countries. To me, it was interesting to hear the different accents. Also, there was—maybe still is--an online site called Phorum where one went in to ask questions about the different customs and idioms belonging to each country, discuss the latest episodes, and just interact with the other telenovela watchers.

Although I haven’t regularly watched a telenovela during the last several years, I appreciate the varying understanding, religious, political, social, and moralistic stances of each country that they show. My favorite telenovelas came from Peru and some from Colombia, but I could relate better to those made in Mexico, as far as the immediate grasp of the language was concerned. I think I watched a couple of good ones from Argentina, too.

If I have to pick any telenovela as a favorite I have to opt for Girasoles para Lucia (Sunflowers for Lucia) from Peru. The main character Lucia (Gianella Neyra) was a funny character who could also turn highly dramatic. The telenovela was captivating because of the funny mishaps and mix-ups, but underneath it all, there was a serious love story.

During the last year or so of my watching telenovelas, some of the stories began to take shape in Miami as the Mexican actors and actresses began to establish homes there because of the kidnappings in Mexico and whatnot. The stories that happened in Miami didn’t interest me all that much. I preferred to see and learn about the local attitudes in each country.

Later on, I got too busy with life and couldn’t find the time to sit in the middle of the day to watch any TV, let alone a continuing telenovela. I still don’t have the time, but I miss it, and I especially miss the give-and-take with the friends I made on the Phorum who were Hispanic, American, or anyone else who understood Spanish and liked the telenovelas.