Credit: Howard Wise/JPI (7)
Sometimes, it ain’t easy being a soap fan. The couple you ship encounters one roadblock after another. The storyline you hate with a burning passion drags on for months. The actor you love takes up permanent residency on the back burner.
Yet day after day, you keep coming back. Right? Your theme song is the 1985 Howard Jones tune “Things Can Only Get Better.”
But user ComradeConrad1 took to Reddit’s Young and Restless forum to declare… well, they’d had enough. “I’m done,” they wrote. “Never-ending stupid plots and rehashing the same stuff over and over and over.”
They had, it seemed, reached the breaking point. And the reaction of pretty much every person responding?
“See ya tomorrow.”
Fellow user Southern_Assistant_7 admitted they were “kinda enjoying hate-watching the show.” And Barberon suggested “there’s a 12-step support group that might be of help should you feel the need.”
They went on to add that quitting is easier said than done. “I say I’m done every other day. Then I come here to vent or laugh, and then I’m OK for a while.”
Empathized user snack-scream-repeat, “Me and my grandma are like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppets. We complain and criticize to high heaven and tune back in for more fun.”
More: Remembering James Van Der Beek’s soapy roots
Ask any longtime soap fan, and they’ll tell you that every show goes through cycles. When it comes to the Genoa City-set sudser, there have been epic highs like the early days of the Victor/Nikki romance, and laughable lows, like the reliquary. (If you know, you know.)
More: Worst soap plots of all time, ranked!
At the end of the day, however, most of us are forever fans. Much like some of the more lovelorn characters, we hold out hope that a brighter day is around the corner. We look to the genre’s past for reassurances.
“General Hospital,” we remind ourselves, “was on the verge of cancellation before the pairing of Luke and Laura sent it to the top of the ratings heap.”
So as both the ludicrous AI storyline comes to a conclusion and Mariah’s kidnapping plot reaches its fizzling-rather-than-sizzling end, we look forward to what might be just around the corner. Dare we hope for more romance and fewer CEO swaps?
As soap fans, we know that happy endings have to be earned. Having suffered the slings and arrows of less-than-stellar stories, might we finally be rewarded with plots that have us tuning in each day not out of obligation but a burning need to find out what happens next?
As Redditor SilkCitySista reminded us all, “Tomorrow is another day.”
We’re revisiting all of the soaps highest and lowest moments in the picture-packed gallery below, including photos we bet you’ve never seen before!