Soap: The Complete Series

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The Soap Memo" was leaked to the press before the show premiered and was printed in its entirety in the Los Angeles Times on June 27, 1977. On August 27, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library, including Soap. 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 Tates had to hire a new butler/cook named Saunders ( Roscoe Lee Browne), whose attitude is similar to that of Benson, but has a more formal personality.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.

Benson became a popular character and in 1979 left the Tates' employ to work for Jessica's cousin, Governor Gene Gatling, on the spin-off series Benson, wherein his last name, DuBois, was revealed. Therefore, the final one-hour episode, which originally aired on April 20, 1981, did not serve as a series finale and instead ended with several unresolved cliffhangers. Although the uproar against Soap subsided shortly after its premiere, the program continued to generate additional criticism for its relatively frank depictions of homosexuals, racial and ethnic minorities and the mentally ill, as well as its treatment of other taboo topics such as social class, marital infidelity, impotence, incest, sexual harassment, rape, student-teacher sexual relationships, kidnapping, organized crime, murder of and by cast members, and new age cults. m. By its second week on the air, 2 more affiliates dropped out, bringing the boycott to 20 stations.In a 1982 analysis in The Village Voice, published as the series was entering syndication, TV critic Tom Carson lauded the ensemble, saying that "the cast matches the best TV series rep troupes ever.