The small screen suited the ephemeral nature of the relationships when one story line went cold, there was another couple in the sidebar. I’d never read fiction for young adults, but I would watch the gay story lines on television for young adults, so long as they had no vampires or werewolves. Sentimental viewers like me wanted the gay couples to live happily ever after-for young gay love to triumph over parents, bullies, and clueless girlfriends-but the premise of the soap opera is that things don’t work out. For Aaron and Robert, a wild couple about whom every resident in the Yorkshire village of Emmerdale has strong opinions, doom lurks in the fact that Aaron is a big jailbird mess and Robert a total criminal. Often, it seemed that our team was never going to win. Passion doesn’t save Christian and Oliver, the boxer and his bartender from one German series. I stopped watching before Christian rediscovers women and leaves. On a popular Dutch soap opera, Lucas, the obnoxious rich kid, falls into a coma after shy Edwin has kissed him. When he wakes, Edwin dies from the Ebola virus. Their destruction wasn’t camp it was a pity.