Soap (TV series)

Soap
Format Situation Comedy
Created by Susan Harris
Starring Jimmy Baio
Roscoe Lee Browne
Diana Canova
Billy Crystal
Cathryn Damon
Robert Guillaume
Katherine Helmond
Jay Johnson
Robert Mandan
Dinah Manoff
Richard Mulligan
Arthur Peterson
Donnelly Rhodes
Jennifer Salt
Robert Urich
Sal Viscuso
Ted Wass
Narrated by Rod Roddy
Country of origin Flag of the United States.svg United States
No. of seasons 4
No. of episodes 85 (93 in syndication)
Production
Running time 77 x 30 minutes
8 x 60 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel ABC
Original run September 13, 1977 – April 20, 1981
External links
IMDb profile

Soap is an American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from 1977 to 1981.

The show was a weekly half-hour long primetime comedy and its format was similar to that of a daytime soap opera. It aired for four seasons and 85 episodes, some episodes of which were one hour long. (The hour-long episodes were later split in two, yielding 93 half-hour episodes for syndication.) The show was created, written, and produced by Susan Harris. The final four episodes of the series aired as one-hours during the original run on ABC. Each returning season was preceded by a 90-minute retrospective of the previous season. Two of these retrospectives were made available on VHS in 1994. [1]

All episodes are currently available on region 1 DVD in 4 separate box sets. In the past, the series has rerun on local syndicated channels as well as on cable on Comedy Central and TV Land.

Contents

Plot

Soap is set in the fictional town of Dunn's River, Connecticut. In the very first opening sequence, the announcer says that the Tates live in a neighborhood known as "Rich". The wealthy Tate family employs a sarcastic butler, Benson DuBois (referred to only as "Benson" on this series), played by Robert Guillaume, who is perhaps the only "normal" character on the series. In 1979, Guillaume's character was spun off into his own series, Benson. In Soap, the name "DuBois" is never mentioned, and there are several suggestions that Benson is his surname.

Jessica and her husband, Chester, are hardly models of fidelity, as their various love affairs result in several family mishaps, including the murder of Mary's stepson, Peter Campbell (Robert Urich). Even though everyone tells Jessica about Chester's affairs, she does not believe them until she sees his philandering with her own two eyes: while out to lunch with Mary, Jessica spots Chester necking with his secretary. Heartbroken, she sobs in her sister's arms. On later occasions, it becomes clear Jess has always known on some level about Chester's affairs but never allowed herself to process the information.

Mary's family, the Campbells, are more middle-class, and as the series begins, her son Danny Dallas, a product of her first marriage to Johnny Dallas, is a junior gangster-in-training. Danny is told to kill his stepfather, Burt Campbell, Mary's current husband, who, Danny is told, murdered his father Johnny. It is later revealed that Danny's father was killed by Burt in self-defense. Danny refuses to kill Burt and goes on the run from the Mob in a variety of disguises. This eventually ends when Elaine Lefkowitz (played by Dinah Manoff), the spoiled daughter of the Mob Boss (played by Sorrell Booke), falls in love with Danny and stops her father, who then tells Danny he will have to marry Elaine or he will kill him. In the fourth season, it is revealed that Chester is, in fact, Danny's true father, the product of a secret affair between him and Mary before his marriage to Jessica.

The first season ends with Jessica convicted of the murder of Peter Campbell. The announcer concludes the season by announcing that Jessica is innocent, and that one of five characters - Burt, Chester, Jodie, Benson or Corinne - killed Peter Campbell. The interest over this cliffhanger precursored interest over the "Who shot J.R.?" cliffhanger on Dallas. Chester later confesses to Peter's murder and is sent to prison.

Major plots of later seasons

Other plot lines include Jessica's adopted daughter Corinne courting Father Tim Flotsky, with the two eventually marrying and having a child who is possessed by the Devil; Chester being imprisoned for Peter's murder, escaping with his prison roommate Dutch, and coming down with amnesia after a failed operation; Jessica's other daughter, Eunice, sleeps with a married congressman, and then falls in love with Dutch; Mary's stepson Chuck, a ventriloquist whose hostilities are expressed through his alter ego, a quick-witted dummy named Bob; Jessica's love affairs with several men, including Donahue, a private investigator hired to find the missing presumed-dead Chester, her psychiatrist, and a Latin American revolutionary known as "El Puerco" (his friends just call him "El"); Billy Tate's confinement by a cult called the "Sunnies" (a parody of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Movement, called the "Moonies" by its critics), and then his affair with his school teacher who becomes unhinged; Danny and his romantic trials with the daughter of a mobster, a black woman, a prostitute, and Chester's second wife, Annie; and Burt's confinement to a mental institution, his abduction by aliens while being replaced with an oversexed alien look-a-like on Earth, and getting blackmailed by the Mob after becoming sheriff of their small town.

At the beginning of each episode, off-camera announcer Rod Roddy gives a brief description of the convoluted storyline and remarks, "Confused? You won't be, after this episode of...Soap". At the end of each episode, he asks a series of life-or-death questions in a deliberately deadpan style -- "Will Jessica discover Chester's affair...? Will Benson discover Chester's affair? Will Benson care?" and concludes each episode with the trademark line, "These questions - and many others - will be answered in the next episode of Soap."

The series ended abruptly on April 20, 1981; the final episode contains several cliffhangers that are never resolved. These involve a suicidal Chester preparing to kill Danny and his second wife after catching them in bed, Burt preparing to walk into an ambush set up by his political enemies, and Jessica about to be executed by a communist firing squad.

However, a 1983 episode of Benson mentions Jessica's disappearance, noting the Tate family is seeking to have her declared legally dead. In this episode, Jessica appears as an apparition whom only Benson can see or hear, revealing to Benson that she is not dead, but in a coma somewhere in South America. The other two cliffhangers are not referenced, leaving it to the viewers' imagination as to what might have happened.

Opening title sequence

Initially, the opening sequence was a lunch scene between Mary and Jessica. Announcer Rod Roddy would describe the basic premise of the series. "This is a story about two sisters, Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell. These are the Tates. And these are the Campbells, and this is SOAP". After that, the series consisted of two different title sequences during the first two seasons, with the leading cast members assembled together in a tableau. In the first one, a fight slowly breaks out between the cast members. The second involves wooden beams and plaster from overhead, suddenly and without warning, crashing to the floor, but the cast remains still, apparently unfazed by what would be likely seen by others as catastrophic. In the later seasons, the sequences changed to just a fighting one as cast members left or were added.

Characters and actors

Announcer

Recurring Characters

Notable one-off characters

Controversy

The show was controversial for its time, dealing openly with the topics of homosexuality, marital infidelity, impotence, interracial marriage, and gay parenting.

Soap was among the earliest American primetime series to include a regular gay character (Jodie Dallas, played by Billy Crystal). Soap is commonly cited as the first series to do this, but it was preceded by at least three other such shows: 1972's The Corner Bar, 1975's Hot L Baltimore, and 1976's The Nancy Walker Show. The confusion may result from the fact that none of those shows achieved the ratings success of Soap.

Much of Soap's controversy preceded its September 1977 premiere. In June of that year, a review of the show's pilot by Harry F. Waters stated:

"SOAP" promises to be the most controversial network series of the coming season, a show so saturated with sex that it could replace violence as the PTA's Video Enemy No. 1." [1]

The review went on to pan the show, while also mischaracterizing some of its basic plot elements and offering exaggerated reports of its sexual content.

A number of organizations then mobilized against Soap, including the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the International Union of Gay Athletes, and the National Gay Task Force. Also mobilized were the National Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and the National Council of Catholic Bishops, although they asked the members of their 138,000 collective churches to watch the show first, and then inform ABC of their feelings about it. Nonetheless, the network reportedly received 32,000 letters of complaint before the show's premiere, and eight out of 195 ABC affiliates refused to air the show.

Reception

On Tuesday, 13 September 1977, Soap premiered to an audience of 19 million homes (39% of the national audience). Executives at ABC described initial public reaction as "mild," even though Vlasic Foods pulled their sponsorship of the program shortly after the episode aired.

Harry F. Waters' 1977 review proved prescient during the following year, when the National PTA declared Soap one of "ten worst" shows in television.

Soap was a parody of daytime soap operas presented in a primetime sitcom. Like soap operas, the show's story was presented in a serial fashion and included melodramatic plot elements such as amnesia, alien abduction, demonic possession, murder, and kidnapping.

The cast included former soap opera actors. Robert Mandan (as Chester Tate) previously appeared on Search for Tomorrow as a leading man for Mary Stuart, and Donnelly Rhodes (as Dutch Leitner) had played the first husband of Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless.

DVD releases

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released all 4 Seasons of Soap on DVD in Region 1.

DVD Name Ep # Release Date Additional Information
The Complete First Season 25 September 16, 2003
The Complete Second Season 23 July 20, 2004
  • Making Of Featurette
  • Pilot Episode
The Complete Third Season 22 January 25, 2005
The Complete Fourth Season 25 October 11, 2005

References

  1. ↑ Harry F. Waters (June 13, 1977). "99 and 44/100% Impure". Newsweek 90 (3): 92. 

External links