Piece of soap in pie does badly? (7)
I believe the answer is:
episode
'piece of soap' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to communication as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'pie does badly?' is the wordplay.
'badly?' indicates an anagram (letters in the wrong order).
'pie'+'does'='piedoes'
'piedoes' is an anagram of 'EPISODE'.
'in' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for episode that I've seen before include "Musical passage" , "Incident forming part of a sequence" , "Story instalment" , "Distinctive happening" , "Incident in a story or part of a serial" .)