Plot
Soap is set in the fictional town of Dunn's River, Connecticut.
In the opening sequence of the first installment, the announcer says "This is the story of two sisters—Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell". The Tates live in a wealthy neighborhood (the announcer calls it the neighborhood known as "Rich"). Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond) and her husband, Chester (Robert Mandan), are hardly models of fidelity, as their various love affairs result in several family mishaps, including the murder of Peter Campbell (Robert Urich), the stepson of her sister Mary (Cathryn Damon). Even though everyone tells Jessica about Chester's continual affairs, she does not believe them until she sees his philandering herself. While out to lunch with Mary, Jessica spots Chester necking with his secretary, Claire (Kathryn Reynolds). Heartbroken, Jessica sobs in her sister's arms. On later occasions, it becomes clear that 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/cook named Benson (Robert Guillaume). Benson clearly despises Chester, but has a soft spot for their son, Billy (Jimmy Baio). He also gets along with the Tates' daughter Corinne (Diana Canova) as well as their mother, Jessica; but doesn't speak to the other daughter, Eunice (Jennifer Salt), although that later changed. 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. 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.
Mary's family, the Campbells, are working class, and as the series begins, her son Danny Dallas (Ted Wass), a product of her first marriage to Johnny Dallas, is a junior gangster-in-training. Danny is told to kill his stepfather, Burt Campbell (Richard Mulligan), 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 (Dinah Manoff), the spoiled daughter of the Mob Boss (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. Mary's other son, Jodie (Billy Crystal, in an early role), is homosexual, having a secret affair with a famous professional football quarterback, and contemplating a sex-change operation.
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, due to a medical condition in his brain. Other plot lines include Jessica's adopted daughter Corinne courting Father Tim Flotsky (Sal Viscuso), who ended up leaving the priesthood, with 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 mate Dutch, and being afflicted with amnesia after a failed operation; Jessica's other daughter, Eunice, sleeping with a married congressman (Edward Winter), and then falling in love with Dutch; Mary's stepson Chuck (Jay Johnson), 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 (John Byner) 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") (Gregory Sierra); Billy Tate's confinement by a cult called the "Sunnies" (a parody of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, called the "Moonies" by its critics), and then his affair with his school teacher who becomes unhinged; Danny and his romantic trials after Elaine's death with a black woman (Polly, played by Lynne Moody), a prostitute (Gwen, played by Jesse Welles), and Chester's second wife (Annie, played by Nancy Dolman); and Burt's confinement to a mental institution, his abduction by aliens while being replaced with an oversexed alien lookalike 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 summary 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."
The fourth season ended with Jessica being shot by a South American firing squad, it being unclear whether she survived. This was the result of the unexpected cancellation of the fifth season, which prevented the producers from coming up with a logical end.
