Soap: Episode 80

Soap: Episode 80
ABC
January 28, 1981
Dramedy
DVD
B-

And then this episode came along.  Yes, it has six writers, but it feels more focused than lately.  Everything is either about newly divorced Chester and Jessica having sexual problems with their new partners (Chester is impotent and not over Jess, while El still refuses to even neck before marriage), or about Danny's hospitalization.  Yes, Danny is still an idiot (and apparently was at 13, too), but the love between him and Gwen, and between him and Burt (who seems to see him as more his son than Chuck) is clear.  OK, yes, Bob confesses he's an alcoholic, but even that is tangentially related.

The real turning point is when Dr. Saxon (Richard McKenzie returning one last time) says that both Danny's kidneys were damaged and he needs a donor.  Mary volunteers but the doctor says that, as her long-term physician, he can't recommend it.  So Jodie volunteers.  Mary sends everyone out of the room and tells Jodie that Danny isn't his brother.  She's mother to both but they have different fathers.  Rod Roddy says that Danny's father is either Chester, Benson, Burt Reynolds, or Mr. X.  Well, that narrows things down!  (Note that Reynolds was then 44, which would make him a teenager and not yet famous when Danny was born.)

Roddy also says that we'll find out when Soap returns in its new time slot in early March.  I wasn't watching at the time (although I have a clear memory of a promo where Chester cries, "I feel so inadequate!" and I thought what a stupid show this looked like), and I can't recall exactly what I thought watching it in syndication, a couple years later.  I was intrigued but less concerned than I'd been when Roddy had said, "Jessica Tate did not kill Peter Campbell.  One of these five people did."  I don't remember guessing but I probably would've thought Mr. X seemed like a safe bet.

The Major, Dutch, Eunice, and Billy are absent from this episode.