Soap: Episode 86

Burt would rather spend time with the Governor
and wife than with his own lonely, alcoholic wife.

Soap: Episode 86
ABC
March 23, 1981
Dramedy
DVD
D+

When the best things about the episode are Mary and Jessica respectively leaving Burt and kicking Chester out of the house, things that have of course happened before, it's fair to say that if the show isn't shark-bait, it's awfully close to awful.  Mandan almost saves his scene, where he captures Chester's hypocritical indignation that Jessica slept with El (and in an earlier scene we see her non-explicitly teaching El that women are orgasmic) the night that Chester eloped with Annie.  But then Chester calls Annie a slut and it feels out of character; he's a sometimes cruel man but he's also classy.  And while Mary was mistaken to leave Burt before, it's painful to see how justified she is this time.  His character change is too extreme and implausible, and, yes, I found the alien abduction more plausible.

Meanwhile, it's a toss-up which is more painful to watch, Jodie being turned through hypnotism into a 90-year-old Jewish man, or Dutch and Eunice yet again trying to spice up their sex life, but I'm going to go with the latter because, one, she tells Dutch he physically repulses her, and two, she slept with a burglar, thinking it was one of Dutch's disguises, and the scene ends with her alone and holding her necklace out the window in hopes that the thief will return.  This is the worst episode of Soap so far, and with four more to go, I can't see the series bouncing back much.

Danny, Chuck, and Bob are absent, and who could blame them?