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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 13094" data-attributes="member: 22">05/Dec/83: EMERALD POINT N.A.S.: Episode 10 v. 07/Dec/83: DYNASTY: The Proposal v. 08/Dec/83 KNOTS LANDING: I’ll Tell You No Lies v. 09/Dec/83: DALLAS: To Catch a Sly v. 09/Dec/83: FALCON CREST: The Betrayal v. 10/Dec/83: THE YELLOW ROSE: A Question of LoveTwo of EMERALD POINT’s principle females are played by ex-Bond girls, Tiffany Case from DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, and Octopussy from, um, OCTOPUSSY. So far, Tiffany’s come on like a flakier version of DYNASTY’s Alexis - more scheming busybody than evil bitch - while Octopussy resembles a romantically unavailable Krystle (her husband is a navy pilot missing in action). The most significant departure from their DYNASTY counterparts is that Tiffany and Octopussy don’t hate each other (at least not yet). Just as last season’s DALLAS gave Holly Harwood (aka Holly Goodhead from MOONRAKER) a line where she compared Bobby to James Bond so EMERALD POINT can’t resist making a self-conscious 007 reference this week. “This is real life, not some James Bond movie,” Tiffany informs Harlan Adams. (Adding to the 60s secret agent vibe, the role of Harlan has now been taken over by Napoleon Solo from THE MAN FROM UNCLE.)Elsewhere on EMERALD POINT, Casey Denault and Good Girl Kay become the fourth Soap Land couple of the season to elope. Like Cole and Linda on FALCON CREST, they recite their own vows, full of slightly embarrassing therapy-speak. When the couple later return home to face the music in true Pam-and-Bobby fashion, Kay’s father Tom questions the wisdom of young people marrying in such haste. His concerns are borne out in this week’s DYNASTY as Jeff and Kirby, one of last season’s eloping couples, decide to end their marriage. “We never really belonged to each other,” Kirby tells Jeff sadly. "The first time you kissed me, you closed your eyes and called me Fallon ... The fact that you held me and said you loved me was enough, but it isn’t anymore.”Bobby sounds some equally plaintive notes on this week’s DALLAS, whilst talking both to Pam (“I feel like I’m in the back of a train looking out, seeing everything I had in my whole life disappear”) and to Jenna ("Maybe if we hadn't tried to set the world on fire, if we'd taken it a little slower, we might not have split up”). Suddenly, these glamorous, somewhat unreal characters - Kirby and Bobby - are imbued with human flaws and past regrets.Minor trend of the week #1: Troublesome secretaries. Alexis and Abby each have one who unintentionally, but repeatedly, undermines them. On this week’s DYNASTY, Alexis reprimands her latest male assistant Perry for entering her office without knocking, only for him to point out that his name is actually Terry. (This is a gag that will run and run.) Over on KNOTS, Abby’s secretary Elizabeth has an unerring knack of blurting confidential information at the most inopportune times. Also on KNOTS, Mack’s assistant Barbara (who is about a generation older than all the other Soap Land secretaries) inadvertently reveals that all his crime commission reports are being forwarded to Greg Sumner’s office without his knowledge. However, all of these misdemeanours pale next to JR’s discovery on this week’s DALLAS that his loyal secretary Sly has been spying on him for Cliff Barnes. When he confronts her, Sly tearfully explains that Cliff threatened to use his influence with the parole board keep her brother in prison indefinitely if she didn’t comply. Mack tries a similar manoeuvre on KNOTS. Having used his influence with the parole board to get crooked lawyer Tom Jesick out of jail, he now threatens to send him back there unless Tom agrees to infiltrate a organised crime syndicate known as the Wolfbridge Group.Jeff’s discovery that Adam is not only the father of Kirby’s baby but also her rapist leads to great showdown between the two men on this week’s DYNASTY. Like the fight between half-brothers Roy and Chase in last week’s YELLOW ROSE, this quasi-sibling confrontation has been a long time coming. Where the Champion boys got down in the mud, Adam and Jeff come face to face on the roof of the Carrington Plaza. This being DYNASTY, their fight feels a lot more consciously choreographed than the YELLOW ROSE one, but it’s exciting nonetheless.Interestingly, in spite of its reputation as the most male-driven soap, the majority of DALLAS’s mano-a-mano fights have been either played for laughs or interrupted as soon as they've gotten started. The closest DALLAS has come to the kind of physical confrontation we see between Roy and Chase or Jeff and Adam is the Ray/JR fight that led to the Southfork fire, but in terms of spectacle, both the YELLOW ROSE and DYNASTY scenes have the edge.Speaking of edge, the strange climax of this week's fight, which has Jeff on top of Adam, his hand between his legs as he levers him by the crotch towards the edge of the roof, is particularly eye-watering. “If Kirby’s child is a girl, I hope she never has to meet scum like her father!” seethes Jeff through gritted teeth. Adam’s reaction to this is just great: “I didn’t know. Oh my God, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was my baby.” “I didn’t know,” he repeats pleadingly throughout the episode, thereby usurping Lilimae Clements' “I only did what need to be done” as Soap Land latest mantra.There’s more unexpectedly exciting violence on FALCON CREST when Chase slams a wrench into Lance's gut and then treads on his hand. Lance might be the younger, fitter and meaner of the two, but both actors totally sell the scene.Minor trend of the week #2: Harboring fugitives. KNOTS LANDING’s Diana is hiding husband Chip on Gary's ranch while FALCON CREST’s Angela has Dr Lantry holed up at the Hideaway Motel against his will. The plan is to get both men out of the country before the police catch up with them. Angela wants Lantry shipped to Brazil before he can turn state’s evidence and testify against her, while Diana and Chip intend to start a new life in some unspecified location. (At least that’s Diana’s plan. Once Chip gets hold of his passport and her savings, he secretly intends to take off on his own. Conversely, Lantry doesn’t want to leave his wife and children behind, but Angela and Phillip insist he has no choice.)Both schemes go tragically awry. On FALCON CREST, Lance reveals Lantry’s whereabouts to Chase who then alerts the cops, prompting Lantry to do a runner. On KNOTS, Detective Morrison intercepts Diana as she is about to rendezvous with Chip, while Chip seeks refuge in a nearby barn. Chase tracks Lantry down to his lakeside cabin (the same location where Lute-Mae fought off her rapist in FLAMINGO ROAD) only to watch helplessly as Lantry kills himself with an overdose of morphine. But that’s nothing compared to what happens to Chip ..."The first time you kissed me, you closed your eyes and called me Fallon,” remembers Kirby on this week’s DYNASTY. And the last thing Chip Roberts ever does — well, before falling over backwards and impaling himself on a rake — is lay eyes on Cathy Geary and call her Ciji (“Ciji?? Oh my God!”). Yes, having given Soap Land its most unconventionally “real” death with Sid Fairgate, KNOTS now goes to the other extreme with Chip’s freaky demise. He may not have intentionally killed himself in the same way as Walt Driscoll and Joseph Anders, but all three have now paid the ultimate price for the crimes they committed at the end of last season. In a different way, Dr Lantry also follows in the footsteps of Walt and Joseph as another little man pushed too far who ends up taking his own life.This week’s FALCON CREST lives up to its episode title by having Lance first betray his grandmother by revealing Dr Lantry’s whereabouts to Chase then blackmail her over her dealings with him. “You wanna know why I betrayed you?” he asks her towards the end of the ep. "Because you betrayed me time after time … If I’ve turned against you, it’s your fault." Angela then barks at Lance to get out her office. There’s a similar exchange at the beginning of this week’s YELLOW ROSE. “You betrayed me,” Jeb Hollister accuses daughter Mandy Winger. “You betrayed yourself,” she replies, "your greed, your immorality, your obsession with the Yellow Rose.” She then orders Jeb to get out of her office.DYNASTY and DALLAS’s new PR executives, Krystle and Pam, both throw themselves into their work this week. While Krystle proposes “a full page ad in every newspaper in the country” extolling the virtues of Denver Carrington, Pam immerses herself in drilling reports and thick-looking books about oil exploration in the South West. Whereas Krystle’s efforts are motivated by a genuine enthusiasm for the company, Pam’s are prompted, at least in part, by a need to distract herself from Bobby and Jenna’s burgeoning romance. Blake and Cliff, meanwhile, regard these efforts somewhat condescendingly. Blake nuzzles up to Krystle and admires “that little vein on your neck that throbs when you get excited” while Cliff chuckles at Pam's “heavy duty reading” assignment. Pam’s insistence that “I’m not going to be just window dressing for this company” is echoed by another pretty woman eager to be taken seriously in business. “I won’t be a puppet for you, a wind-up doll, an echo,” Mandy Winger tells her father during that same confrontation scene on THE YELLOW ROSE.The latest on Soap Land’s May/December romances: While Alexis and Sue Ellen each admits to being attracted to her respective young admirer, they both continue to keep them at bay. Having been outwitted by Dex in business and obliged to enter into a partnership with him at a lesser percentage, Alexis shows up at his hotel suite, kisses him passionately — and then walks out on him. “Nobody takes me to the cleaners and to bed on the same day,” she purrs. Meanwhile, on DALLAS, Sue Ellen confesses to feeling jealous when Lucy shows an interest in Peter. Peter reacts by kissing Sue Ellen through the window of her car. She responds briefly, but then breaks away. “It’s wrong,” she gasps. “Can’t you see that it’s wrong?” While Dex laughs off Alexis’s rejection, Peter is left standing helpless as Sue Ellen drives away. Over on FALCON CREST, Terry is already cheating on her older lover, standing Michael up at a restaurant to have sex in a sauna with Lance. If anything, Michael is even more hurt than Peter. Abby gets stood up on KNOTS this week too when Greg chooses his daughter Mary Frances over her. One might expect Abby to react as nonchalantly as Dex does, but instead she is genuinely rattled.Greg gets back in Abby’s good graces by presenting her with the building variance she needs to proceed with her plans for Lotus Point. On FALCON CREST, Richard needs similar permission in order to proceed with his plans for the racetrack. To that end, he travels to San Diego to give John Sharp from the State Racing Commission the same treatment JR gave Harve Smithfield’s son-in-law at the beginning of last season’s DALLAS, when he wanted to sneak a peek at his daddy’s will. So he takes Sharp to lunch, invites a nubile young associate (Miss Perkins) to join them, then uses a pre-arranged call from his assistant as an excuse to leave them alone together and for Miss Perkins to do her thing. Instead of later walking in on the couple in flagrante as JR did, Richard has their assignation filmed. Having Miss Perkins procured by Richard’s assistant Pamela is also a nice touch. ("She's a world-class professional,” Pamela informs Richard. "When I worked at European headquarters, your mother hired her to blackmail a prime minister.” I don’t think even Serena, DALLAS hooker extraordinaire, could lay claim to that.)While Abby and Richard may face obstacles in developing their properties, they are both fully determined to succeed. The struggles Roy Champion faces over his land on THE YELLOW ROSE are more internal. "Two hundred thousand acres,” he says, surveying the land he inherited from his father. “Looked just like this before any man laid eyes on her. Could stay this way as long as we live or it could change. Depends on us. I had never known I was big enough to have that kind of power.” Ah, the age old question: to drill for oil or not to drill for oil? In an inversion of the Soap Land norm, he asks his half-brother to share the responsibility with him (“We’re facing some hard, hard decisions, brother … I want your help. I need it”), but Chase is reluctant to get involved. “You’re a cowboy,” Roy tells him, "a nineteenth century man trying to hold on to things the way they used to be. Part of me wants the same thing, but I just got an overdose of twentieth century problems I got to deal with whether I like it or not.” Chase and Roy are utterly convincing as men of the soil to whom conversations like this don’t come easily, yet when they do speak it’s with a depth and an eloquence one is unlikely to find anywhere else in Soap Land.In last week’s Soap Land, rich businessman Peter de Vilbis and upstanding politician Greg Sumner both turned out to be something other, i.e., more sinister than they first appeared. That trend continues this week. First, ditzy Tiffany Case on EMERALD POINT is revealed to be — outrageously — a secret Russian agent. She’s after some military Maguffin or other, which explains her reasons for becoming sexually involved with Napoleon Solo/Harlan Adams. Then on THE YELLOW ROSE, we are introduced to Jeb Hollister’s personal assistant Caryn Carbera, who is cast from the same coldly efficient, crisply flirtatious mold as Richard Channing’s sidekicks, Diana Hunter and Pamela Lynch. She is thrust abruptly into the centre of the action almost immediately when Jeb, sitting next to her in the back of his limousine, is shot by a sniper’s bullet. This is the first of two genuinely gasp-out-loud moments in this week’s YELLOW ROSE. The second takes place later at the hospital when Caryn suddenly slaps an emotional Mandy Winger across the face before informing her she has precisely fifteen minutes to compose herself so they can discuss business. (“You must assume the power! That is your father’s wish and it is your responsibility!”) It is only at the very end of the ep that we discover that Caryn - like Peter de Vilbis, Greg Sumner and Tiffany Case before her - is something other than we have been led to believe. “I despise your brother as much as you do,” she informs Rose, Jeb’s as-yet-unseen sister over the phone. (This was such a deliciously soapy reveal that I actually clapped.)And this week’s Top 6 are …1 (2) KNOTS LANDING2 (-) THE YELLOW ROSE3 (1) DALLAS4 (3) FALCON CREST5 (4) DYNASTY6 (-) EMERALD POINT N.A.S.</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =