by Monty Hamilton

Created on: November 06, 2007

Forget less is more. The combination of reality and soap opera has begun to yield a virtual smorgasbord of highly entertaining trash TV, and millions upon millions of viewers are eating it up like Oscar the Grouch. It's a marriage made in purgatory, however, as while they both sure up the other's weaknesses, they also share many similarities that if pushed too far over the top can lead to overload. In this case, too much of a bad (the good bad, like the Michael Jackson song) thing can turn out to be no good. I know, I know, I know. How can too much salaciousness be a bad thing? But, hey, that's what I used to think about too much shrimp until I had an unfortunate all you can eat seafood buffet incident back in 1999 (in the interest of full disclosure, me partying like it was 1999 may have contributed to the incident).

All that being said, reality TV brings with it an instant credibility, because no one watching it can say that anything that occurs during a reality program cannot happen in real life. And soap operas afford their creators almost limitless creative license and freedom. Their stories can go whenever, wherever, however, and, of course, can go on (almost) forever. Overall, let's just say that I doubt many soap opera ideas get shot down because they are too over the top or ludicrous, and in the right hands that kind of creative freedom can produce envelope pushing programming the likes of which the viewing public may have never seen before. All in all, the soap opera structure can give reality programming the direction and creativity that it often lacks, and in turn, reality can give soap operas the credibility and dramatic weight they often lack, giving rise to the subgenre of the reality soap opera, a program type that's future is so bright that it's in danger of being blinded by the light.

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