Soap wasn’t brilliant just because it seemed groundbreaking in terms of portraying alternative sexuality and shocking acts committed by, what should have been at the time, lovable goofy sitcom characters. In its flippant and understated audacity, its heartless portrayals of morally ambiguous characters, and its real world reflected through funny mirrors attitude, the Soap sitcom paved the way for future television bad boys like Married…with Children, Seinfeld, South Park, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and, well, a lot of what’s currently on TV today with the dark humor and ADHD approach to filming.
#1970 comedy soap tv show series#
Yet the Soap TV comedy series (unfortunately Google-ghettoed because of the ubiquity of TV soap opera keyword searches) was a trailblazer of what is now considered contemporary satire, and not merely a smart and funny sitcom, like everything else in the 1970s. Yet, Soap was an altogether different animal and one that only recently has found its classification as a TV Satire, a counterculture parody that fused together tragedy and comedy in ways that had never really been seen in the mainstream, outside of comic books and literature, and certainly not on network television. Namely, a show like every other 1970s sitcom-an earthy and politically insensitive look at the lives of wise guys that championed minority viewpoints and alternative culture. In its debut, Soap, a comedy sitcom following two families (The Tates and the Campbells) and the chicanery that developed from their associations, was lambasted by the Moral Majority, heavily censored by the network, and worst of all, only tolerated by critics as a show that tried really hard to be something that it never intended to be. The most innovative and yet forgotten show of the 20 th century, which is only now becoming prophetic as a new generation of comedy clowns emerge, is Susan Harris’ Soap.
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