Soap (TV Series) - Plot

Plot

Soap is set in the fictional town of Dunn's River, Connecticut.

In the opening sequence of the first installment, the announcer says that the Tates live in a wealthy neighborhood. Jessica Tate and her husband, Chester, are hardly models of fidelity, as their various love affairs result in several family mishaps, including the murder of her sister Mary's stepson, Peter Campbell (Robert Urich). Even though everyone tells Jessica about Chester's affairs, she does not believe them until she sees his philandering with her own eyes: while out to lunch with Mary, Jessica spots Chester necking with his secretary. Heartbroken, she sobs in her sister's arms. On later occasions, it becomes clear Jess has always known on some level about Chester's affairs but never allowed herself to process the information.

The wealthy Tate family employs a sarcastic butler, Benson DuBois (Robert Guillaume).

Mary's family, the Campbells, are working class, and as the series begins, her son Danny Dallas, a product of her first marriage to Johnny Dallas, is a junior gangster-in-training. Danny is told to kill his stepfather, Burt Campbell, Mary's current husband, who, Danny is told, murdered his father Johnny, who was also a mobster. It is later revealed that Danny's father was killed by Burt in self-defense. Danny refuses to kill Burt and goes on the run from the Mob in a variety of disguises. This eventually ends when Elaine Lefkowitz (played by Dinah Manoff in one of her earliest roles), the spoiled daughter of the Mob Boss (played by Sorrell Booke), falls in love with Danny and stops her father, who then tells Danny he will have to marry Elaine or he will kill him. In the fourth season, it is revealed that Chester is Danny's true father, the product of a secret affair between him and Mary before his marriage to Jessica.

The first season ends with Jessica convicted of the murder of Peter Campbell. The announcer concludes the season by announcing that Jessica is innocent, and that one of five characters – Burt, Chester, Jodie, Benson, or Corinne – killed Peter Campbell. Chester later confesses to Peter's murder and is sent to prison. He is soon released after a successful temporary insanity defense.

Other plot lines include Jessica's adopted daughter Corinne courting Father Tim Flotsky, who ended up leaving the priesthood, and the two eventually marrying and having a child who is possessed by the Devil; Chester being imprisoned for Peter's murder, escaping with his prison roommate Dutch, and being afflicted with amnesia after a failed operation; Jessica's other daughter, Eunice, sleeps with a married congressman, and then falls in love with Dutch; Mary's stepson Chuck, a ventriloquist whose hostilities are expressed through his alter ego, a quick-witted dummy named Bob; Jessica's love affairs with several men, including Donahue, a private investigator hired to find the missing presumed-dead Chester, her psychiatrist, and a Latin American revolutionary known as "El Puerco" ("The Pig"; his friends just call him "El"); Billy Tate's confinement by a cult called the "Sunnies" (a parody of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Movement, called the "Moonies" by its critics), and then his affair with his school teacher who becomes unhinged; Danny and his romantic trials with the daughter of a mobster, a black woman, a prostitute, and Chester's second wife, Annie; and Burt's confinement to a mental institution, his abduction by aliens while being replaced with an oversexed alien look-a-like on Earth, and getting blackmailed by the Mob after becoming sheriff of their small town.

At the beginning of each episode, off-camera announcer Rod Roddy gives a brief description of the convoluted storyline and remarks, "Confused? You won't be, after this week's episode of...Soap." At the end of each episode, he asks a series of life-or-death questions in a deliberately deadpan style—"Will Jessica discover Chester's affair...? Will Benson discover Chester's affair? Will Benson care?" and concludes each episode with the trademark line, "These questions—and many others—will be answered in the next episode of...Soap."