Haha, nm I suck cocks. No, here are my Beyond the Gates thoughts, two-and-a-half weeks in. The big storyline so far has been that the resident borderline-personality-disorder loose-cannon pulled a gun on her ex-husband at his wedding, to their daughter’s best friend, on the very day their divorce was finalized:

In brief, it’s targeted at Gen-Z women; the racial component is smart not only for its social importance (this is the first hour-long soap opera with a Black cast) sed etiam because that portion of the demographic (young black women) is disproportionately home during the day. I would expect the social component to bleed over into its CBS stablemates. I’m not complaining at all, btw, this is just the first new daytime soap opera since 1987 or something and there are two entire generations of social progress to consider in starting a show from scratch. and I’m trying to look at it neutrally from that angle.

I was concerned the show would be overly political given the fact of its conception and casting and its target audience, not to mention its being backed by the NAACP, but the only cringe PC moment has been a conversation between a character and her friend before going for an evening with a man and his wife: “Hey, I heard your brother identifies as queer.” – “Yeah, it’s no dabs [or whatever Gen-Zism for nbd]”. Hey, it’s the younger generation, whatever. No doubt there will be Very Special Episodes about racism and ongoing racial issues, but that’s fine. Working stuff into storylines is no dabs, a better way to get to an audience than clobbering them over the head with it. There’s also a gay married couple that’s treated as totally normal. You’d think traditional soap-opera audiences would overlap with tradwives and church ladies, but even with the more established shows they’ve been socially liberal. The Young and the Restless was very progressive for its time.

Speaking of the FFM threesome hookup, that might end up as a storyline, either as about the dangers of hooking up (The Bold and the Beautiful, originally aimed at now-parents-of-teens Gen X, recently had a storyline on the dangers of deepfakes and sextortion) or the throuple could become a regular, normalizing storyline. Probably not; this is the NAACP, not MSNBC. Plus, it’s soapier.

One thing that leaps out at me is the advertising. The Young and the Restless has AARP car insurance, Colonial Penn life insurance, osteoporosis medication, COPD medication, and bladder-leak underwear. Beyond the Gates has Miralax (which says “supernaturally” when they mean “preternaturally”), Curél lotion, Consumer Cellular, Schwarzkopf hair dye (not aimed at hiding grey), Listerine, Ozempic, Shopify, and Humana dental insurance, Arm & Hammer detergent sheets, Astapro allergy spray, and Dove body wash. There’s also much more variety – ads don’t air twice.

There’s a gambling addict who’s being cucked by his white wife real-estate agent’s Latino personal trainer (I normally use “Hispanic”, rejecting the unnecessarily gendered and cumbersome foreignism, but this is a fucking Latino). Ah, soap operas.