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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 155327" data-attributes="member: 22">19 Oct 89: KNOTS LANDING: Close Call v. 20 Oct 89: DALLAS: Pride and Prejudice v. 20 Oct 89: FALCON CREST:  PaybackAfter all the death and darkness of recent weeks, Soap Land takes its foot off the gas a little. The stakes aren’t quite so high on this week’s episodes and each show includes what could be described as a "filler" storyline. On KNOTS, something that could be dealt with in a couple of lines — Val telling Danny that Gary is the twins’ father — instead plays out over the course of the episode as Val worries about his reaction (“What if I tell Danny and he doesn’t wanna stick around?”). The show succeeds in making it feel like a big deal, assisted in no small part by Val herself, who could make a drama out of anything. DALLAS includes a cute little subplot about Christopher going on his first date while FALCON CREST has a stand-alone storyline where Charley hijacks the family limo, picks up a couple of girls in town (wide-eyed Valley girls as opposed to slutty stereotypes, which makes a refreshing change) and brings them back to the house for an afternoon of vase-smashing, pillow fighting and blasting out ‘That’s Amore’ by Dean Martin on the stereo (Charley’s third homage to Dino in as many episodes and the very song that Zorelli sang in the shower on last season’s DYNASTY). Compared to his previous acts of desecration in the family home, it’s pretty mild, but it’s a desecration nonetheless.Last week, James Beaumont made his first appearance on DALLAS via a “chair reveal”. This week, DALLAS ends and FALCON CREST begins with a character making their entrance using another soap trope, the “feet-first introduction.” In both instances, the camera focuses on a woman’s feet as she steps out a car, then pans up her legs. Technically, it’s a reintroduction on DALLAS as the woman climbing out of the limousine and onto the cardboard patio at Southfork, clad elegantly in black, is revealed to be Vanessa Beaumont. On FALCON CREST, the woman who steps out of a red convertible outside of the Agretti house, dressed all in white, is an entirely new character, Genele Ericson.Placing an introductory scene before the opening titles has become something of a fixture on this season’s KNOTS. This week's has Paige using Carlos as a sounding board as she weighs up her options regarding her relationship with Greg. Carlos’s inability to get a word in could be read as an ironic acknowledgement that Soap Land’s servants mostly exist to be seen and not heard. FALCON CREST’s opening scene is also an exchange between a glamorous blonde and a domestic that underlines the difference in their social status. Having arrived at the Agretti house, Genele knocks on the door. “Can I help you?” asks the maid. “I doubt it,” she replies, walking in uninvited. While sizing up the joint, she passes the maid her jacket without bothering to look at her: “Careful, it wrinkles.” Instead of answering the maid’s questions or obeying her polite request to leave, Genele dismisses her (“I’d like to be alone now. I’ve had a long trip and I’m tired … Go, go away”), stretches out on a couch, kicks off her shoes, chuckles to herself and says to a photo of Frank, “Honey, I’m home.” There is no equivalent servant action on DALLAS, but after seven years of answering phones and walking back and forth to Sly’s desk, Ewing Oil receptionist Kendall is finally rewarded with her first ever close up when James takes her out for drinks and quizzes her for information about JR. (She’s late for work the next day, which suggests that’s not all they got up to.)The way Genele makes herself at home on FALCON CREST, it’s as if she’s heard there’s a vacancy for a Soap Land villainess (the original triumvirate of Alexis, Abby and Angela having all dispersed) and is determined to land the job. Luckily for her, her nearest rival, DALLAS’s Michelle Stevens, has the week off. As soap bitches go, Genele is a bit New Alexis — vampy rather than subtle. When Frank Agretti, who turns out to be her former brother-in-law, arrives home, he finds her doing that most Alexis of things: taking a bubble bath. “What in the name of God are you doing here?” he asks. “I do very little in the name of God,” she purrs before standing in front of him, as naked and wet as Marilee Stone was when JR abandoned her in her swimming pool last week. “You must be out of your mind to come here,” he says. “Please, Frank,” she murmurs. She kisses him and when he responds, she rewards him by biting his bottom lip, drawing blood. She goes on like this throughout the episode, alternately teasing and taunting him, while tossing out the occasional veiled remark about his dead wife, until you’re not sure if Frank wants to shag her or strangle her. Just as Angela did with Charley a few weeks ago, he eventually wakes up to find her sitting on his bed in her best Valentine Lingerie. She’s found the document that gives him Angela’s power of attorney. He tries to grab it, but she’s too quick. “Frank, you’re so stupid,” she tells him. “It’s one of the things I like best about you … A goldmine right under your nose and you probably weren’t planning to do anything at all with it, were you?” By now, she’s kneeling on the bed on all fours, practically wiggling her behind in his face. “I know what you want and you can have it,” she says — and she’s not talking about the document. “Then I’ll tell you what I want.” “No,” he replies. “Yes,” she insists. Then he throws her back onto the bed, she laughs, he undoes his robe and — blackout. To be sure, theirs is a lot more twisted, even masochistic, than either of Soap Land’s other May/December relationships, JR and Cally or Paige and Greg.It’s the first day of a new job for Paige on KNOTS and Richard on FALCON CREST. While Paige dictates the terms of her employment to Greg (“I want your ex-wife’s old office,” she begins, “an expense account, and I want a company car with a parking space next to the elevator to park my company car, I want my own secretary, a computer and I want $120,000 a year salary with six months guaranteed severance pay”), the terms of Richard’s are laid out to him by his new boss at Murdy and Sampson (some sort of investment brokers): “I’m only gonna say this once, Channing, so I hope you’re paying attention. We do things by the book around here. We don’t lie, we don’t cheat and we don’t steal. I know this may seem like a novel approach to you, but that’s the way we do business.” “I’ll try to get used to it,” replies Richard with his customary wryness. “Skip the wisecracks,” snaps the boss.Paige’s return causes some literal office politics at the Sumner Group as Mort is under the misapprehension that he is to inherit Abby’s executive suite. While he is measuring up the walls to redecorate, Paige sweeps in and takes over. Meanwhile, Richard is obliged to downsize his workspace from his executive office at the New Globe (just as JR was when he returned to Ewing Oil last season). “The private shower in your old office was bigger than this,” a colleague points out, “but golly, it’s the best we could do. Sorry about the parking lot view.” Not that Richard’s complaining: “My old office had iron bars and a toilet in the middle of the floor.”There is scant sympathy for Soap Land’s recently bereaved. Not only does Richard receive a cool welcome from his new employer, but when Carter McKay approaches April on the street, scarcely a week after his only son died in his arms, she tells him he’s “a cold cruel arrogant man … I wouldn’t sell you yesterday’s newspaper.” Satisfyingly, he gives as good as he gets, telling her she’s “a busy little opportunist that goes from man to man the way a bee goes from flower to flower.”Some big numbers are bandied about this week. First, Greg Sumner presents Michael Fairgate with $100,000 for his computer vaccine (the one that Johnny Rourke ripped off), then the Tuscany bank demands the immediate repayment of a $20,000,000 loan or they will foreclose on Falcon Crest, and finally $42,000,000 is the amount Michael Sharpe is obliged to pay Richard’s new bosses when a business transaction that I was just about able to follow as it was happening but couldn’t begin to explain now backfires. (Sharpe throws the most spectacular tantrum when this occurs.)After a week’s absence, we catch up with Miss Ellie who is proving just as dogged in her search for the lock that her second Mysterious Key will open as her son Gary is in his mission to track down Sally’s Friend. Both rise above the negative opinions of those they have enlisted in their search. “Looks like another dead end to me,” says Clayton as he and Ellie stand outside a boarded up boarding house in Pride. “Does the phrase ‘needle in a haystack’ mean anything to you?” Frank Williams asks Gary as they go from door to door, asking people if they know a woman with a friend called Sally and a dog named Chester. “At least we’re reducing the size of the haystack,” says Gary while Ellie goes so far as to buy up the entire town of Pride in order to gain access to the boarding house.The leisurely pace of this week’s KNOTS makes the head-spinning pileup of coincidences in the show’s final scene all the more unexpected. Frustrated by his search, Gary accepts an invitation to watch Frank perform at a club called Stage 25 (the first indication we’ve been given of any musical proclivities on Frank’s part). Amanda, the twins’ teacher who just happens to be sleeping with Danny, just happens to be singing there as well (that same cheesy Peter Pan number from last week). Gary doesn’t know her but just happens to see Danny kissing her in the club. He follows them outside where he just happens to hear Amanda talking to her dog who just happens to be called Chester, which just happens to be the name of the dog belonging to the woman he’s been desperately searching for for the past three episodes. Cut back to Gary with a “Holy Shit, it’s Sally’s Friend!” expression on his face. Ellie and Clayton look similarly open-mouthed when their search leads them from a cuckoo clock in Pride to a farmhouse in Montana where the mailboxes read “Ewing” and “Mallory”.There are also twists galore in the final minutes of FALCON CREST. The bank is about to seize the family business when Richard arrives to save the day with a $20,000,000 cheque (“If you want, you can write a thank-you note to Michael Sharpe,” he tells Lance and Pilar. “He’s the one that came up with the money. He didn’t want to, but he did.”) This gives Lance what he’s always wanted (except when he hasn’t): control of Falcon Crest — for about five seconds. Frank Agretti appears with his power of attorney and apologetically insists on exercising his right to take over, “effective as of right now.” “Why are you doing this?” asks Lance. Frank can’t give him a straight answer, but the episode ends with Lance looking out of the window to see him driving away with Genele in her red-for-danger convertible.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (3) KNOTS LANDING2 (1) FALCON CREST3 (2) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?