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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 11556" data-attributes="member: 22">17/Oct/83: EMERALD POINT N.A.S: Episode 4 v. 19/Oct/83: DYNASTY: The Note v. 20/Oct/83: KNOTS LANDING: Marital Privileges v. 21/Oct/83: DALLAS: My Brother's Keeper v. 21/Oct/83 FALCON CREST: Partners v. 22/Oct/83: THE YELLOW ROSE: When Honor DiesThe original Tony Cumson in FALCON CREST went on to play Soap Land’s first Middle Eastern character, Rashid Ahmed in DYNASTY. The second Tony Cumson now becomes Soap Land’s first Russian, Admiral Yuri Bukharin, who arrives in EMERALD POINT N.A.S. on a diplomatic mission. Where Rashid was outrageous, devious and funny ("a naughty little Arab boy,” as old flame Alexis described him), Admiral Bukharin is a predictable TV Russian - strategic, enigmatic and patriotic. "I don’t think that either one of us is going to outmanoeuvre the other,” concludes Admiral Tom Mallory, his American equivalent, during their inevitable, metaphor-laden chess game. And so a dramatic stalemate is reached.At the end of DYNASTY's most recent episode, Blake read a suicide note from Joseph who then shot himself. In last week’s DALLAS, Katherine read Bobby a letter supposedly written by Pam which led to Bobby conclusively ending their marriage. The ramifications of both missives continue to be felt throughout this week’s episodes.The circumstances leading up to Joseph’s death have much in common with those of Soap Land’s last suicide, Walt Driscoll. Both were subservient men pushed too far (Joseph by Alexis, Walt by the Ewing brothers) who then resorted to attempted murder - Walt by ramming JR’s car, Joseph by setting fire to the cabin with Alexis inside it. In both instances, innocent people were caught in the crossfire. While Walt’s guilt over Mickey is what caused him to take his own life, the fact that Joseph nearly killed Krystle is glossed over in this week’s ep. Instead, the reason for his suicide, his note explains, was an attempt to stop Alexis from telling Kirby the terrible truth about her mother (“The attic nympho, wasn’t that her soubriquet?” Alexis recalls mockingly.)FALCON CREST has also come up with a variation on the “little man pushed to homicidal extremes” scenario. Having been blackmailed by Angela into falsely declaring Chase physically and mentally incompetent, Dr Lantry decides that the only way to cover his tracks is to kill Chase on the operating table. Whereas JR and Alexis only learnt of Walt and Joseph’s murderous intentions in hindsight, Angela is privy to Dr Lantry’s plan ahead of time. "What you're suggesting is murder!” she protested at the end of last week’s episode. "That's right,” he replied, "and you're in this with me."It’s interesting to compare the responses of JR, Alexis and Angela to these men’s actions. In last week’s DALLAS, a semi-remorseful JR listed some of his recent wrongdoings, including Walt’s death: “I’m responsible for so much damage and although I recognise it, I feel the pain, something tells me deep down inside that I’d do it all again.” By contrast, when the original Gary Ewing reads out Joseph’s confession in this week’s DYNASTY, (“It was I who set the fire. I tried to stop that evil woman from ruining another life. I pray my death will satisfy her need for vengeance”) Alexis refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever. “Are you accusing me of being the evil one in that note?” she asks indignantly. "There were two women in that cabin, you know."And what of Angela? Well, her shocked reaction to Dr Lantry’s plan would suggest that, however cruel and sadistic she might be, there is a moral line she will not cross when it comes to taking someone’s life. Although Chase is a perpetual thorn in her side, she is not prepared collude in his murder the way Titus and Constance were Lane Ballou’s when her would-be executioner came looking for her in FLAMINGO ROAD. However, when one looks at this week’s episode a little closer, that moral line is not so clear after all. While Angela might wring her hands in anxiety, she actually does nothing to help Chase. Instead, she heeds her attorney's advice: “We can’t get involved, Angela.” It becomes apparent that her concern over her nephew's survival is guided more by self preservation than any moral considerations. "If Chase doesn’t make it, our problems are solved,” shrugs Lance. “If Chase dies, our problems are just beginning,” she snaps back. In the event, it’s only the intervention of Dr Michael Ranson that saves Chase's life.A week after Julia's flashback to the murder of Carlo Agretti, KNOTS LANDING presents us with an equivalent sequence of Chip killing Ciji and then dumping her body in the ocean. However, instead of showing events from the killer’s point of view, this time it's Lieutenant Morrison putting forward his theory of what must have happened. “You’re just guessing, pal. You don’t have a case against me,” Chip responds. However, this flashback sequence doesn’t have the same aura of unreality that Julia’s had - save for the actual killing itself, which is played out as shadows on a wall, like a piece of German Expressionism.Jail cells and hospital rooms figure largely in this week’s Soap Land. On THE YELLOW ROSE, where Big John is behind bars awaiting his arraignment hearing, there is concern amongst the Champion family that he might not survive in jail very long - that he would sooner kill himself rather than remain caged. (I think this is related to him being an American Indian, but I’m not sure.) This is expressed in a sweet scene between Chance and Colleen’s young daughter LC, who keeps lightning bugs in a jar. “Bottle something up like this,” says Chance looking at the bugs, "take away its freedom … life doesn’t have much meaning.” This sentiment is echoed by Mickey Trotter on DALLAS. “The thought of living like a vegetable,” he tells Ray, "hooked up to some damn machine, disgusts me ... I hope and pray nobody will make me live that way.”There’s also a parallel between bedridden Mickey and his new fiancée Lucy, and incarcerated Chip and his new wife Diana. “I can’t hold you,” laments Mickey, "I can’t touch you. I’ll never make love to you again.” Police regulations mean that Chip and Diana can’t make physical contact either. “I wish we could be together again,” Chip murmurs, sitting across a table from her. "I’d let you know how much I love you.” For now, they make do with brushing the tips of their fingers together.The respective Lils in Mickey and Chip’s lives, Aunt Lil in DALLAS and Lilimae on KNOTS, have each spent the season thus far putting on a brave face. Lil has been chortling away at Mickey’s bad jokes ever since he came of his coma, while Lilimae has busied herself cooking for the Mackenzies, poking her nose into Val’s love life and occasionally muttering that Chip would never murder anyone. This week, however, the truth catches up with them both. “I want to believe you,” Lil tells Ray when he insists that Mickey can still make a full recovery, "but I cannot deny what I see with my own two eyes.” “Just tell me you’re not a murderer,” pleads Lilimae on a visit to Chip. The moment where he laughs in her face is truly chilling, like an alien peeling off its face to reveal the horrible truth underneath. “You killed Ciji,” Lilimae suddenly realises. "You got her pregnant and then you killed her!” Appalled, she pulls off the butterfly brooch she has been wearing since Chip gave it to her and flings it at him.FALCON CREST’s Richard Channing has a more welcome gift for Julia when he visits her in jail in this week - an orchid. “Carlo,” he explains, "was carrying on one night about you to me, and he compared you to an orchid - refined, exotic.” (It goes without saying that such an exchange never took place on screen. So is Richard simply colluding with Julia’s fantasy that her affair with Carlo ever took place? It’s impossible to be sure.)Ben Gibson also uses an orchid-as-woman metaphor on this week’s KNOTS: “The hardest part about raising orchids is that they are so delicate. The slightest change in their atmosphere or their culture can be the difference between success and failure.” This is his roundabout way of explaining to Val why he didn’t tell her the truth about his job as a journalist when they first met. “We’re not all the scum of the earth, you know,” he says, calling her on her “prejudices against newsmen". (He could just as easily be addressing the prejudices of Soap Land itself, referring not only to the tabloid reporters who hounded Val last season, but also the depictions of the New Globe’s Richard Channing and the Denver Chronicle’s Clare Maynard, amongst others, as ruthless scandalmongers.)On the same theme, THE YELLOW ROSE’s Roy Champion barges into the offices of the San Antonio Morning Star to complain about an editorial accusing him of “tampering with the law”. And who should he find sitting in the editor’s chair but a charmingly miscast Mandy Winger from Future DALLAS? He accuses her of being a mouthpiece for her father Jeb Hollister, the show’s main villain, but Mandy insists that, like Ben Gibson’s, her aim is true. “If this paper plays any part at all in urging law enforcement to do its duty, then it’s doing the job I want it to,” she declares earnestly. Mandy and Ben are Soap Land's first positive representations of the Fourth Estate since the days when Elmo Tyson ran the Clarion on FLAMINGO ROAD and Douglas Channing the Globe on FALCON CREST.“The large landowners in this state have always had special treatment,” Mandy asserts. "That results in their manipulation of beef prices, oil drilling regulations and every other kind of injustice that’s bred and fed through political corruption.” Her strong sense of social inequality is matched by Mack’s on KNOTS LANDING. “I get to prosecute the bad guys, but it’s the little guys who pay the price,’ he complains. "The big guys, they stay behind their palatial gates.” He receives a sympathetic hearing from an old pal named Greg Sumner (“We worked on Wall Street together after law school”) who is about to announce his candidacy to the United States senate. (DALLAS’s Donna also has a politically connected reunion this week, when she runs into Paul Morgan, former assistant legal counsel in the reelection campaign of Senator Sam Culver.)“I don’t know how yet, but I want you as part of my team,” Greg tells Mack. That Greg is a new breed of soap character is underlined by him making this offer whilst standing in a locker room in just his shirt and socks - truly, a Soap Land fashion first. However, Greg’s knees pale into insignificance next to Peter Richards’ wincingly tight speedos on this week’s DALLAS. It’s safe to say this is the most revealing outfit in all of Soap Land’s history - at least until that swimsuit of Emma’s in New DALLAS Season 3. And might there possibly be a formative connection between John Ross’s exposure to Peter’s let-it-all-hang-out attitude to swimwear in this ep and some of the more scrotum-hugging underwear he will grow up to sport on TNT?On both this week’s KNOTS and DYNASTY, a child/parent relationship hits an all time low. Steven Carrington is shocked when his father threatens to sue him for custody of his own son and Diana Fairgate-Fenice feels equally betrayed when her mother tells the police that Chip admitted to killing Ciji. “I’ll see you in court!” Steven snarls Blake. “I never want to see you again!” Diana shouts at Karen before moving onto Gary and Abby’s ranch. (This leads to a terrifically charged final scene where Mack tries and fails to get Diana to return home with him.) Over on FALCON CREST, Vicky bids a more amicable farewell to her parents before moving back to New York, while on DYNASTY, Adam starts saying his farewells as he too prepares to return from whence he came.To this week’s Pregnancy Watch, where neither EMERALD POINT’s Celia nor DYNASTY’s Kirby are exactly radiant mothers-to-be. Celia continues to drink like a fish (“Do you think you should?” “It’s just some white wine”) and is discovered unconscious at the end of the episode. Meanwhile Kirby, still reeling from her father’s suicide, breaks down after his funeral and admits to Krystle that Adam is the father of her unborn child and that he raped her. This is the first time the “r” word has been used in relation to this story-line. (Actually, it looks as if the line “he raped me” was added after the scene was shot - it plays over a close up of Krystle and isn't referred to for the rest of the scene.) On FALCON CREST, Melissa is also pregnant, and encourages both Lance and Richard to think that they are the father. Richard plays along before revealing to new assistant Pamela Lynch that he has had a vasectomy. Miss Lynch, with her crisp English accent and femullet-cum-quiff, feels like a response to DYNASTY’s Alexis - albeit a younger, more low status one.Another possible “homage" to DYNASTY is DALLAS’s decision to name a none-too-bright oil-rig saboteur Clarence Colby. Could this possibly be a subtle retaliation for DYNASTY’s DALLAS-on-the-cover-of-the-National-Enquirer gag from last season? A bit of a stretch perhaps, but how else to explain the prolonged introduction given to such a minor character, whereby he announces his arrival at Ewing Oil to receptionist Kendall who then announces it to Sly who in turn announces it to JR, thus ensuring the name “Colby” is spoken four times in quick succession?Just when I thought KNOTS and DALLAS had severed the ties between them, Abby hears from an off screen JR that "this contest between JR and Bobby, or whatever it is" will be over in fifteen days. This is confirmed on the following night’s DALLAS, when we are told there is exactly two weeks to go until the battle officially ends. Time-wise, the two shows are perfectly in sync for once. There are anomalies elsewhere, however: Abby is surprised (and delighted) to learn that Gary is about to inherit 10% of Ewing Oil. “Does Gary know about this?” asks her confidante Jim Westmont. “According to JR, he doesn’t,” she replies - except Gary does know about it as he was present at the reading of Jock’s will on DALLAS almost a year earlier.Gary’s ignorance works story-wise because it gives Abby a window of five days between the completion of Gary and Val’s divorce and his inheritance coming through for her to marry him and claim his share of Ewing Oil as community property. While Abby schemes to make Gary want to marry her, JR and Katherine scheme to keep Bobby and Pam apart until their divorce. Part of Abby’s strategy is a steamy moonlight seduction which leaves Gary gasping for breath. The raunchiness of this scene contrasts sharply with the sight in this week’s DALLAS of a hungover JR waking up at Serena the hooker’s place having failed to get it up the night before.Another comparison that makes KNOTS suddenly seem like a slicker, more glamorous soap than its parent - the news of Gary’s Ewing Oil inheritance prompt Abby and Westmont to fantasise about the possibilities: “With that kind of financial base, we could create one of the powerful corporations in the country.” Back on DALLAS, JR’s vision remains steadfastly parochial. “The Ewing brothers working together is gonna make this little old town sit up and take notice,” he tells Bobby.With its beautiful ranch, luxury offices and ever increasing glamour, KNOTS no longer looks like the odd soap out. That position has now been taken by THE YELLOW ROSE, where the entire Champion family may congregate for dinner like the Ewings and Carringtons, but they do so in the kitchen. What’s more, the ranch hands eat alongside them. However, the KNOTS crowd are still sufficiently “down to earth" to comment about the trappings of success that other soap characters take for granted - hence Laura’s gag about renting out Abby’s reception area as a trailer park, Gary comparing an elaborate light-fitting to a waffle iron, and Lilimae remarking on how fancily dressed Val is for her property settlement meeting: “Used to be people got dressed up for weddings, not divorces."In a perfect instance of Soap Land synchronicity, this week sees the pre-divorce property settlement meetings of two Ewing couples - Gary and Val, and Bobby and Pam. On DALLAS, the attorneys run the show while Pam and Bobby sit mutely by. On KNOTS, the lawyers attempt to do the same, but Val is voluble in her insistence that she wants none of the Ewing fortune as a settlement - all she’s interested in is her house and car. Pam isn’t seeking alimony either, all she wants are her personal belongings. (This doesn’t stop Abby and JR thinking the worst of their respective nemeses. "How much did she soak you for?” Abby asks Gary. "Pam come up with some last minute demands?” JR asks Bobby). As soon as their meeting is over, Bobby heads for the door without so much as a glance in Pam’s direction. "I guess it’s all been said,” says Pam sadly. In stark contrast, after their meeting, Gary and Val share what Gary later describes as “one of the best conversations I’ve ever had” where Val credits Abby and Gary’s betrayal with making her a stronger, better person.Equivalent to Abby’s discovery of Gary’s inheritance is Colleen Champion’s revelation to her late husband’s illegitimate son (and her present lover) Chance on THE YELLOW ROSE: “He left you an equal share in the Yellow Rose,” she tells him. "It’s in his will … ‘An additional share to be held by my eldest living son.’ We always thought that was Roy, but Chance, it’s you.” So far, so conventionally soapy, but what really fascinates is Chance’s reaction. “I don’t want it,” he snaps, addressing the portrait of the father he never knew. "You can’t do that to a man’s life. You can’t just pawn him off when he’s born and then jerk him around like a poor dumb calf at the end of a rope. I’m not the bastard, old man - you are!"While this week's KNOTS and DALLAS are both very handsomely shot, (Larry Elikann working his crazy magic on the former and DoP Bradford May ensuring the latter has never felt so cinematic) THE YELLOW ROSE looks great too. It particularly excels in its action sequences - most notably a jaw-dropping scene where Chance rides a bucking bronco into a honky tonk bar.Three episodes in, I’m starting to think THE YELLOW ROSE is something quite special. Sometimes it feels as much of a western or action series as it does a primetime soap, but there’s a deep soulfulness about it, and a melancholic quality reminiscent of DYNASTY’s first season. It has a similar love centipede too, whereby almost everyone quietly longs for someone they can never truly have - or so it seems.This week’s DALLAS and FALCON CREST both end with a court hearing. The good guys prevail at one but not the other. Katherine Wentworth can barely contain her excitement when a forlorn Pam’s divorce is granted at the Dallas County Courthouse while Chase Gioberti makes a last minute appearance at the hearing where Angela has petitioned to have him declared incompetent. Having delivered an impassioned speech from his wheelchair in which he compares himself to Franklin D Roosevelt, he then slowly but defiantly gets to his feet to stand unaided. “Case dismissed,” rules the judge.And this week’s Top 6 are ...1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (3) DALLAS3 (4) THE YELLOW ROSE4 (2) FALCON CREST5 (-) DYNASTY6 (-) EMERALD POINT</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =