SOAP [TV SERIES] - DVD review
It's pretty tame now, but in 1977 "Soap" was so controversial that ABC received thousands of complaints and churches organized boycotts before the first episode even aired. Given that Welcome Wagon, it's surprising the show lasted four seasons. Then again, it turned out to be tamer than most daytime soap operas would become just a few years later.
As a parody, "Soap" doesn't poke fun of every daytime dramatic convention, either. For one thing, the melodramatic music is lacking (and just as well, if you ask me). For another, the sets and the blocking resemble TV sitcoms more than afternoon soapers. It's not nearly as static, and the lighting isn't as one-source subdued. Then too, there isn't even much parody of soap opera dialogue. The lines, by virtue of their comedic timing and their lack of stand-and-deliver hyper-emotion also have more in common with sitcoms. They're less cheesy, less hokey, and more designed to keep things moving. It's the plot, really, that has a little fun at the expense of soap operas, and even then the writers seemed to find as much inspiration from the tabloids as they did from the daytime serials.
Over the course of the series, viewers encountered one of TV's first openly gay characters presented as a normal person and not a flaming caricature, but there was also plenty of good old-fashioned heterosexual infidelity, secrets aplenty, mobsters, dementia, oversexed priests, alien abductions, alien clones, demon spawn, murder, kidnapping, erectile dysfunction, escaped convicts, a split-personality ventriloquist, revolutionaries, and so much interbreeding that you'd think there'd be more obvious disorders than there are. And the secrets that are revealed each episode? If I had a dollar for every one, I'd be a rich man. Well, make that an English pound sterling. The U.S. dollar is getting uncomfortably close to Confederate money these days.
"This is the story of two sisters, Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell," the voiceover announcer intones, and each episode begins with a long story-style introduction of the rich Tates and not-so-rich Campbells. That opening, by the way, gets old real fast when you watch five or six episodes in rapid succession. So does the lengthy recap of the previous episode and the "outro" teaser, which means if you're like me you'll be pressing the "next" button to advance to the third chapter for every episode. But I digress (like this series). Jessica (Katherine Helmond) is married to Chester Tate (Robert Mandan, a veteran of "Search for Tomorrow"), who's a successful stockbroker. They have an open marriage, though neither of them knows it, at least for a while. Their children are blue-blood-at-heart Eunice (Jennifer Salt); good-girl Corinne (Diana Canova), who's having an affair with the same tennis pro as mom; and Billy (Jimmy Baio), a sex-obsessed little guy who ends up having an affair with his teacher. Then there's "The Major," Jessica and Mary's father, who takes neighbors prisoner because he thinks they're Nazis. Then there's the butler, Benson (Robert Guillaume), who would function like the maid in "The Jeffersons" and back-talk his way to a spin-off (after which he'd be replaced by Roscoe Lee Browne, another comedic veteran).
Then there's the Campbells. Mary (Cathryn Damon) is married to a second husband who can't make love to her because she can't imagine why. Turns out the guy popped her first husband, and guilt makes him go limp (Freud would love to have written for this show). Later, mental illness makes Burt (Richard Mulligan) go all soft and floppy as he starts thinking he can make himself invisible. Yeah, well, don't try walking into a women's restroom. This little blended family is composed of Mary's sons, Danny (Ted Wass), a small-time mobster who's following in his dead father's footsteps, and Jodie (Billy Crystal), who is openly gay and will get the water-cooler crowd talking in future episodes when he's seduced, fathers a child, and petitions the court for custody. The boys don't exactly get along with their stepdad. In fact, they routinely have food fights, and Burt keeps referring to Jodie as a "fruit," which of course hurts Mary's feelings.
I've always felt that the test of an ensemble sitcom was the quality of guest stars that they could attract, and this one pulled in a bunch over its four-year run. Look for Doris Roberts ("Everybody Loves Raymond"), Sorrell Booke ("The Dukes of Hazzard"), Howard Hessman ("W.K.R.P. in Cincinnati"), Bernard Fox ("The Andy Griffith Show"), Gordon Jump ("W.K.R.P. in Cincinnati"), Harold Gould ("Rhoda"), and Gregory Sierra ("Barney Miller").
This was a show that tried to be both outrageous and bitingly critical of not just soaps but social mores that seemed out-of-whack. Though it was set in Connecticut, it felt as if it could have been Anywhere, U.S.A., it was that far out. And how does it play today? While it's not as biting or funny a satire of soaps as "Desperate Housewives," it still holds up pretty well. It's not laugh-out-loud funny anymore, but the show is still amusing. Oddly enough, the gentler and less "logically challenged" episodes have more appeal than some of the really whacked-out episodes, because those episodes stray a little far from the satire that was part of the show's premise. It's still entertaining, though, even after 30 years, and that all but confirms that "Soap" was a little ahead of its time.
Included here are 25 episodes from season one, 22 episodes from season two, 22 from season three, and 21 from season four. As Sony did with "What's Happening!!," the complete series of "Soap" is housed in a new "spindle box" container, which is basically a plastic slide-tray with a spindle in the middle that holds the 12 discs the way that blank discs are sold. What holds them in place is a corrugated cardboard cut-out, and this tray slides into a cardboard box with a flap. Episodes are not listed, much less annotated. What you get is a rundown of each season and what episodes are contained on what disc. That's why this set is bargain-priced.
Video:
These discs are the same ones that were released in the single-season sets that Sony produced. The show is mastered in High Definition and for a late-Seventies' series it looks pretty good. There's a textured feel to the surface that I wouldn't go so far as to call grain--it's just that it doesn't have a high-gloss plasticine look to it. Colors are only slightly faded or undersaturated, and the level of detail is certainly acceptable for a TV-on-DVD. The aspect ration is 1.33:1.
Audio:
The audio is a nothing-special Dolby Digital Mono in English, closed captioned. No subtitles. And nothing, really, to report on. It's there: nothing to complain about, and nothing to praise.
Extras:
Nada. None.
Bottom Line:
"Soap" earned 17 Emmy nominations over its four-year run and won for Art Direction, Outstanding Supporting Actor (Guillaume), Outstanding Lead Actress (Cathryn Damon), and Outstanding Lead Actor (Richard Mulligan). But the performances are pretty solid all the way around, with the exception of the roles that are out-and-out caricatures. "Soap" still plays well, and this bargain-priced Complete Series should entice a whole new generation of fans.
