Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic imagines what a Victorian-era TV soap opera would look like. Two characters dressed in Victorian clothing -- complete with top hats -- engage in dramatic, soap-opera-style dialogue, but the scandalous revelation isn't infidelity or a secret child. Instead, the man confesses to Marie that he has "bodily functions," specifying that "some of them are pooping." Marie reacts with melodramatic horror: "How many?!" and "Damn you, Charles! How could you do this to me?!"

The humor comes from the collision of Victorian-era prudishness with the overwrought emotional intensity of soap operas. The Victorian period was famously associated with extreme propriety and discomfort around anything related to the body, to the point where even mentioning basic biological functions was considered deeply taboo. By transplanting soap opera conventions into this setting, the comic imagines that the most shocking possible revelation -- the equivalent of a modern soap opera affair or murder confession -- would be the mere admission of using the bathroom. The caption "Sometimes, I wish there had been Victorian TV soap operas" frames the whole thing as a wistful fantasy about a hilariously absurd genre mashup.