Annoyingly unrealistic things in soap operas

[Floogal]

Ones I've noticed are:
People frequenting cafés and pubs, especially when the characters are supposed to be skint (I'm not skint thankfully, but I can't afford to do that).

People who seem to earn a good wage working for the local family firm or start up.

In the case of doctors, GPs that are caring and read between the lines and chase up patients. Oh and the reception staff rehearsing for a dance competition

@feistyoneyouare hahaha yes so true.
In all my 42 years I don't think I've ever just walked out of a job and shouted something rude no matter how much I've hated it

What about the incest one? Even more unrealistic!!!

And there’s never any problem getting time off work for a surprise/last minute holiday.

If you are a Professional, you do not have a specific area of expertise but can cover any issue. So if you are a solicitor everyone will contact you for all legal matters. Nurses know everything about all areas of health.

No-one ever goes to the bank for a loan but will always rely on loan sharks or the resident bad character who has lots of money.

If you are unemployed and in desperate need of a job you will only ask the pub/laundrette/cafe if they “have any shifts going” and never look further than your immediate locality. Or look despairingly in the local Gazette because it’s apparently still the 1990s and the Internet doesn’t exist.

Women drink from the fountain of youth as they look 50 odd but have adult children in their 40s.

No-one is on Benefits.

Women drink from the fountain of youth as they look 50 odd but have adult children in their 40s.

Also, women in their mid to late forties who suddenly decide they want a late child have zero problem conceiving - especially if they’ve previously lost a child (see Chas Dingle and Sharon Watts - the latter of whom conceived naturally at 49 having once been believed to be infertile).

Every single member of one street running the local pub at some point or another, and that pub burning down every Christmas. Also, more murderers in one street than the whole town!

Also, no one goes to the toilet unless it's to do a pregnancy test or to threaten someone.

The disappearing and reappearing families that get to me.

Linda in Eastenders has just lost her husband and none of their adult kids have so much as popped down to Walford for the weekend to give her a bit of support. Yet her Mum, who has never been to the pub in all the years Linda has run it, is suddenly hands on running the pub with her.

And don’t get me started on all the kids and babies who must mind themselves. Where the hell is Linda’s baby, Annie, when she’s running a pub full time on her own? Who looks after Mac & Mia when Karen & Mitch are constantly in the pub?

Or so they can be in a cubicle and conveniently overhear a conversation between two other people that reveals a devastating secret. They never confront said people but wait until they leave the toilet and emerge from the cubicle with a face like thunder.

Or so they can be in a cubicle and conveniently overhear a conversation between two other people that reveals a devastating secret. They never confront said people but wait until they leave the toilet and emerge from the cubicle with a face like thunder.

Ha yes!!

There’s only one GP at the local surgery, who also finds the time to double up as a hospital doctor. (I’m looking at you, Dr Karl Kennedy)

If a child is sent away for a while to live with relatives/go to boarding school, they will return with a different face, a new rebellious personality and a brand new date of birth which could be three years earlier or later than the previous one.

Most people are questioned by the police on suspicion of murder at least once in their lives. We’ve all been there.

Ending up in a coma is very common, but luckily most make a full recovery very quickly. The most impressive example was probably Leah in Home and Away, who was in a coma for weeks and eventually pronounced brain dead. However, she woke up soon afterwards and went back to work at the Diner.

Nothing surprises me in soaps anymore.
At present I am waiting for Billy in Corrie to become Archbishop of Canterbury.
He will be still be living in a tiny flat in a backstreet of course.

Or for sex. In a pub toilet that always looks really clean.

Ending up in a coma is very common, but luckily most make a full recovery very quickly. The most impressive example was probably Leah in Home and Away, who was in a coma for weeks and eventually pronounced brain dead. However, she woke up soon afterwards and went back to work at the Diner.

Similarly with life changing injuries. They are never permanent. If someone is told they will never walk again they always do.

If a child has special educational needs, they get a diagnosis and an EHCP right there on the spot, without the months, possibly years worth of assessments and red tape real life parents of SEN children have to fight through.

Hope in Coronation Street was deemed to have some kind of behavioural issue in one episode and by the following episode they had found her a place for therapy in a residential home.

Yes! When in reality, she'd have to be fully assessed and while I don't know much about EHCPs (what little I do know is from MN) it takes ages to get, and then surely it has to go to panels to get funding?? But no Hawp got it all in a week!

A last-minute event can be arranged at the local pub/club/bar with no logistical or financial issues, well-designed flyers printed and handed out within 5 minutes and all the locals will turn up, while their kids are looked after by the magic babysitting pixies.

I only watch eastenders, but the way children seem to disappear is annoying. They can't always be at school or nursery 24/7.
They also only ever do their shopping in the local ones when most have a car or able to get a bus to other cheaper supermarkets nearby.
People move out or leave with one small bag or a few boxes of things
You never see wet washing drying in their homes
People recover really quickly from injuries or illness ( apart from Lola recently )
Loads of things are so unrealistic.
Still watch it though.

People have pain and then miraculously pull a packet on pills out of their pocket, chuck it in their mouth with no water and feel better within seconds.

Great thread!

Everyone is born on Christmas Day

Walford is a fictional borough which I understand but London borough's are much bigger than squares surely. Albert Square and Walford are used interchangeably

People on low incomes can afford to rent houses with many bedrooms with no apparent difficulty

Noone uses estate agents, property is bought and sold by merely signing a bit of paper. No surveys either.

Anyone who has a good job outside the vicinity will be doomed to lose it and end up being brought down to the level of the other characters around them.

People drink/eat in the pub/cafe despite the landlord/owner harming/threatening them and their family for decades (Ian Beale/Phil Mitchel are who comes to mind)

When a policeman/woman enters their home or business to quesition a character, does the character do what the rest of us in Normalland would do and sit down with the officers until the questions/interview is over? No, they carry on with their business, housework, etc while the officers have to follow them around.

Houses end up being like Tardis's with ever increasing number of people moving in with apparently magic bedrooms being added.

People get over bereavement within a week.

Characters don't return for the funerals of their parents/siblings

When having an important/emotinoal conversation, the two characters never face each other, no, one has their back turned to the other while carrying on the conversation.

Weddings never go to plan.

Peopel invite those who tried to murder them or have murdered a relative, to their parties/weddings/christenings

Funerals are held in churches with services conducted by a vicar. Does the vicar ever ask them why they never darked a church door at any other time of year?

The whole of the street / square are allowed to come to the hospital and gawp, from behind a pane of glass, at the patient who is at death's door.

Also, I am sure I must have posted on this old thread somewhere before about how they can all come up with elaborate, themed fancy dress costumes with less than a day's notice. (Every single soap party is concocted the day before.)

is it possible to 'like' posts here?

Hi 80s, I'm on a daybtrip from EE too 😊. All house and business sales, job offers etc are always instant, in cash and with no need for paperwork.

And (as I'm pretty sure I said earlier on this thread or maybe another one) characters seem to be able to up and leave and emigrate to America with no visa applications, no embassy interviews or any of the other procedures which take several months, they just leave in the back of a taxi with just one bag and then you don't see them for the next 5-10 years!