Volume I, Issue iii

November 1998

How We Watch: My Sister, My Self by Joan Roseman

My sister Inez is seven years older than I. We live in different cities and lead very different lives. She is married, with two children and two grandchildren. She teaches special education in the inner city of Philadelphia. I am single, with no children that I know about, and I spend my work day (and too many evenings) trying to get rich people to part with large sums of money on behalf of a major New York City academic medical center.

We both love General Hospital.

As different as Inez' life is to mine, so is her way of watching GH. While I am working to make New York-Cornell great (or at least well-funded), my tape recorder at home is whirring away, recording every moment of the day's episode unless interrupted by news bulletin, hearing or brownout. No tape recorder whirs 180 miles to the south, even though Inez' house boasts two machines. Inez prefers to watch (or hear, but I'll get to that in a minute) live, and if Life intervenes, in the form of a doctor's appointment or department store sale or urgent telephone call, that day is gone. Better luck tomorrow.

I come home from work, often late, following a dinner with a prospective donor or, if I'm lucky, dinner with as close to Mike Corbin as Fun City allows. I rewind my tape, light up a Virginia Slims Menthol 120, and for the next 40 minutes or so I am glued to my VCR. I watch, I rewind, I pause. Occasionally I fast-forward. All over the country, working women like me are doing the same. We don't answer the phone, we don't read mail or putter. We're planted.

Inez isn't planted, and she watches GH in a way I guarantee isn't the duplicate of any other viewer in America. Here's how.

At 3:00, EST, Inez is in her car, heading home from a hard day at school. She's miles away from suburban Philadelphia, but she's already hot-wired into GH via her car radio. Non-car owner me still doesn't know how it works or why, but by now I accept that there are radios capable of receiving the audio portion of television programs. I've never seen one, or heard one, but I know they exist because Inez generally knows what goes on in the first half-hour of GH when she has no access to a set. Of course, the set she uses for the second half-hour isn't much of an improvement.

I should perhaps explain that in the fifty or so years I've been watching television with my sister, I have never known her to simply sit down and watch. Anything. GH or Moon Walk, it doesn't make a difference. Inez is constitutionally incapable of merely looking at television. She must always be doing something else, and preferably two or three something elses. I feel honored to have been present on November 26, 1997, a day when she hit her personal best. She watched The Little Mermaid while doing five something elses: talking on the phone, braiding her grandchild's hair, needlepointing, soaking her feet and reviewing lesson plans. With that track record in mind, it should not be a shock to read on.

As soon as Inez gets into the house after her drive home from Spring Garden Street, she goes into the kitchen and turns on the TV. This is an 8-inch, black and white set that sits in the corner of her kitchen counter, in between the lazy-Susan spice rack and the Krups coffee maker. While she checks her phone messages, runs downstairs to the big freezer for meat and back up and out to the enclosed porch for apples and root vegetables, she's following right along with GH. As she begins to cook dinner and returns the more pressing calls, at least one ear and most of her imagination is in Port Charles, NY.

I read at least two major soap opera magazines and participate in an active Usenet newsgroup, RATSA (rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc). I also maintain a lively email correspondence with several like-minded friends and write articles for the webzine you are reading now. At the office, my assistant and I compare notes (she's still devastated over Brenda's "death," and is desolate that Sonny is returning too late to save her.) Occasionally our conversations are overheard and misunderstood by colleagues who worry that the physicians whose addictions and abuses we discuss so avidly are on staff at our own hospital, not the fictional one that entertains us.

Inez reads no soap magazines. Although she's recently started using her home computer to explore the Net, she hasn't yet discovered newsgroups, and probably wouldn't be much interested. I'll bet she'd be more likely to want to swap stratagems on a bridge group than theories about Carly on PCO or RATSA. Aside from brief mentions in our weekly phone chats or at holiday get-togethers (at which we are joined by her daughters-in-law from Virginia and neighboring Newton, PA) she doesn't talk about GH to anyone. It's her Guilty Pleasure, and has been for 30 years.

Generally, Inez keeps her cool. Whatever her likes or dislikes, she never gets worked up over what is, after all, just a television program. Oh, there was that time when she got very upset over Bobbie's scheme to trap Damian Smith in the Catacombs, but really, I think it had more to do with the place than the peril. All that dust. All those cobwebs. The rats! My sister is an excellent housekeeper; her sensibilities were seriously offended by that little stunt. But if you asked her what keeps her tuning in, day after day, the answer would probably be plot. Inez is satisfied if the story excites her, or if the resolution suits her idea of romance, fair play or suspense. She wants to know What Happens Next.

When I watch GH I, too, know that it is just a TV show, but that is largely where the common ground ends. I look less at plot and more at psychology, writing and performance. Permed or shorn, Luke's locks are irrelevant compared to his fascinating persona, and my pleasure is amplified by the confluence of shadings provided by the writing, the direction and Tony Geary's consummate performance. I enjoy being able to recognize whether the words Geary speaks come from Patrick Mulcahey's mind or that of Elizabeth Korte. While I, like my sister, watch viscerally, eager to know What Happens Next, another part of me is wired into my critical faculty, appreciating and judging on a level that is enhanced by attention to elements that have nothing to do with action and everything to do with nuance.

For me, troubled characters, even downright bad ones, are my meat and drink, in a way that Inez has never understood. I like to take off my Via Spiga pumps and run barefoot, metaphorically, through their complex psyches. My idea of viewing enjoyment, GH style, is to figure out what makes Carly tick, or why Laura lies first and tells the truth later or not at all. I enjoy watching what happens in the now and relating it to what happened years ago. The lapidary, analytical approach gives me as much pleasure as the linear, straightforward attack affords Inez. We could not watch in more dissimilar ways, and yet we always have lots to discuss whenever GH is the topic.

Two sisters, two cities, two vastly different modes and methodology. Yet both of us are crazy for General Hospital. Go figure. How do YOU watch?