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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 155115" data-attributes="member: 22">12 Oct 89: KNOTS LANDING: Prince Charming v. 13 Oct 89: DALLAS: Sunrise, Sunset v. 13 Oct 89: FALCON CREST:  Flesh and BloodThe strange powerlessness of FALCON CREST’s regular characters continues. After Chao Li discovers her comatose in her bed, Angela is rushed to Soap Land Memorial Hospital. This is as close to a conventional Soap Land scenario as FC has gotten so far this season, but even here it deviates fascinatingly from the norm. Remember last year, when Ben Agretti and Gabriel Ortega were admitted to hospital after their car crash and the medical staff pretty much ignored Gabriel’s father until Lance arrived on the scene? Well, now it’s Lance who’s ignored. Upon arrival at the hospital, he asks the nurse on reception about his grandmother, but she’s too busy chatting on the phone to reply. Only when he takes the phone out of her hand does she grudgingly give him her attention. Later on, when Charley sidles up to her desk, the same nurse is transfixed by him, almost as if she were hypnotised — so when he asks about the life support system Angela is attached to, she thinks nothing of telling him all about the back-up generator in the basement that keeps the machine going in case of a power outage.Next thing we know, Charley is down in the hospital basement cutting the generator like some demented BATMAN villain and thus depriving Angela of oxygen for a few vital moments. “We can keep her breathing, but I see little possibility of her coming out of this now,” the doctor subsequently informs the family. Compared to the patience and sensitivity with which Krystle’s equivalent condition was treated on DYNASTY, this prognosis feels very abrupt. Lance immediately votes to pull the plug: “She wouldn’t wanna just lie there, like a vegetable.” This allows Charley, of all people, to deliver the obligatory “x is a fighter” line. “I knew her long enough to know that she was a fighter. Let’s give her a fighting chance,” he says — practically smirking as he does so. He knows it’s a cliché. Ted Melcher exhibits a similar awareness of banal dialogue during a terrific scene on KNOTS where Greg returns from his cross-country caper to find Ted waiting for him in his darkened office. “You know, Greg, I hate it when people say, ‘Let’s talk’ or ‘We have to talk’,” Ted begins. “It’s the dialogue of the thoughtless, of the shallow, the glibly shallow, the illiterate. It’s the emotional equivalent of ‘Let’s do lunch’ and the intellectual equivalent of ‘HEY YOU!’ Yet, at this moment, I can’t think of conveying to you in a better way what needs to be done: We have to talk.” He then proceeds to draw a comparison between Greg and Geraldine Ferraro, the real-life Democratic politician whose career and reputation was tainted by scandal five years earlier. “Nobody believes that she didn’t know what her husband was doing,” he tells Greg. “Nobody believes someone could be so removed from a spouse’s activities. She suffered for her husband’s sins. I don’t want you to suffer for your wife’s little felonious transgressions.” “You have the Murakame papers,” Greg realises. “Which prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your beloved wife defrauded her partners … You don’t wanna be another Geraldine Ferraro,” Ted replies. So it is that Ted persuades Greg to trade the photographs incriminating him in Nagata’s death (which Greg is obliged to steal from Paige) in return for the Murakame documents. Back on FALCON CREST, an even more interesting parallel between a fictional and real-life figure is drawn. Charley and Emma are lying in bed when he asks her, not if she remembers Geraldine Ferraro, but if she knows her ancient history: “Claudius was a fool, a stutterer. Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula — none of them took him seriously. He took over Rome and cleaned up after their mess. That’s you, baby … You are the one who should be running Falcon Crest, not that bozo nephew of yours.” Emma as the Claudius of the Tuscany Valley — how brilliant is that?! As well as linking the power struggles at Falcon Crest to the early days of the Roman Empire, the analogy also applies to I, CLAUDIUS, the internationally successful BBC series of the 1970s. A saga of a bloodthirsty, backstabbing dynasty, it’s a logical precursor to the '80s soap genre and one which the increasingly dark FC, with its casually dispatched lead characters, resembles ever more closely as the weeks go by. And how does Charley follow this fascinating cultural allusion? By declaring his intention to “go and point Percy at the porcelain.” (It scarcely needs saying that no-one in Soap Land has ever come remotely close to uttering this phrase before.) Out in the hallway, Lance has just returned from a business meeting when he sees Charley clad in just his tighty-whities. “Why don’t you show a little respect?” he snaps. “You don’t walk around this house like that.” So says the man who, when he wasn’t bringing his one-night stands back to “this house”, used to strut around the pool in a pair of budgie smugglers.Like Emma, Paige Matheson and Cally Ewing are also on the receiving end of some career advice this week. “Self-righteousness doesn’t become you,” Greg tells Paige after she walks in on his trade-off with Ted and voices her disapproval. “If you wanna be part of the Sumner Group, and I hope you do, you have to wise up to the ways of the world. You don’t like the way I do business, you go work for Mother Teresa.” Undeterred, she follows Ted out to the elevator where she accuses him and Greg of blackmailing each other. Following “She’s a fighter” and “We need to talk”, a third cliché is then knowingly deployed: “Such an ugly word, blackmail,” says Ted. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck —“ Paige retorts. “I can still call it a waterfowl,” counters Ted. “So what’s your other name for it — quid pro quo?” she asks. “Or maybe a long term business deal, mutually beneficial to both parties?” “By George, I think you’ve got it!” he exclaims. “Suddenly I feel like Henry Higgins!” Over on DALLAS, a Pygmalion scenario is playing out for real as Alex Barton seeks to reinvent almost every aspect of Cally’s identity. From her name (“I want to promote you as Cally Harper; I’d like you to drop the Ewing name”) to her dress sense (having asked her to choose between two gowns in a shop window, she chooses the red, gaudy one that is quintessentially ‘80s; he agrees that it’s “sexy and fun … but it’ll be out of fashion in six months” — as will the ‘80s themselves) to her creative process (“I want you to paint from your imagination, I want to see what’s in your mind”). It all feels like a mini-version of the makeover Bess Riker attempted on Val when she starting her writing career back in KNOTS Season 4 — but whereas Bess wanted to capitalise on the Ewing name, Alex sees it as a liability. “It makes you sound like the dilettante wife of a rich man,” he tells Cally. Although his interest in her work seems more genuine that Bess’s in Val’s, Alex is also, to borrow Greg’s phrase, wise to the ways of the world: “There’s a certain reality to hyping the modern artist. The art can be primitive or raw or untamed, but the artist must be at ease with the jet set.” He also charges a 40% commission on all sales — nothing comes for free in Soap Land.It’s the end of the road for two Ewing-verse bad boys this week, Ted Melcher and Tommy McKay. On KNOTS, Ted’s quid pro quo/mutually beneficial business deal with Greg enables him to get off scot-free with his crimes (which include two murders), thereby making him the show’s first guest villain not to end up impaled on a pitchfork, shouted off a roof or buried in cement. Instead, he’s on his way to Japan — watch out, Abby. (But not before delivering some parting words of wisdom to Paige: “Maybe you don’t love Greg anymore, I don’t know … At least now you know that you can’t trust him. If you’re smart though, you’ll stick around here because he’s vulnerable to you. You are his weak spot … You’re in the perfect position to take advantage of him.”) Tommy doesn’t fare as well on DALLAS, sadly. During an office confrontation parallel to (if slightly dumber than) Ted and Greg’s, Bobby surprises him by showing up at West Star with “a business opportunity for you”, whilst carrying the booby-trapped attache case (actually, a replica thereof). As he goes to open it, Tommy panics and calls security — “Get this guy, he’s got a bomb!” — thereby alerting them to his own crime. That night, Daddy McKay tries to stop him going after Bobby with a gun. They struggle, the gun goes off and, just as in Fallon’s flashback, Roger/Tommy is shot dead while intent on inflicting harm on a major character — Alexis then, Bobby now. Over on FALCON CREST, Richard also makes an abortive attempt to shoot someone. He gets as far as aiming his gun at an oblivious Michael Sharpe, but cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. Instead, he throws the gun away and screams his dead wife’s name in an empty parking lot — another example of an FC character’s impotence. (Richard’s fleeting reference to Garth elsewhere in the episode is a reminder that he no longer has his Man Friday to turn to either. It’s a sad loss, but one that makes sense for the same reason that DOCTOR WHO eventually had to write out its genius robot dog, K9. K9 was so clever that made the Doctor’s job too easy. Likewise, Garth was so capable he could always be relied upon to lighten Richard’s load — and nothing is allowed to be light or easy for Richard anymore.) The FC characters’ sense of weakness extends to their business. To quote Michael’s attorney, “Richard Channing’s family empire is drier than their white wines.” To make matters worse, their distributor, Ned Vogel, expresses a lack of confidence in Lance as Angela’s successor and threatens not to renew their contract. “Without proper distribution, you’re out of business,” he gloats. “You’re on the back shelf of some 7-11 next to the Stridex pads.” The old Lance wouldn’t have stood for this putdown, but now he just has to sit there and take it.Distribution also becomes an issue on DALLAS when the tanker carrying JR’s crude from Venezuela is delayed by bad weather. Not being able to supply Shaughnessy’s refinery on time means a million dollar a day penalty. JR is, therefore, eager to buy up Marilee Stone’s oil reserves — but she’ll only sell under certain conditions. She explains these to JR while speaking almost entirely in double entendres: “I love to see a man on his knees, it offers such interesting possibilities … There is one dotted line that you’ll have to sign on first and you know where to find it … Your money is only the second best thing about you.” This results in JR reluctantly wading into her swimming pool fully dressed (“You never minded getting wet before,” she purrs). Back on FC, Pilar realises that there is a similar way she can persuade Vogel to renew his deal with Falcon Crest — so she does for her man what Laura Avery and Afton Cooper did for theirs in “Community Spirit” (KNOTS Season 1) and “Fringe Benefits (DALLAS Season 5) respectively. “Let’s get this over with,” she tells Vogel in his office. Cut to her back at Falcon Crest, crying in the shower. In both storylines, there is a twist — at the very last minute, JR receives a phone call telling him his oil has arrived at Shaughnessy’s refinery, which allows him to escape Marilee’s clutches with his virtue intact. The situation is less comedic on FALCON CREST when Vogel refuses to deal with Lance even after Pilar has slept with him. This is a Soap Land first: in all previous storylines where sex and business have intertwined, no man, however slimy, has ever double-crossed the woman after she’s put out. But this is the treacherous, all-bets-are-off world of FALCON CREST Season 9 where the old rules no longer seem to apply. The situation does, however, afford Pilar the opportunity to transform herself from sexual victim to aggressor. When Vogel tells her he’ll only make the deal if she continues to have sex with him (“One bite of candy isn’t enough, I need the whole box”), she threatens to file rape charges against him unless he honours their agreement. It works. “We made the deal!” Lance later crows, as oblivious to how he landed the contract as Cliff Barnes was when he bought Gil Thurman’s refinery seven years ago. ”I knew I could pull this thing off. You should have seen me, honey, I was beautiful! I was in control, a deal maker!” He hugs Pilar, who has the same expression on her face that Afton did then.There are two contrasting gatherings in this week’s Ewingverse — the Mackenzie barbecue on KNOTS and Tommy’s funeral on DALLAS. Whereas Paula is reluctant to attend the former (“This is going to be dreadful”), JR is looking forward to the latter (“I’ve cut some of my best deals at funerals”). While Karen finally starts putting two and two together about Mack and Paula at the barbecue, yet another innuendo-laden remark from Marilee at the funeral (“I’m sure [JR] didn’t tell you about the other night … we really got up to our hips in fun”) starts Cally worrying about JR’s fidelity. Both wives confront their husbands with their suspicions. “Something happened in that motel and I wanna know what,” demands Karen. “I wanna talk now,” Cally insists after the funeral. “Did you sleep with Marilee Stone?” Mack responds by flashing back to the night in question when he admitted to being attracted to Paula but told her that, even if he could get away with it, he would never cheat on his wife. This reaffirmation of his love for Karen puts him firmly back in her good books. In contrast, the first cracks in JR and Cally’s marriage surface as JR starts to lose patience with his wife. “Cally, you are developing a bad case of sexual jealousy and I’m getting a little tired of you seeing a mistress behind every tree,” he tells her. “Monogamy is not exactly second nature to me so I want full credit for my efforts!” That’s such a great line. Two recent parent/child reconciliations — between Carter McKay and Tommy on DALLAS, and Angela and Richard on FALCON CREST — have both now been cut tragically short due to Tommy’s death and Angela’s coma. Over on KNOTS, Mack and Paige manage to put their differences aside long enough to enjoy a reunion that lasts all of thirty-one seconds before she tells him she’s going back to work at the Sumner Group. He calls her stupid, she calls him brainless and that’s the end of that. More poignant is the way DALLAS’s Mack turns his back on daughter Tracey when she returns for Tommy’s funeral. “Not a tear for Tommy, not a hug for me? Don’t you dare turn back into the old Carter McKay,” she pleads. After the funeral, she offers to stay and look after him, but he won’t hear of it. “I’m glad you’re going,” he tells her coldly. “I’m your last chance and you know it, Dad,” she insists. “There’s your cab … Goodbye, Tracey.” It’s a desperately sad ending to the MacKay family, who at one point seemed set to be the new Barneses, especially when one remembers that it was McKay’s desperate need to reconcile with his daughter that brought him to Dallas in the first place. Tommy and Tracey’s arc mirrors that of a previous brother/sister act on DALLAS, Jack and Jamie. Whatever hang-ups they arrived with, each pair ended up considerably worse off for having encountered the Texas Ewings, with one sibling dead and the other left full of grief and regrets. Back on KNOTS, we get our first insight into Olivia and Harold’s married life since Abby left for Japan taking Olivia’s credit cards with her. With Olivia determined to prove that she can survive without her mother’s millions, their situation becomes the inverse of DALLAS’s equivalent “rich girl marries poor boy” storyline from nine years earlier. Whereas Lucy’s insistence on living like an heiress frustrated the proud and principled Mitch, Olivia’s scrupulous budgeting starts to bug Harold when she begrudges him a night at the movies or a tub of fancy ice cream. “I’m never gonna be a rich man. We’re never gonna be rich,” he tells her. “We could be — if you tried,” she argues. This is the first indication that she has inherited more of Abby’s ambition than previously suspected. Over on DALLAS, Michelle Stevens delivers a neat little speech about the haves and have nots to Cliff, as part of her ongoing scheme to rewaken his bitter and twisted side. “It doesn’t seem fair,” she complains. “Bobby, JR, April — they all have that inherited money. Nobody gave you anything — or me. We have to do it on our own … The Ewings are still dumping on you and April’s still dumping on me.”Random trend of the week: Ewing-verse characters describing each other as saints. Sometimes they’re being sarcastic, as when Michelle describes her sister to Cliff as “St April, Queen of Goodness and Light. Didn’t you meet her when she first came to Dallas? She was hell on high heels!” or when Paige reminds Greg how badly he’s treated her. “I never asked you to go skinny-dipping in my pool,” he points out. “I never said you asked … You’re blameless, you’re a saint,” she replies. And sometimes, they’re speaking out of genuine admiration. “You are a saint … You shouldn’t invite a single young lady to go away on vacation with you and your husband,” Ginny tells Karen. “You really are a saint, aren’t you — going to the funeral of the man that tried to kill you!” JR tells Bobby.In the first Soap Land Song Wars of the new season, Amanda, the twins’ kindergarten teacher on KNOTS, bursts into a chorus of ‘Never Never Land’ from Peter Pan. The kids are spellbound, Val is charmed (“Amanda’s so sweet”), and Danny prefers to wait it out in the car park for some reason. Over on FC, Charley apes Dean Martin for the second week in a row with a bespoke version of ‘Houston’, a minor 1965 hit penned by Lee ‘These Boots are Made for Walking’ Hazlewood: “It’s so lonesome in Tuscany town, everybody’s gotten me down. I’m a face without a name, just walking in the rain.” Whereas Amanda’s number is a bit too jazz hands for my taste, Charley’s number is both creative and stupidly funny — a bit like the man himself. Ergo, Charley’s the winner.  Speaking of Danny, Val is stunned by his marriage proposal but admits to Karen that she is considering it. Over on DALLAS, April likewise surprises Bobby by proposing to him. He doesn’t give her a straight answer but, as with Val and Danny, the signs are positive.There are two late additions to the opening titles, James Beaumont on DALLAS and Lauren Daniels on FALCON CREST. Another tall, good-looking twenty-something, James feels like an instant replacement for Tommy McKay, but whereas Tommy was snarly and intense, James is full of goofy charm. His first scene takes place at Ewing Oil. Sly is not happy to hear from the other secretaries that he’s made himself at home in JR’s office and marches in to confront him. But then he does a “the chair swivels round to reveal …” thing and says, smilingly, “I was wondering what a Sly Lovegren would look like”, and she sort of melts. But that’s not the whole story: James is Vanessa Beaumont’s son! And he gets the freeze frame! Not even Casey Denault got one of those!Lauren’s introduction is more complicated. Having arranged for Richard Channing’s sons to be taken to “the dog pound” (his nickname for a children’s shelter), Michael Sharpe pulls even more strings to have them adopted by a childless couple, Walker and Lauren Daniels — thereby making them Harry and Sheila Fisher to his Dr Ackerman. In contrast to the rest of FALCON CREST, the Walkers are like something from a Lifetime movie. They live a rural existence — there are logs everywhere — and Lauren, in particular, oozes wholesomeness. Their backstory — they decided to adopt after their own children died in an accident — is suitably heart-tugging. But that’s not the whole story: Lauren is Michael Sharpe’s sister!After learning who the boys’ father is, Lauren arranges to meet Michael for the first time in five years. “Why do I have Richard Channing’s children?” she asks him. “I’ve got to know — did you have anything to do with me getting those children? … Because if you did, I can’t keep them. I can’t get attached to them and then have them taken away from me.” He swears “on Papa’s grave” that it’s a coincidence — just like the one that is revealed at the end of this week’s KNOTS: Danny the computer guy’s other woman is Amanda, the twins’ Peter Pan-singing teacher. What are the odds of that?And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (2) FALCON CREST2 (3) DALLAS 3 (1) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?