We come together today to eulogize the genius who created one of television's most brilliant series. No, not David Chase, creator of The Sopranos. Have no fear, Matt Groenig remains among the living. Instead, the madman that we are paying tribute to is James E. Reilly, who created perhaps the most demented show that has ever existed, the NBC soap Passions. According to Soap Opera Digest, the 60-year-old Reilly passed away over the weekend while recovering from cardiac surgery. He leaves behind a sister, Cathy Robinson, as well as many of the most insane things that have ever happened on television. We're talking child witches with thought bubbles, armies made exclusively of fighting lesbians, insanely convoluted incest storylines — and that's just for starters! We've got a more in-depth sampling, after the jump.A mere perusal of Passions-related entries on Wikipedia unearths these amazing sentences, which make no more sense out of context than they were intended to on the show:

Vincent was revealed in February to have been engaged in an incestuous, homosexual, and eventually adulterous affair with Chad Harris-Crane (who was simultaneously Vincent's half-uncle, adoptive half-cousin, and half-brother-in-law)...After finding out that his father's penis had been severed—by a second Harmony serial killer—Vincent made sure that Eve was drunk and drugged before she performed surgery on him—causing her to reattach Julian's penis upside-down. In 2003, Passions submitted a trained orangutan named BamBam, who had been portraying the recurring role of Precious, for a Daytime Emmy Award. Precious was the non-speaking live-in nurse and caregiver for elderly Edna Wallace, and held an unrequited love for Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald, which was depicted in elaborate fantasy sequences. In early 2004, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which administers the awards, disallowed the entry. In 2005, so many plotlines came to involve an element of rape that fans began to refer to that year as the "Year of the Rapes." In the early days of the show, Passions heroine Sheridan Crane is identified as a close friend of the late Diana, Princess of Wales; soon Sheridan recalls speaking to Diana on the phone immediately prior to the 1997 car accident which took the Princess' life. Sheridan also has a similar accident in the same Paris tunnel, and speaks to a "guardian Angel Diana" who urges her to fight to survive, which drew considerable controversy. Sheridan later adopts the name Diana after a boating accident that results in amnesia. Noted Guest Stars: Ruth Buzzi as Nurse Kravitz, an eccentric nurse who discovers that Endora has a demon tail.

We leave you, then, with this:

Rest in peace, Mr. Reilly.