Good bye to Guiding Lights

I have never watched the soap opera that finished its Guinness Book of World Record holding run. I suppose now I never will. But I have watched other soap operas, and I do know how wonderful and addictive they can be. Many people will say they are ridiculous and have no possible resemblance to real life, but that's not true. Soap operas (other than the occasional step towards science fiction or fantasy - which is a step Guiding Lights may never have taken. I don't know), soap operas are just the most extreme situations. It is possible in a lifetime to be in a hotel fire, or a train or plane crash, to need brain surgery or to fall in and out of love with the same person over and over again and still believe that he or she is your one true love. It is also possible, although extremely unlikely, for all those things to happen to the same person. That is what a soap opera is about.

So it is with sadness that we say good bye to Guiding Lights, which is probably a victim of the recession, but more to the changing world of television. This may be the beginning of the end of soap operas, and I, for one, shall regret that end.