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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 242766" data-attributes="member: 22">08 Apr 13: DALLAS: Guilt by Association v. 06 Apr 16: EMPIRE: A Rose by Any Other Name v. 19 Oct 18: DYNASTY: Ship of VipersDuring last week’s DYNASTY, the episode after his wedding to Steven, Sam learnt that his new husband is also an expectant father. At the beginning of this week’s DALLAS, the episode after his wedding to Pamela, John Ross finds compelling evidence that his new wife’s father murdered his own. The newlyweds are returning from their Vegas elopement — aboard Cliff Barnes' private jet, no less — when a sneaky peak at the flight tracker reveals that the jet was in Nuevo, Laredo on the night of JR’s death. “It was Cliff all along!” John Ross realises. Understandably, this causes a little tension between the newlyweds. “I married you, I love you, and now I worry that every time you look at me, you’re connecting me to what my father did,” Pamela says. “You are not responsible for anything he did,” John Ross assures his bride.While Cliff celebrates his acquisition of Ewing Energies (“the ultimate payback for what Jock did to Digger all those years ago!”) by moving into Bobby's office and throwing his old furniture out on the street, Hakeem marks his ascension to CEO of Empire ("the dawn of a new empire here at Empire!") by replacing the picture of his father's face on the company logo with one of his own. Brilliantly, this also becomes the series’ new logo in the opening credits.Behind the scenes, however, Hakeem, in a dizzying about-turn, starts plotting with his family to get rid of Camilla and Mimi. The plan is to trick Camilla into saying something on tape that proves “the way [they] stole our company is illegal." While Rhonda uses her new job working for Camilla's fashion range to eavesdrop on her phone conversations with Mimi, Cookie concentrates on keeping Empire running smoothly despite Camilla’s interferences. Similarly on DALLAS, the Ewings tackle the problem of getting rid of Cliff from a variety of angles. While Christopher travels to Zurich to obtain his mother’s shares of Barnes Global, all the while insisting to Elena that he has no personal interest in finding Pam ("The woman ceased to be my mother the day she abandoned me,” he maintains), Sue Ellen uses a combination of threats, blackmail and betrayal to neutralise the governor’s attempts to prevent them pumping oil out of Southfork, Emma pretends to turn against her mother to regain her father's trust then searches his house for incriminating evidence to use against him and Cliff, and an on-the-lam Drew makes good on his promise to bring Harris's henchman to justice. “Roy Vickers has been arrested for possession of narcotics,” he tells Bobby over the phone. "You should be able to leverage the charges against him to get what you need on Ryland.” John Ross, having already done his part by marrying Pamela for her shares of Barnes Global, is impatient for the family to move against Cliff, but in a powerful scene, Bobby insists that they still need to adhere to JR’s masterplan, even though he can’t yet tell John Ross what that plan is: "You have to trust me on this, John Ross. I have given you the benefit of the doubt after everything you’ve done. It’s your turn now ... We need to make sure that when we finally do have control of Barnes Global, there’s enough proof in place to implicate Cliff in the murder of JR." To that end, he asks his nephew to persuade Pamela to plant evidence in Cliff’s safety deposit box that "will help us tie him to the murder.” “You want me to frame my father?” Pamela asks. “For something that he did," John Ross replies. "You and I, we both deserve justice.”Back on EMPIRE, Hakeem ends up going down the good old-fashioned sex tape route. He secretly records him and Camilla "doing the nasty", along with Camilla saying that she hopes Mimi will hurry up and die of cancer so that they can inherit her fortune, and then sends it to Mimi in New York. Pretty soon, word reaches Empire that Mimi has started selling her stock in the company — stock which Andre immediately starts buying. "Boy, you did it. We're free!" a delighted Cookie tells Hakeem.Having sided with the Ewings against her father, Emma also agrees to go to rehab. Her rebellious counterpart on DYNASTY, Kirby, likewise turns over a new leaf this week. Having already shacked up with Jeff Colby, she spies an opportunity to ingratiate herself with his sister as she prepares to open her new nightspot, Club Colby. Monica hits a snag when a rival club nearby books real-life hip hop group Migos (how very EMPIRE of them) to appear on the same night as her opening. "This is not coincidence, it's sabotage!" she declares angrily. Kirby comes up with a wacky sitcom-style solution — sneaking into the rival club, she lets loose some live rats in the kitchen (you can almost hear the canned sitcom laughter) before anonymously tipping off the health inspector who promptly shuts the place down (cue more canned laughter).Indeed, this week's DYNASTY is less of a continuing drama than it is a succession of unfunny comedy capers. The main focus of the episode is Blake’s determination to spend all his money before he dies so there'll be nothing left for his children to inherit. Even if one wanted to buy into this premise, there's nothing at stake dramatically. As Blake himself points out, if he succeeds in his goal, Fallon and Steven will still be unimaginably rich thanks to the sale of Carrington Atlantic, so who cares? He starts to replace the vintage cars he lost in the fire, but there's a particularly rare one he needs to complete his collection and Jeff Colby’s after it too. To decide which of them gets it, they race each other with toy cars. Unless the race is intended as an advert for the toy race track, which admittedly is pretty cool, I'm at a loss to see how this storyline is meant to be entertaining or interesting. Are we meant to genuinely care which billionaire gets to take home the prize? God knows, ‘80s DYNASTY was oft accused of obsessing over its rich characters to the exclusion of all else, but it never had a storyline where the outcome hinged on how many classic cars someone might end up owning. In the event, Jeff wins the car and Blake has to wear a 'Jeff Colby owns me' T-shirt. (Cue hysterical canned laughter, whoops and applause.)While there's nothing at stake on DYNASTY, there's everything's at stake on DALLAS as the mystery that's been hovering over Soap Land for the past twenty-six years — the fate of Pam Ewing — is finally resolved (sort of). Christopher traces Pam to a big house in Zurich. The scene where he keeps watch on the house from his car, hoping to spot the mother he'd given up for dead, mirrors the scene from DALLAS, 1980 where Pam likewise sat outside a mansion in Houston, hoping to see the mother she’d similarly believed was dead. Instead of Pam, Christopher meets Dr Gordon, who introduces himself as her surgeon and husband. He then recounts the scene from DALLAS '88 where Cliff met Pam after her accident. Because Margaret Michaels played Pam in that one scene but never appeared again in the role (instead, she played her own lookalike two years later), the scene always kind of felt like an experiment that had failed, one that DALLAS itself would just as soon pretend never happened. However, the gravitas with which Dr Gordon describes the conversation that took place between Cliff and Pam then (“He asked her to come back to Dallas, to be with him and Bobby and you. She said no. She said that that part of her life had ended”), as well as Christopher’s devastation upon hearing about it, not only legitimises the earlier scene, it imbues it with an emotional significance that it didn’t have at the time. In other words, a scene from 1988 has retroactively become more powerful in 2013 than it was in 1988. The past and present also collide intriguingly towards the end of DYNASTY (the only scene in this week's ep that could be remotely described as intriguing) when New New Cristal comes face to face with Blake and introduces herself as "a friend of your late wife." To prove it, she shows him a locket containing a photo of the two New Cristals together. "I think she wanted me to come here and help you — and I think you can help me too," she adds mysteriously.In this week's "Parents Who Interfere After Their Gay Son Sleeps With a Woman" section, Jamal is furious to learn that it was his father who told Jamieson (the influential publicist fella) about his fling with Alicia Keys. I assumed Lucious had done so because he was proud of his son finally behaving in a heteronormative way, but his true motive was far soapier — he did it to wreck Jamal's chance of winning an ASA award for Best Song  — a category in which Lucious himself has also been nominated. "He's never won an ASA before. He wants it more than anything, even if it means sabotaging my chances," Jamal realises angrily. "He's foul on a whole other level and I'm getting him back this time!" Meanwhile, Alexis goes full sitcom in her attempts to prove that Melissa's pregnancy is a scam. “When she looks at Steven, she sees dimples and dollar signs. I have doubts she's pregnant with anything other than carbs,” she tells Sam. Together, they break into Melissa’s house to look for evidence of her charade. While Sam helps himself to the cold meats he finds in her refrigerator, the kind pregnant women specifically aren't supposed to eat, Alexis finds a fake pregnancy bump in the bedroom (cue more canned laughter). Jamal and Alexis each elect to confront Lucious and Melissa publicly. While Jamal performs a powerfully angry song in which he savages his father's reputation and reveals to the world that "Lucious Lyon ain't even his real name", Alexis barges into Melissa's pregnancy meditation class (cue more canned laughter), rips open her dress in order expose her fake pregnancy bump (even more canned laughter and whooping), but instead finds her real very pregnant stomach (laughter, whooping, applause, closing theme tune).To entrap Roy Vickers, Drew tricked him into pursuing him in his truck while he (Drew) was on his motorbike. It was only after the police stopped Roy for speeding and found the drugs in his possession that Drew removed his helmet to reveal ... someone else entirely. Drew himself watched the whole thing unfold from a safe distance. Fallon pulls a similar switcheroo when Liam's creepy Uncle Max tells her he'll only go ahead with the deal to buy Carrington Atlantic if she goes to bed with him. So she hires a look-slightly-alike prostitute to take her place."Son, you’re still gonna have to turn yourself in," Bobby tells Drew when he calls to tip him off about Roy's arrest. Conversely, Alexis tells Hank to "lay low. You be quiet about our deal, or the two of us are gonna end up in jail." Whereas Drew's final words to Bobby are very poignant (“Thank you for everything you have done for my family. Please tell Christopher I’m sorry”), Alexis and Hank’s exchange is the one genuinely funny scene on this week's DYNASTY. She shows him a painting, explaining that it's an original Rembrandt which she’s giving it to him as collateral against the money she owes him. Hank is confused: he has no idea what either a Rembrandt or collateral is. He looks blankly at the painting before asking, "Do you have any bigger ones?"All three shows end in death. On DALLAS, as a slow-motion Christopher chases after a woman in a wide-brimmed hat, spins her around, sees that she is not played by Victoria Principal and cries out, "Where’s my mother?!”, John Ross and Pamela are standing in a bank vault looking through the contents of Cliff's safety deposit box. “Oh my God," Pamela exclaims, holding a document. "It’s Pam Ewing’s death certificate. Christopher’s mother is dead.” Fallon, meanwhile, receives a call from the hooker substitute who tells her Max Van Kirk has just expired from a Cecil Colby-style heart attack. But far weirder than either of these bombshells is what happens at the end of EMPIRE. At first, I wasn't sure if I'd skipped ahead by accident and was watching the final scene of next week's ep — or maybe even next year's ep.The scene starts with Naomi Campbell in a swanky New York apartment wiping her fingerprints off the taps of a sunken bath. There's a body under the water — we can't see the face, but we’re led to believe it belongs to Mimi. (I guess it was too much to expect the Oscar-winning Marisa Tomei to return just to play a wet corpse.) Lucious appears from nowhere, having filmed whatever's just happened on his phone. "You know, nobody's gonna believe she killed herself," he tells Camilla. "They might have, if I hadn't watched you pour that stuff in her drink … Was that cyanide or arsenic?" Pulling out a gun, he threatens to show the police the recording of “Mimi's last few precious moments” unless Camilla commits suicide right there and then. It's not quite Cliff saying, "I love you; kill yourself" to Frank, or even Jill Bennett forcing Val to take an overdose at gunpoint, but it’s still pretty twisted. He proceeds to paint a grim picture of what Camilla can look forward to in prison: "You gotta be constantly aware that somebody's gonna try to rape you or murder you, or just the general unsanitary conditions of the place … It'll be a whole lot easier and a whole lot less mess if you just take a swig of whatever that was that you made Mimi drink." Camilla begs Lucious to shoot her instead, just as Lucious asked Hakeem to shoot him at the end of last week’s EMPIRE. "After all the pain you caused my family, I don't owe you any favours,” he replies. “You gonna have to off yourself. Go ahead.” Eventually, she drinks the poison. "Rot in hell,” she says by way of a farewell.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (2) EMPIRE3 (3) DYNASTYThank God for Alexis and Hank at this point.I'd be fascinated to see what you make of it!He does, but he doesn't play on it the way John Ross does (and the way his daddy did).Yeah, that was pretty cool:[ATTACH=full]23401[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]23402[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?