Exorcisms and flying saucers might suggest desperation on the part of writer-creator Susan Harris, but the opposite is true: the controversy that plagued Soap's first season had subsided (thanks to valiant defense by ABC President Fred Silverman), and Harris and Jay Sandrich (who directed 20 of these 22 episodes) were able to push their spoofy plots to even greater heights of absurdity without sacrificing the show's core integrity. Jimmy Baio (as Billy Tate) gets his moment to shine, and Robert Guillaume (as Benson) deservedly won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Most impressively, Soap built its madness upon a solid tragi-comic foundation, with risky shifts of tone and characters invested with surprising depth and compassion. The episodes are consistently full of classic scenes and side-splitting dialogue. In a 20-minute bonus featurette, Harris and coproducers Paul Witt and Tony Thomas reveal how luck, timing, talent, and network support brought the series to life. Simply put, it doesn't get any better than this. --Jeff Shannon