TVSquad

Soap operas are a funny form of television fiction. They have rules all its own, they can tell all kinds of stories and do them in the most unusual ways. Here's a few things I've noticed lately, things that seem to only be possible, on a soap.

Only on a soap...can a medical clinic be conceived, built and stocked in less than a month.
It's true. It happened in Port Charles. On General Hospital, soon after Emily died -- and Nikolas stopped seeing visions of her thanks to a brain tumor -- he decided to dedicate a health clinic in her memory. Since Nikolas is a royalty, some kind of prince, cost was no object. He never met with an architect or designer, never spoke to contractors, never searched for a location and dealt with permits. He did have a fight with the mayor for a couple of shows about opening the clinic after it was already completed. If only all construction projects could be done so easily. Jeff Lewis on Bravo's Flipping Out doesn't even work that fast!

Court TV has begun production on its first original scripted series 'Til Death Do Us Part. Each episode will dramatize bizarre cases of happily married couples whose relationships take a turn for the murderous worse. Hosting each episode will be Mr. Bizarre himself - John Waters.

The director of such trash classics Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble will star as the "Groom Reaper," guiding us through the grizzly murders that resulted from these most unholy of matrimonies. The show will debut in 2007.

I'd be slightly more excited if Waters were directing the series, but its subject matter is right up his alley -- if only it were set in Baltimore.