Burt [played by Richard Mulligan]: “Prentiss got caught stuffing the ballot boxes, so I won, I am the sheriff.”
[Everyone congratulates Burt.]
Danny [played by Ted Wass]: “How 'bout that? Sheriff. And I get to be deputy, right, Burt? Me, deputy, me. Please?”
Bob [played by Jay Johnson]: “I'm gonna be the deputy.”
Danny: “You are not!”
Bob: “Am too!”
[Danny and Bob argue
before Mary breaks it up.]
Mary [played by Cathryn Damon]: “Burt, what's the matter?”
Burt: “Well, it's Prentiss, he won't give up the office. Yeah, he's holed up in the armory with enough weapons to quality as a Third World nation. He says he will not be taken alive and my first assignment is to take him.”
Danny: “Let's go get him.”
Burt: “Danny, this Prentiss, he won gold medals for marksmanship and he is now in a fortified stone building.”
Bob: “On second thought, I don't want to be deputy.”—Soap, Season 3, Episode 20, original air date Mar. 13, 1980, teleplay by Susan Harris and Stu Silver, directed by J.D. Lobue
I must confess that when I heard that bit here about someone who “won’t give up the office,” I had a flashback to January 6, 2021—and especially one person involved that day. I bet some of you felt the same way.
Believe it or not, it looks like, since no legal or electoral price was paid for that refusal to accept the results of an election, other politicians want to get in on the act. A New York Times headline from the other day, about the major and several council members in rural Avenal, CA, who lost a recall election, says it all: “They Were Voted Out. They Refuse to Leave. Now What?”
Now what? Better pray that anyone else who gets this idea doesn’t get their hands on weapons, as Prentiss did in this Soap episode.
