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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 49255" data-attributes="member: 22">22 Oct 86: DYNASTY: Reward v. 23 Oct 86: THE COLBYS: Something Old, Something New v. 23 Oct 86: KNOTS LANDING: All Over But the Shouting v. 24 Oct 86: DALLAS: Trompe L'Oeil v. 24 Oct 86: FALCON CREST: Fatal AttractionFour significant characters arrive in Soap Land this week — Dana on DYNASTY, April on DALLAS, Cash Cassidy on THE COLBYS and Dan Fixx on FALCON CREST. While none has previously been mentioned onscreen, each has a role in at least one major character's backstory.Precisely what that role is isn’t always immediately clear. So far, all we know about Dana’s connection with Adam Carrington is an old newspaper cutting about him (“Michael Torrance Revealed as Carrington Heir”) she produces from her purse following their seemingly chance encounter. Just as Wes Parmalee’s keepsake photo of a young Miss Ellie was our first clue that he wasn’t just another ranch hand for hire and Channing Carter’s collection of Colby dossiers provided the first hint that she wasn’t simply a girl Miles had met by chance in a bar, Dana’s clipping is our first indication that is she isn’t quite the agenda-free character she initially appeared to be.There’s a mystery surrounding THE COLBYS’ new character Cash, too, but it's one that he himself is unaware of. In fact, the episode ends with his old flame Monica on the phone to her offscreen Aunt Connie. “God, I don't know what I'll do if he ever finds out the truth!” she cries.There’s yet more mystery on FALCON CREST where everyone seems to remember Melissa’s former schoolmate, Dan Fixx (“He always had a dangerous look about him,” recalls Julia — herself no slouch in the danger department), but no one knows what hold he has over Angela that would cause her to provide him with both a place to live and a job at the Del Oro Spa.In contrast to Dana, Cash and Dan, April Stevens’ first scene on DALLAS tells us pretty much all we need to know about her: she’s sexy, funny and a gold digger. Like Kristin Shepard, Sammy Jo Dean and Terry Hartford before her, her target is a family member from humble beginnings who has struck it rich. Instead of an elder sister or an aunt who has married into a rich family, April is focused on her ex-husband Jack and his ten percent of Ewing Oil.As well as Dana Waring, this week’s DYNASTY also introduces us to Nick Kimble, aka “the best drill foreman in the business”. While his FALCON CREST namesake Skylar was the daughter of one of Peter Stavros’s ex-wives, Nick is the son of one of Blake’s former wildcatting buddies. Nick is also black, which presumably means his father was too. The idea that Blake Carrington (or at least the Blake we were introduced to when DYNASTY began) would have had a close black friend in the mid-1950s is kind of surprising — as surprising as the notion that the Jock Ewing we knew in the first few seasons of DALLAS would have battled the Ku Klux Klan to defend the rights of black sharecroppers in the 1930s, as depicted in last season’s DALLAS: “The Early Years”. The parallels don’t end there — Blake’s appeal to Nick and a bunch of other riggers to join him in his quest for “gas, natural gas!” carries with it the same kind of pioneering passion that Jock had when galvanising those same sharecroppers into fighting for the oil that lay beneath the land on which they toiled.However, the present day character Nick Kimble has most in common with is Cash on THE COLBYS. Nick’s and Cash’s fathers were once the business partners of Blake and Jason respectively. Although we aren't given the details of these partnerships, there is a lingering sense of ill-feeling in both cases. “At least he took a chance,” says Blake of Nick’s father. “And lost,” counters Nick. “You fought with my father and lost,” echoes Cash while talking to Jason. “What I lost was faith,” Jason replies. “Your old man was my partner. He didn't level with me.”  However, both sets of men agree to set aside these differences for the sake of an exciting new business venture — Blake’s gas field (“possibly the biggest field in the United States!”) on DYNASTY, and Jason’s IMOS Project (not merely “an internationally manned orbital satellite dedicated to scientific research”, but “a star of hope that will shine over every nation on earth”) on THE COLBYS.IMOS sounds sexily space-age in the same way that Empire Valley once did on KNOTS. (Speaking of which, E***** V***** gets a rare mention this week when Gary reflects on his failed bid for the senate: “I’m glad I ran. I got Sumner to clean up the pollution at Empire Valley.”) That’s not the only connection between this storyline and KNOTS LANDING, of course. It’s hard to ignore the fact that Cash Cassidy is played by Seaview Circle’s very own Kenny Ward and, as such, a couple of his comments take on an unintentional irony. “I never lived in California before: I think I’m going to like it,” he says — this from the same face of whom Richard Avery once said: “Born and raised on a surfboard, right here in California.” But when Cash says to Jason, “You know how hard neighbours are to ignore,” he’s referring not to the suburban Averys and Fairgates, but to the intergalactic Russians: “The Soviets are a major player in outer space. Your satellite and theirs will be neighbours.”Oddly, two key events in this week’s Ewing-verse — the result of the senatorial election on KNOTS and the moment on DALLAS where Wes Parmalee formally declares himself to be Jock — take place offscreen. We only learn of Peter Hollister’s victory as Gary prepares to deliver his concession speech. Meanwhile, Miss Ellie assembles her family at Southfork to relay what Wes has previously told her and Punk. Her speech is then interspersed with flashbacks of Wes speaking directly to her. This nonlinear approach to narrative is highly uncharacteristic of DALLAS and feels almost as bold as KNOTS’ recent soap-within-a-soap flashbacks to 1967.On one level, the DALLAS flashbacks are simply an attempt to conceal some pretty heavy-handed info-dumping: the story of what happened to Wes (as Jock) following the helicopter crash of Season 4, the injuries he sustained, the explanation for his prolonged absence as well as his change in appearance and voice. His tale combines elements of the stories once told by Steven and Fallon on DYNASTY to explain away their absences — burns, plastic surgery, amnesia — but somehow feels more harrowing and believable than either. Whether Wes turns out to be Jock or not, Miss Ellie — and by extension, DALLAS itself — cannot help but have compassion for him.All of the Lorimar soaps have undergone some stylistic changes this season. While KNOTS and FALCON CREST share similarly synthesised scores, DALLAS and FALCON CREST now both employ shorter, punchier scenes than we’re traditionally used to seeing. A scene in this week’s DALLAS between Sue Ellen and her Valentine Lingerie advertising executive, for instance, lasts all of twenty-one seconds. FALCON CREST, meanwhile, introduces a new convention of freeze frames not just at the end of an episode, but before each commercial break.Running counter to such innovations is a sense of both DALLAS and FC going back to basics — returning to the Camelots of their first few seasons if you will. The reintroductions of Tony and Julia Cumson and Vicky Gioberti, as well as the surprise remarriage of Lance and Melissa at the end of this week’s episode, restore some of the original family dynamics to FALCON CREST. (Lance and Melissa’s is one of two elopements in this week’s Soap Land, the other being Miles and Channing’s on THE COLBYS.) Meanwhile, the Parmalee story on DALLAS puts that show's focus firmly back on the Ewings. As Wes tells JR, “I gotta say, you boys are acting true to form.” Indeed, all the major characters’ responses to Parmalee's claim are reassuringly in character. While JR’s proposition (“What do you want to drop this act and get the hell out of Dallas?”) echoes the one he made to Pam at the beginning of the series (“What sort of settlement you’d require to annul this farce?”), Bobby’s threat of violence (“I’m gonna go over to that motel and beat the truth out of him”) reverberates all the way back to Lee Raintree’s pre-series novelisation (“You always did have a terrible fierce temper,” Wes remembers). Cliff’s response to the idea of Jock coming back from the dead feels equally characteristic (“JR … must be climbing the walls!” he laughs delightedly. “Oh my, the Ewings are finally getting theirs!”) which puts Pam, in turn, in the familiar position of scolding her brother for mocking her precious Bobby. Most intriguing, however, is Ray's quietly ambivalent response to Wes.Whereas his brothers put pressure on Parmalee to leave town, Ray sets him an interesting challenge. “I’m pretty sure I know what Jock would have done. I’m kind of curious to see if you do the same thing,” he tells him. Ah, but to which Jock is Ray referring — the semi-ruthless one from DALLAS’s early years who would surely stay and fight for what’s his, no matter what, or the more saintly figure the show turned him into after his death, who would sooner walk off into the sunset than cause his loved ones any further distress? We soon get our answer. “Jock Ewing can’t be scared off and he can’t bought off,” Wes snarls. “Like it or not, JR, your daddy’s back to stay!”Wes and his “boys” aren’t the only ones with father/son issues this week. “We both had, or have, fathers who hated us … Accept your father’s hatred, Adam, because until you do, you won’t be able to control your own life,” Ben Carrington tells his nephew in an almost dizzyingly paranoiac exchange on DYNASTY. Like a kinkily perverse Jock Ewing, Alexis has pitted the two men against each other in order to determine which is her most loyal subject. “Your fantasy’s the same as mine — your father, who never understood you, welcoming you back, promising to make up all for all those wasted years,” continues Ben, trying to get inside Adam’s head. “What the hell is your game?” Adam snaps back. “It’s to send me running back to my father, to try and fulfil that so-called fantasy, and then you can smugly show Alexis you were right all along — no, I can’t be trusted.” Over on FALCON CREST, Tony Cumson would dearly love to fulfil such a fantasy for his own son only Lance isn’t interested. Tony finally loses patience: “It makes me sick to see what Angela’s done to you, you damn playboy! She’s emasculated you!” he barks before father and son start brawling in the Falcon Crest hallway (another scene which ends abruptly in a mid-episode freeze frame).Unwanted press attention is another theme running through nearly all this week’s soaps. Not only does the Denver Mirror continue to hound Blake with provocative headlines about the fire at La Mirage, but Alexis goes so far as to poach ace reporter Gordon Wales (easily my favourite recurring character on DYNASTY) from World Finance magazine. “Who do I have to kill?” he asks after she promises to triple his former salary. “Blake Carrington,” she replies. “I want you to kill him with your infamous killer prose.” Meanwhile, Phil Harbert’s mug shot is plastered all over the front page of the Knots Landing Tribune under the headline “MAN IDENTIFIED AS KIDNAPPER OF KAREN MACKENZIE”. And while JR is offended when he overhears a couple of men in a bar slavering over Mandy’s Valentine Girl ad (Mitch Cooper suffered a similar indignity when Lucy was Miss Young Dallas), FALCON CREST’s Kim Novak/Kit Marlowe/Skylar Kimble goes to great lengths to avoid having her picture taken by a press photographer at the grand opening of the Del Oro Spa.The most interesting scenes in this week’s DALLAS and KNOTS take place in motel rooms — those occupied by Wes Parmalee and Phil Harbert respectively. Phil is under strict instructions from Greg Sumner to keep a low profile until he can get him out of the country: “I don’t want you to leave this room. I don’t want anyone to see your face.” Ironically, Phil proves far more fascinating to watch in captivity than his own hostage Karen did a few weeks ago. With only a few cockroaches for company, Phil goes quietly stir crazy, seeking refuge in junk food and trash TV. This culminates in a variation on Katherine Wentworth’s hurling-an-object-at-a-TV-screen moment. Just as the blood-red stain Katherine's tomato juice left on her screen was suitably metaphorical so the sludgy brown smear Phil’s choc-ice leaves on his serves as an effective symbol of how everything he touches eventually turns to shit.So, while Phil Harbert plans to skip town, Wes Parmalee is “back to stay”. Each arrangement, however, is subject to an end-of-episode plot twist. A craving for carbs leads to Phil’s downfall when he ignores Greg’s orders and calls out for pizza. The delivery guy recognises his face from the newspaper and notifies Mack of his whereabouts. Meanwhile, Wes drops by Ewing Oil with an unexpected announcement for JR and Bobby: “I’ve decided to leave Dallas. I know I’ve caused you all pain but it's hurt me too. None of my family, except maybe Ray, can see who I am so I guess maybe it's better if I leave.” It’s unclear what led to this change of heart — possibly the conversation between Wes and Clayton where the latter impressed upon him his devotion to Miss Ellie — but it doesn’t take much goading from JR for Wes to lose his temper and recount events that took place in “The Dove Hunt” (Season 2) that only JR and Jock were privy to. “You tell me how anyone on God’s green earth but Jock Ewing could know that!” he shouts.The scene in this week’s FALCON CREST where Maggie finally blurts out to husband Chase that she was raped is unusually raw and powerful, for both FC in particular and Soap Land in general. There have been other rape victims over the years — Lucy Ewing, Lute-Mae Sanders, Kirby, Fallon Colby — but this is the closest a 1980s supersoap has come since Richard Avery found wife Laura with her dress torn in "The Lie" to acknowledging the reality behind those three little words: “I was raped”. Now that her husband knows that either he or her rapist could be the father of her baby, Maggie is in pretty much the same position as Fallon on THE COLBYS (just she was a year ago when both were suffering from amnesia). In each case, an amniocentesis test could determine the unborn child’s paternity. In each case, inevitability, there is a snag. For Fallon, such a procedure would jeopardise the health of her unborn baby, which she is determined to keep. As for Maggie, who is as yet undecided whether or not to continue with her pregnancy, the test cannot be performed for another six weeks, by which time it will be too late for her to have an abortion.And this week’s Top 5 is …1 (1) DALLAS2 (2) FALCON CREST3 (3) DYNASTY4 (4) KNOTS5 (5) THE COLBYS</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?