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Dallas the TV series
Dallas - The Original Series
DALLAS versus KNOTS LANDING versus the rest of them week by week
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<blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 218322" data-attributes="member: 22"><p><u>28 Jan 13: DALLAS: Venomous Creatures v. 18 Mar 15: EMPIRE: Who I Am v. 31 Jan 18: DYNASTY: Promises You Can't Keep </u></p><p></p><p>It comes as no surprise to learn Lucious survived Cookie’s attempt to suffocate him with that pillow at the end of last week's EMPIRE. It seems he woke up just in time and she backed off. The following day, he summons his three sons to tell them he’s no longer dying and wishes to make amends for past wrongs. “I woke up this morning so conscious of the harm I’ve done to each and every one of y’all,” he says. To compensate for banishing Naomi Campbell to England, he gives Hakeem a jet. As consolation for “trying to break your faith”, he gives Andre $100,000,000 to start something called the Lyon Foundation. But these gifts pale into insignificance next to what he gives his remaining son: “The empire is yours, Jamal.” Jamal may have started off parading in his mama’s high heels when he was a little kid, but he ends EMPIRE’s first season walking in his father’s shoes. Oh, and Lucious has one extra surprise for Cookie: security footage of her attempt on his life which he plays for Jamal to turn him against her.</p><p></p><p>Now that Jamal is running Empire, his previous position as Soap Land’s rich kid living in a crummy apartment, determined to make it on his own, is taken by Steven on DYNASTY. He even has the same roommate as Jamal did, only back then he was Jamal’s boyfriend Michael and now he’s Steven’s ex Sam (or maybe they’re back together again, I’m not quite sure). However, Sam is far less stoical about his new surroundings, pithily described by Fallon as “a Craigslist decorated co-op”, than he was when he was Michael.</p><p></p><p>This week’s DALLAS and DYNASTY each include a storyline about a corrupt politician which contains all the ingredients one would expect in Soap Land: a sexual scandal, bribery and blackmail. Her dreams of being elected governor now dashed, there is still a criminal case hanging over Sue Ellen’s head. “The state attorney wants to indict me on charges of bribery,” she tells JR. He offers to take care of the situation: “I’ll make sure that twit never presses charges.” For all her talk of walking the straight and narrow, she agrees — as she later admits to Ann, it was either that or pick up a drink (“For the first time in his damned life, JR was the lesser of two evils.”) JR approaches the state attorney who refuses to consider dropping the case. “I don’t have any skeletons in my closet for you to pull out and parade,” he informs JR confidently. “I’m an <em>honest</em> state attorney.” Later on, JR interrupts his golf game to bring up the subject of “a certain charity tournament in Austin last year, some widows and orphans fund … Wasn’t there some big scandal — a hospitality tent on the thirteenth tee? Now, I hear the girls there were very, very hospitable. Jake here took pictures.” The smug expression is wiped from the state attorney’s face and the charges against Sue Ellen are dropped. As JR’s schemes go, this one is pretty basic, but knowing that Larry Hagman’s time is running out, it’s great to see him in action one last time. The fact that he’s acting on Sue Ellen’s behalf makes it all the more touching — legally and morally corrupt, but still touching.</p><p></p><p>Things are even more ethically complicated for Cristal on DYNASTY. When Blake asks her to play hostess at a fundraising party for Senator Daniels, she happily agrees — <em><em>until</em></em> she hears from an old reporter pal, Rick Morales, that Daniels has a past as a crooked judge and that one of the people he took bribes from was Blake. Rick plans to expose Daniels in the press, which means that he and Blake could both end up in prison. When Cristal confronts him, Blake admits that the story is true. She is appalled — <em><em><em>until </em></em></em>he tells her that he only bribed the judge once, and did so for the sake of his kids. “When Alexis left, she wanted full custody of my children,” he explains. “I had enough dirt on her to keep that from happening, but I also knew that if I revealed it in court, it would devastate Fallon and Steven … I knew she would take my children and leave the country … so I turned to Daniels and he … ruled the case in my favour.” Touched, Cristal asks Rick not to run the story. When he refuses, she threatens to go over his head to his boss: “He’s a friend of the family and I could have him end your career …” “It’s not just your husband who’s one of them. It’s you too,” Rick tells her. Cristal stands by her man — <em>until</em> she meets Daniels’ wife, Melissa, who tells her about the senator’s “new anti-immigration stance - build the wall, SB 1070 kind of stuff.” Cristal realises she and Blake are “supporting someone who would have had me deported at the border.” (As if to counterbalance this allusion to Trump’s real-life anti-Mexican crusade, Patti LaBelle, aka Lady Marmalade herself, cameos on EMPIRE and gives a shout out to the Black Lives Matter movement.) “Sometimes you have to compromise your values for the greater good,” Blake argues when Cristal asks him about Daniels’ policy. “What’s greater than your values?” she shoots back, but he doesn’t give her a satisfactory reply.</p><p></p><p>On the subject of values, Jamal’s promotion on EMPIRE receives a mixed reaction from those around him. Not only are his brothers resentful, but some of Empire’s clients ain’t too thrilled either. “Last time I checked, hip hop was born from the struggle of <em>real</em> men … Ain’t no place in this game for them bitches!” yells rapper Black Rambo at a press conference — an acknowledgement of the homophobia that is part of hip hop’s real-life history. A discussion on how Empire should publicly respond to this outburst leads to a juicy conflict between Jamal and Andre. When Lucious suggests issuing a statement that “Bigotry has no place at Empire”, Andre warns that such a stance would “weaken the stock price and cost shareholders millions.” “Thank you, Andre, thank you for the support,” retorts Jamal coldly. “It’s not about <em>you</em>, it’s about <em>Empire</em>,” Andre snaps back, “or is Empire now the cult of Jamal?” The lid on this very interesting can of worms is closed a little too easily (at least for now) when Jamal takes on Black Rambo in a rap battle and emerges victorious, the crowd who were digging Rambo’s anti-gay rhymes having been miraculously swayed by Jamal’s vocal acrobatics.</p><p></p><p>Back on DYNASTY, the bad news keeps on coming for Cristal. When Melissa Daniels casually mentions “the trips to Bora-Bora, courtesy of Blake Carrington” she and her husband continue to receive, Cristal realises that Blake lied when he said his pay-out to Daniels was a one-time thing. “Their little quid quo bro has been going on for years,” Melissa assures her.</p><p></p><p>Melissa inflicts upon Cristal the same kind of jaundiced advice about the perils of marriage to a wealthy man that Sue Ellen used to on Pam: “Being married to someone as powerful as Blake can wipe out your identity … but what’s integrity when you can have this bracelet? It cost more than the home I grew up in.” Her bitter experience also serves to place Blake and Cristal’s marriage in a wider context, which is a good thing.</p><p></p><p>In the end, Cristal Solves All. She learns about the senator’s extramarital affairs from his wife, but rather than confront him directly the way JR does the state attorney, she offers the details to Rick Morales in place of the exposé he had planned. The ensuing headlines wreck Daniels’ career, but without harming Blake. “I protected you from the scandal, but I also had to protect my integrity and that meant ending Daniels’ campaign one way or another,” Cristal explains to her husband who is impressed by her ingenuity. This is a nice little self-contained story with some well-drawn guest characters. (As well as Melissa, Rick the reporter is very likeable. I particularly enjoyed the picture he paints of Cristal’s days as a lowly PR associate: “Your dungeon’s cubicle used to reek of Ming’s Chinese takeouts from all those late nights.”) One could easily imagine it working as a stand-alone episode in either ‘80s DALLAS or FALCON CREST’s first seasons.</p><p></p><p>As the political aspirations of Sue Ellen and Senator Daniels each come to a messy end, those of another Soap Land character are only just beginning. Steven tells Fallon and Sam that he’s “done fighting a system that’s just gonna protect the one per cent… I’m ready to change it … I’m running for office.”</p><p></p><p>Bobby Ewing’s quest to solve the mystery of Ann’s vanishing-then-suddenly-reappearing daughter Emma leads him to the Ryland mansion which evokes a similar vibe to FALCON CREST at its darkest and most gothic. There, he encounters Harris’s mother Judith, who’s like the Evil Queen from Snow White with a Texas twang, and Emma herself, a brainwashed hybrid of FC’s Emma and Lance, who has been hidden away for years by her father and grandmother to deprive Ann of raising her. “It was you,” Bobby realises, looking at Judith. “You and Harris took Emma from her stroller at the fair … You kidnapped her.” “… I wasn’t kidnapped,” Emma insists. “My father rescued me that day at the fair. He saved me from my mother.”</p><p></p><p>Two key witnesses prove unreliable this week. The first is on DALLAS. Christopher has pinned all his hopes of getting an annulment on Rebecca Sutter’s promise to testify against Pamela, but having been bought off by John Ross, she changes her statement on the stand. The judge consequently rules against the annulment meaning the marriage must be terminated in the divorce courts, thereby enabling Pamela to make a claim for part of Ewing Energies in the settlement. Rebecca then turns into a liability for Pamela and John Ross when she refuses to leave town as arranged (much as Garry did for Wick Briggs on BLOOD AND OIL). “I wanna find my brother,” she insists.</p><p></p><p>While Fallon Carrington continues to make a weekly song and dance about being a young woman in business, Elena Ramos quietly pulls off a coup for Ewing Enterprises on this week’s DALLAS and advances the plot at the same time. “I closed a deal today that gets us four fixed oil platforms in the Gulf … Each one is sitting on a goldmine of methane!” she tells Christopher. He and Bobby are so delighted, they agree to give her a portion of their shares of Ewing Enterprises. To their surprise, John Ross is all for the idea: “You have earned it, Elena, and not just a bigger share of the company — an equal share. How about it, fellas? We each give five per cent, making it equal!” Thrilled, Elena hugs him — but John Ross has an ulterior motive. As he later explains to JR, Elena is in debt to Sue Ellen and “until she gets that loan repaid, all her assets are vulnerable”, including her shares in Ewing Enterprises. “Son, you got the devil in you,” JR chuckles appreciatively. Among other things, this development paves the way for Sue Ellen to become a more central part of the action. “Once you and your mama take over the company, I get my piece like we agreed on,” JR reminds his son.</p><p></p><p>Compared to Elena, Fallon travels a much more convoluted road to conclude a deal which I’m not sure amounts to much more than episode filler. In a corporate variation on the meet-cute, she is in the lobby of Morell Corp when she catches a man checking out her ass and calls him a pasty-faced, porn-addicted perv. He insists he wasn’t checking out her ass; he simply noticed she had some bacon stuck to the back of her skirt. Inevitably, it turns out that the future of the company depends on keeping the man Fallon just insulted, Tim Myers, onside. (“If Tim doesn’t agree to renew the lease, he could shut us down,” Jeff explains.) Fallon frantically tries to make nice, but Myers remains impervious to her charms. Eventually, he tells her he will renew the all-important lease if she beats him at poker. “And if I lose, what do you get?” she asks. “I get you,” he replies. (Turns out he really <em>was</em> checking out her ass and he really <em>is</em> a pasty-faced perv.) Fallon wins, of course, which allows her to yet again crow how about brilliant she is at everything. “Out of curiosity, what did you have?” Tim asks following their poker game. “More balls than you, Tim,” she gloats. “That’s why I’ll always win.” (While New Pamela reminds Frank Ashkani that she was “top of my class in business school”, Fallon finds time to brag that she was “pre-law, first semester at Wharton”. Other Soap Land Wharton alumni include DALLAS’s James Beaumont and KNOTS LANDING’s Charles Scott.)</p><p></p><p>There are some notable literary references this week. As evocative quotations go, John Ross reciting the final words of <em>The Great Gatsby</em> to New Pamela (“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”) is up there with Steven quoting <em>Much Madness is Divinest Sense</em> to Claudia on ‘80s DYNASTY. “The way you were looking off out there reminded me of the way that Gatsby looked off at the light at the end of Daisy’s pier,” he tells her, echoing part of the proposal speech he delivered to Elena at the end of last season: “When I saw this ring, it reminded me how light reflects off oil.” I love the callback to his dyslexia: “I’m not that good of a reader, but I have read <em>The Great Gatsby</em> about a dozen times — it’s nice and short.”</p><p></p><p>Over on EMPIRE, Anika commends Hakeem, somewhat condescendingly, on his choice of reading material. “<em>A Curious Mind</em> — this is an inspirational book, Hakeem. I’m happy you’re reading this!” she remarks. (A quick google reveals this to be a meta moment — <em>A Curious Mind</em> was written by one of EMPIRE’s producers.) “You know who else you should read?” she continues. “Machiavelli.” “You talking about the Italian guy, he be writing books about power?” he asks. “I already read that.” (So has Paige Matheson. She quoted him to Greg Sumner in 1991: “Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it also causes you to be despised.”) “So you also know that he had a disdain for what he called ‘effeminate princes’?” Anika replies. “I’m not talking about Jamal being gay, I’m talking about a battle we can win. You are gonna be a much better king now that you have to fight for it.” “Fight for what?” he asks. “Have you ever heard of a hostile takeover? We’re gonna need Andre,” she tells him.</p><p></p><p>It so happens that Hakeem has already had much the same discussion with his mother, which leads to Hakeem, Anika, Cookie and Andre meeting to discuss how best to take Empire for themselves. There’s just a little something Cookie and Anika need to get out of the way first — the cat-fight they’ve been building up to all season. It’s more chaotically violent than Alexis and Krystle’s initial contretemps back in ’82, but similarly funny and exciting. It starts with Cookie hurling a cocktail in Anika’s “bitch ass face” before knocking her to the floor with one blow. Anika then grabs Cookie by the hair and punches her in the stomach. “Who Boo Boo Kitty now, bitch?!” she asks. By way of reply, Cookie rips the pearls off of Anika’s necklace and throws her onto a pool table, then clambers on top of her and proceeds to strangle her. At this point, Andre pulls Cookie away. She appears to calm down but then makes one more lunge at her opponent. Hakeem appeals for reason: “We all here outta hate for the same man, right?” “Mom, if we’re gonna make a play for Empire, we need her,” Andre adds, going on to explain that Anika can introduce them to Tony Trichter, “a famous corporate raider” who is “the best at hostile takeovers” “… OK, I will work with Boo Boo Kitty this time,” concedes Cookie grudgingly.</p><p></p><p>Trichter tells them the most effective way to assume control of a company is to “nail the CEO with a good scandal” — such as the murder of his ex-wife’s cousin, perhaps? This puts Cookie in the same position Blake was apparently in when he “had enough dirt” to use against Alexis in their divorce, but didn’t want to hurt their children. Besides, as flashbacks remind us, Cookie wouldn’t rat on Lucious seventeen years ago and she promises Jamal she won’t rat on him now. As far as she is concerned, Bunky’s death is “between him and the Lord, baby.”</p><p></p><p>Trichter agrees to invest $150,000,000 of his own money into the takeover of Empire on the condition that the company then release his talentless grandson’s hip hop album. “Four hundred — he ain’t no Tupac,” counters Cookie. They settle on $250,000,000. Meanwhile, John Ross and New Pamela do some negotiating of their own while circling each other in her apartment. “Fifty per cent of my shares of Ewing Energies after the divorce in exchange for Christopher’s methane patent,” she proposes. “If I’m giving you the whole enchilada, I expect the same — a hundred per cent of your shares,” he counters. She barters him down to seventy per cent then interrupts their sexy haggling with an even sexier kiss, which John Ross breaks away from. “Hell, I’d’ve take taken fifty,” he smiles. “Pleasure doing business with you.” With that, he exits the penthouse, leaving Pamela high and dry. As he travels down in the elevator, it looks like he’s already grasped what it took his mother years to learn about his father — that the chase is everything. Sure enough, he’s only descended a couple of floors when the elevator starts to go back up again. The door slides open to reveal New Pamela waiting for him. He marches towards her, grabs her, they start pulling at each other’s clothes and then disappear from view.</p><p></p><p>As well as secret plots to take over Ewing Enterprises and Empire, there is also one afoot to seize control Carrington Atlantic. Jeff explains to Monica the real reason he’s so determined to marry Fallon: “It’s the only way I’ll have influence over her CA shares — my first step in taking the company away from Blake.” At first, Monica is against the idea (“This is insane!”) but changes her mind by the end of the episode. “You wanna make them pay for what they’ve done?” she asks Jeff. “Well, so do I … We’re just getting started.”</p><p></p><p>The resentful family black sheep has long been a familiar fixture in Soap Land — Andre Lyon and John Ross Ewing are simply picking up where Adam Carrington and Richard Channing left off — but now we also have another variation on the character: the quasi-family member who is continually taken for granted until they decide they’re not gonna take it anymore. DALLAS has Frank Ashkani, the protege whom Cliff Barnes treated “as his own, gave him an American education, college degree, fancy suits — everything but the heir-to-my-fortune part.” EMPIRE has Vernon Turner, Lucious’s consigliere who thinks of himself as a second father to the Lyon sons and encourages them to call him Uncle, but whose guilt over covering up Bunky’s murder has led him to relapse on cocaine.</p><p></p><p>Whereas Jamal has waited a whole season to be crowned King of Empire, New Pamela simply sweeps into a board meeting at Barnes Global and interrupts Frank to announce the company’s change of focus away from casinos and back to alternative energy. Adding insult to injury, she then assumes Frank's place at the head of the table. “You disrespected me in front of the board. Don’t do that again,” he snaps once they are alone. “You have to stop thinking of me as your father’s driver.” She is unrepentant and he gets his revenge by sending Christopher Tommy’s cellphone which contains some incriminating voicemail messages from Pamela and Rebecca Sutter.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, Andre takes his business defeat out on Vernon. “Empire should be mine and you know it … You stabbed me in the back!” he shouts. “You still my family,” Vernon insists. “I raised you.” “… You’re not my family. You’re just my dad’s thug and now you’re Jamal’s thug. That’s all you’re ever gonna be!” sneers Andre. This hits a nerve with Vernon and an ugly brawl ensues.</p><p></p><p>Andre’s wife Rhonda only has two speaking scenes in this finale episode, but somehow manages to cram half a season’s worth of story lines into them. When we first see her, she is walking out on Andre (“You conceded Empire to Jamal without even putting up a fight!”). In the second, she returns to discover Vernon knocking seven bells out of her husband. So she picks up a candlestick, a large brass candlestick, and whacks Vernon with it, whereupon she becomes the third woman in as many weeks, following DALLAS’s Pamela and DYNASTY’s Iris, to kill a man in self-defence (“He doesn’t have a pulse!”). Andre wants to call the police, but she pleads with him not to: “There’s gonna be an investigation and a trial and who knows what can happen? I can’t take that … BABE, I’M PREGNANT!” This gives her and New Pamela even more in common: both are pregnant, both have unintentionally killed someone and both have covered it up as if it were a murder. Whereas much was made of the disposal of Tommy Sutter’s body in the season finale of DALLAS, EMPIRE skips over that bit and the next thing we see is Andre and Rhonda standing at Lucious’s side for the symbolic bell-ringing that signifies Empire is now a publicly-traded company.</p><p></p><p>Several characters face the possibility of imprisonment this week — Sue Ellen for bribing a medical examiner, Blake for bribing a judge, Rebecca Sutter for perjury and conspiracy to commit fraud — but it’s the man who has managed to evade his terrible crime for an entire season who finally ends up under arrest — Lucious Lyon.</p><p></p><p>“You did this to me … You’re a ghetto rat!” shouts Lucious at Cookie, as he is placed in handcuffs after the bell-ringing ceremony. But it wasn’t Cookie who reported him to the authorities. “Vernon Turner’s disappeared … He’s my star witness,” mutters the FBI agent who just arrested Lucious. It’s at this point that we realise it was Vernon, not Cookie, who snitched on Lucious — and now he’s dead. Nevertheless, the timing of the arrest could not be better for Cookie and co’s planned takeover. Lucious is still being led away by the cops when Becky tells him “the news of your arrest has already hit and now the stock is plummeting … Everyone’s talking about a hostile takeover.” The scene goes into slow motion as he passes Andre and Hakeem and sees the smug expressions on their faces.</p><p></p><p>A patriarch locked up as his sons look on smiling, his wife and mistress teaming up to rob him of his power: this feels like a mashup of James Beaumont tearing up JR’s sanatarium release papers and Sue Ellen joining forces with Kimberly Cryder to prevent JR getting West Star, only with more gravitas. The season ends with Lucious vowing from behind bars to get back at those who betrayed him: “You may think you’ve gotten away with it, but don’t fool yourselves … Lucious Lyon will return.” His final words, delivered direct to camera, strike the same vengeful note as Monica Colby’s “We’re just getting started” at the end of DYNASTY: ”Game time, bitches.”</p><p></p><p>And this week’s Top 3 are …</p><p></p><p>1 (2) DALLAS</p><p>2 (1) EMPIRE</p><p>3 (3) DYNASTY</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James from London, post: 218322, member: 22"] [U]28 Jan 13: DALLAS: Venomous Creatures v. 18 Mar 15: EMPIRE: Who I Am v. 31 Jan 18: DYNASTY: Promises You Can't Keep [/U] It comes as no surprise to learn Lucious survived Cookie’s attempt to suffocate him with that pillow at the end of last week's EMPIRE. It seems he woke up just in time and she backed off. The following day, he summons his three sons to tell them he’s no longer dying and wishes to make amends for past wrongs. “I woke up this morning so conscious of the harm I’ve done to each and every one of y’all,” he says. To compensate for banishing Naomi Campbell to England, he gives Hakeem a jet. As consolation for “trying to break your faith”, he gives Andre $100,000,000 to start something called the Lyon Foundation. But these gifts pale into insignificance next to what he gives his remaining son: “The empire is yours, Jamal.” Jamal may have started off parading in his mama’s high heels when he was a little kid, but he ends EMPIRE’s first season walking in his father’s shoes. Oh, and Lucious has one extra surprise for Cookie: security footage of her attempt on his life which he plays for Jamal to turn him against her. Now that Jamal is running Empire, his previous position as Soap Land’s rich kid living in a crummy apartment, determined to make it on his own, is taken by Steven on DYNASTY. He even has the same roommate as Jamal did, only back then he was Jamal’s boyfriend Michael and now he’s Steven’s ex Sam (or maybe they’re back together again, I’m not quite sure). However, Sam is far less stoical about his new surroundings, pithily described by Fallon as “a Craigslist decorated co-op”, than he was when he was Michael. This week’s DALLAS and DYNASTY each include a storyline about a corrupt politician which contains all the ingredients one would expect in Soap Land: a sexual scandal, bribery and blackmail. Her dreams of being elected governor now dashed, there is still a criminal case hanging over Sue Ellen’s head. “The state attorney wants to indict me on charges of bribery,” she tells JR. He offers to take care of the situation: “I’ll make sure that twit never presses charges.” For all her talk of walking the straight and narrow, she agrees — as she later admits to Ann, it was either that or pick up a drink (“For the first time in his damned life, JR was the lesser of two evils.”) JR approaches the state attorney who refuses to consider dropping the case. “I don’t have any skeletons in my closet for you to pull out and parade,” he informs JR confidently. “I’m an [I]honest[/I] state attorney.” Later on, JR interrupts his golf game to bring up the subject of “a certain charity tournament in Austin last year, some widows and orphans fund … Wasn’t there some big scandal — a hospitality tent on the thirteenth tee? Now, I hear the girls there were very, very hospitable. Jake here took pictures.” The smug expression is wiped from the state attorney’s face and the charges against Sue Ellen are dropped. As JR’s schemes go, this one is pretty basic, but knowing that Larry Hagman’s time is running out, it’s great to see him in action one last time. The fact that he’s acting on Sue Ellen’s behalf makes it all the more touching — legally and morally corrupt, but still touching. Things are even more ethically complicated for Cristal on DYNASTY. When Blake asks her to play hostess at a fundraising party for Senator Daniels, she happily agrees — [I][I]until[/I][/I] she hears from an old reporter pal, Rick Morales, that Daniels has a past as a crooked judge and that one of the people he took bribes from was Blake. Rick plans to expose Daniels in the press, which means that he and Blake could both end up in prison. When Cristal confronts him, Blake admits that the story is true. She is appalled — [I][I][I]until [/I][/I][/I]he tells her that he only bribed the judge once, and did so for the sake of his kids. “When Alexis left, she wanted full custody of my children,” he explains. “I had enough dirt on her to keep that from happening, but I also knew that if I revealed it in court, it would devastate Fallon and Steven … I knew she would take my children and leave the country … so I turned to Daniels and he … ruled the case in my favour.” Touched, Cristal asks Rick not to run the story. When he refuses, she threatens to go over his head to his boss: “He’s a friend of the family and I could have him end your career …” “It’s not just your husband who’s one of them. It’s you too,” Rick tells her. Cristal stands by her man — [I]until[/I] she meets Daniels’ wife, Melissa, who tells her about the senator’s “new anti-immigration stance - build the wall, SB 1070 kind of stuff.” Cristal realises she and Blake are “supporting someone who would have had me deported at the border.” (As if to counterbalance this allusion to Trump’s real-life anti-Mexican crusade, Patti LaBelle, aka Lady Marmalade herself, cameos on EMPIRE and gives a shout out to the Black Lives Matter movement.) “Sometimes you have to compromise your values for the greater good,” Blake argues when Cristal asks him about Daniels’ policy. “What’s greater than your values?” she shoots back, but he doesn’t give her a satisfactory reply. On the subject of values, Jamal’s promotion on EMPIRE receives a mixed reaction from those around him. Not only are his brothers resentful, but some of Empire’s clients ain’t too thrilled either. “Last time I checked, hip hop was born from the struggle of [I]real[/I] men … Ain’t no place in this game for them bitches!” yells rapper Black Rambo at a press conference — an acknowledgement of the homophobia that is part of hip hop’s real-life history. A discussion on how Empire should publicly respond to this outburst leads to a juicy conflict between Jamal and Andre. When Lucious suggests issuing a statement that “Bigotry has no place at Empire”, Andre warns that such a stance would “weaken the stock price and cost shareholders millions.” “Thank you, Andre, thank you for the support,” retorts Jamal coldly. “It’s not about [I]you[/I], it’s about [I]Empire[/I],” Andre snaps back, “or is Empire now the cult of Jamal?” The lid on this very interesting can of worms is closed a little too easily (at least for now) when Jamal takes on Black Rambo in a rap battle and emerges victorious, the crowd who were digging Rambo’s anti-gay rhymes having been miraculously swayed by Jamal’s vocal acrobatics. Back on DYNASTY, the bad news keeps on coming for Cristal. When Melissa Daniels casually mentions “the trips to Bora-Bora, courtesy of Blake Carrington” she and her husband continue to receive, Cristal realises that Blake lied when he said his pay-out to Daniels was a one-time thing. “Their little quid quo bro has been going on for years,” Melissa assures her. Melissa inflicts upon Cristal the same kind of jaundiced advice about the perils of marriage to a wealthy man that Sue Ellen used to on Pam: “Being married to someone as powerful as Blake can wipe out your identity … but what’s integrity when you can have this bracelet? It cost more than the home I grew up in.” Her bitter experience also serves to place Blake and Cristal’s marriage in a wider context, which is a good thing. In the end, Cristal Solves All. She learns about the senator’s extramarital affairs from his wife, but rather than confront him directly the way JR does the state attorney, she offers the details to Rick Morales in place of the exposé he had planned. The ensuing headlines wreck Daniels’ career, but without harming Blake. “I protected you from the scandal, but I also had to protect my integrity and that meant ending Daniels’ campaign one way or another,” Cristal explains to her husband who is impressed by her ingenuity. This is a nice little self-contained story with some well-drawn guest characters. (As well as Melissa, Rick the reporter is very likeable. I particularly enjoyed the picture he paints of Cristal’s days as a lowly PR associate: “Your dungeon’s cubicle used to reek of Ming’s Chinese takeouts from all those late nights.”) One could easily imagine it working as a stand-alone episode in either ‘80s DALLAS or FALCON CREST’s first seasons. As the political aspirations of Sue Ellen and Senator Daniels each come to a messy end, those of another Soap Land character are only just beginning. Steven tells Fallon and Sam that he’s “done fighting a system that’s just gonna protect the one per cent… I’m ready to change it … I’m running for office.” Bobby Ewing’s quest to solve the mystery of Ann’s vanishing-then-suddenly-reappearing daughter Emma leads him to the Ryland mansion which evokes a similar vibe to FALCON CREST at its darkest and most gothic. There, he encounters Harris’s mother Judith, who’s like the Evil Queen from Snow White with a Texas twang, and Emma herself, a brainwashed hybrid of FC’s Emma and Lance, who has been hidden away for years by her father and grandmother to deprive Ann of raising her. “It was you,” Bobby realises, looking at Judith. “You and Harris took Emma from her stroller at the fair … You kidnapped her.” “… I wasn’t kidnapped,” Emma insists. “My father rescued me that day at the fair. He saved me from my mother.” Two key witnesses prove unreliable this week. The first is on DALLAS. Christopher has pinned all his hopes of getting an annulment on Rebecca Sutter’s promise to testify against Pamela, but having been bought off by John Ross, she changes her statement on the stand. The judge consequently rules against the annulment meaning the marriage must be terminated in the divorce courts, thereby enabling Pamela to make a claim for part of Ewing Energies in the settlement. Rebecca then turns into a liability for Pamela and John Ross when she refuses to leave town as arranged (much as Garry did for Wick Briggs on BLOOD AND OIL). “I wanna find my brother,” she insists. While Fallon Carrington continues to make a weekly song and dance about being a young woman in business, Elena Ramos quietly pulls off a coup for Ewing Enterprises on this week’s DALLAS and advances the plot at the same time. “I closed a deal today that gets us four fixed oil platforms in the Gulf … Each one is sitting on a goldmine of methane!” she tells Christopher. He and Bobby are so delighted, they agree to give her a portion of their shares of Ewing Enterprises. To their surprise, John Ross is all for the idea: “You have earned it, Elena, and not just a bigger share of the company — an equal share. How about it, fellas? We each give five per cent, making it equal!” Thrilled, Elena hugs him — but John Ross has an ulterior motive. As he later explains to JR, Elena is in debt to Sue Ellen and “until she gets that loan repaid, all her assets are vulnerable”, including her shares in Ewing Enterprises. “Son, you got the devil in you,” JR chuckles appreciatively. Among other things, this development paves the way for Sue Ellen to become a more central part of the action. “Once you and your mama take over the company, I get my piece like we agreed on,” JR reminds his son. Compared to Elena, Fallon travels a much more convoluted road to conclude a deal which I’m not sure amounts to much more than episode filler. In a corporate variation on the meet-cute, she is in the lobby of Morell Corp when she catches a man checking out her ass and calls him a pasty-faced, porn-addicted perv. He insists he wasn’t checking out her ass; he simply noticed she had some bacon stuck to the back of her skirt. Inevitably, it turns out that the future of the company depends on keeping the man Fallon just insulted, Tim Myers, onside. (“If Tim doesn’t agree to renew the lease, he could shut us down,” Jeff explains.) Fallon frantically tries to make nice, but Myers remains impervious to her charms. Eventually, he tells her he will renew the all-important lease if she beats him at poker. “And if I lose, what do you get?” she asks. “I get you,” he replies. (Turns out he really [I]was[/I] checking out her ass and he really [I]is[/I] a pasty-faced perv.) Fallon wins, of course, which allows her to yet again crow how about brilliant she is at everything. “Out of curiosity, what did you have?” Tim asks following their poker game. “More balls than you, Tim,” she gloats. “That’s why I’ll always win.” (While New Pamela reminds Frank Ashkani that she was “top of my class in business school”, Fallon finds time to brag that she was “pre-law, first semester at Wharton”. Other Soap Land Wharton alumni include DALLAS’s James Beaumont and KNOTS LANDING’s Charles Scott.) There are some notable literary references this week. As evocative quotations go, John Ross reciting the final words of [I]The Great Gatsby[/I] to New Pamela (“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”) is up there with Steven quoting [I]Much Madness is Divinest Sense[/I] to Claudia on ‘80s DYNASTY. “The way you were looking off out there reminded me of the way that Gatsby looked off at the light at the end of Daisy’s pier,” he tells her, echoing part of the proposal speech he delivered to Elena at the end of last season: “When I saw this ring, it reminded me how light reflects off oil.” I love the callback to his dyslexia: “I’m not that good of a reader, but I have read [I]The Great Gatsby[/I] about a dozen times — it’s nice and short.” Over on EMPIRE, Anika commends Hakeem, somewhat condescendingly, on his choice of reading material. “[I]A Curious Mind[/I] — this is an inspirational book, Hakeem. I’m happy you’re reading this!” she remarks. (A quick google reveals this to be a meta moment — [I]A Curious Mind[/I] was written by one of EMPIRE’s producers.) “You know who else you should read?” she continues. “Machiavelli.” “You talking about the Italian guy, he be writing books about power?” he asks. “I already read that.” (So has Paige Matheson. She quoted him to Greg Sumner in 1991: “Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it also causes you to be despised.”) “So you also know that he had a disdain for what he called ‘effeminate princes’?” Anika replies. “I’m not talking about Jamal being gay, I’m talking about a battle we can win. You are gonna be a much better king now that you have to fight for it.” “Fight for what?” he asks. “Have you ever heard of a hostile takeover? We’re gonna need Andre,” she tells him. It so happens that Hakeem has already had much the same discussion with his mother, which leads to Hakeem, Anika, Cookie and Andre meeting to discuss how best to take Empire for themselves. There’s just a little something Cookie and Anika need to get out of the way first — the cat-fight they’ve been building up to all season. It’s more chaotically violent than Alexis and Krystle’s initial contretemps back in ’82, but similarly funny and exciting. It starts with Cookie hurling a cocktail in Anika’s “bitch ass face” before knocking her to the floor with one blow. Anika then grabs Cookie by the hair and punches her in the stomach. “Who Boo Boo Kitty now, bitch?!” she asks. By way of reply, Cookie rips the pearls off of Anika’s necklace and throws her onto a pool table, then clambers on top of her and proceeds to strangle her. At this point, Andre pulls Cookie away. She appears to calm down but then makes one more lunge at her opponent. Hakeem appeals for reason: “We all here outta hate for the same man, right?” “Mom, if we’re gonna make a play for Empire, we need her,” Andre adds, going on to explain that Anika can introduce them to Tony Trichter, “a famous corporate raider” who is “the best at hostile takeovers” “… OK, I will work with Boo Boo Kitty this time,” concedes Cookie grudgingly. Trichter tells them the most effective way to assume control of a company is to “nail the CEO with a good scandal” — such as the murder of his ex-wife’s cousin, perhaps? This puts Cookie in the same position Blake was apparently in when he “had enough dirt” to use against Alexis in their divorce, but didn’t want to hurt their children. Besides, as flashbacks remind us, Cookie wouldn’t rat on Lucious seventeen years ago and she promises Jamal she won’t rat on him now. As far as she is concerned, Bunky’s death is “between him and the Lord, baby.” Trichter agrees to invest $150,000,000 of his own money into the takeover of Empire on the condition that the company then release his talentless grandson’s hip hop album. “Four hundred — he ain’t no Tupac,” counters Cookie. They settle on $250,000,000. Meanwhile, John Ross and New Pamela do some negotiating of their own while circling each other in her apartment. “Fifty per cent of my shares of Ewing Energies after the divorce in exchange for Christopher’s methane patent,” she proposes. “If I’m giving you the whole enchilada, I expect the same — a hundred per cent of your shares,” he counters. She barters him down to seventy per cent then interrupts their sexy haggling with an even sexier kiss, which John Ross breaks away from. “Hell, I’d’ve take taken fifty,” he smiles. “Pleasure doing business with you.” With that, he exits the penthouse, leaving Pamela high and dry. As he travels down in the elevator, it looks like he’s already grasped what it took his mother years to learn about his father — that the chase is everything. Sure enough, he’s only descended a couple of floors when the elevator starts to go back up again. The door slides open to reveal New Pamela waiting for him. He marches towards her, grabs her, they start pulling at each other’s clothes and then disappear from view. As well as secret plots to take over Ewing Enterprises and Empire, there is also one afoot to seize control Carrington Atlantic. Jeff explains to Monica the real reason he’s so determined to marry Fallon: “It’s the only way I’ll have influence over her CA shares — my first step in taking the company away from Blake.” At first, Monica is against the idea (“This is insane!”) but changes her mind by the end of the episode. “You wanna make them pay for what they’ve done?” she asks Jeff. “Well, so do I … We’re just getting started.” The resentful family black sheep has long been a familiar fixture in Soap Land — Andre Lyon and John Ross Ewing are simply picking up where Adam Carrington and Richard Channing left off — but now we also have another variation on the character: the quasi-family member who is continually taken for granted until they decide they’re not gonna take it anymore. DALLAS has Frank Ashkani, the protege whom Cliff Barnes treated “as his own, gave him an American education, college degree, fancy suits — everything but the heir-to-my-fortune part.” EMPIRE has Vernon Turner, Lucious’s consigliere who thinks of himself as a second father to the Lyon sons and encourages them to call him Uncle, but whose guilt over covering up Bunky’s murder has led him to relapse on cocaine. Whereas Jamal has waited a whole season to be crowned King of Empire, New Pamela simply sweeps into a board meeting at Barnes Global and interrupts Frank to announce the company’s change of focus away from casinos and back to alternative energy. Adding insult to injury, she then assumes Frank's place at the head of the table. “You disrespected me in front of the board. Don’t do that again,” he snaps once they are alone. “You have to stop thinking of me as your father’s driver.” She is unrepentant and he gets his revenge by sending Christopher Tommy’s cellphone which contains some incriminating voicemail messages from Pamela and Rebecca Sutter. Meanwhile, Andre takes his business defeat out on Vernon. “Empire should be mine and you know it … You stabbed me in the back!” he shouts. “You still my family,” Vernon insists. “I raised you.” “… You’re not my family. You’re just my dad’s thug and now you’re Jamal’s thug. That’s all you’re ever gonna be!” sneers Andre. This hits a nerve with Vernon and an ugly brawl ensues. Andre’s wife Rhonda only has two speaking scenes in this finale episode, but somehow manages to cram half a season’s worth of story lines into them. When we first see her, she is walking out on Andre (“You conceded Empire to Jamal without even putting up a fight!”). In the second, she returns to discover Vernon knocking seven bells out of her husband. So she picks up a candlestick, a large brass candlestick, and whacks Vernon with it, whereupon she becomes the third woman in as many weeks, following DALLAS’s Pamela and DYNASTY’s Iris, to kill a man in self-defence (“He doesn’t have a pulse!”). Andre wants to call the police, but she pleads with him not to: “There’s gonna be an investigation and a trial and who knows what can happen? I can’t take that … BABE, I’M PREGNANT!” This gives her and New Pamela even more in common: both are pregnant, both have unintentionally killed someone and both have covered it up as if it were a murder. Whereas much was made of the disposal of Tommy Sutter’s body in the season finale of DALLAS, EMPIRE skips over that bit and the next thing we see is Andre and Rhonda standing at Lucious’s side for the symbolic bell-ringing that signifies Empire is now a publicly-traded company. Several characters face the possibility of imprisonment this week — Sue Ellen for bribing a medical examiner, Blake for bribing a judge, Rebecca Sutter for perjury and conspiracy to commit fraud — but it’s the man who has managed to evade his terrible crime for an entire season who finally ends up under arrest — Lucious Lyon. “You did this to me … You’re a ghetto rat!” shouts Lucious at Cookie, as he is placed in handcuffs after the bell-ringing ceremony. But it wasn’t Cookie who reported him to the authorities. “Vernon Turner’s disappeared … He’s my star witness,” mutters the FBI agent who just arrested Lucious. It’s at this point that we realise it was Vernon, not Cookie, who snitched on Lucious — and now he’s dead. Nevertheless, the timing of the arrest could not be better for Cookie and co’s planned takeover. Lucious is still being led away by the cops when Becky tells him “the news of your arrest has already hit and now the stock is plummeting … Everyone’s talking about a hostile takeover.” The scene goes into slow motion as he passes Andre and Hakeem and sees the smug expressions on their faces. A patriarch locked up as his sons look on smiling, his wife and mistress teaming up to rob him of his power: this feels like a mashup of James Beaumont tearing up JR’s sanatarium release papers and Sue Ellen joining forces with Kimberly Cryder to prevent JR getting West Star, only with more gravitas. The season ends with Lucious vowing from behind bars to get back at those who betrayed him: “You may think you’ve gotten away with it, but don’t fool yourselves … Lucious Lyon will return.” His final words, delivered direct to camera, strike the same vengeful note as Monica Colby’s “We’re just getting started” at the end of DYNASTY: ”Game time, bitches.” And this week’s Top 3 are … 1 (2) DALLAS 2 (1) EMPIRE 3 (3) DYNASTY [/QUOTE]
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