Melodrama 101

29/10/05

I didn't think it was possible, but there exists TV that is cheesier than Irish/British serial drama. I'm talkin' Roquefort, Baby. Arabic and Berber soap operas and movies are in a league of their own. I won't even talk about the quality of the acting. It's just not even worth the words.

Today I watched a beautiful woman drown herself because her lazy-ass, drugged-out boyfriend broke up with her. She walked into a calm ocean, and as she got about chest deep, she began flailing her arms in "Help me! I'm drowning!" fashion. Her head wasn't anywhere near being under water. The bum boyfriend watched from afar, as some suitably tragic music droned in the background. Too much of a bum to go in and rescue her, he went home and OD-ed on cocaine. The horror!

But nothing could top the Berber movie we watched several nights ago, about a family that is struck with several calamities on one day (father wrongly sent to prison for murder, mother dies of broken heart, daughter struck by a car, son left orphaned and alone). Fast forward 15 years and the same family that had been tragically wrenched apart is now VERY coincidentally reunited for a tidy happy ending set over mom's gravesite.

That ain't just Roquefort, Baby! That's a large roomful of cheese, unrefrigerated and improperly ventilated, somewhere in the Tropic of Cancer. The thing that kills me, though, is that people here eat that shit up. Lahcen and his friends were going, "Oh, my. That is so sad. I'm going to cry."

No, seriously.