Jodie must have had something going for him, though, because the idea of a skinny nerd like Jodie managing to hook up with a hunky pro quarterback like Dennis boggles the mind. I can guess they wanted to do more, but the network standards and practices was being so oppressive that they decided to give up fighting for him to have a real love life. After all the effort made to get his daughter Wendy back from Carol-which culminated in a single, gay man winning custody of his daughter from the mother, something unheard of in that time-they seemed not to have anything else to write for him. In fact, one of the failings of season four was how they made him too boring and left him unconnected to the other characters.
I think the plan for the character was to introduce him with all those stereotypes just to whip up the publicity, then depict him as a regular guy (well, as regular as anyone in that bunch could be) once people tuned in. Over time they moved Jodie away from the stereotypes (suicidal, wanting to wear mom's clothes, flamboyant) and wrote stories for him that, when looked at for that time period, were moving the needle a bit in the positive direction.
But like I said earlier, the majority of the series is one well-done plot arc after another. I also have a great fondness for Burt's alien-abduction story, simply because it's a comedy riot.
The way they skewer the "multi-suspect murder mystery" trope, followed by the "heroine on trial for her life" trope, all while keeping the real murderer a secret right up to the end. It's hard to pick a favorite storyline, but I'd have to say it's the death of Peter Campbell and the ensuing trial of Jessica Tate. (Berkeley Harris later married Beverlee McKinsey, considered by many to be the greatest actress ever on soaps.) So while it would have been tempting for another writer to take the parody aspect of Soap too far, she hits the right balance between crazy situations and honest emotions-not insulting the fans of soaps in an effort to be funny over all else. It was only a few years ago that I realized Susan Harris's knowledge of soap opera (as opposed to sitcoms and episodic dramas, which were the formats she'd written for in her TV career to that point) could have been the product of her early marriage to Berkeley Harris, a soap opera actor. I'm sure much of the pleasure I got from this show comes from having a sold background in "real" soaps, watching how ably Susan Harris hung this outrageously funny comedy on a soap opera scaffolding. Season four, despite its faults, is still very watchable and enjoyable once you recognize there were writing changes behind the scenes and increased pressures from the network that forced a few too many compromises. It's difficult to recall anything in seasons 1-3 that I could label as a mis-step. I can't say enough good things about this series! Excellent writing, well-drawn characters, spot-on casting. I've got the complete series of SOAP on DVD, and my wife and I are planning to work our way through the series. I've heard different people on here (although I forget which ones) say before how SOAP was "the best soap opera" and how it was, in many ways, "better than the daytime and night-time soaps". SOAP is one of the best and funniest TV shows in history. Like most sitcoms of the time, SOAP was filmed before a live studio audience and shot on videotape, further enhancing its "look" as a daytime soap opera. These hour-long episodes were later sliced in two, giving the series 93 episodes to air in syndication. Eight of these (including the final four episodes) aired as one-hour installments during the show's original run on ABC. SOAP aired 85 episodes over four seasons. Each returning season was preceded by a 90-minute retrospective of the previous season.
The series was created, written, and executive produced by Susan Harris, and also co-produced by Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas. In 2007, it was named one of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time" by TIME magazine. Over the course of the show's four-year-run, plotlines included alien abduction, demonic possession, extramarital affairs, murder, kidnapping, unknown diseases, amnesia, cults, organized crime, a communist revolution, and teacher-student relationships. A parody of daytime soap operas, the show was a weekly half-hour comedy with on-going story lines presented in a serialized format. SOAP aired on ABC from Septemto April 20, 1981, totaling four seasons and 85 episodes.