Soap: Episode 48

And one to grow on

Soap: Episode 48
ABC
September 13, 1979
Dramedy
DVD
B-

Harris & Silver kick off Season Three by mostly picking up where they left off, although they can't get to every thread of course.  Jessica chooses Chester over Detective Donahue, who pretends to get dizzy every time he tries to leave the house, although it doesn't stop him from joining Chester, the Major, and a temporarily returned from the Governor's mansion Benson in the Major's plan to rescue Billy from the Sunnies.  (Three of them are in blackface as part of the disguise, leading to some racial jokes that haven't dated well.)  The aliens tell Burt they're going to keep him and send one of their own down to Earth in a duplicate of his body.  The alien is thrilled because he hasn't had sex in 2000 years.  And, on the day Jodie and Alice are celebrating their third month of living together, agreeing that relationships are so much better without sex, Carol's mother shows up with baby Wendy, who is adorable and definitely looks like Jodie.

(Hypothetically, depending when this was shot, that could be Crystal's daughter Lindsay, born in October of '77, but I think there'd be a mention of it in IMDB trivia or someplace if it were.  When Tony Danza's daughter Katherine would later appear on Who's the Boss?, there would be obvious clues that it was her.  In any case, Wendy, while not looking like a newborn, doesn't seem to be a toddler.)

As with Three's Company, there's a more cartoony feel than a couple years earlier, with the exception of the Wendy storyline.  It says something that the studio audience has accepted Jodie enough that they audibly express how cute they think the scenes are of him as a father.  Down the road, the home audience would root for Jodie in his custody battle, at a time when gay parents generally lost such battles.  I'll get back to this, but for all Soap's mistakes, this is an area where I think the show made a difference.

Billy isn't shown although he's of course mentioned a lot.  And Chuck, Bob, and Danny are all gone without being mentioned.