Hello all, h/f man here. I’m a big fan of a couple of the UK soaps. The identity of the one I’m going to talk about here doesn’t matter, so I’ll just call it ‘Acorn Antiques’.
Let’s call my favourite Acorn Antiques character ‘Melissa Grangerford’.
Melissa’s a fun, sassy lady and a warm, kind, caring type. She’s very attractive but perennially unlucky in love. In recent times she’s become a fan favourite, but she gets quite limited air time.
There was a pair of consecutive episodes (Episodes A and B) some weeks ago when Melissa received a significant emotional hurt. Being the fan I am, I felt for her.
Yet in Episode C she was cheerful enough, and in Episode D she was fully back to her usual vivacious self. While that was gratifying to see, I was curious about her recovering so soon.
It’s easy to work out the Doylist reason why Melissa was back to her normal sparkling self so quickly : that is what the fans want from her. After all, there are enough sad and desperate characters in Acorn Antiques already. However, perhaps it’s my Aspergerite mind, but I find a Watsonian explanation much more satisfying.
Over the coming weeks, I worked out a Watsonian theory that, with a couple of ‘missing scenes’, explained how Melissa recovered from the wound so soon. I rewatched the episodes and fine tuned my idea, and it is fully compliant with onscreen events.
The trouble is that I’ve found no-one to share my thoughts with. None of the friends I’m in regular contact with are Acorn Antiques fans. By the time I had my idea primed, the episodes were 6-7 weeks into the past, so posting about those episodes on the Acorn Reddit or DigitalSpy forum would have been frowned on.
I emailed the people who maintain an Acorn Antiques website and podcast - they really are hardcore fans - asking if I could run my thoughts by them. Although they replied ‘yes, go for it’, when I emailed back setting out my theory they didn’t reply.
The saga hasn’t diminished my enjoyment of Acorn Antiques - I still find it valuable escapism, and still feel joy whenever Melissa appears. It’s just frustrating that, when I put a lot of thought and effort in, my Watsonian idea has to just stay in my personal headcanon.
Acorn is one of the several soaps which have episodes from 10+ years ago airing as ‘Classic’ on one of the Freeview channels. I make the gallows joke to myself ‘I’ll wait until the episodes air on there in 10 years’ time then post my idea on the Classic Acorn thread on DigitalSpy’!
Any support welcome, thank you so much.