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July 2001

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In this issue:    Ash gets Artificially Intelligated!   God hates Evolution!    Sequels Worth Seeing!   PLUS:    the Passions of Batturtle,    Hamilton goes Straight to Hell,    and Craig Kilborn Must Die!
 
 
TV Trash: Passions
batturtle

 
There's a little critically acclaimed cult series out there that you may have heard of called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One of said show's main characters, Spike, is addicted to a daytime soap opera titled Passions. Now, even though Spike hovers anywhere between bloodthirsty madman to creepy stalker type who will make a robot double of the girl he loves in order to do dirty things to her…I trust his opinion. It's also quite an endorsement from Buffy creator and big-boss Joss Whedon to have another network's show repeatedly mentioned within his show.

So, the other day, PULP's editor-in-chief Ash and I completed our weekly Comic Day excursion, and returned to his secret, underground lair just before 2pm. Just in time to sit, relax and enjoy another fine episode of…you guessed it, Passions.

Now, although I can't really claim to have a grasp of what exactly is going on on this show, let me try to give you all a little run-down synopsis of this complicated overall plotline as I understand it. Here we go. So, there's an old lady princess and an annoying little midget guy. I'm not sure if he's a by the books classification of a traditional midget…but he's really tiny none-the-less. His name is Timmy, he speaks in third-person ("Timmy's scared"), and has creeped me out just enough to make me start to lose my otherwise staunch support of the midget acting community. Anyhow, these two live in what looks like an attic filled with leftover props from an Ed Wood movie. They spend their free time (of which they seem to have quite a bit of) looking into a wishing well and talking with disembodied floating demon heads. I think that they have some stake in the outcome of what happens to the denizens of the city of Passionville, I'm just not sure what that stake may be. Passionville, by the way, is probably not actually the name of the city, but in the long-standing PULP tradition of little or no research, I'm taking a wild guess and making things up.

So, meanwhile down on earth, there are a bunch of attractive young folks going about the days of their lives. They all speak to themselves, which is the first sign and an early warning of insanity, seemingly with absolutely no skill at the art of interior monologue. And when they're talking to another character, it's in the worst, romance novel, makes-other-soaps-look-like-they-were-written-by-David-Mamet dialogue you've ever heard grace the small screen. But, the difference with this show is that its day to day storylines are so convoluted, complex and out-there, that in comparison they make other soaps seem realistic and believable. I can't figure out if the folks behind the scenes of this show are sly and witty geniuses lampooning their own genre…or just really really awful writers. So, if you're a person who has nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon between the hours of 2-3pm (lonely housewife, unemployed wretch on society collecting welfare, school-skipping student…or like our friend Spike, a vampire), give Passions a try. I wouldn't exactly call it, well, "good" per say. But at least the pictures are moving, so it's better than staring at the wall or looking at art.





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