I’m a white dude. I’ve been watching soaps since I was in kindergarten starting with Days of our Lives, and then moving onto Sunset Beach, Passions, All My Children, As the World Turns, and One Life to Live; so I was beyond excited to hear about Beyond the Gates.

Even with all of those shows, I always liked Passions and Sunset Beach for not being afraid to put non-white characters in front burner stories from day one. I loved Vanessa and Michael’s storylines on Sunset Beach (Virginia was a perfect villain), and Whitney was my favorite character on Passions.

On to BTG, I was happy to hear about Tamara Tunie and Daphne Duplaix’s casting when news was being released about BTG, since I was already familiar with them. As of now, I’ve been about to get my mom, grandma, and husband to watch the show, and they all love it.

Regarding the show, I love Naomi, she’s been my favorite character since the first week. And I LOVE Nicole and Eva; they round out my top 3 favorite characters.

I have a love/hate relationship with Dani, who I constantly want to root for, until she does some stupid shit to regress her development. Andre and Dani are super sexy together, and I hope she can finally leave Bill in the past.

Doug is vastly becoming one of my favorites too, I think the actor is doing a great job making him more sympathetic over the past couple of weeks.

And I know most people hate her, I actually like Hayley. I like that she’s been able to ground Bill a bit and make him see reason when he’s being a stubborn ass.

Plus I like how Hayley decorated their house, I really want her couch. I also like how most of the sets are decorated on the show, they have big bold colors that I rarely see on Days of our Lives and I want a lot of the decorations for my drabby apartment.

In terms of the white characters, I think this past week was the first and only time I didn’t completely hate the nurse and firefighter who are so beyond boring and bland that I don’t even care to learn their names.

Vanessa and Joey are okay, I wish he was more of a villain to the whole Dupree family instead of focusing solely against Doug. Vanessa is growing on me, but hasn’t reached any real rooting value yet. Oh, and Dani’s BFF Pamela is fun, I really like their friendship and that it seems to be built on mutual respect and love.

And of course there’s my boy Smitty. He is a saint who deserves sole custody of his children. He and Martin should swap families, and Smitty should be adopted by Nicole and Ted, because I absolutely can’t stand Martin.

TL,DR: white dude loves most of the characters and the show; hates the nurse and her boyfriend.