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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 15085" data-attributes="member: 22">09/May/84: DYNASTY: The Nightmare v. 11/May/84: DALLAS: Hush, Hush, Sweet Jessie v. 11/May/84: FALCON CREST: The Avenger v. 12/May/84: THE YELLOW ROSE: The Far Side of FearPhew, what a week: the season finale of DYNASTY, the series finale of THE YELLOW ROSE, the most powerful episode of FALCON CREST to date and an action-packed instalment of DALLAS that’s none too shabby either.“Won’t it knock their socks off when they find out I’m a Carrington?” asks Dominique Devereaux of an empty room on this week’s DYNASTY. It certainly knocks the socks off DALLAS’s Donna and Ray when they find out, from Clayton, that Jessica isn’t Dusty’s aunt, but his mother. And those aren’t the only revelations of the week. We discover on DYNASTY that Sammy Jo was behind the violets sent to Claudia supposedly from her dead husband Matthew while Pam learns on DALLAS that Katherine was behind the letter read to Bobby, supposedly from Pam herself, that broke up their marriage. Another letter, this time sent to Pam, explains that Mark Graison’s plane crash wasn’t an accident — he knew he was dying and decided to end his own life rather than become a burden to those he loved. And in the same week that Mark G’s presumed accident becomes a suicide on DALLAS, Mark J’s presumed suicide is reclassified as a murder on DYNASTY.Physical confrontations between women, ranging from the comedic to the tragic, recur throughout this week’s episodes. In ascending order of violence, there’s Alexis and Krystle’s beauty parlour run-in on DYNASTY where, in lieu of their annual catfight, Krystle throws a potful of mud in Alexis’s face after hearing her insinuate that Blake is not the father of her unborn child. Moving things up a notch, DALLAS’s Pam strikes Katherine across the face after learning that she has been scheming against her all along. Then things get seriously gun-crazy: Jessica makes off with Miss Ellie and a handgun at the end of DALLAS while DYNASTY’s Kirby and FALCON CREST’s Julia both realise their long-awaited revenge fantasies of holding Alexis and Angela respectively at gunpoint."Do it now, Kirby,” challenges Alexis. "Go ahead. Pull the trigger ... and watch me die. That’s what you want, isn't it?” “Are you just going to stand there?” Angela asks Julia. “I thought the idea was for you to shoot me.” Their bluffs called, neither Kirby nor Julia can go through with the deadly deed. It’s Lute Mae Sanders in FLAMINGO ROAD all over again. When faced with the reality of shooting Michael Tyrone in cold blood, she crumbled.The climaxes of this week’s DYNASTY and DALLAS are dealt with in diametrically opposite ways. On DYNASTY, we are given no narrative explanation for Fallon’s headaches or what subsequently causes her to flee from her wedding at the Carrington mansion. Whatever she is feeling is conveyed to us through abstract imagery: nightmarish flashbacks, distorted point-of-view shots, off-kilter camera angles and a discordant musical score. The dark clouds and lashing rain also seem to reflect her emotional state (and unintentionally echo Miss Ellie’s lighthearted suggestion to Clayton in last week’s DALLAS, “You wanna get married in the rain?”).After Fallon fails to appear for their wedding, her beloved Jeff finds her bridal dress discarded on her bedroom floor (in the same symbolic fashion that Admiral Mallory found his bride-to-be’s wedding gown abandoned in the final scene of EMERALD POINT). Jeff then spots her driving off into the night and sets off in pursuit. The episode’s — and indeed the season’s — final seconds show Fallon behind the wheel of her car, blinded by a sudden flash of headlights, followed by a scream that echoes over a black screen. This extra-diegetic ending is the equivalent of Sid Fairgate’s “Oh my God!” playing over his freeze frame at the end of KNOTS LANDING Season 2, but without the coherent narrative logic leading up to it.“In everyone’s life there should be one perfect night,” Mark Graison told Pam on last week’s DALLAS. The morning after his perfect night, he died. Whenever I hear Pam’s description of his death — “Mark was flying his plane and it exploded over the Gulf” — it conjures up for me an image of Icarus flying too close to the sun. “I’m on top of the world, kid,” Mark Jennings told Krystle on DYNASTY a few weeks ago, “but I do know somebody who’d like to push me off.” And so it came to pass. Indeed, it’s an unwritten rule of Soap Land: no one can be too happy for too long. With Fallon’s abstract malady, DYNASTY has distilled that rule to its essence and dispensed with plot altogether: the pain and noises in her head, for which there are no medical explanation, began when she and Jeff first reconciled. As their wedding day has grown nearer, her torment has worsened, reaching crisis point just before the ceremony. Therefore, in the absence of a more conventional explanation, her suffering can be interpreted as the result of too much happiness. By daring to believe in an idyllic future with Jeff, Fallon was flying as dangerously close to the sun as Marks Graison and Jennings.Whereas nothing about Fallon’s behaviour is explained on DYNASTY, everything about Jessica’s actions is spelled out on DALLAS this week, to an almost laughable extent, thanks to her diary which JR finds at the eleventh hour. The journal’s most recent entries reveal her twenty year old secrets in the way that is most convenient for the present day plot. For example, the first page JR reads seems to implicate Clayton in the fire that killed his wife, while the entry on the next page — which isn’t read until after JR has driven across town to accuse Clayton of mariticide — completely exonerates him. Hokey as such blatant exposition is, it’s highly enjoyable, as is Fallon’s logic-be-damned pre-wedding freak out.While the DYNASTY wedding guests wonder what has become of the bride, a detective arrives at the Carrington mansion to speak to Alexis. Their subsequent exchange reminds me of the scene at the end of “Blackmail” (DALLAS Season 4) where the police show up at Ewing Oil to talk to Bobby. Alexis thinks the police are at the house due to Fallon’s disappearance while Bobby assumes their visit to his office is connected to Lucy’s. “We don’t know anything about your daughter/niece,” they reply. Instead, they explain, they want to talk to Alexis and Bobby about the suspicious deaths of the men who were blackmailing them — Mark Jennings and Jeff Farraday respectively. Adding to the sense of déjà vu, the sergeant who then arrests Alexis for Mark’s murder is played by the same actor who killed Jeff Farraday.The DYNASTY/DALLAS parallels continue with Blake Carrington and Cliff Barnes. This week, both men are forced to sell off their assets to keep their companies afloat. Each encounters an old adversary happy to take advantage of the situation. Dex Dexter offers Blake $10,000,000 for his football team — a deal which Blake angrily rejects: "That team's worth $50,000,000 at least and you know it!” Katherine Wentworth, meanwhile, offers Cliff $18,000,000 for his third of Wentworth Tool & Die even though it’s worth $25,000,000 — a deal which Cliff reluctantly accepts. ("You really enjoy twisting the knife, don't you?” "I do get a certain satisfaction, seeing how it's going into you.”) While Cliff’s deal with Katherine buys Barnes Wentworth another week, Blake’s refusal to do business with Dex means it’s the end of the road of Denver Carrington.Not for nothing is this episode of DYNASTY called ‘Nightmare’. What worse fate could a Soap Land alpha male imagine than the loss of his beloved company? It’s a demise that every businessman from Jock and JR on DALLAS to incompetent old Claude Weldon on FLAMINGO ROAD has come perilously close to, only to sidestep at the last moment. But in the DYNASTY season finale, the unthinkable actually happens to Blake Carrington. Likewise, what could be more devastating for a Soap Land diva than to find herself, in all her finery, behind bars with a bunch of cackling hookers laughing and jeering at her? Whereas last season's KNOTS ended with Gary enduring his jail time with silent stoicism, this season’s DYNASTY ends with Alexis grabbing her cell bars and screaming, “Get me out of here!” DALLAS’s Peter Richards, out on bail after being set up by JR on a drugs charge, can surely sympathise. "I keep having nightmares about that jail!” he exclaims this week.Something I’d never previously noticed about this week’s episode of DALLAS — how the opening shot of Bobby and Jenna driving into Southfork while joking about how the family will react to their engagement mirrors the very beginning of the series which had Bobby and Pam driving into Dallas while joking about how the family would react to their elopement.Something I'd never previously noticed about the entire Lady Jessica story-line — how many references there are to characters substituting for other characters. In the same episode that Sue Ellen describes Clayton to Jessica as the father she never had, Jessica explains to Ellie how Clayton was more of a parent to her when she growing up than their own father was. JR’s resentment at the prospect of Clayton replacing his father (“becoming the second man on a one man ranch”) mirrors Jessica’s resentment towards Amy for replacing her as Dusty’s mother — and it’s the idea of Ellie doing the same thing now — in effect becoming “the new Amy” — that pushes Jessica over the edge in this episode. A side note: Jessica telling Ray at her party that he reminds her of Clayton as a young man puts Donna in the de-facto role of a second substitute Amy, which makes it fitting that Jessica also assaults her (albeit off screen) before making off with Ellie.“She’s got Mama!” JR shouts at the end of DALLAS. “She's taken my baby!” yells Melissa at the beginning of FALCON CREST. Indeed, FALCON CREST picks up where DALLAS leaves off this week, but ratchets up the pathos. There isn’t really time for DALLAS to explore the emotional consequences of Clayton learning that his sister is a psychopath who burned down his house, murdered his wife and now plans to do the same thing to his fiancee — the best he can muster is an “oh no, Jessie” — whereas this week’s FALCON CREST is all about emotional consequences, about how it feels to have a dangerously disturbed woman as a mother, a daughter and a sister.If Fallon’s mystery meltdown at the end of DYNASTY feels like the latest development in Soap Land’s increasingly abstract form of story-telling which began with FALCON CREST retroactively turning Julia into a killer, then this episode of FC is the emotional pay off for that decision. The flippantly comedic tone of last week’s episode is entirely absent, replaced by a strong sense of gravitas, especially in the moving scene where Lance finds Angela in her study reading a letter written to her by Julia when she was in college: ‘Dear Mother, there are so many opportunities here … I can hardly wait for you to come down for parents’ weekend so I can show you around.' "Did you go?” Lance asks Angela. She shakes her head. "I was too busy,” she says. "Even for a weekend?” he persists. "I was a businesswoman before it became fashionable,” she replies,” and I didn’t have time to do the things I wanted to do … Julia understood. She had such promise, only …” "Everything went wrong,” concludes Lance. What’s so touching is that Lance doesn’t display any rancour towards Angela here, just a profound sadness for his mother.”I was a businesswoman before it became fashionable.” That’s one in the eye not just for Abby and Alexis but for all the other Angela-come-latelys who have joined them in the executive suite this season: Krystle, Pam, Laura, Claudia, et al., none of whom will have to worry about missing parents’ weekend because this is the have-it-all Soap Land eighties where childcare simply isn’t an issue anymore. For the first time, one gets a real sense of the solitary road Angela must have walked in those less shoulder-pad-tastic days.While her family worry and ruminate, Julia drives down the same dark Soap Land highway that Fallon did after fleeing her wedding. Where Fallon swerved to avoid the obligatory Soap Land roadworks, Julia deftly dodges the police roadblocks set up in her honour.It all leads to a hostage situation at the springhouse with Julia (still in her nun’s habit) holding Joseph (never cuter) at gunpoint. She agrees to release him on the condition that her mother take his place. As the rest of the cast gradually congregate outside the springhouse, it feels like a slow-burn version of the Belmar Hotel climax on this season’s KNOTS. Every gesture, every close up carries an emotional weight. The exchange made, Lance watches as Melissa and Cole are reunited with their son and then take him away. I've always found it significant that Richard — of all people — should be the one to register Lance's pain and give him a consoling pat on the shoulder. Only a few weeks ago, these two men were trying to kill each other in an underground parking garage yet somehow Richard’s gesture here feels true, and dramatically earned, in a way that his being best man at Phillip and Angela’s wedding last week didn’t.Whereas KNOTS LANDING’s Belmar Hotel climax was the result of a trap set by characters external to the show’s core, FALCON CREST’s equivalent comes from within the Gioberti family itself. In fact, it feels as if the entire Falcon Crest saga has been building up to the moment where Angela enters the springhouse and is forced by Julia to acknowledge her own failings for the first time. "I’ve always had a difficulty expressing my feelings ... I’ve never been a mother to you,” she admits. A truce of sorts is reached and Julia is persuaded to hand over the gun. The sheriff’s deputy positioned outside misreads the situation and, thinking that Julia is about to shoot her mother, fires his rifle. Both women fall to the floor, a kerosene lamp explodes and a fire breaks out, exactly a year and a week after the fire at Southfork. Just as Bobby and Ray rescued JR, Sue Ellen and John Ross, Lance and Chase manage to save Angela, but they can’t get to Julia in time. The episode ends with everyone watching the springhouse burn with Julia still trapped inside. And this isn’t even the season finale.In place of a psychotic nun, the final episode of THE YELLOW ROSE brings us Soap Land’s first bisexual killer-rapist. After murdering Whit’s girlfriend (a pre-fame Robin Wright) in the first scene, he turns his attention to Colleen Champion. With not enough evidence for the police to hold him, the ep turns into a grim but gripping hybrid of “Winds of Vengeance” and “Land of the Free” from DALLAS and KNOTS’ respective first seasons. Like this week’s FALCON CREST, it builds to a fatal hostage situation before concluding with a touchingly humble prayer round the family dinner table. Lord love THE YELLOW ROSE — idiosyncratic to the end.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (3) FALCON CREST2 (2) DALLAS3 (1) DYNASTY4 (4) THE YELLOW ROSE</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?