Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) typical of family and social life as it is portrayed in radio or TV drama series, e.g. soap opera mentality .

1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 236: Some lushhead writer’s soap-opera idea of life with a capital L.
1952		(con. 1948) G. Mandel Flee the Angry Strangers 132: It was soap-opera stuff.
1963		J. Blake letter 28 March in Joint (1972) 206: He had in mind a kind of soap operatic commercial for faggotry, passion-in-the-pen style – Boystown Meets Queenstown.
1966		(con. 1958) R. Farina Been Down So Long (1972) 103: You don’t come out and say what you’re thinking because it would be too soap-opera.
1969		N. Cohn Awopbop. (1970) 102: There was no subject too soap-opera for him to take on.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 261: In a soap opera world, that can come in handy.
1993		T. Jones Pugilist at Rest 155: I don’t want to hear a fucking soap opera plot!
2008		Times (London) 16 May 7/2: Soap women always quarrelled, but in gentler times it was just hairnets at dawn and glaring over the back fence.