Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Soap opera” is a term that conjures cliché images. In hindsight it’s a rather sexist phrase, like the studio-system category of “women’s pictures.” Soap operas have always dealt, at times in depth, with women’s experiences.
When the phrase came into vogue, in the 1960s, soap operas were what housewives watched on network television in the afternoon (I’d watch my mother get absorbed into them).
One of the many ways that they were unfairly sneered at is that the culture gave no credibility to the fact that soap operas were a serial form, which allowed them to slip into the nuances of a dramatic situation.
Sure, they featured broad acting and a certain mannequin-model handsomeness and beauty, yet they gripped people — mostly women — because there was something vital and alive in them. “It Ends with Us” is an overripe saga of love and romance that’d also about some very serious dark things.
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