Quote:
|
The one area in which Soap falls a little flat is in attempting to be serious. It suffers from “A Very Special Episode Of”-itis, which didn’t work any better in half-hour comedies of those days than it does today. One generally doesn’t pop in a sitcom episode to see things like a couple deciding to get a divorce and then bursting into heart-rending tears. While all sitcoms eventually get around to this sort of thing, Soap tends to visit this territory about once every other episode. Perhaps the producers felt that they should try to maintain a tighter bond with the daytime soaps they were spoofing, as the comedy doesn’t really have much connection to them.
|
I don't think that was quite it. Susan Harris has always talked about how what she liked about writing
Soap was the freedom to change tone and go from goofy comedy to emotional moments and back again; she liked to surprise the audience by making them care about these people even though we might think, at first, that the show was only a spoof. Those changes in tone, and the fact that the show can do all different kinds of scenes, is built into the kind of show it was; it just wouldn't be the same show without those sudden shifts from wackiness to seriousness. The ultimate example of that was in a season 2 episode when a crazy, silly scene with Chuck and Bob (having nothing to do with the plot) is followed by a shocking, and totally serious, scene with Danny and Elaine.
Whether you like the serious scenes or not is another matter (I like some of them, like the above-mentioned Danny/Elaine scene; others not so much), but I don't think they're extraneous or tacked on; they're a part of what the show was supposed to be.
I watched the first episode of season 3. Great stuff. "We speak your Earth languages. We read and write. We also disco!"