The second season of SOAP didn’t find the show’s creators, writers or actors aping any sort of civil tone as it begins just moments after the first season had ended. The continuity maintained from show to show – and apparently season to season – again makes this show one of the easier television efforts to be immediately sucked into. The dense universe of Dunn’s River, Connecticut finds itself being ever expanded as the shows principal writer, Susan Harris, continues to grow more and more confident in her ability to manipulate each character in some sort of sensible (?) manner given each’s background and personality.

As much as SOAP’s second season being a continuation of what occurred during the first season, there are enough ridiculous plot twists to keep all enthralled. Chester eventually vindicates his wife and confesses to the murder of Burt’s son. This result’s in his incarceration as well as the introduction of Dutch, who ends up impacting the Tates as well as the whole of SOAP more than any viewer would have initially guessed. But beyond even that, folks are married for the wrong reason and eventually killed off only after having been ingratiated to the family – and the viewer.

The end of this season, much like the show’s first, leaves viewers with more questions than conclusions. And as the twenty second episode comes to a close, scenes veer wildly from person to person in order to neatly conclude some narrative arc.

Since Chester’s eventual acquittal of murder has set him free, only after an operation and a disappearance, Jessica is forced to decide between her husband of many years and a new beau in the form of the detective hired to find the missing man. We’re literally cut off at the point of her decision making, only to await the following clutch of episodes.

Apart from the familial focus, as Billy has matured over the first two years of SOAP, he gets a bigger feature as the season draws to a close. But in an unexplained absence, Benson arrives to extricate the youngest Tate from his cult surroundings, only to return to the family’s home to rally more support. Guillaume’s Benson had been spun off into another show, but his departure isn’t ever discussed, making some of the exchanges here difficult to follow. Ignoring that fact, the plot involving Billy was a timely critique of the Moonies - who had garnered some headlines as the ‘70s drew to a close.

Another trapping of that decade getting a feature were extra terrestrials. Of course, much like the inclusion of a cult within SOAP’s world, Burt’s run in with a spaceship is meant strictly as a tremendous joke – which actually feeds into the following season. What the scene does provide is more of Richard Mulligan’s ridiculous and entertaining stuttering, stammering and stamping. And if just for those reasons no others, this piece of SOAP’s plot succeeds.

There’s still nothing here that makes the ‘serious’ moments anything more than passable, but with so many different stories to be played out, Susan Harris and company have followed up that introductory season of SOAP with another that does nothing other than entertain.