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Product Details:
"Soap: The Complete
Four Seasons"
Intro:
This is a tale about two
sisters, Mary Campbell & Jessica Tate. While the Tates are a rich
family, the Campbells are just another blue-collared family, but they go
though some REALLY psycho times.
This is one super crazy comedy. It's good to have family, or is it?
Product Description:
The complete collection of 90 episodes from 4 seasons of the series
available together for the first time.
Season 1:
Editorial Review:
Even before it premiered on September 13, 1977 (Tuesdays at 9:30 pm on
ABC), Soap was mired in controversy (including 32,000 letters of
protest) and primed to make television history. Conceived as a primetime
satire of daytime melodramas, this groundbreaking series toppled many of
the TV taboos that remained after All in the Family and M*A*S*H, openly
addressing a variety of risky topics (homosexuality, infidelity,
impotence, familial murder) with a deft combination of irreverent wit,
wacky slapstick, supreme stupidity, and--key to its success--engaging
drama from characters you could really care about, regardless of their
rampant quirks and foibles.
As a friendly announcer informs us,
"this is the story of two sisters" in suburban Connecticut--wealthy
dimwit Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond) and blue-collar housewife Mary
Campbell (Cathryn Damon)--whose class-divided families are bound by
enough scandalous secrets to make each of these 25 episodes (all written
by creator-producer Susan Harris and directed by sitcom veteran Jay
Sandrich) a polished gem of half-hour comedy. The integration of plot
and character is flawless, and dirty laundry was rarely this absurd:
Jessica's cheating on her cheating husband (Robert Mandan, the show's
underrated lynchpin); stepson Jodie (Billy Crystal) is (gasp!) openly
gay, and brother Danny (Ted Wass) has Mafia connections; daughter
Corrine (Diana Canova) is in love with a priest; Mary's husband Burt
(manic genius Richard Mulligan) is a would-be killer who thinks he's
invisible; and all of them are suspects in a murder case that fuels the
season's cliff-hanger finale.
This is ensemble comedy at its finest, and is it any wonder Robert
Guillaume--as the Tates' insolent servant Benson--got his own spin-off
sitcom in 1979? His line readings (such as "You want me to get that?"
when the doorbell rings) are instant classics, and while Helmond tops
the cast with her inimitable brand of idiocy, there's not a weak link in
the entire cast. All those protesting prudes fought a futile battle:
Soap was never naughty without purpose (indeed, the show possesses
subtle integrity) and a large and loyal audience propelled it to even
crazier heights in subsequent seasons. (Technical note: Given the
shortcomings of 25-year-old videotape, with minor glitches and colour
variations, these episodes look and sound remarkably good.) --Jeff
Shannon
Product Description:
The controversial sitcom that defined the late 70s and became an instant
classic, Soap took viewers into the homes of not one but two of the most
dysfunctional families ever and we couldn't help but embrace every
eccentric one of them!
This first season introduces us to the quirky lives of the Tates and the
Campbells. The unparalleled cast features Billy Crystal, Richard
Mulligan, Robert Guillaume, Emmy nominees Katherine Helmond and Cathryn
Damon, Robert Mandan, Diana Canova, Jimmy Baio and Arthur Peterson. The
series first season was nominated for 4 Emmy® Awards and won for
Outstanding Art Direction in a Comedy Series.
Season 2:
Editorial Review:
It doesn't seem possible, but the second season of Soap is even better
than the first. Only the greatest primetime sitcoms achieve
triple-threat genius: Casting, writing, and direction reached their
zenith as the 1978-79 season began with a resolution to season 1's
cliff-hanger murder. Chester (Robert Mandan) loses his memory and wander
out west while his ditzy wife Jessica (Katherine Helmond) enjoys a fling
with the detective (new cast member John Byner) she'd hired to find
Chester. Across town, the working-class Campbells have their own
melodramas to contend with: Despite being gay, stepson Jodie (Billy
Crystal) is an expectant father and moves in with pregnant Carol
(Rebecca Balding), and later a lesbian roommate; Mary (Cathryn Damon)
suspects Burt (Richard Mulligan) of having an affair; Corrine (Diana
Canova) and ex-priest Tim (Sal Viscuso) have a baby that's demonically
possessed; and Burt is abducted by aliens!
Exorcisms and flying saucers might suggest desperation on the part of
writer-creator Susan Harris, but the opposite is true: the controversy
that plagued Soap's first season had subsided (thanks to valiant defence
by ABC President Fred Silverman), and Harris and Jay Sandrich (who
directed 20 of these 22 episodes) were able to push their spoofy plots
to even greater heights of absurdity without sacrificing the show's core
integrity. Jimmy Baio (as Billy Tate) gets his moment to shine, and
Robert Guillaume (as Benson) deservedly won an Emmy for Best Supporting
Actor in a Comedy Series. Most impressively, Soap built its madness upon
a solid tragi-comic foundation, with risky shifts of tone and characters
invested with surprising depth and compassion. The episodes are
consistently full of classic scenes and side-splitting dialogue. In a
20-minute bonus featurette, Harris and co producers Paul Witt and Tony
Thomas reveal how luck, timing, talent, and network support brought the
series to life. Simply put, it doesn't get any better than this. --Jeff
Shannon
Season 3:
Product Description:
The Comical Saga of the Tates and Campbells Continues as the two
families deal with such everyday matters as prison escapes, kidnapping,
murder, blackmail, UFOs and demonic possession. Confused? You won’t be
after watching the complete third season of SOAP.
Season 4:
Editorial Review:
Even as it struggled with lower ratings and ongoing backlash from
conservative watchdogs, Soap entered its fourth and final season with
big laughs and plenty of surprises. The series was beginning to lose its
edge with interwoven plots even more preposterous than usual, but its
primary strengths (a great ensemble cast, risk-taking writing, and a
delicate combination of humor and pathos) are still abundantly evident
as Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond) emerges from a coma in episode 1. In
the 20 episodes that follow, Burt (Robert Mulligan) will survive a
blackmailing scandal and, as the new local sheriff, begin a political
career; Jodie (Billy Crystal) fights for child custody, enters into
psychotherapy, and begins to channel a 90-year-old Jewish man from a
previous life; Mary (Cathryn Damon) suspects that her newborn child is
an extraterrestrial, and devastates Jessica with a long-held secret
about her past involving Chester (Robert Mandan); and the now-liberated
Jessica gets involved with El Puerco (Gregory Sierra, from TV's Barney
Miller), a revolutionary from the (fictional) Latin American country of
Malaguay.
These and other plots--including an
affair between Danny (Ted Wass) and Chester's new wife Annie (Nancy
Dolman), and the climactic kidnapping of Jessica--ensured that Soap's
final season was never boring for even a minute, and the one-liners are
endlessly quotable as series creator Susan Harris (here backed, for the
first time, by a stable of co writers) dares to combine comedy with
heavier elements of betrayal, alcoholism, life-threatening situations,
and heart-warming reconciliation. These shifts of tone still qualify
Soap as one of the most accomplished sitcoms in TV history (you'd be
hard pressed to find a better cast capable of handling such a dynamic
range of comi-tragic extremes), and with Sierra and a then-unknown Joe
Mantegna providing the best laughs from an impressive guest-star lineup,
the series mixed up its volatile ingredients with considerable aplomb
and no small degree of genuine humanity. While some characters suffered
due to the season's ambitious plotting, it's still clear that Soap could
have thrived into a fifth season and beyond. Alas, it wasn't to be.
Amidst threats of sponsor withdrawal and the inevitable fallout of
ratings in decline, ABC pulled the plug on Soap, depriving loyal viewers
to a resolution to this season's cliff-hangers, which left several key
characters on the brink of disaster. It's one of TV's boldest comedy
experiments. --Jeff Shannon |
