Soap: Episode 89

My least favorite regular character
shares my disgust and disbelief.

Soap: Episode 89
ABC
April 20, 1981
Dramedy
DVD
D+

The opening scene caused me to exclaim aloud, "That's just stupid!  They wouldn't do that.  Especially in 1981."  Things slightly improved from there, so this is only tied for the worst episode of Soap, not a new low.

The episode begins with a stock shot of a tennis court, and I couldn't help wishing we were back in the beginning of the first season and Jessica was fooling around with Peter.  Instead Burt, who previously showed he knows nothing about golf, now turns out to be a bad tennis player.  (Maybe Peter got his athleticism from his mother.)  The dimwitted Governor and Gene, the rich Southern guy, continue to want Burt as Lieutenant Governor, but now they want him to ditch his family.  They don't mention Mary's alcoholism or Danny's criminal past; it's bad enough that Jodie is a homosexual and Chuck is a ventriloquist.  (That this seems positively quaint now is a sign of how much politics and society have changed in 35 years.)  I exclaimed because I really don't think this would be how it would be handled, especially back then.  Divorce was still somewhat of a taboo in politics (despite Reagan's election), and it would make more sense, and be funnier, if they instead advocated that Burt's family get training in how to be media-friendly, like teaching Mary to look adoringly at Burt during his speeches.

Burt looks like he's considering distancing himself from his family and I have to ask what the purpose of this is.  I suppose it's a "devil on the mountaintop" moment, but dramatically what needs to happen is for Burt to stand up and say, "My family may not be perfect but they mean everything to me."  Instead he just sits there, looking uncomfortable.  When sinister figures later plan to give him the Serpico treatment, it's hard to care.

El also has to choose between the personal and the political, since Jessica is kidnapped by two not particularly threatening Communists (see below), whom her family nonetheless fear will kill her.  Should El try to rescue her, or would that put her, and everyone, further at risk?  I might be invested in this if it didn't feel so out of nowhere, and if Dutch would fricking stop sobbing and talking like an idiot!  Oh, and if Billy would quit mispronouncing, "Silencio!"

In the final scene, Mary is distraught and Jodie/Julius sort of cheers her up, and the scene might work if, one, I weren't tired of this schtick and, two, if there weren't a gratuitous rape joke (about Cassocks ravaging an ugly woman).

Still, still, the show isn't flat out terrible.  It might in a way be more bearable if it were.  When, for instance, Jessica is getting the Commies to move her bedroom furniture, there are glimpses of what once was.  That there are still talented people involved, most of them wasting their talents, is what's heart-breaking.  A full-on shitstorm shark-jump would at least be something to grimly laugh at.

Luis Avalos, who previously played a doctor on Soap, is miscast as Communist leader General Sandia, since the Electric Company veteran has such a quiet, gentle demeanor.  Writer Barry Vignon plays Private Esquivo and actually does an OK job, but it's hard to believe that these two will ruthlessly kill Jessica to achieve political ends.  Danny, Chuck, and Bob are absent, Chuck & Bob for good.