YMMV / Soap

• Accidental Aesop: Jodie accepts a date with an attractive nurse, the night when Peter Campbell gets killed. When Jodie becomes a suspect, Burt says that he couldn't have done it because he had a date, only for Jodie to then admit that he did not show up for the date, so he does not have an alibi. This could be a good lesson to show up for dates, so that if somebody gets murdered at the time, this would prevent one from being a suspect.
• Award Snub: Richard Mulligan and Cathryn Damon both won Lead acting Emmys in 1980, but the show lost to Taxi for Outstanding Comedy Series that year. Robert Guillaume's Supporting Actor win the year before was Soap's only other Emmy. Robert Mandan never getting a nomination despite his impressively deft navigation of Chester Tate's truly bizarre character arc is a notable snub.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: When the show started airing in Sweden in 1978 (under the name "Lödder", meaning "Lather"), it became a surprising success despite the type of show it was parodying being almost unheard of in the country. One possible factor is that Arthur Peterson actually visited Sweden while the show was airing there, making some appearances on TV to advertise upcoming episodes.
• Harsher in Hindsight: This series isn't the last time that Harold Gould played a character who lost his beloved wife to a Drunk Driver.^note Which was also a Junger-Witt production
  • The treatment of Chester re: his infidelity is alternately played for laughs or to show him as a scoundrel. On closer examination, Chester displays many of the signs of sex addiction, a psychological condition far better understood and sympathized with in the 21st Century.
• Informed Attractiveness:
  • While Jessica Tate was by no means difficult on the eyes (and her personality and red hair certainly didn't hurt), the way the show set her up as being simply irresistible to virtually any man who crossed her path was a little over the top.
    • Likely done for humor: for example, when Jessica is in her hospital bed dying, her nameless physician suddenly declares he has fallen madly in love with her!
  • Billy's Teacher. While she was certainly not unattractive, the way everyone was taken aback by her was also over the top.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Quite a bit of the cast, especially Billy Crystal (and for those of us that are old enough, Robert Urich).
  • The announcer was Rod Roddy, who later did several game shows including The Price Is Right and Press Your Luck.
  • Stu Silver wrote 47 episodes. Silver is best known as creator and executive producer of Webster and for co-creating It's a Living.
  • Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon wrote 12 episodes. Both are best known for creating Mama's Family and The Facts of Life and for co-creating It's a Living.
  • Danny Jacobson wrote seven episodes. Jacobson is best known as co-creator and executive producer of Mad About You.
  • Robert Englund as a member of the Sunnies cult only slightly less sadistic than Freddy Krueger.
  • Howard Hesseman and Gordon Jump sharing a scene a year before they'd become WKRP in Cincinnati's Dr. Johnny Fever and Arthur 'Big Guy' Carlson.
  • Himmel, the German detective Ingrid hires to find out who murdered Peter was played by William Daniels.
  • Jodie's hospital room mate from season one, Harold Gould, was one of the inmates from Patch Adams, as well as Kid Twist in The Sting.
  • Juan One was played by Joe Mantegna in one of his earliest screen roles.
  • George Wendt played a diner employee in a fourth season episode, a year before landing his iconic role as Norm Peterson on Cheers.
• The Scrappy: It's pretty easy to see why Carol is so hated by the fandom.
  • El Puerco doesn't have a lot of fans, either, given his unpopular storyline. This is also a Broken Base as those who do like him, really like him
• Values Resonance: Even though he ultimately doesn't go through with it and the whole thing rests heavily on being Fair for Its Day (including correlating being gay with being trans which is now known to not necessarily always be the case), Jodie's desire for a sex-change operation in the first season, in particular the scene where he explains his reasons to Mary (telling her very firmly that he knows he should be a woman and has always felt that way and is glad to have surgery as an option to be his true self), is surprisingly well presented and not Played for Laughs nearly as much as one would think. All of this makes the plotline surprisingly resonant since the late 2010s with the increasing visibility of trans people and their experiences.