The Good

Fans of Soap es in one place.

The Bad

The packaging on this release is atrocious.Soap: The Complete Series gives us 90 episodes over 12 discs chronicling the fictional soap opera families, the Tates and the Campbells. Sending up the very nature and themes that soap operas hold so dear, what makes this show work is how ahead of its time it was. The 1970s, by and large, were a time of genre deconstruction. We see this is films like Bonnie and Clyde, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Nashville, etc. The themes in these movies seemed commonplace on the surface. However, as movie experiences they played as something else entirely. This is precisely what Soap did as well. Presenting itself as a soap opera in the sitcom format, this show really did its best to turn the conventions of its self created medium on its ear.

If you want a funny show filled with actors like Billy Crystal, Roscoe Lee Brown and Robert Guillaume among others, then I highly recommend checking out Soap: The Complete Series.

Features

As this is simply a repackaging of the original DVD sets that were already released, I sadly didn't really look into the extras.

Video

1.33:1 - Full Screen. This show looked pretty good on DVD. Sometimes Sony has problems when they compress these shows (I remember a season of The Jeffersons that made the actors look like they were moving through marmalade), however that really wasn't evident here. Sure some of the images got a little blown out here and there, but overall things were fine in this department.

Audio

Dolby Digital. Language: English. Close Captioned. All in all the audio was fine. Sony has never been a slouch in this department and that record continues here. While I didn't hear anything that really blew me out of bedroom, the audio didn't need to be turned up that high in order to hear what the actors were saying.

Package

This is the biggest problem with this set. This flimsy, embossed, red cover gives us a bubbly shot of the cast on the front over. The back features shots of all the Soap season sets, a small description of what this show is about and technical specs. This packaging then opens up giving us images of the cast from these season sets, season listings and what discs go where. All the discs are stored in a separate plastic, cardboard piece of packaging. I am sorry but the best way to describe this thing is cheap.

Final Word

As I was going through this 90 episode compendium I couldn't help but wonder why this show was released as it was?

First came all four seasons of this show in individual sets, and now comes this complete series set. I guess I am wondering why it wasn't just released as one large set to begin with? The fact that people can pick up this whole show for under $40 really makes things interesting, because I am sure that individually each season set probably went for $20 or so. I guess I am just curious why Sony felt the need to do a double dip with this show? It doesn't seem like there would be much of an upside, and even if there was would it be large enough to really make a difference?

Okay, I admit that this portion of this release really doesn't have much to do with the actual show, however, if you've never owned it before you can save your money and get a lot more buying Soap: The Complete Series.