Soap: Episode 13

Soap: Episode 13
ABC
December 13, 1977
Dramedy
DVD
B

This episode opens the next morning.  Burt and Mary successfully had sex last night, so he wants to throw a party to celebrate.  He goes over to Peter's to invite him personally (I don't know if Burt knows about Peter fooling around with Corinne or Jessica at this point), and he finds his son dead in the shower (offscreen).  Then we get stock footage of a funeral, presumably held within a couple days.  There's a big everyone-in-the-regular-cast (except for of course Peter) gathering at the Tates' after the funeral.  Danny is disguised as a rabbi again.

Gordon Jump (about seven years after his Brady cameos and still months away from WKRP) makes his first of twelve appearances as, as he puts it and Jodie deadpanly mocks him, "Piece of Chalief Tinkler."  He explains that everyone, except Billy, whom he sends out of the room, is a suspect, yes, even Bob.  (The woman Peter was with when Corinne caught them is not, since "it's impossible for a blind woman to shoot with that kind of accuracy.")  Tinkler's reasons for suspecting Benson and Jodie are because they are respectively black and "a homo."  (Jodie stood up the nurse.)

Rod Roddy says at the end that the questions "might" rather than "will" be answered on the next episode.  In fact, we wouldn't find out Peter's killer till the next season, making this a very long plot arc for a TV comedy of the time.