Ask Lemmy

There's an old comedy/parody of soap operas called SOAP. SOAP is the show Benson spun oft from. It starred, among others, Billy Crystal and Katherine Helmond. Absolutely amazing show that I can and will talk about for hours.

S1e9 has a scene in which Jessica (Helmond) discovers that her husband Chester is cheating on her.

She looks to her sister and says Oh, Mary, I would faint if I knew how

It's one of the finest examples of writing, acting, direction... Everything. It's a perfect scene, so much so that it inspired me to want to write, and is the reason I decided to go for a creative writing degree.

For anyone curious, SOAP was so hated by network execs, Christian right orgs and basically all of conservative America that by the end of it's run all advertisers had pulled out except for vlassic pickles, and commercial breaks would just be pickle commercials over and over again during the break. You couldn't watch it in most areas, because locals refused to run it. It featured the first openly gay character in a major network show, a trans story (which did not age as well as it could have, but was progressive for it's time), a lesbian character, interracial relationships, suicide, race relations, crises of faith, extramarital affairs, divorce... In the 70s. It always punched up, and the black and gay characters were almost always the most clever, most witty and sharpest.