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soap opera [soap opera 词源字典]: soap opera: [20] The original soap operas were a radio phenomenon, in 1930s America. Serial dramas dealing with humdrum-butoccasionally- melodramatic domestic life were as common then as they are on television now, and several of those on the commercial US networks were sponsored by soap manufacturers. A writer on the Christian Century in 1938 said ‘These fifteen-minute tragedies…I call the “soap tragedies”…because it is by the grace of soap I am allowed to shed tears for these characters who suffer so much from life’.

The soap connection soon linked up with horse opera, a mildly derisive term for a Western movie that had been around since the 1920s, to produce soap opera (a later coinage on the same model was space opera). The abbreviated version soap is recorded as early as 1943.
[soap opera etymology, soap opera origin, 英语词源]
tetralogy (n.): 1650s, from Greek tetralogia, from tetra- (see tetra-) + -logia (see -logy). A group of four dramatic compositions, originally three tragedies (the trilogia) and a Satyric play.
tongue-in-cheek (adv.): 1856, from phrase to speak with one's tongue in one's cheek "to speak insincerely" (1748), suggestive of sly irony or humorous insincerity, perhaps a stage trick to convey irony to the audience.
Hem! Pray, Sir, said he to the Bard, after thrusting his Tongue into a Corner of his Cheek, and rolling his Eyes at Miss Willis, (Tricks which he had caught by endeavouring to take off a celebrated Comedian) were these fine Tragedies of yours ever acted? [anonymous, "Emily, or the History of a Natural Daughter," 1761]

This arietta, however, she no sooner began to perform, than he and the justice fell asleep ; but the moment she ceased playing, the knight waked snorting, and exclaimed,--'O cara! what d'ye think, gentlemen? Will you talk any more of your Pargolesi and your Corelli ?'--At the same time, he thrust his tongue in one cheek, and leered with one eye at the doctor and me, who sat on his left hand--He concluded the pantomime with a loud laugh, which he could command at all times extempore. [Smollett, "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker," 1771]
tragedian (n.): "writer of tragedies," late 14c., from Old French tragediane (Modern French tragédien), from tragedie (see tragedy). Another word for this was tragician (mid-15c.). Meaning "actor in tragedies" is from 1590s. French-based fem. form tragedienne is from 1851. In late classical Greek, tragodos was the actor, tragodopoios the writer.
trilogy (n.): series of three related works, 1660s, from Greek trilogia "series of three related tragedies performed at Athens at the festival of Dionysus," from tri- "three" (see three) + logos "story" (see logos).