Will Carl Divorce Myrna? Will Lois Get an Abortion? Will Someone Please Change the Channel?

Here it is, noontime or thereabouts, and you've just skipped Physics 103 or postponed that important stockholders' meeting or said the hell with the laundry to watch the latest heart-rending episode of Days of Our Lives. Will Amanda's tumor turn out to be malignant? Why is Maggie upset with Mike? Is Brooke really pregnant or did she swallow a football? Whatever happens, and rest assured something will, the fact of the matter is, America is slowly drowning in an ever-expanding vat of soapsuds. We have become a nation of armchair gossips. Nowadays, to be a really with-it human person, it's de rigueur to be able to converse at length about the soapers. Who cares about détente or the fact that a nuclear war has just been determined inevitable by Pentagon experts when the really hot issue of the day is Hortense's proposed separation from Dr. Carl Putz?

Whether or not you're a bona fide soap-opera enthusiast (and God help you at the next cocktail party if you're not), the following quiz was designed solely to test your soap-opera aptitude potential (SOAP). Which means, in other words, that you can score high even if you've never seen a soaper and low even if you're an addict, (continued on page 192)Will Carl divorce Myrna?(continued from page 141) and vice versa. The point of all this is basically the same as that of soap operas themselves; which is to say, there is none.

Part I Multiple Choice Quiz

Part II Who Needs This Aggravation?

Every soap-opera character is beset by his or her own personal tsooris. We know when someone in a soaper is about to find out he's got a problem, because that's when the organ music starts. And, naturally, everybody in the soap-opera community has found out about everybody else's problem by the time the commercial is over--word travels fast in Soap City, U.S.A. Here is a list of problems and another of the characters who have them. Your job is to match them. A little organ music, maestro....

Part III What's What

Five of the following are actual plot summaries of actual episodes from actual soapers. The others are phonies. See if you can spot the real ones.

Answers

Part I

Part II

Part III

Real Plots:

B (Somerset)

C (Dark Shadows)

E (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman)

F (All My Children)

I (Ryan's Hope)