I haven't seen enough of the story to comment, but I thought this was interesting, as I had assumed that no one really pays attention to social issue stories on soaps now. A blogger at the women's health site RHRealityCheck takes some issue with the plotline.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/07/18/soap-opera-tackles-stds-really-dramatic

She brings up some valid points but her issues seem to stem more from AMC exploring an issue that she clearly cares deeply about in a format that she clearly finds frivolous. I understand where she's coming from but if she was hoping for 100% realism and accuracy with regard to this topic, she's not going to find it on a soap, in fact she's not going to find it on any TV drama.

I was surprised when she said she used to be hooked on soaps, because a lot of her writing came across to me as someone who only knew the parody idea of soaps. Not that soaps have done anything in the last 10-15 years to be worthy of an objective look. I do wish they'd mentioned that AMC did have a history of breaking new ground in stories about health issues for women...even if some of those stories weren't handled well in the long run.

I think the part where they made it seem like Amanda got it from JR is what confused alot of viewers. I saw on various boards "How can Amanda know she has HPV after 3 weeks"?

I was surprised when she said she used to be hooked on soaps, because a lot of her writing came across to me as someone who only knew the parody idea of soaps. Not that soaps have done anything in the last 10-15 years to be worthy of an objective look. I do wish they'd mentioned that AMC did have a history of breaking new ground in stories about health issues for women...even if some of those stories weren't handled well in the long run.

She's one of the millions of people who quit watching soaps over the years so clearly the genre stopped working for her a long time ago.

To be fair, the article isn't about soaps and what they've done, it's about this one story and what she considers to be the failure of this story to address the topic of HPV correctly. She's coming at it from the perspective of someone who sick of seeing bad information about women's health shown on television in the name of drama. I disagree with her on some of her points mainly because she's going by recaps and that's a losing proposition but she admits that she didn't watch so I think she was fair. Also, we're working with a cancellation timeline. The story has been rushed because of that.

To be fair, as someone pointed out in the comments, a lot of this WAS covered in later episodes--and she didn't go in looking for an STD test. I think they handled it better than bpast STD stories (aside from HIV) I've heard of, but of course as marceline says it IS a soap.