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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 146912" data-attributes="member: 22">09 Mar 89: KNOTS LANDING: A Grave Misunderstanding v. 10 Mar 89: DALLAS: The Serpent's Tooth v. 10 Mar 88: FALCON CREST: The Vigil   Two weeks ago, the Ewing Oil secretaries were conspicuous by their presence at JR and Cally’s wedding. On this week’s KNOTS, Jill’s former secretaries are the chief mourners at her funeral. Whereas Sly, Phyllis and Jackie were at Southfork primarily to boost the numbers now that DALLAS’s well of recurring characters has almost run dry, the prominence of Joy and Peggy at Jill’s graveside is an indication of how unpopular she had become by the time of her death. It’s particularly telling that the only character to shed an onscreen tear at her passing is Joy, an employee she’d known for a matter of weeks.We get an interesting insight into another subordinate character on FALCON CREST where everyone’s concerned about Ben Agretti and Gabriel Ortega following their accident at the end of last week’s ep. “There is nothing worse, sir, than to watch your child die,” Richard’s manservant-cum-chief of security Garth tells him. “Do you have a child?” Richard asks in surprise. “Yes, sir,” Garth replies matter-of-factly. “A daughter, Ava. She was five when she died. Measles. The treatment was not so good in East Berlin in those days … Sometimes I like to be reminded that I once had another life.” And with that, the door into Garth’s past shuts as quickly as it opened. But it leaves a lingering impression.The juiciest scenes in this week’s Ewingverse occur in a business setting and involve secret pacts and double-dealing. At the Sumner Group (although no-one’s calling it that yet), Abby assigns Ted the task of finding out who leaked the story about Meg — on the understanding that he report his findings to her and not Greg. It doesn’t take Ted too long to learn that Paige was responsible, but instead of turning her in, he covers for her. “Consider it a gesture of good faith,” he tells her. “Our interests coincide. We should work together.” “And what is it you think I want?” Paige asks him. “Greg,” he replies. “And what do you want?” “Abby.” Of the four people involved, Greg is the only one not indulging in any kind of executive duplicity. And when Greg Sumner’s the most innocent person in the room, you know things are getting murky. Speaking of executive duplicity, Tommy McKay makes an arrangement with JR Ewing after he overhears his father talking about meeting with some Europeans (or “damn foreigners” as Jordan Lee likes to call them) to discuss “the biggest single deal in West Star history”. JR has Tommy wear a wire at the meeting in return for enough money to dig himself out of the cocaine-shaped hole he’s gotten himself into. Larry Hagman’s delivery of the line “You really hate your daddy, don’t you?” is a classic.At said meeting, Tommy, aka Roger Grimes, is introduced to another refugee from this season’s DYNASTY, Hamilton Stone, who now answers to the name of Gustav Hellstrom. Having helped Sable swipe Alexis’s tankers from under her nose, he now “represents large European industries who never again want to be held hostage by OPEC.” Instead, they want West Star to supply them directly with a billion barrels of oil over the next ten years.The main focus of this week’s FALCON CREST is the aftermath of the car crash that has left the lives of its two occupants hanging in the balance. Soap Land convention dictates that one of those involved should be a heavily pregnant heiress and that her family convene in the hospital waiting room in full evening dress while loudly demanding that the best relevant medical specialist in the country be flown in immediately from whatever conference he/she’s attending in whichever city. None of these traditions is adhered to. Instead, the victims in question are two inoffensive teenage boys who aren’t even in the opening credits. In theory, then, the storyline shouldn’t be all that gripping, but the fast-moving camera work, the quick cutting and general sense of urgency all conspire to make us feel that this situation — of which we’ve seen countless Soap Land variations over the years — really matters. In a way, the characters’ lack of status adds an extra element of unpredictably to the story. Ben Agretti and Gabriel Ortega are both sufficiently dispensable to kill off, but not so unimportant that their deaths wouldn’t break the hearts of those they’d leave behind. Plus, you know, they’re kids.There are a couple of crucial differences between the two boys — namely, their race and class. Just like Val Gibson following her overdose at the beginning of this season’s KNOTS, Ben and Gabriel are rushed to Soap Land Memorial without any insurance documents. For one of the boys, this isn’t a problem. (“His ID says he’s Ben Agretti.” “Same Agretti they named the wing after?”) For the other, it’s a different story: “What about the Ortega boy?” “We’ll send him on to County.” When Gabriel’s family later question this decision, they are tersely informed: “He has a mild concussion, this is a private hospital” — almost as if the two facts were one and the same. No sooner are these words out of the nurse’s mouth than Gabriel abruptly goes into convulsions in the hospital corridor. It’s a genuinely alarming moment.Ben, meanwhile, has already been taken into surgery to remove a ruptured spleen. This scene is particularly striking. It lasts almost two minutes — a surprisingly long time in Soap Land — but there’s no melodramatic music to tell us how we should feel. Instead, the emphasis is on surgical procedure, medical jargon I couldn’t begin to understand and a general sense of gravity which make the whole thing feel as important as hell. As with Jill’s autopsy on last week’s KNOTS, we view the procedure from the medical team’s dispassionate point of view. Paradoxically, the situation becomes all the tenser for being treated so matter-of-factly. Suddenly, Ben Agretti and Jill Bennett aren’t important soap characters who can’t die, they’re just two more anonymous John or Jane Does. All the soapy twists and lipgloss in the world won’t help them now — they’re no different to the rest of us: flesh and blood with a half a digested pizza still inside of them.Later, Gabriel also undergoes surgery. When his anxious father Cesar enquires about his progress (“It’s been hours”), the nurse on duty gives him short shrift. But when Lance arrives and asks for the same information Cesar just has, her attitude changes abruptly: “Sorry, Mr Cumson, I’ll see what I can do … The doctor will be right down to talk to you.” “The doctor can talk to this man, his father, Mr Ortega. Do you understand?” Lance replies sharply. It’s notable that all the discrimination exhibited in the episode is by the hospital staff. When the rich white stars of the show realise what’s happening, they ride to the Hispanics’ rescue. “We can’t keep a patient who can’t afford to pay,” insists a nurse. “That’s crazy — you send the bill to me!” argues Nick Agretti. It’s kind of an inversion of what happened on last week’s DALLAS where the racist comments of one of the show’s leading men, Cliff Barnes, went unchallenged.The subject of race also crops up, in another context, on KNOTS. While investigating Jill’s death, Mack questions a neighbour who remembers a man that entered her apartment on the day of the murder. He asks her to describe him. “He looked like a football player or maybe a wrestler,” she begins. “He was about this tall. He had a very nice looking sports coat on, short, dark hair and these great big shoulders.” And then finally she comes right out and says it: “He was a very attractive black man.” “A black guy?” echoes Mack. Using deductive reasoning, i.e., the fact that there is only one black man in Knots Landing, he realises immediately she’s talking about Frank Williams. This is the first time any of the Williamses have been directly referred to by their colour.In both DALLAS and FALCON CREST, a writer’s work is criticised by their partner, with dramatic results. First, Sue Ellen ruffles new boyfriend Don Lockwood’s feathers when she sneaks a peek at the unfinished first draft of his script. “This scene isn’t exactly the way it really happened,” she tells him. Don is so angered by this intrusion that he immediately quits the picture and has to be gently coaxed into changing his mind. There are bigger fireworks after Maggie writes a front page article for the Herald describing the consortium as “a front for a multi-national corporation whose aim is to turn Tuscany Valley into a heartless, soulless playground for corporate greed.” Richard is so outraged that he brings work at the Herald to a standstill while he confronts his wife. Things rapidly escalate between them and by the end of the episode, he has obtained a court order (by dubious means) granting him custody of their two children. Maggie can only watch helplessly as he takes them back from her. It’s kind of satisfying to see Richard getting the upper hand in their marriage for once.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (3) FALCON CREST2 (1) KNOTS LANDING3 (4) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?