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DVD: Soap - The Complete First Season (1977)
Columbia Tri-Star: 3 discs, 25 episodes, 600 min.
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
As the years have gone by and the DVD box sets have stacked up, many of us have been asking the question, "where's the Soap?" After all, Soap isn't just hilarious and enduring, it's historically significant for being the first television series with an openly gay character. Well, sort of. Well, it did, but he wasn't exactly... Geez, I'd better start from the beginning.
Soap, a spoof of soap operas, hit the airwaves in 1977 and immediately began breaking all the rules. Susan Harris, who would later create the entertaining but much less risky and rewarding Golden Girls, did something very clever when she cooked up Soap: instead of going for a one-dimensional joke machine poking fun at the soap opera genre, she created characters you could care about, and the actors responded with unforgettable ongoing performances. Katherine Helmond and Cathryn Damon were the center of Soap's universe as Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell, two sisters, each of whom is very much the head of her household. Jessica lived in the family mansion with her womanizing husband, Chester (Robert Mandan), daughters Corrinne (Diana Canova) and Eunice (Jennifer Salt), son Billy (Jimmy Baio), Jessica's father, the Major (Arthur Pennington), and the only fully sane member of the household, Benson (Robert Guillaume), the housekeeper/cook/butler who didn't do anything he didn't feel like doing at any given moment. The Tate's always at least seemed to have wealth and taste.
Meanwhile, over at the Campbell's modest digs, Mary had her hands full just trying to keep her new husband Burt (Richard Mulligan) and her Mafia-employed son, Danny (Ted Wass), from killing one another, and then there was the impending sex change operation her youngest son, Jody (Billy Crystal), was determined to have. And if that wasn't enough, Chuck (Jay Johnson), Burt's son from a previous marriage, moved in, bringing his best friend, Bob, a ventriloquist's dummy with a nasty attitude. Burt was invisible sometimes, impotent at other times, Jody was gay, yet he kept finding himself in bed with women, much to the chagrin of his boyfriend, Dennis, the local professional football team's quarterback, but that was all small potatoes compared to what hit the fan when the murder happened right there in Dunn's River and the whole fam damily ended up on the suspect list, but then...
Man, sounds like a soap opera, doesn't it?
Yes, it does, except it was all extraordinarily funny. The show was blessed with a castful of gifted physical comedians. The late Richard Mulligan was one of the funniest humans ever to grace both the small and big screens. He could leave you gasping for breath with the simplest double take or panic shot, have you slapping at the arms of your easy chair as he drunkenly wanders onto a coffee table and then locks into mortal combat with gravity and an altered sense of balance. Mandan could destroy the viewer just as quickly, but his physical comedy was all about precise body language that always seemed to spell out "I am such a worm." It's like watching comedic ballet, and it hasn't grown tiresome after 28 years. Mandan and Mulligan working a scene together? Frankly, I don't know how they ever got a usable take without the sound of laughter from the cast and crew. In the eye of the storm stood Guillaume's indifferent butler, Benson, the one who could see just how absurd everyone else was and took none of their guff, yet never abandoned them in their times of need because he also truly loved them. Well... maybe not Chester, but the rest of them.
Though it only lasted four seasons, the show's fans knew where Benson was coming from. No matter how screwy things got, you never stopped caring about the characters. This box set has no special features, but all 25 episodes of season one are present and it can be had for $20-$25, which is mighty cheap. The second season is already on the shelves, as well, for the same price, this time with a "making of" documentary, and the third season is due out on January 7th. My videotapes can now be tossed, but I'll give them a salute on their way out. I must have watched this series from beginning to end seven or eight times over the years, and I can't count the times I've loaned it out. One more time through and they were apt to shred inside the VCR. And believe me, I'd have risked it.
© 2005 - DJ Johnson