Soap (TV series)

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Image:Soap.jpgSoap was an infamous sitcom which ran on the ABC network from 1977 through 1981. The show was designed as a weekly, primetime half hour comedy whose format was similar to that of a soap opera. The format was augmented by the introduction of real-life soap opera actors into the cast. Robert Mandan had previously been seen on Search for Tomorrow and Donnelly Rhodes was the first husband of Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless.

The show was controversial for its time, as it included one of the first regular gay characters depicted in a prime-time network television series in the United States. (Soap is commonly mistaken for the first series to include a sustained gay character, but at least two other series, 1972's The Corner Bar and 1976's The Nancy Walker Show, preceded it.) This character, Jodie Dallas, was played by actor Billy Crystal. Many stations refused to air the series because of this character, and the (incorrect) report of a priest being seduced in a confessional the first episode.

The show, which took place in the fictional town of Dunns River, Connecticut, started each week with a shot of two women chatting over lunch. The announcer, Rod Roddy, would intone, "This is the story of two sisters: Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell". The Tate family was very wealthy. In the very first opening sequence, the announcer said that the Tates lived in a neighborhood known as "rich". Jessica liked life but if she could change anything about hers, she would set it all to music. The Tates employed a sarcastic butler, Benson, played by Robert Guillaume, who was perhaps the only "normal" character on the series (the character of Benson was spun off into his own series, Benson, in 1979.) Jessica and her husband, Chester, were hardly models of fidelity, as their various love affairs resulted in several family mishaps, including the murder of Peter Campbell (Robert Urich), the first son of Mary's second husband, in the early days of the show. Even though everyone told Jessica about Chester's affairs, she did not believe it until she saw it with her own two eyes: one afternoon, while out to lunch with her sister Mary, she spotted Chester necking with his secretary. Heartbroken, she sobbed in her sister's arms. While Soap was a sitcom at its core, the show, at times, had many dramatic scenes that were performed like a real soap opera.

Mary's family, the Campbells, were more middle-class. Mary also liked life but the announcer intoned that "life wasn't so crazy about her." The Campbells had the problem that Mary's son Danny Dallas was a junior gangster in training. Danny was told to kill his stepfather Burt when it was revealed that Danny's father did not commit suicide, but instead was killed by Burt out of self-defense. In the fourth season, it was revealed that Chester was in fact Danny's true father, the product of an affair between him and Mary before he married Jessica.

Other plot lines involved Jessica's daughter, Corinne, having a love affair with Father Tim Flotsky, with the two eventually marrying and having a child that was possessed by the Devil; Jessica's other daughter, Eunice, having an affair with a married Congressman before falling in love with a murderer; Mary's stepson Chuck, a ventriloquist whose alter ego was his dummy Bob, who voiced all of the negative comments that Chuck was too repressed to say; Jessica's love affairs with Peter Campbell, a private investigator, her psychiatrist, and a Latin American revolutionary known as "El Puerco"; Billy Tate being held hostage by a cult called the Sunnies(a parody of a cult in the 70s known as the Moonies), after which he had an affair with his school teacher; Danny and his romantic trials with the daughter of a mobster, an African-American woman, a prostitute, and Chester's second wife, Annie; and finally Mary's husband Burt being committed to a mental institution, being abducted by aliens while replaced with a look-a-like on Earth, and being blackmailed after becoming Sheriff of their small town. All this plus several kidnappings, alcoholism, time travel, near-death experiences, amnesia, ninja fortresses, extraterrestrial babies, court trials, numerous (and usually disasterous) dinner parties, and Jodie being stuck as the reincarnation of a 90 year old Jewish male.

At the beginning and end of the show, off camera announcer Rod Roddy would give a brief description of the convoluted storyline and then he would conclude it with the line, "Confused? You won't be, after tonight's (or this week's) episode of...Soap".

The series ended abruptly; the final episode contained several cliffhangers that were never resolved. One involved a suicidal Chester preparing to kill Danny and his second wife after he unexpectantly catches them in bed, another involved Burt about to walk into an ambush set up by his political enemies, and the final one had Jessica about to be executed by a communist firing squad. Had the show continued into a 5th season, it would have been revealed that Jessica had survived because her family came to save her, and replaced the bullets in the firing squad guns with blanks. Jessica later appeared on Benson two years later in 1983 and revealed that she was not dead, but in a coma.

The show was created, written, and produced by Susan Harris. It aired for 85 episodes, some of which were one hour long, which were split up into 93 episodes when it was sold into syndication.

All episodes from all four broadcast seasons are currently available on DVD.

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Major characters and the actors who portrayed them

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External links

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