I love this comparison of comic books and soap operas from Kalinara. I used to watch soaps. A lot.
At first, it was Dark Shadows and The Edge of Night. Edge focused on crime mostly, back in the '60s, and DS was, well, vampires before they became ubiquitous in entertainment media. Over the next two decades, I added a lot of soaps, including General Hospital, which Kalinara mentions, and Days of Our Lives, which managed to take one stupid act, when a character pretty much raped his future sister-in-law (or maybe the marriage had already happened -- I started watching a year or so later) at her wedding to his brother. She got preggers, her new hubby was sterile but he didn't know it, and... well, they managed to drag out the repercussions of that for over 20 years. Not quite as convoluted as Ollie Queen fathering Connor and all the drama that came out of that, although Connor was introduced years later and retconned into Ollie's history. But still... a bit soap operish, I'd say.
And a good excuse for a post here, because I've been busy watching Doctor Who and Torchwood DVDs, having gotten into both rather late and am now catching up, instead of reading the comics that are piling up in the den.