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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 17771" data-attributes="member: 22">02/Oct/85: DYNASTY: The Homecoming v. 03/Oct/85: KNOTS LANDING: Here in My Arms v. 04/Oct/85: DALLAS: Those Eyes v. 04/Oct/85: FALCON CREST: The Phoenix This week, Krystle and Alexis share a Moldavian prison cell on DYNASTY, Sue Ellen rattles the bars of a police station drunk tank on DALLAS and Melissa serves time in the Tuscany County jail on FALCON CREST. Whereas the DYNASTY women are released soon after their episode’s opening scene, Sue Ellen is transferred to the detoxification ward of the county hospital after going into convulsions. Melissa, meanwhile, remains in jail throughout her episode, but still finds time to make out with husband Cole and trade insults with ex-husband Lance. However, she is keenly aware that all the while she is behind bars, another woman — her cousin Robin — is raising her son. (“I only like Robin,” Joseph states this week.) This puts Melissa in a similar position to Val Ewing, who continues to wait outside the house where her children are being raised by another couple for most of this week’s KNOTS LANDING. There is a striking scene where Val speaks to Sheila Fisher through a locked garden gate. As she peers through the railings, desperate for a glimpse of her babies, she looks just as much a prisoner as any of the other Soap Land jailbirds. But while the rest of them want out (“GET ME OUT OF HERE!!” Sue Ellen screams), Val is pleading to be let in.As Val and Sheila talk, a mutual empathy develops between them. Indeed, what makes this particular episode of KNOTS so strong is the growing understanding (on the part of both the viewer and the regular characters) that the Fishers are not bad people and that their feelings towards the babies are as genuine as Val’s.There are no equivalent insights into the "enemies" responsible for the violence at the end of last season’s DYNASTY and DALLAS. We're privy to neither the political circumstances that led to the Moldavian massacre nor the psychological issues that compelled Katherine Wentworth to mow down Bobby. Blake Carrington’s dismissal of the rebels as terrorists and Pam Ewing’s conclusion that her sister’s actions were “just so crazy” are as in-depth as it gets. With the Carringtons now free to leave Moldavia and Katherine’s journal revealing her to be responsible not just for Bobby’s death but also those of Naldo and Veronica plus Jenna’s kidnapping, both shows’ end-of-season cliffhangers are now essentially resolved.Not so that of FALCON CREST, which may have returned a week later than the rest of the soaps but narratively jumps ahead of them by resuming its story six weeks after the explosion at the end of last season. It’s a nifty approach which ensures the action is already up and running as the new season begins. Instead of a “Previously on …” recap, we’re quickly brought up to speed by a gossipy television news report explaining that Richard and Maggie both survived the explosion, and that Richard is now "a reclusive figure refusing to grant interviews or even to cooperate with law enforcement agencies seeking to solve the crime that nearly killed him.” We watch Angela Channing and Greg Reardon watching the news report disapprovingly. Over on DYNASTY, Sammy Jo and Rita are watching live news coverage of the Carrington wedding party landing back in Denver where they are greeted by a barrage of reporters. To JR’s dismay on this week’s DALLAS, Sue Ellen’s lost weekend has also made the six o’clock news. “Unfortunately, you are a famous man. That makes her a famous wife,” Mandy points out.While Sammy Jo is openly hostile towards the woman controlling her inheritance (“Forget the sermon, Aunty Krystle,” she snaps, "I need ten thousand dollars”), JR is far more tactful when dealing with the woman controlling Christopher’s share of Ewing Oil. (“I know Bobby meant well when he named you administrator,” he tells Pam, "but frankly, I think that choice was a little more romantic than it was smart … I want to buy back his shares in Ewing Oil. It would be the best thing we could do. Christopher would have all the money he’d ever need and you’d never have to worry about Ewing Oil again.”) Krystle and JR put forward similar arguments — that neither Sammy Jo nor Pam are experienced enough to handle such vast fortunes. The same cannot be said of FALCON CREST’s Angela Channing, of course, but this week she finds herself in the same situation as Sammy Jo — obliged to seek Cassandra Wilder’s permission before she can draw on the Falcon Crest bank account. This is a result of the uneasy business partnership between Angela and the vengeful Rossini family, who also announce their intention to turn the Falcon Crest vineyards into a hotel complex. “If you think you’re going to plough under my vineyards and build that instant slum, it’ll be over my dead body!” barks Angela.Season finales being what they are, there have been several Soap Land fatalities of late, but most do not warrant an onscreen funeral. DYNASTY’s Lady Ashley was possibly too minor a character, while Katherine Wentworth and Dr. Ackerman are simply too undeserving. FALCON CREST’s time-jump means that Lorraine Cumson’s burial has been skipped over — although there is a juicy confrontation at her graveside this week when Richard accuses “my grieving son-in-law” Lance of blowing up his house. Bobby Ewing was, of course, given a memorable send-off in the DALLAS season opener, but, more surprisingly, so is Luke Fuller on this week’s DYNASTY. Whereas JR, ordinarily the most outspoken of Soap Land characters, waited until the rest of the funeral congregation had departed before delivering a private eulogy to his brother, Steven Carrington — a far more reserved personality — summons up the courage to pay public tribute to his dead lover. (“So much of what passed between Luke and me was private that it’s very hard for me to express my emotions publicly, but Luke was too important to be mourned in silence … He knew that love doesn’t grow in a closet, it needs air.") That such overt declarations don’t come easily to this repressed stuffed-shirt of a character (nor possibly to the actor playing him) only serve to make them more touching.Private-versus-public issues also arise for two of Soap Land’s newlywed couples this week. On KNOTS, Cathy commits the error of snapping at Joshua in front of his TV crew. As soon as they are alone, he grabs her roughly by the arm. “Don’t you ever talk to me that way in front of other people — do you understand?” he snarls. “If you have something to say to me, you save it for the privacy of our own home.” She pushes him away and he cuts his hand. Meanwhile on DYNASTY, Prince - nay, King - Michael’s hand is already bandaged, a result of an injury sustained during the massacre. That’s not all the two men have in common. Just as sudden celebrity went to Joshua’s head, so Michael’s abrupt change in status — from playboy prince to monarch in exile — has made him pompous and domineering, and he too lectures his blonde bride about speaking out of turn. “When it comes to affairs of state, you leave the thinking to me … Lower your voice, someone might hear … You are no longer simply Blake Carrington’s daughter, you’re my queen and you will act as one.” Michael then goes one better by forbidding Amanda to speak her mind even in private. “Michael, we’re in our bedroom,” she points out. "We’re lovers here, not the King and his queen.” "I learned at a very young age that whether a door is open or closed, I was a prince and future king,” he replies.No Alexis in last week’s DYNASTY, no Gary Ewing on this week’s KNOTS. He is literally between two soaps, driving cross country from Texas to California. Having left Southfork directly after Bobby’s funeral, his journey has thus far taken two episodes of DALLAS and one of KNOTS with still no sign of his return. In his absence, Abby and Greg each turn DALLAS’s recent tragedy to their own advantage. Abby breaks the news of Bobby’s death to Karen as way of deflecting her awkward questions regarding Abby's knowledge of the twins’ whereabouts. “I met him,” Karen recalls. "He was here when Val and Gary moved in." This nice call back to the very beginning of the series is amusingly undercut by a roll of the eyes from Abby, as if to suggest that Karen is trying to make even Bobby’s death all about her. Meanwhile, Greg uses Gary’s absence to countermand some of his orders concerning Empire Valley.Last week, there was some refreshingly straight-talking when Ben Gibson on KNOTS and Miss Ellie on DALLAS dished out a few unwelcome home truths to Karen Mackenzie and Sue Ellen respectively. There are equivalent scenes in this week’s episodes, again involving Karen and Miss Ellie, but this time they are even more powerful. Karen is firmly on the front foot as she delivers a compelling speech to Harry Fisher about the babies he claims are his. Miss Ellie, meanwhile, is on the receiving end of a stern talking-to from the doctor presiding over Sue Ellen’s detox. Harry is determined to somehow elude the authorities and keep the babies; Miss Ellie is equally determined to take Sue Ellen away from the grim surroundings of the county detox ward (“I won’t let her rot in this place!”). Karen and the nameless doctor are consequently tasked with cutting through Harry’s and Ellie’s respective denial and making them face the reality of their situations. For Harry, it’s a moral reality; for Ellie, it’s a medical one.“You have no choice,” Karen tells Harry. "Excuse me, you’ve got no moral choice. Think what it would be like now, raising them, that you know the truth … How can you be decent parents? How can you raise them morally knowing that you’ve gotten them immorally? … Oh God, Mr Fisher, I feel so awful for you, I really do, but don’t you see, nothing about this is right except the babies being with their real mother. You see that, don’t you? Of course you do, I know you do.”"Sue Ellen is an alcoholic,” the doctor tells Miss Ellie. "For her, alcohol is lethal. It's one of the strongest drugs man uses and she overdosed. If she’d been left out there in the street, unsupervised, her withdrawal could have been fatal. Now Sue Ellen beat the odds this time, but unless God gave you a talent He hasn't given anyone else, you're not gonna keep her from taking that next drink, and that's all it'll take. If I let you sign that release form now, I'd be watching you sign her death certificate.”“You’ve got no moral choice … ” “Unless God gave you a talent He hasn’t given anyone else …” Beware the sin of hubris. Ignore this warning at your peril. That seems to be the message common to both speeches, one the likes of King Michael and Joshua Rush would do well to heed.I’ve always regarded this KNOTS scene, specifically Michele Lee’s performance, as the pivotal turning point of the entire year-long stolen-babies saga. If we don’t believe in Karen’s ability to persuade Harry to voluntarily surrender the children he thinks of as his own, then the whole storyline collapses at the eleventh hour. And Lee does indeed come up trumps, delivering a passionate yet selfless performance. For once, the scene isn’t about Karen. She is merely acting as a conduit, a vessel for her friend, and the actress understands that. But perhaps even more crucial than Karen’s appeal is Harry Fisher’s near silent but very truthful response to it. As a result, the big emotional payoff at the end of the episode — which is also the end of the storyline — is not just about Val’s unabashed joy at finally being united with her babies, but also Harry’s corresponding (if more understated) pain at relinquishing them. Somehow, we’re rejoicing in Val’s happiness and grieving the Fishers’ loss simultaneously.Meanwhile on DALLAS, in Miss Ellie’s reaction to the doctor’s speech, we see the glamorous, rarefied world of the Ewings come slap up against the ugly realities of life that even they are not immune from. As the soaps become increasingly interchangeable (Greg Sumner acquires his own Ewing Oil-style executive suite in this week’s KNOTS) and the hair grows even bigger (and that’s just the men — Mack Mackenzie, Chase Gioberti and Lance Cumson are each looking more bouffant this season), such moments of clarity as these become all the more striking, slicing through the Soap Land artifice to touch upon the basic human truths underneath.The new DALLAS season might only be three episodes old, but Sue Ellen's identity has already been redefined several times. “She was never a Ewing,” JR declared in the season opener, lashing out at her in the aftermath of Bobby’s death. Following Bobby’s funeral, he downgraded her yet further: “You don’t exist — you’re just a bad memory that doesn’t know when to go away.” By the time she makes it to the detox ward this week, any vestige of her individuality has been lost (“lady had no ID on her”) and in the eyes of the medical staff, she is reduced to her most basic human credentials: "Jane Doe, female, Caucasian, weight approximately 110, height approximately 5'10", eyes green, hair brown, all her teeth.” Following her scene with the doctor, it falls to Miss Ellie to restore Sue Ellen's former identity: "She's a woman that we have loved and a woman that has loved us. She’s the mother of your son who still needs her. She’s a member of this family, JR. She is a Ewing.” His mama’s words hit home — as much he might want to, JR can no longer dismiss Sue Ellen as nonexistent. Later in the episode, he delivers a touching monologue in which he reverently recalls the first time he ever laid eyes on her and concludes it by conferring upon her her original title of “Miss Texas, 1967.” (This tribute also makes a fitting counterpart to the one Sue Ellen delivers at JR’s graveside nearly thirty years later.)The final scenes of this week’s KNOTS LANDING and DYNASTY dovetail rather neatly. “Nightmare is not a strong enough word to describe what she’s been through,” Karen Mackenzie tells Harry Fisher during their scene together. “Dreams are my business,” Rita's movie director boyfriend Joel Abrigore informs Sammy Jo during their first meeting. Yes, just as Val gets her babies back on KNOTS, thereby signalling the end of one kidnapping-related nightmare, another is about to begin on DYNASTY.Similarly, no sooner has one “back from the dead” storyline (that of Val and her supposedly stillborn children) been finally laid to rest than others arise from the grave to take its place. On FALCON CREST, we learn of a another woman falsely informed that her baby was stillborn — this time, by her own mother. Unlike Val, Julia Cumson still believes that the illegitimate son she gave birth to years earlier was born dead. Instead, as we discover in the exciting last moments of this week’s episode, he is now a Catholic priest living in Connecticut! Meanwhile on DYNASTY, Alexis is haunted by nightmares that King Galen is still alive, just Val was by dreams of her twins last year.On last week’s DALLAS, a jive-talking street guy broke an unwritten Soap Land rule by directly referring to Sue Ellen’s shoulder-pads. (“She looks like a Dallas cowboy!” he laughed, prodding them.) On this week’s DYNASTY, as if in direct response to that transgression, Alexis sports what must surely qualify as the genre’s most outrageous outfit to date. In place of shoulder-pads, she wears shoulder-spikes, and looks less like an American footballer than a human firework. Most incongruously, she wears the item to a business meeting with Dominique Devereaux. Unlike the incident on DALLAS, no reference is made to the strangeness of Alexis’s appearance, but this does not prevent the viewer at home from being entirely distracted from the scene’s dialogue. This reflects Alexis’s own state of mind as she is too preoccupied by thoughts of King Galen’s fate to pay attention to what Dominique is saying to her (something about timberland). This is signified by her childlike doodling of Galen’s name on a pad. Similarly, the spikes on each of Alexis’s shoulders create the shape of a crown as if crudely drawn by a child. So while the scene is ‘all about the dress’, it does at least have some thematic logic.Also back from the dead this week, fresh from blowing his brains out on KNOTS LANDING, Dr. Ackerman resumes his original Soap Land role of JR’s banker, Franklin Horner. We see him helping to arrange a handsome offer for Christopher’s share of Ewing Oil (and not a bridge tournament in sight). He declares that if Pam accepts the deal, “She will be one of the wealthiest people in the state, in the country.” Impressive, but not as much as Joel Abrigore’s description of Blake Carrington on DYNASTY: “I read about him in Fortune. He's one of the world's wealthiest men."While Jack Ewing lends Ray a hand with the cattle-branding on Southfork, his erstwhile PAPER DOLLS lover Racine shows up as the daughter of a famous lawyer on FALCON CREST. As JJ Roberts, Morgan Fairchild combines her PAPER DOLLS work ethic (“I made my first million before I was thirty”) with an interest in her former FLAMINGO ROAD flame, Michael Tyrone aka Richard Channing - only this time she's offering him her expertise as an attorney rather than as a bed partner. On PAPER DOLLS, Jack was a member of a prominent family while Racine was an enigmatic character whose background was shrouded in mystery. Now their situations are reversed. We learn more of Jordan Jennifer Roberts’ history in her introductory scene than we did about Racine's in all thirteen episodes of PAPER DOLLS. By contrast on DALLAS, Jack is proving to be a master of the inscrutable one-word answer. "You thinking of putting some roots down, Jack, or you be heading back to where you came from? Where was that anyway?” asks Ray. "Nowhere,” he responds. "You ever marry?” Ray persists in a later scene. "Almost,” he replies.Jordan Roberts has a question of her own, regarding the night of the explosion at the end of last season’s FALCON CREST. "What was Mrs. Gioberti doing at your house?” she asks Richard. This query echoes Miss Ellie’s to Pam last week, regarding the morning of Bobby’s death at the end of last season’s DALLAS: “It was so early. How did he happen to be here?” Whether or not Richard will able to keep dodging the question as deftly as Pam did remains to be seen.Elsewhere, it’s time for Soap Land’s very first Battle of the Amnesiacs. In the DYNASTY corner, we have Randall Adams, whose past is an entirely blank slate — all she knows about herself is that she can speak French with an accent and has an affinity with the name Colby. In the FALCON CREST corner, we have Maggie Gioberti who, by way of contrast, is surrounded by family and friends, but no longer has any memory of them following last season’s cliffhanging explosion. Save for her budding friendship with Miles, Fallon is all alone in the world, but even that seems preferable to the position Maggie finds herself in. “I am going home with a total stranger,” she says nervously as she prepares to leave the hospital with her husband. When told that she and Chase have a wonderful marriage, she replies, “I can’t remember it and I can’t feel it.” “It was like it wasn’t her there. It was like it was somebody else in her body,” says JR of his encounter with Sue Ellen in the detox ward this week. Although their circumstances are different, that could just as easily be Chase describing his situation with Maggie.This leads to some fascinating scenes from a soap marriage. In the absence of a shared history, the Giobertis’ relationship is reduced to its most basic elements. Without knowing why, Maggie intuitively recoils whenever Chase tries to touch her until, in an explosive combination of wounded male ego and a genuine desire to get through to her, he comes dangerously close to forcing himself on her. A soap’s most heroic character almost raping his wife just one episode after she shared a romantic kiss with its most villainous one — how upside down is that? This is another instance of what is arguably Soap Land’s vaguest show tapping into something unexpectedly primal and subversive.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (3) KNOTS LANDING3 (-) FALCON CREST4 (2) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?