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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 128843" data-attributes="member: 22">27 Oct 88: KNOTS LANDING: Suicidal v. 28 Oct 88: DALLAS: Carousel v. 28 Oct 88: FALCON CREST: Changing TimesNew season, new lineups in the opening credits. Ray Krebbs, Jenna Wade, Dan Fixx and Eric Stavros are gone, Jill Bennett, Paige Matheson and April Stevens have been promoted, Lucy Ewing is reinstated and Pilar Ortega appears out of nowhere.Last season’s Ewingverse ended with JR shot and Val unconscious following an overdose. Is it too late to save them? Sue Ellen having already alerted the authorities, JR gets a head start on his ex-sister-in-law and is at Soap Land Memorial when this season begins. Val isn’t found by her twins until the following morning and they just assume “Mommy’s asleep on the floor.” Eventually, she is taken to hospital where Soap Land meets Real Life. “Does she have insurance?” a woman with a clipboard asks Pat Williams. “Do you have her insurance information with you? … Do you know the name of the company she has a policy with?”There’s a first-class example of When Storylines Collide on KNOTS. Still reeling about Manny Vasquez holding Paige and Michael hostage in Mexico, Karen is at Lotus Point with Gary and Abby when Marsha pulls up in a golf buggy with even more horrible news: “Val tried to commit suicide.” Karen is stunned but quickly realises, “I can’t leave” — because of what’s going on with Manny. In the equivalent DALLAS scene, Bobby and Clayton are out on the range introducing a new plot about the effects of a drought on Southfork when a helicopter descends and out rushes Charlie the ranch-hand. “JR’s been shot!” he announces. “From what they say, he must be near dead!” Gary and Bobby both rush to the hospital. FALCON CREST, meanwhile, has jumped forward a month from the end of last season (that’s in addition to the two-month jump that occurred midway through the finale ep) so the atmosphere’s less urgent, more melancholy than in the Ewingverse. Having lost both her son and her empire, Angela is suffering from a severe case of soap fatigue. “I’m tired of fighting,” she sighs wearily. There’s a frailty about her now — along with Frank Williams’ and Lance Cumson’s shorter haircuts, it’s most visible “between seasons” change — and it becomes her, making her seem more human and vulnerable than she has in a long while.Back on DALLAS, JR’s doctor informs him that he is “the luckiest man I’ve ever known, or your wife is the worst shot … You’ve got two clean holes here, nothing vital has been hit.” Things are less straightforward on KNOTS where Gary arrives at the hospital to learn that Val has had her stomach pumped, but has yet to regain consciousness. There is also a possibility of brain damage. He is then informed that “if she recovers and stabilises, she’ll be transferred to county hospital … They’re equipped to handle uninsured patients.” “I’ll pay,” he replies coldly, tossing a credit card on the desk. Money talks for JR too. When he asks for his condition to be announced as “extremely critical” and for his room to be filled with “monitors … and tubes and drip bags and all the stuff that makes you look bad,” his doctor objects: “It’s wrong and it’s cruel.” “Doctor, do you have any idea how much money I contribute to this place?” JR asks. He gets his way.When Sue Ellen and Jill hear that JR and Val aren’t as dead as they’d assumed, they are both disappointed, to say the least. “You mean to tell me that bastard is still alive?” Sue Ellen snarls, before remembering that she’s talking to the cop investigating the shooting. Jill, meanwhile, hears the happy news about Val from Gary over the phone. She manages to keep it together during their conversation, but then immediately starts to unravel, throwing the phone across the room and later throwing up in a sink.By the time Jill joins Gary at Soap Land Memorial, Val has been transferred to the psychiatric ward (“They weren’t supposed to move Val out of ICU until she became conscious, but they got so backed up in there,” Gary explains — another reminder of the real world going on outside of this soapy drama). While Bobby enters JR’s more private hospital room, looking almost as sad as JR did when Bobby was on his deathbed back in “Swan Song”, Gary leaves Jill alone with Val for a few moments. In both scenes, things then get kinda meta. On KNOTS, Jill has one of those thought-bubbles sequences, where we can hear her thoughts without her actually speaking them aloud. “What are you going to tell them?” she “asks” Val. “What will they believe? … It won’t matter what you say about me. I’m safe. I’m home free. No-one saw me.” Just then, Val’s heavily rouged, possibly psychic roommate pops her head around the curtain. “I heard every word you said!” she declares. Jill looks worried — which is interesting. I had kind of assumed that thought-bubbles were meant to convey whatever random thoughts were going through a person’s head, as opposed to a precise inner monologue that requires them to think articulately and in full sentences, but Jill’s reaction suggests otherwise. Back in JR’s room, he is saying his goodbyes. “Bob, I think this is it … Shake my hand. Tell me we’re partners again. Let me go meet my Daddy with my head held high.” At this point, Bobby can keep up the pretence that this is a conventional life or death scenario no longer and starts to laugh. A soap opera undermining its own drama with humour? When this kind of thing happens on FALCON CREST, I purse my lips in pious disapproval — so why has this scene always amused me? Perhaps it’s because the characters’ relationship and motivations ring true. JR still wants what he’s always wanted: Ewing Oil. He’s just going about trying to get it in a different way (i.e, by pretending he’s dying). And the two brothers play off each other well — they’re still recognisably them: they aren’t performing a watered-down sitcom version of themselves. By the end of the scene, Bobby has grown serious again and tells JR flatly, “I’m not gonna make you my partner.” Then, referring to the medical equipment, he adds: “Why don’t you send all of this stuff back to the people who really need it?” Like the ones in that backed-up ICU ward Gary was talking about, perhaps.DALLAS manages to slither out of the "double murder" corner it painted itself into at the end of last season by having Sue Ellen and JR each claim self-defence while accusing the other of (attempted) murder. After Bobby points out to Sue Ellen the impact a trial would have on her son (“Now that would make wonderful headlines for John Ross to read, wouldn’t it? ‘Mother Accuses Father of Killing Her Boyfriend.’ That’s real love, Sue Ellen”), she drops all charges against JR and he then does the same. I’m not sure how much legal scrutiny this would hold up to in the real world, but it keeps the story barreling along and by the end of the ep, they’re back to fighting over John Ross. (“You’ll get him back over my dead body.” “Whatever it takes, Sue Ellen.”) There’s a similar disregard for legal niceties when Peter Stavros, last seen fleeing the US after confessing to the murder of Roland Saunders, returns to FALCON CREST. “I didn’t think you were welcome in this country anymore?” Angela enquires. “The charges were dropped. I’m a free man,” he replies breezily. “Oh well, I suppose money and friends can make anything possible,” she shrugs.The authorities are equally ineffectual on KNOTS, but not in a way that’s advantageous to the characters. When Karen suggests contacting the police about Manny Vasquez, Mack scoffs: “In Mexico? He owns them. The Feds? That’s why we’re in this in the beginning!”Everyone’s looking for someone this week. Mack heads for Mexico in search of his daughter and stepson (“We even don’t know if they’re alive!”), Cliff Barnes flies north hoping to find his sister (“I just want to let her know that we love her”), Sue Ellen comes to Southfork looking for her son (“I’m gonna get him back one way or the other”), Peter Stavros has returned to the Tuscany Valley to investigate the disappearance of his son (“He’s gone so far underground, no-one can find him”) and Carly Fixx takes off for Oklahoma to find Dan, formerly her brother and now “the guy I’m nuts about.”These searches yield mixed results. Mack arrives in a Santa Tecla that’s suddenly as dangerous as Moldavia after the revolution and soon finds himself a prisoner in the Mexican equivalent of Krystle’s royal dungeon, only hotter and sweatier. Peter Stavros has no luck either. Not only does he find no clues to Eric’s whereabouts, but Vicky manages to shatter whatever remaining illusions he has left about him: “Your son was a liar and a gambler and a wife-beater and a thief.” Sue Ellen receives a cool reception from Bobby, who comes down firmly on JR’s side. “He’s my brother and that’s the bottom line. I love him,” he tells her. “You don’t know a damn thing about it!” she snaps. (It’s always fascinating to see these two at odds.) Sue Ellen does find an unexpected ally in Lucy, who eventually reunites her with John Ross as a helpless JR watches, fuming, from his hospital window. Cliff also finds Pam. Well, sort of. She’s Pam but not she’s Pam. She looks similar, but she’s not the same. She claims that she has no interest in returning to her family (“Forget you ever had a sister … We’re never gonna see each other again”), then after Cliff leaves we learn that she “only has a few months to live.” The fact that this has all been corroborated on New DALLAS makes a strange scene even stranger — and sadder. “It’s better this way,” Pam explains to Dr Gordon, who will himself relay the story to Christopher in 2013. “They won’t look for me anymore and if there is pain in the end, in my mind I’ll have Cliff and Christopher, and Bobby will be with me. My love for them is all I really need.” Boy oh boy — it’s Laura’s decision to die alone to the power of ten.In spite of his firm refusal to readmit JR into Ewing Oil, Bobby gradually softens throughout the episode and ends up, inevitably, inviting him back into the fold. Now that Sue Ellen is cutting the ties once and for all — she consults a lawyer about “a clean and fast divorce” and insists that she has no interest in a settlement (“I don’t want JR to have a claim on me at all”) — Bobby seems to be replacing her as JR’s codependent partner. His proviso that JR can return to the company so long as he has no dealings in oil is a bit like Sue Ellen’s previous agreement to stay married to JR on the condition that they have separate bedrooms.It’s unusual for Soap Land to establish an entire family of new characters all at once, but following the Williamses' arrival on last season’s KNOTS comes the Ortegas on FALCON CREST. Significantly, neither family is white, which means Soap Land is now more racially diverse than it ever has been. Whereas the Witness Protection Programme storyline essentially wiped out any identity Pat and Frank may have had before showing up in Seaview Circle, it turns out the Ortegas have always been in the Tuscany Valley — we’ve just never seen them before. This device of widening the view of an existing community to introduce fresh faces was deployed very effectively by both FLAMINGO ROAD and PEYTON PLACE back in the day. We learn that the Ortega patriarch, Cesar, had worked at Falcon Crest for thirty-five years until he is unceremoniously fired by Melissa this week. His eldest son Tommy works for Dan Fixx’s trucking company and his daughter Pilar, already elevated to opening credit status, went to school with Lance and Melissa. She now returns to the valley after an absence of several years, bringing with her some of Kirby Anders’ below-stairs bitterness (“I used to play with Lance and Melissa [but] I never once got invited to their homes”) and Lane Ballou’s social ambition (“I’m gonna be on everyone’s guest lists now”). “Your own kind was never good enough for you. That was always your problem,” Cesar tells her, adding a hint of racial divide into the mix. It’s also intimated that she has Something To Hide. “Pilar ran away when she was sixteen. Cesar didn’t say why,” recalls Angela.Having realised her dream of owning Falcon Crest, Melissa is now living there, alone and miserable, just like Alexis after she fulfilled her ambition of taking over the Carrington mansion. Gratifyingly, everyone onscreen finally seems to be losing patience with her. “I could ring Melissa’s neck,” says Frank Agretti. “You’re gonna have to stand in line,” Angela replies.At the end of last season’s DALLAS, Jenna persuaded Ray to move to Europe by arguing that he would never escape the shadow of the Ewings “as long as you can see Southfork from your front porch.” On this week’s FALCON CREST, Peter Stavros uses similar reasoning when he asks Angela to return to Greece with him: “As long as you’re living in this valley, you’re gonna be fighting the same old battles.” To Lance’s astonishment, Angela agrees. “This is my life we’re talking about and I’m going to live it any damn way I please!” she barks — but then she sees the sorry state of the vines at Falcon Crest. It’s not the result of the drought currently afflicting Southfork’s cattle, but mildew brought about by Melissa’s neglect. Angela immediately changes her mind about leaving. “I can’t stand by and see you ruin everything my family has worked for for generations,” she tells her. She then echoes what Kimberly Cryder told JR in her final scene on DALLAS: “Melissa, you’re such a fool. You could have had it all.”KNOTS climaxes with a terrific shoot-out in Santa Tecla — the kind of gun battle that’s grown increasingly meaningless on FALCON CREST over the last couple of seasons, but that really matters here. While poor old Chava is killed, Harold Dyer saves Mack by switching sides at the last second and shooting his Uncle Manny dead instead. This barely registers with Mack. “WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?!!” he yells. “I don’t know” mumbles Harold from offscreen, still shocked at what he has just done. “I don’t know.”A grieving Maggie is obliged to take control of Richard’s empire on FALCON CREST, just as Pam was Bobby’s at the start of the Dream Season. And in the same way that Mark Graison returned from the dead just as Pam was reaching crisis point so Richard reappears just as Maggie finally loses it with Garth and fires him. For a second, it looks as if she will faint into her dead lover’s arms the way Pam did, but instead she slaps him across the face. “You son of a bitch!” she shouts.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (2) DALLAS3 (-) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?