Days Of Our Lives Ends Today. Please, Stop Crying.

Hello. My name is Nicholas, and I am a recovering soapaholic. My earliest memories are not of frosty Christmas mornings, or rocking-chair snuggles from my mother, or vaguely homoerotic romps in the summer grass with my angel-faced little brother. That Tree of Life crap? Never happened to me. I don’t even have a little brother.

No. Foggy as they are, my earliest reminiscences occur in another dimension, a place fuelled by cathode rays and populated by oily, brandy-sipping criminals and crimson-lipped bitches with a penchant for bed-hopping. They take place not in my childhood home but between the walls of the Chandler Mansion, in the operating rooms of General Hospital, and on the foggy, crime-ridden piers of Salem, U.S.A. My childhood was spent indoors with the blinds closed, clutching to my stories and breathlessly sitting through laxative and denture-cream ads just to get my fix. Would Indiscriminately Hot Dude and Tough-As-Nails Town Hussy finally have sex after the commercial break? I had to know!

From the sandbox to the soaps box

I must have first known I was hooked on the junk when I resorted to begging my babysitter, Diane, to let me take my daily “nap” on the sectional in her living room so I could catch The Young And The Restless (get well soon, Jeanne Cooper!) through half-opened eyes. Even now, a frisson of anticipation travels my spine when I hear the opening piano plinks of ‘Nadia’s Theme’.

It was a harbinger of so much: Intrigue! Scandal! Big hair! Catfights! Shady people being shady! All happening on every major network for the next four hours! The kids today, they don’t know.

This youthful dalliance with daytime TV was mere prelude to a full-blown addiction, and over the years, my focus morphed from catholic to concentrated: I could dip in and out of any soap like a pro, but Days Of Our Lives became my monkey, and my devotion consumed (and defined) me for more than 25 years. I must have earned hundreds on the two newspaper delivery routes I maintained in grade and high school, but who knows? Much of that money went straight toward weekly soap magazines.

I sent off for autographed pictures of its stars, became an official fan club member and even attended its annual gatherings with my high-school girlfriend (LOLZ), all so I could meet said stars. I made numerous pilgrimages to the LA studios where Days filmed – first as a fan and, eventually, as an actual journalist reporting an actual news story. My Days habit cemented a few of my closest friendships and convinced me to pursue the boy who would become the love of my life. Because if he could learn to love my love for Marlena Evans North Craig Brady Black, surely he could learn to love me. Right?

The notion of ever quitting the show cold turkey, even when it hit a rough patch (and they were rough) was unthinkable. I needed that daily dose! But upheaval can change a person’s perspective, and in April 2009, distracted by a job resignation, apartment sell-off and major move across the world, I simply fell out of love with my old friend. Didn’t set the TiVo. Didn’t troll the message boards for online spoilers. Didn’t consider Sami Brady’s love-life newsworthy any longer. I was getting clean.

I took my last hit just over four years ago. I haven’t watched or taped an episode since. I’ve moved on, and I don’t miss it one bit. And if you’re one of the 18 remaining Australians who still tunes in daily, I have comforting news: you probably won’t, either. At 2pm this afternoon, after 45 years of going steady, Channel Nine will air its final episode of Days, before the show and the network part ways. At the time of this writing, there were some vague mentions of another potential “outlet” for the show, perhaps on Foxtel. But would it really matter?

Does anyone actually still watch this stuff?

Soap operas are like opium tinctures, Christina Aguilera albums and recipes for meat aspic: they’re relics of another era, and few turn to them for a fix anymore. In America, just four remain on-air; at their zenith, nearly 20 were fighting for eyeballs. The surviving quartet should be commended for nobly standing firm as the winds of change whip around them. But that’s about it.

Insensitive as that sounds, the unimpeachable truth – and it grows truthier each year – is that across the dial, the elements that made soaps such a sturdy, irresistible treat for so long have ironically increased in direct proportion to the genre’s steady decline, and are more relevant than ever. Serialised storytelling, larger-than-life characters, outrageous plot twists, plucky heroines and a high you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me quotient are now staples of prestige dramas and tacky reality competitions alike (not to mention my iTunes purchase history). Demonic possession and horny priests? Pffft, American Horror Story: Asylum. Days was on it back in 1995.

Days isn’t actually going anywhere, anyway. It may no longer screen on Australian free-to-air television at 2pm each weekday, but those who aren’t ready to kick the habit just yet can easily find ways to keep watching via the bottomless pit of uploads that is the internet.

There will, no doubt, come a day when Days is put to death stateside by its parent network, NBC. But even that might not matter much: like its most famous villain, Stefano “The Phoenix” DiMera, the show could rise again (and again and again). Two other “cancelled” soaps already have. Next Monday, less than two years after they were unceremoniously dumped, All My Children and One Life To Live will be resurrected on the web, where new daily episodes featuring a mix of veteran cast members and newcomers will again air.

While every frame of this preview reel for One Life To Live’s comeback is cringe-worthy (I really can’t with the baby-boomer sex, or that “club” that looks like it hasn’t been remodelled since 1984), the fact that these two shows have been so lovingly brought back to life is testament to fan loyalty, the changing economics of television production and the powerful pull of daytime drama, however diminished it may be. These returns don’t necessarily presage a TV comeback, but may just represent the future for a genre that has been stuck in the past for far too long.

Besides which: Australia’s two most beloved serials don’t appear to be in any danger (yet). And they only require a half-hour of your time each day. So if you really love your suds, shouldn’t you be supporting your local economy? Shouldn’t you be watching Home And Away?

Nine’s final episode of Days Of Our Lives will air at 2pm today, Friday April 26.

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Nicholas Fonseca is the acting deputy editor of Madison, and a (sometime) master of film studies student at the University of Sydney. Prior to arriving in Sydney, Nicholas was based in New York City, where he worked for a decade as a writer and senior editor for Entertainment Weekly.