11 Apr 91: KNOTS LANDING: Where There's a Will, There's a Way v. 12 Apr 91: DALLAS: Farewell, My Lovely
(Directed by Karen Mackenzie and Bobby Ewing respectively.)
Just over a year ago, in the third to last episode of FALCON CREST, Angela awoke from her never-ending coma to reclaim her matriarchal throne. This week, in the fourth to last episode of DALLAS, it becomes clear that Miss Ellie has no intention of returning from her never-ending cruise to do the same. Instead, it falls to Clayton (in his final screen appearance) to inform her sons that “your mother’s decided not to come back to Southfork.” JR is not impressed. “What I don’t understand is why the woman who is the head of this family doesn’t at least wanna come back and see her children once in a while!” he huffs. “She’s sick of the fighting and tragedy that seems to haunt this family,” Clayton explains. Ellie's weary sentiment is echoed throughout this week’s Ewing-verse. “There is so much backstabbing and brown-nosing going on there, I can’t take it anymore,” says Paige of the Sumner Group. “There’s nothing left in Dallas for me,” declares Carter McKay. “I’m getting out of the business for good,” echoes Clayton. “I don’t want your stupid company … I’m outta here!” John Ross informs JR. “I don’t give a damn about Ewing Oil. To hell with it,” JR tells James. Yes, after thirteen years and 353 episodes, even the mighty JR Ewing has finally succumbed to soap fatigue.
Like Miss Ellie on DALLAS, mothers are also a hot topic on KNOTS where Steve Brewer offers Greg his assessment of Linda Fairgate: “I think she’d slit her own mother’s throat to get ahead — although I’m sure you find that an admirable quality in a woman.” “Motherhood is overrated,” Greg replies. “Depends on the mother,” suggests Steve. Ironically, it emerges elsewhere in the episode that Linda’s mother is actually her Achilles heel.
A few weeks ago on DALLAS, Jory Taylor was very excited that her high-maintenance mom was coming to California on an overnight visit. At the last minute, this visit was downgraded to a brief layover between planes. In the event, Jory wasn’t able to make even this short meeting because she’d been kidnapped. Almost the exact same situation plays out on this week’s KNOTS. This time, it’s Linda’s high-maintenance mom who had the last-minute layover, and it looks as if Linda won’t be able to meet her either, because of an important meeting scheduled with Mrs Richfield. Impulsively, Linda leaves a note asking Paige to cover her and rushes off to the airport. Her mom (whose name isn’t mentioned on screen, but whom IMDb credits as Doris) turns out to be a Mother from Hell caricature — she even smokes, which is never a good sign. Linda clearly adores her, but Doris blithely dismisses both her daughter's new position as the Sumner Group’s Head of Research (“Isn’t that kind of a glorified librarian?”) and the scarf she has bought her as a gift (“It’s, um, busy”). What’s most striking, though, is Doris’s attitude towards Eric, coming as it does just a week after KNOTS’ tribute to Steve Shaw. She gets his name wrong (“How is Ricky doing?”), puts him down intellectually (“He always struck me as a little slow”) and even forgets that he and Linda are now divorced. Her behaviour has the desired effect of humanising Linda and placing her in a more sympathetic light. While Doris can’t get away from Linda quick enough, Jory’s mother Hilary resurfaces at the end of this week’s DALLAS. “I’m really rather anxious to see my daughter,” she declares.
Now that the season’s nearly over and the writers have run out of wacky things for her to do, Val is cured of her brain virus as arbitrarily as she contracted it. But as one medical storyline ends, another begins as Gary breaks Kate’s arm during a random accident. What this means for her career as a tennis player has yet to be determined.
In the same way that Cathy Geary gradually went from looking like Ciji to essentially becoming her (first the singing career, then the violently abusive relationship), so Kate now seems to be turning into Mary Frances. A few weeks ago, she adopted her late cousin’s hair colour and now she is fuelled by the same righteous anger towards corporate greed. In fact, when Greg awakens from a nap to find Kate glaring down at him, he could be forgiven for thinking that his daughter’s ghost is back to re-haunt him.
Kate’s ire stems from Steve’s discovery in last week’s ep that it was Greg who gave the order to shut down his parents’ lumber mill, which resulted in their ruination. This is a familiar Soap Land scenario — the grieving relative of a humble worker blames their untimely death on a business decision made by a bigwig too insulated by power and money to care about the end results of their actions. We’ve seen it before on KNOTS with Peter Hollister and Jill Bennett, as well as with Mrs Scotfield on DALLAS, Nick Toscanni on DYNASTY, Zach Powers on THE COLBYS and seemingly half the Tuscany Valley on FALCON CREST. Rarely does the accused bigwig get much chance to explain his point of view. Greg makes a start (“If you understood a little bit more about how business works —”), but Kate cuts him off. “I’m not talking about how business works,” she tells him. “I’m talking about people. I don’t care about profit margins or cost-effectiveness or the bottom line. My bottom line is how does it affect the men and women that are actually doing the work? … You know, my mom always told me that you put dollars before people, but somehow I didn’t wanna believe it. Now I believe it.”
Later, Greg broaches the topic again, this time with Steve himself at the Sumner Group. Steve, along with Paige, Linda and Mort, has just concurred with his assessment that a poorly functioning subsidiary company should be sold off. “I was surprised at your reaction to the deal I proposed,” Greg remarks. “If it goes through, it’ll put a lot of people out of work.” “If it goes through, we should do what we can to help those people,” counters Steve. “Well, if all the profits go to bail out the employees, what’s the sense in doing the deal?” Greg asks. “Sound business decisions often hurt a lot of people, but at the same time, they also help a lot of people. If you can’t live with that, you’re in the wrong line of work.” Steve’s reply — “I can live with that. I’m related to you, aren’t I?” — is tantalisingly ambiguous. Is he being ironic or might he be about to succumb to the Dark Side? (The Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker-ish vibe of this moment reminds me of a future office scene, the one at the end of New DALLAS’s first season where JR and John Ross finally join forces.) Add this to Anne Matheson’s two-pronged revelation at the end of the episode — that Steve is Paul Galveston’s son (“Why on earth would Claudia have an affair with him, her own mother’s lover?”) and he is worth millions (“Here it is, Nick, right here in Paul’s will: he left the bulk of his estate to ‘all my offspring’!”) — and the stage looks set for an almighty dynastic power struggle that could run and run.
Steve isn’t the only one in line for an unexpected windfall. As Ellie’s emissary, Clayton has one more bombshell up his sleeve: “She’s giving the title of the ranch to you, Bobby … You are the new owner of Southfork.”
Somewhat randomly, Jaws has become a recurring Soap Land theme in recent weeks, starting with the shock discovery in this very thread that Steve Brewer was in Jaws: The Revenge, followed by Michelle casting herself as Jaws opposite Debra Lynn’s Little Mermaid during last week’s DALLAS, and now, KNOTS does a little “Jaws approaching” homage where the camera glides eerily across the surface of a boardroom table (standing in for the Atlantic Ocean) towards Paige and Linda, as a pastiche of the movie's iconically ominous score plays under their adversarial but icily controlled dialogue. It’s playful and fun, but also one of those instances in KNOTS Season 12 where style threatens to drown out content. (No pun intended by the use of the word “drown” in a Jaws context, by the way.)
The balance is later redressed in a sparky showdown in Paige’s office between her and Linda, which closely resembles a sparky showdown between her and Tom at the beginning of last season, which also took place in Paige's office. Both Tom and Linda start by taking a dig at Paige’s privileged upbringing. “You, with your silk stockings and fancy job and prep school background — you have no idea about the real world,” Tom told her then. “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Linda tells her now. Each goes on to describe their own tough childhood. “My mother was a drunk who locked me out of the apartment … I got smacked in the head if I spilt my milk so don’t go talking to me about the real world,” said Tom. “I’ve been earning my own money since I was twelve years old and most of that time has been spent kowtowing to people like you,” says Linda, “rich snobs who look down on anyone who has to work for a living, who treat anyone in service as subhuman. You don’t know what it’s like to be humiliated and have to take it because if you lose that job, you’ll lose the rent that month and then you might end up on the street. You’ve had it handed to you on a silver platter. I’ve had to work for everything I’ve ever gotten.” In each case, Paige is coldly unrepentant. “You know nothing about me, nothing,” she informed Tom. “How dare you tell me who you think I am?” she snaps at Linda. “And don’t think that some sob story about how hard your life was is any excuse for the way that you’ve acted.”
Paige’s enmity towards Linda on KNOTS continues to parallel Michelle’s towards Debra Lynn on DALLAS. “I don’t wanna share the Richfield account with Linda Fairgate,” she tells Greg wearily. “It’s not worth the aggravation for me to stay here.” “If I have to see that sweet thing’s face across the dinner table one more time, I’m gonna puke!” snarls Michelle at JR. “You have two days to get Debra Lynn out of Texas. If she’s not gone by then … James is outta Ewing Oil!” Both of these blonde ultimatums backfire. Greg does indeed remove Linda from the Richfield account, but he takes Paige off it as well. “Since it’s too difficult for women to handle this account,” he tells her witheringly, “I decided to handle Mrs Richfield myself.” And when James chooses Debra Lynn and his son over Michelle and Ewing Oil (why, Lord, why??), JR gives him his full approval.
And this week’s Top 2 are …
1 (1) KNOTS LANDING
2 (2) DALLAS