> I use soap opera as a bit of shorthand for things focusing on human relationships a lot.

I don't know if that's really fair. I don't think that's really what most people think the term soap opera denotes, and if you broaden it to mean any work that has any sort of relational elements, its almost a tautology that all fiction will meet the standard.

More to the point, i think its an unfair response to the article, as the author is not claiming that the similarity between these two works is merely that they have relationships in them.