SOAP

Hello, hey there, hiya, howdy, and how ya doin’! This is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, saying hello and welcome to the column! I’ve some good news and some bad news about it, too. See, on account of April Fool’s Day, I thought it would be appropriately pompous and preposterous to prepare a paper about the Internet itself! Why? Cuz I thought it would be a good laugh for me to be pretentious enough to assign a rating to the Internet! Unfortunately, to do that I had to peruse a little bit of the history so that I could relay some actual facts to You, my loyal readers (cuz you deserve it)! It was a great idea, but the history of the Internet according to Wikipedia is so god-awful BORING that I stopped reading WAY before I got to anything interesting like Rick-rolling, “It’s a trap!” and other Internet memes, or the infamous “Two Girls, One Cup” video. So I’m sad to say that I’ve scrapped that scheme in selection of some other subject. But for those who simply MUST know: I give it a seventy-two.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today! Today I am here to offer you an Odd Review, and that’s just what I’m gonna do! In the unthinkable instance that this is your initial attendance, I shall impart a little introductory information so you have an optimum understanding of our everyday ongoings.

I pick a subject, any subject, usually with the help of a dart board, conduct some minimal research, then write up a brief-but-entertaining essay that is light on facts and heavy on unabashed bias, then present it to You, the loyal reader. Then I sit back and bask in your assumed amazement, imagining the utterance of lines like: “Wow! That Oddcube is a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!” These utterances would be uttered, of course, with the utmost of admiration and esteem, which I, of course, appreciate utterly.

So you can see that there’s nothing wrong with my imagination!

But I digress, and I’m awfully good at it! Because I’m supposed to be informing you that the subject of this Odd Review is Soap, a brilliant American sitcom that spoofed soap operas! Why is it so good? Read on, Grasshopper!

In the days of my misspent youth I was subjected to all the usual forms of childhood torture: being sent to bed without supper, the long-lasting affects brought on by the misinformation of Disney-film realities, and most insidious of all: the afternoon soaps!

I am proud to say that even at that young age, I knew they were totally dumb. I mean, seriously, how many of you have two or three identical twin siblings that you didn’t know about that conveniently showed up out of nowhere to die in the plane crash in your place? It’s never happened to me! How many people do you know have contracted a never-before-encountered disease and/or an inoperable brain tumor and magically got over it? How many people survive an explosion and leave the hospital with a brand new face that does NOT look like Darkman unmasked? Now how many people do you know that have done all three? More than once? Man, I tell ya, if you buy into this stuff it’ll warp your mind worse than those Disney films! No lie!

But then came Susan Harris! Susan Harris was a TV scriptwriter who won the Humanitas Prize (whatever that is) for writing the abortion episode for Bea Arthur’s 70’s sitcom Maude. She was the co-founder of Witt/Thomas/Harris productions, and the creator of several shows including Soap, its spinoff Benson, The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and others. Anyway she created, wrote, and produced the super-campy, slapstick, definitive soap opera parody, Soap.

Soap is the story of two sisters, Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell, who are totally devoted to one another, and their respective families of super-eccentric oddballs, who do not get along at all.

Now, the Tates have money, and live in the mansion that belonged to Jessica and Mary’s parents. Jessica’s husband, Chester is an embezzler, but his main hobby is having a string of affairs behind Jessica’s back. They have three children, two adult daughters and one teenage son. Their oldest daughter, Eunice, is apparently some sort of journalist who is having an affair with a married Congressman. Meanwhile, the younger daughter, Corinne, is very promiscuous, but I think this is a form of compensation because she can’t have her high-school crush who became a priest. Their only boy, Billy, ends up getting kidnapped by a wacky cult and eventually has a brief affair with his teacher. Also in the household is the Major, who is Jessica and Mary’s father, who believes that he’s still fighting World War Two. And last but not least, the dry-witted and long-suffering Benson, easily the most well-grounded character on the entire show.

The Campbells are a middle-class family. Mary is married to her second husband, Burt, who owns his own construction company and suffers impotency brought on by guilt because he believes he is responsible for the death of Mary’s first husband, a mobster who was trying to extort money from Burt with a protection racket. When a situation becomes too complicated for him to handle, he snaps his fingers and believes that he has turned invisible. Mary has two sons from her first marriage, Danny, who is part of the mob, but will be allowed to leave if he kills the man who killed his own father…who, of course, turns out to be his stepfather, Burt; and Jodie who is gay. Burt also had two sons from his previous marriage, first off there was Peter, a tennis instructor who usually held his lessons in the bedroom, and Chuck, a schizophrenic ventriloquist who believed his dummy, Bob, was real and insisted that everyone treat him as though he were.

And that’s just how it starts! Then they proceed to skewer all manner of tried-and-true soap opera clichés and gimmicks, some of them before they got to happen in real soaps! Like, the primary storyline of Season One is finding out who shot, stabbed, and pummeled Peter Campbell to death, YEARS before anyone wondered who shot J.R.! One of the weirder storylines centers on the baby Corinne had with her ex-priest boyfriend…the baby was possessed by the Devil! I mean, how many soaps would use a storyline like that? Perhaps the most appropriate one is Dark Shadows (but they had more class than that). But it happened to Marlena on Days of Our Lives some years later. And I do love it when Burt gets kidnapped by aliens and replaced with an alien double.

Of course, there weren’t any long-lost identical twins, and there was no baby-switching. But there was a case of “I’m not your real Mom”, and a case of “Your Dad isn’t this guy, its that guy!” Actually, most of it was pretty typical soap opera crap, only much funnier.

However, that did not stop all sorts of protest groups from writing letters of complaint to the station and the studio before the show even aired! See, there were some reviews and reports about the upcoming show. Unfortunately (or fortunately) some of these reports were written by people who had NOT seen the show, and were working off of notes, or outlines, or something. Some people were calling it a sex farce, unsuitable for prime time, filled with more sex per minute than any other show ever, and included the seduction of a Catholic priest while in the confessional! …This, by the way, is not exactly true.

But little things like facts are unimportant when you just want to complain about things. And that’s what various religious groups did, because that’s what various religious groups love to do the most. They complained about extra-marital affairs! They complained about impotence! They complained about the gay guy! And they weren’t the only ones, various gay groups also complained about the gay guy for fear that he would be nothing but bad stereotype! Thanks to the supporters of all these various groups, it is estimated that the station and studio received anywhere from 20,000 to 32,000 letters of complaint BEFORE the show even went on the air!

Of course, once it finally debuted, everyone was like “Hey, what’s the big deal?” Only about 26% of the people who watched it claimed to be offended in some way, and half of them said they would watch again next week!

Regardless of these troublemakers, Soap lasted for four seasons, a grand total of 85 episodes. Although the last few episodes were one hour long instead of the usual half-hour, and were chopped up into two episodes for syndication, making a total of 93 episodes.

On the down side, the over-all story arc was planned out for five seasons. But the ratings had dropped low enough that the stupid idiots who ran the network did not renew that final season, and the internet was not yet mainstream enough to run an online petition to save the show. Hey, it worked for Babylon 5! Because of this premature cancellation, there were a collection of unresolved plots, creating what might have been the most excruciating cliffhanger EVER!

See, Jodie was the victim of a bad hypnotherapy session and was stuck in a past life incarnation—that of a 90-year old Jewish man in the Bronx! Chester, who expected to die in a duel to a South American freedom fighter, was threatening to shoot Danny Campbell when he found him in bed with Chester’s new wife, Annie! Mary had a baby that she believes was sired by Burt’s alien duplicate! Burt, who became Sherriff, was about to walk into an ambush set up by a crooked politician! And Jessica was about to be shot by a South American Communist firing squad! And that’s where it ends!

These were all supposed to be wrapped up in the next season, and creator Susan Harris later told fans that if she had known the show was not going to be renewed, it would not have ended that way. She did not divulge any details that I am aware of, except for a promise that “Jessica would have lived”, which I assume means that Jessica would have specifically survived the firing squad, although I would expect both her and Mary to live through the entirety of the series since it is “a story of two sisters”. The only official closure we get is, like, two years later on the spinoff Benson we learn that Jessica is alive but in a coma somewhere in South America.

Soap was truly great, and there’s never been anything quite like it since. It was exceptionally written, and the outrageous plots were expertly enacted by an amazing ensemble which included Katherine Helmond, Cathryn Damon, Richard Mulligan, Robert Mandan, Billy Crystal, and Robert Guillaume, to name only a few.

Should you see it? Yes you should! How? Where? Good questions! If you’re lucky, some local or cable channel will show reruns. I know Nick-At-Nite and Comedy Central have both run marathons, but that was some time ago. The entire run, all four seasons, are available on DVD and can be bought or rented from discerning sources, like Amazon or Netflix. Also, the first two seasons can be watched online for free at places like Crackle or Hulu. The entire show is available for streaming through Netflix.

And now, the time you’ve all been waiting for, time to pull out the good ol’ D&D percentage dice and fairly and randomly determine a rating! For those of you who don’t know, percentage dice are a pair of ten-sided dice used to determine a number between zero-one (almost as bad as Manos: the Hands of Fate) to double-zero, which actually means one hundred (it does not GET any better than this)! So we’ll just give the ol’ dice a roll like so…

…and end up with a enviable ninety-six! Meanwhile the network that failed to renew season five gets a spiteful sixteen, take that, you tasteless twits!

Well folks, I’m afraid we’ve found the finish of our Word file. So be sure to check back next time to find out what I’m gonna talk about next! And just before I leave, I’d like to leave you this bit of advice: if you find a link that’s supposed to lead to the “Two Girls, One Cup” video, be very careful. Because you could get Rickroll’d, and then you’ll know “It’s a trap!” And this is everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, saying be there and be square!

-----Everybody’s Buddy, Oddcube

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