DALLAS versus KNOTS LANDING versus the rest of them week by week

[James from London]

15 Apr 13: DALLAS: Legacies v. 13 Apr 16: EMPIRE: The Tameness of a Wolf v. 25 Oct 18: DYNASTY: The Butler Did It

Each of last week’s episodes ended with either a death or the news of a death — or, in the case of EMPIRE, both. “Out of death blooms new life,” claims New New Cristal on this week's DYNASTY. Out of Soap Land deaths, all one really hopes for are lots of juicy repercussions. Alas, the after-effects of Mimi and Camilla’s murder/suicide are somewhat minimal, barely lasting beyond this week’s opening scene where Hakeem, surrounded by giant photos of Naomi Campbell, makes a nice speech about how “she shouldn’t be remembered the way she died because she was way more than that”, which the rest of the Lyons listen to with varying degrees of cynicism. The best moment comes when Lucious, taking advantage of the fact that no-one knows of his role in Camilla’s suicide, congratulates Hakeem on orchestrating the whole thing: “If you hadn’t sent that sex-tape, we’d all still be under that backstabbing bitch’s thumb today. Thank God you killed her.” Over on DYNASTY, Max Van Kirk’s demise at the end of last week’s ep leads to a typically convoluted plot in which Michael Culhane finds himself blackmailed into working for Ada Stone, an impressively sinister criminal who collects two-thousand-year-old sarcophaguses, while Fallon is obliged to make nice to Liam’s formidable mother. I’m not sure if C21st Soap Land in general, and New DYNASTY in particular, really needs another flamboyant middle-aged woman who says bitchily outrageous things all the time, but we’ve got one anyway. (Speaking of flamboyant middle-aged women saying bitchily outrageous things, it’s a toss-up between EMPIRE’s Cookie and DYNASTY’s Alexis for the crudest pudenda-based insult of the week. While Cookie describes Camilla and Mimi as “a carpet-munching Romeo and Juliet”, Alexis calls Melissa Daniels “a low-level vaginal climber.”)

Like Judith Ryland on DALLAS, Liam’s mother Laura occupies the traditionally male role of a domineering parent openly contemptuous of her son. She goes so far as to refer to Liam as “my son, the eunuch.” While one could imagine Judith saying the same thing about Harris, she would do so in private rather than to someone she’s just met, the way Laura does to Fallon. Rather than push Mommy down the stairs the way Harris did, Liam silently endures her abuse. (“For some crazy reason, I still want her approval,” he admits, sounding like every Soap Land son ever, only with a switch of gender pronouns.) It does bring out Fallon’s protective side, which results in even more bitchy name-calling (“Listen up, you Joan Crawford psycho shrew,” she snarls at Laura), while also bringing her and Liam closer together. Despite all the silliness surrounding them, one can’t help rooting for Liam and Fallon as a couple. Interestingly, Laura’s camp husband George inherits Krystle’s “tennis is a bloodsport around here — people have been executed for missing a backhand” line from ‘80s DYNASTY. Speaking of which, the name of Kirby’s psychiatrist is none other than Dr Nick Toscanni.

Meanwhile on DALLAS, last week’s discovery of Pam Ewing’s death certificate is followed by Dr Gordon explaining to Christopher both the circumstances of her demise (pancreatic cancer) and the cover-up that followed it in a very moving and satisfying scene. By the time Pam exited the original DALLAS in ’87, Victoria Principal was long gone and all that was left was a mute figure wrapped entirely in bandages — less a recognisable character, more a clunky plot device. Twenty-six years later, the mummified creature who was wheeled off the show is finally humanised. “Your mother ran away from Dallas because she felt she was hideous, Christopher,” says Dr Gordon. “She didn’t want to scare her little boy. She came to me for help and I did what I could as a surgeon …” “She fought to get better so she could return home to you,” adds Corinna, aka the mystery woman in the hat, aka Pam’s nurse. “Her biggest regret was that she never made it back to Dallas.” They go on to reveal that after Pam died in ’89, Cliff “asked us to keep your mother’s death a secret so he could control her shares in his company. In exchange, he supported us all these years.” Theoretically, we should hate the Gordons for their role in this heinous deception, but they deliver their story with such sorrow and compassion that it doesn’t occur to us to do so.

While Christopher learns that Pam had her identity stolen after her death, New New Cristal tells Blake that she gave her identity to Dead Cristal when they first met (because she thought she was dying — she doesn’t go into much detail about that bit). Blake then attempts to reverse the situation by turning New New Cristal into Dead Cristal — dressing her up in her clothes, serving her her favourite foods, etc. New New Cristal is no more comfortable with this arrangement than Cathy Geary, Jeanne O’Brien and Lauren Daniels were when Gary, Bobby and Richard Channing tried to turn them into Ciji, Pam and Maggie respectively.

Just as DALLAS resists the temptation to turn the Gordons into one-dimensional villains, Roy Vickers, the henchman who physically detonated the bomb that killed Pamela’s babies, is also shown to be something more than just an evil baddy. Ironically, it is Pamela herself who taps into his human side when they meet in the visiting room of the Soap Land Penitentiary. “Do you have children, Mr Vickers?” she asks. He doesn’t reply. “Did you know that one of my babies was a boy and the other was a girl?” she persists. Upon hearing this, he gets up to leave, but she pleads with him to stay: “I need to know the truth. Did my father know that people were on that rig? … I need to know if he knew I was there … Just tell me it was unintentional and I’ll go.” Finally, Roy speaks. “Have other children. Forget your father. There was nothing unintentional about it.”

Roy’s subsequent murder — stabbed by a fellow inmate just seconds after hanging up the prison phone — recalls that of Frank Gathers in the opening episode of this season’s EMPIRE. Both deaths were executions ordered by powerful men — Cliff Barnes and Lucious Lyon. While Roy’s parting words on the phone (“You just take care of yourself and that little grandbaby of mine”) answer Pamela’s question about him having kids, we’re already familiar with Frank’s daughter Freda, whom Lucious has taken under his wing as his new rap protege. Needless to say, she is unaware of the role Lucious played in her father’s death (“They still ain’t caught who did it”), but judging by Cookie’s scared reaction at the end of this week’s ep when she realises the man Lucious killed to protect her and Freda’s father are the same person, it’s gonna be a major deal when she does.

“I did not kill JR! I did not kill JR!” shouts Cliff over and over in a stunning scene as he is dragged away by the Mexican police, the Ewings looking on in grim satisfaction. We don’t realise it at the time, but he is telling the truth. It was JR who killed JR — for he, like Pam, was dying of cancer. (Well, technically it was Bum who pulled the trigger at his request. This echoes similar requests made on EMPIRE in recent weeks: first Lucious ordering Hakeem to shoot him, then Camilla begging Lucious to do the same thing to her.)

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Bum tells John Ross tearfully in the Southfork graveyard. “Please believe that JR’s last act was an act of love for his family and for you.” The whole graveyard scene is brilliant. Save for a brief moment alone after JR’s funeral, we haven’t really seen Bobby grieve for his brother. Now, in front of John Ross, Bum and Christopher, he fights back tears as he reads aloud from the letter JR wrote to him just before he died. (“I can never make up for all the terrible hurtful things I did to you, Bobby, and I have no excuses either one of us would believe, but I hope in the quiet place in your heart where the truth lives that my jealousy, as powerful as it was, was nothing compared to my love for you. Goodbye, baby brother.”) Although Bobby never denied JR’s death the way Miss Ellie did Jock’s, this is his equivalent of her breakdown scene in the kitchen when she finally acknowledged the reality of his passing, only this scene feels even more real and moving. Aside from its emotional power, the reading of JR’s letter also moves the story forward — we finally discover that JR’s masterplan was to frame Cliff for his own death. Once again on DALLAS, the emotions of the characters and the mechanics of the plot are perfectly in sync.

As neatly as the graveyard scene appears to resolve the “Who killed JR?” mystery, one story thread is left dangling. Only the Ewing men (and Bum) know that Cliff is now behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. The Ewing women have been kept in the dark. Not even Cliff’s daughter is aware that she has helped frame him for a murder of which he is innocent.

Traditionally, such secrets, and the ever-present possibility of their discovery, have been an essential part of soap but I’m not sure if that necessarily applies in C21st Soap Land. For instance, when Lucious finally tells Cookie the whole story of the childhood trauma he’s been flashing back to throughout the season — how his mentally ill mother, after realising she’d tried to drown him in a bathtub, shot herself dead in front of him — her first instinct is not to keep his secret, but to encourage him to broadcast it to the world by re-enacting it in his new music video: “You gotta tell the truth. You gotta tell your whole story … You need to show what happened to your mother … and what she did to you.”

Scarcely a week goes by without some kind of party or grand event on EMPIRE and DYNASTY and this one is no exception. Cookie, celebrating her “first birthday in seventeen years that I get to breathe free air”, asks her family (including Lucious) to set aside their differences long enough to “give me a nice happy birthday dinner, no drama.” Sam, meanwhile, attempts to make up for questioning Steven’s commitment to fatherhood by throwing him and Melissa a “baby-tacular” baby shower, which Anders describes as “over-over-the-top, even by Carrington standards.” (There are baby giraffes, baby grand pianos and baby everything else.) Inevitably, neither party quite goes according to plan. While Cookie’s boys refuse to be in the same room as their father (“All I wanted was a happy birthday dinner with my family — can’t do that because you managed to piss off all my sons!” she complains), Anders suggests to Sam that extravagance might not be the best way to show his support: “Steven was never into excess. He just wanted people to be there for him.” Both of these situations lead to unexpectedly touching scenes. Cookie’s surprise when her sons show up after all (“Apparently, they love you more than they hate me,” Lucious concludes) is genuinely sweet. So is Steven’s when Sam gives him his main present at the shower: the plain wooden rocking horse he (Steven) grew up with. “It’s humble and solid,” Sam explains solemnly. “It gave you support and comfort when you needed it.”

So JR’s masterplan has been successfully executed: Cliff and Harris are behind bars and the Ewings have not only regained Ewing Energies but acquired control of Barnes Global. As Pamela moves onto Southfork as John Ross’s wife with Christopher’s blessing, the Barnes/Ewing feud is essentially over. This sense of familial harmony is matched by both the Lyons sitting down together for Cookie’s birthday and an unexpectedly touching conversation Steven has with Blake about impending fatherhood. “After we lost Adam, I was scared to have another child,” Blake remembers. “I didn’t know if I could ever love again. It wasn’t until the day that you were born that I realised how wrong I was. These things just come … Trust me.” In all three cases, this feeling of peace is shattered in the final moments of their respective episodes.

Elena Ramos receives a message from Cliff asking her to visit him in his jail cell in Mexico. There, he converts the Barnes/Ewing feud into a Ewing/Ramos one with a reminder that JR wasn’t always a benign presence looking down on his family from atop a fluffy white cloud (“Thank-you, Daddy, for watching over us — I love you,” murmurs John Ross at his graveside). Cliff informs Elena that JR tricked her father out of the land that rightfully belongs to the Ramos family: “JR got the parcel which belonged to your dad which was rich in oil and your dad got his, which was worthless. That destroyed your father’s life and JR went off and made millions.” (Suddenly, the sweet but unlikely story Carmen told at JR’s funeral about him inviting her family to live at Southfork after her husband’s death takes on a different complexion.) “JR did the same thing to my father as he did to yours,” Cliff tells Elena. “I can’t fight him from in here but you can. You can be my proxy for the third of Barnes Global that I still own. Make the Ewings pay for the sins against your family.” The prospect of Elena crossing over to the dark side to become Cliff’s new instrument of hate is irresistible.

Back at Ewing Energies, there’s a pleasing sense of end-of-season closure as Sue Ellen joins John Ross to gaze out of the same office window that he and JR did at the end of Season 1. “Now you be nice to that bride of yours. Treat her right,” she tells him. “What do you take me for, Mama — a scoundrel?” he smirks. As the sexy sound of ‘Come Unto Me’ by the Mavericks kicks in on the soundtrack, mother and son go their separate ways — Sue Ellen retires to her office with a bottle of JR Ewing bourbon while John Ross arrives at a hotel suite for a night of romance … with Emma Ryland!

On both EMPIRE and DYNASTY, it is a video played at a party that turns everything on its head. At her birthday gathering, Cookie insists the family watch a rough cut of Lucious’s new video. Seeing the actress playing Lucious’s mother put a gun to her head, Andre flashes back to the moment last season where he did the same thing. This leads to a confrontation so blistering it kind of bypasses soap opera altogether to become purely a rich family drama. Andre turns off the TV before the video has finished playing. “Was my grandmother bipolar?” he demands of Lucious who tries to avoid answering before finally conceding that, “back then, we didn’t have a name for it, but I guess you could say she was bipolar.” “You knew!” replies Andre incredulously and from the rest of the family’s reactions, it’s evident they are as shocked as he is. “This whole time, you knew. You made me feel like I was some freak you didn’t even recognise — my whole life!” “I don’t know how knowing my mother put a gun to her head … would have helped you,” Lucious argues. “It damn sure would have helped me,” snaps Andre. “No, it would have weakened you,” Lucious insists. “I wanted to make you strong, son.” “You’re a damn liar …” “OK, you wanna know the truth? The truth is you got mental issues. The truth is I sent you to all them damn schools thinking maybe that was gonna help you in some way. The truth is I let you marry Rhonda … thinking that maybe that would give you some sense of identity, but the real truth is my mother was a nut job. I was embarrassed by her the same way I’m embarrassed by you. Now does that help you with that truth?” Andre tells him to go to hell and storms out. Rhonda starts to follow, but he tells her to leave him alone. Then, just when we’re starting to think maybe EMPIRE isn’t a soap after all, we see Rhonda walking down the street away from the house. A car pulls up beside her and she gets in, smiling gratefully. “Thank you so much for driving all this way,” she says to the driver. It’s Anika! “I just can’t take it anymore,” Rhonda tells her. “I really just need a day or two to look out for myself.” Anika listens sympathetically then invites her to stay at her place “for as long as you need.” Rhonda eagerly agrees. “It’ll be nice to around someone sane for a change!” she jokes. It’s fascinating how one storyline can incorporate two opposing depictions of mental illness: one is powerfully moving and based on a real disorder; the other is exploitative yet thrilling and based on long-established “psycho bitch” stereotypes that serve to demonise both women and psychological issues.

Like Lucious, DYNASTY’s Kirby has unearthed a long-repressed childhood memory via some stylish flashbacks. When she was twelve years old, she overheard her father and Alexis argue about a night of passion they’d once had. Finding Kirby listening and worried she would blab to Blake, Alexis made it appear as if she were mentally unstable so that her father would ship her back to Australia. History repeats itself during the baby shower as Alexis and Anders argue again and Kirby is listening in once more, this time via a recording device secreted inside a cuddly toy. “You destroyed my daughter’s life and for what — to protect your reputation!” accuses her father before revealing a fresh titbit: “I once asked you about this and you said no — am I the father?” “Yes,” Alexis replies. This is almost really good — a tale of secrets and lies that could have unfolded over several episodes — but frustratingly, New DYNASTY once again chooses comedic spectacle over dramatic tension and so Kirby mischievously plays the video to the assembled party guests. When an embarrassed Alexis stops it halfway through, Kirby stands on a table and shouts that Alexis and Anders not only had an affair, but “a child … Fallon!” The twist, when it comes, is a good one. Anders admits that Kirby is telling truth about the affair, but for one small detail: “Fallon isn’t my child … Steven is.” Despite a sadly poignant look between Steven and Blake who have only just had their nice bonding scene, all the surrounding silliness kind of lets the air of the revelation and what could have been devastating and game-changing feels a bit inconsequential. “OK, wait, so my child wouldn’t be a Carrington heir?” Melissa pipes up, before adding casually, “You’re not the father, Steven. My gyno is.”

Bum may have shot JR, Roy Vickers may have detonated the bomb that killed Pamela’s babies, Dr Gordon and Corinna may have participated in a terrible lie for twenty-four years, but all are depicted in an interestingly human way. The same cannot be said for Melissa. When she first appeared on DYNASTY last season, she was an intriguing, Sue Ellen-ish trophy wife who provided Dead Cristal with a cynical yet pragmatic perspective on what to expect as the spouse of a rich and corrupt businessman. Now, however, she’s just another generic scheming bitch. A similar criticism could be levelled against Camilla on EMPIRE. When Lucious banished her to England last season, she was an aloof but still sympathetic character (who refused to take his money); when she returned a few episodes ago, she was a fully-fledged vengeful murdering loony (who had married Mimi for her money) — but it was all so outrageously exciting that it felt like a fair trade.

If the double whammy of returning home after finding out his mother has been secretly dead for twenty-four years to discover his ex-wife’s married his cousin is tough on Christopher Ewing, it pales into insignificance next to what his poor-little-rich-boy counterpart Steven Carrington goes through in the last few minutes of DYNASTY — within a matter of seconds, he is told that his father is not his father and his child is not his child. To the great credit of the actor playing Steven, his one-word response — a tearily incredulous “What?” — feels utterly believable in the utterly unbelievable circumstances.

And the winner is …

1 (1) DALLAS
2 (2) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY

 

[Willie Oleson]

Speaking of which, the name of Kirby’s psychiatrist is none other than Dr Nick Toscanni.

I've never seen him!

New New Cristal tells Blake that she gave her identity to Dead Cristal when they first met (because she thought she was dying

I don't remember this at all!

I was embarrassed by her the same way I’m embarrassed by you. Now does that help you with that truth?” Andre tells him to go to hell and storms out

It's like Blake and Steven's conversation in the library.

It was JR who killed JR — for he, like Pam, was dying of cancer

And in "Dallas" narrative they died/had died in pretty much the same time span. There's something eerie about it.

Kirby stands on a table and shouts that Alexis and Anders not only had an affair, but “a child … Fallon!”

This misinterpretation is soap gold, not just to reenact Fallon and Sammy Jo's "you're not even a Carrington" scene, but it could have affected so many characters and storylines.
It also works if you know that it was a misinterpretation e.g. watching Alexis trying to do damage control which could have resulted in more unexpected twists and maybe a dangerous cliffhanger too.
I guess Steven was already "on his way out" so the Carrington drama had to end right there and then.

 

[James from London]

I've never seen him!

He's more cold and reptilian than the hearty, hairy original.

I don't remember this at all!

New New Cristal says they met when Dead Cristal volunteered at a hospital where she was a patient and "I gave her my identity to start a new life because I thought mine was over."

It's like Blake and Steven's conversation in the library.

Oh yes, you're right! I think what really sells it is the (mostly silent) reactions of the onlookers. Somehow it feels like a real family explosion.

And in "Dallas" narrative they died/had died in pretty much the same time span. There's something eerie about it.

Yes -- these two arch-enemies, one good, one bad, both succumbing to the same non-soap opera disease. It sort of made them equally human and vulnerable.

 

[James from London]

24 Feb 14: DALLAS: The Return v. 20 Apr 16: EMPIRE: Time Shall Unfold v. 02 Nov 18: DYNASTY: Snowflakes in Hell

New DALLAS’s third season opens with Bobby in the Southfork graveyard talking to his mama’s headstone (Eleanor Southworth Ewing Farlow 1915 - 2001). Similarly on EMPIRE, Lucious “introduces” Andre to his mother via her headstone (Leah Mary Walker 15 March 1947 - 11 January 1979). “So, I’m the caretaker now, huh, Mama?” Bobby says, looking around at the various family graves. “I’m the only one left. Well, I’ll try not to disappoint you.” “Hi, Grandma,” says Andre. “I’m your oldest grandson. I wish I could’ve met you. Medical science has made things more hopeful for people like us.” Lucious tells his son he’s proud of him. “Whenever you say that, you have an agenda,” Andre replies. “There’s a lot of things I’m trying to accomplish right now that I could use your help with,” Lucious admits. “What do you say, man — we good?” Andre doesn’t respond.

To fill us in on the events that led to Alexis and Anders’ one-night stand and Steven’s subsequent conception, New DYNASTY employs the old KNOTSian trick of cross-cutting between three different conversations (Blake and Sam, Anders and Steven, Alexis and Fallon). As it did in the original series, Adam’s abduction proves a useful device to explain the characters’ past actions. “I was the one watching Baby Adam when he was taken and in the sombre weeks that followed, I was drowning in the guilt of having failed my duties,” Anders confesses. “I was also drowning in scotch.” “It was a dark time,” adds Alexis. So far, so evocative. Alas, the characters’ actions in the present are less dramatically interesting. Instead of shooting Anders in the face or at least sacking him for his betrayal, Blake just gets all sulky and petulant. “Bo took a dump and I stepped in it. Make sure you clean all the little grooves,” he huffs, pressing his soiled shoe against Anders’ shirt. By the end of the ep, he and Anders are friends again and all is forgiven. “Names aren’t what make a family, people do,” Blake concludes. Steven, meanwhile, deals with his paternal bombshell by moving to Paraguay to build houses for the needy. Commendable perhaps, but it’s a bit like Ray Krebbs responding to the discovery that he’s Jock’s son by immediately leaving Texas to become a missionary.

Much to Steven’s bemusement, the rest of the Carringtons follow him to Paraguay where they attempt to show their solidarity by slumming it on a campsite. Much culture-clash comedy ensues. (Unsurprisingly, Alexis is not as amenable to sleeping in a tent as she was when she was Paige Matheson on an archaeological dig in Santa Tecla, even if her outfit — black vest, white pants — is the same as she wore then.) Shockingly, this means there is no Party of the Week on DYNASTY. Conversely on DALLAS, where there hasn’t been a party since the Ewing barbecue in Season 1 (unless you count JR’s memorial service almost a year ago), Sue Ellen has decided to celebrate John Ross and Pamela’s elopement by throwing them a big wedding at the ranch. This leads to a very old-fashioned scene on the Southfork patio where the Ewing ladies — Sue Ellen, Pamela and Ann — ooh and aah over engagement rings and bridal magazines. “I didn’t think I’d find happiness again,” says Pamela shyly, as if the clock has been reset and she is once again Rebecca Sutter, the wholesome bride-to-be we met when New DALLAS first began. Sue Ellen’s reply, “Happiness found you and that’s the best kind of happiness,” sounds like one of Miss Ellie’s pearls of wisdom from the 1980s.

If Pamela is Southfork’s new good girl, Emma Ryland is its naughty one. Wearing the same sly smile that Lucy used to when skipping school to make out with Ray in the barn, she makes a point of befriending Pamela — even offering to help with the wedding — while continuing to sleep with her husband right under her nose. “I can see why John Ross loves you so much. It’s good to know you’re both right across the hall.” Indeed they are — I cannot think of another instance where a Soap Land husband or wife conducted an affair with someone just two bedrooms away from their own. (While Emma plays the sexy minx, her trouble-making DYNASTY equivalent, Kirby, is more of a prankster — running up debts on Steven’s credit card and pinning the blame on Alexis, then calling her up to gloat about it.)

While it’s customary for snippets of dialogue from ‘80s DYNASTY to pop up in the reboot, the same thing rarely happens on DALLAS. This week, however, Pam and Bobby’s dialogue from when she woke up and found him in the shower is repeated by Sue Ellen and John Ross as she sees him coming out of Emma’s bedroom. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” John Ross asks his mama. “For a moment I thought I had,” she replies. While I’m hearing Bobby and Pam, Sue Ellen’s visualising JR, making the whole thing doubly spooky. When John Ross comes up with an excuse for being in Emma’s room, Sue Ellen acts like she believes it and changes the subject — which is pretty much how she used to react to JR’s infidelities when the original series began.

“It’s about time we started living like the rich folk that we are!” declares John Ross, having decided, as the new half-owner of Southfork, to remodel the house. If this were New DYNASTY (or maybe even EMPIRE), this would be the set-up for a comedy plot involving gaudy colour schemes and furniture dipped in gold, but while John Ross has fun teasing Bobby with the idea of “a three-storey atrium,” most of his ideas — a billiards room, an indoor pool — don’t seem that outrageous. They certainly don’t warrant Bobby’s accusation that he is trying to “turn Southfork into a monument to you and your father’s self-indulgence.” In a lovely deleted scene, Sue Ellen points out to Bobby what the audience has known for more than thirty years, but no-one has ever acknowledged on screen before: “This house was too small even when I lived here.” However, Bobby is as resistant to change as an old-time DALLAS fan. “This house and its history is what grounds us as a family,” he tells John Ross. “It’s our roots. It’s about time you learnt to respect the past, boy.” “The past is what holds us back, Uncle Bobby,” John Ross replies, sounding as dismissive of his heritage as Fallon Carrington does of hers as the sale of her family’s hundred-year-old company is finally completed. “Good-bye CA, hello new dynasty,” she quips breezily.

In the same deleted scene, Sue Ellen gently suggests to Bobby that “your gut response to John Ross is always to react to him as if he were JR, but he’s not.” “Miss Ellie was a smart woman,” Ann adds. “There’s a reason she gave John Ross half of Southfork.” “Yeah … guilt,” Bobby responds drily, but Sue Ellen disagrees. “Maybe it was balance,” she says. “Maybe she wanted you to be the father figure to John Ross because she knew it would never happen with JR. We’re getting older, Bobby. Maybe Miss Ellie understood that a young man’s point of view might help keep an older man’s point of view fresh.” She also has a word in John Ross’s ear: “As I counselled Bobby to be reasonable with you, I’m also counselling you to be reasonable with Bobby … Don’t underestimate your uncle. He’s a steel hand in a velvet glove.” Over on EMPIRE, Cookie also finds herself playing peacemaker to two men of different generations, but in a much more public context — the first annual meeting of the Empire shareholders since Hakeem took over as CEO. (This being EMPIRE, even a shareholders meeting takes place in a concert environment, complete with musical numbers.) During the meeting, Lucious does such a convincing job of discrediting Hakeem’s management skills that the crowd start chanting for his (Lucious’s) return. Cookie takes to the stage to cool things down. “What we have is two great men fighting over Empire,” she says. “They both love this company so much that they would kill for it!” At this point, she turns to Hakeem and Lucious. “So why don’t you come up here and show these shareholders that you will not fight with one another, but instead you will fight together to make this company great like … we all deserve? Empire was built on family!” Father and son reluctantly shake hands and the crowd love it. Over on DYNASTY, Fallon likewise views herself as the family arbitrator, having strong-armed the rest of the Carringtons into coming to Paraguay. “I’m the one trying to keep the peace among these jackals,” she complains self-righteously. Steven can’t believe his ears. “You’re the peacekeeper?” he asks indignantly. “You’re here for YOU, Fallon!” Eventually, she realises she’s being selfish for not letting her brother do his own thing, and that she has to let him go. They even sing a song together, Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well’ (which Carly Simon covered on her Torch album, the one that has the original Steven Carrington on the sleeve) and I must admit it’s quite sweet.

Back on EMPIRE, Rhonda is now staying at Anika’s place. Andre visits her there and admits he’s stopped going to church. “Why do I find that weirdly comforting?” she wonders. “I miss us,” he says. “We were a team, us against the world …” “We haven’t been that for a long time,” she replies. He asks her when she was happiest. “When we were excited about the future … and wanted to rule the world and take over Empire,” she says. They are interrupted by the sound of Anika throwing up in the bathroom. There’s only one reason someone throws up in Soap Land and Anika admits that, yes, she is pregnant and Hakeem’s the father.

EMPIRE’s Anika and DALLAS’s Elena are two very different characters but have a surprising amount in common. Both started as a quasi-member of their respective show’s main family, both have had relationships with two members of that family (John Ross and Christopher; Lucious and Hakeem), both have now been effectively ex-communicated from that family. “I know that a lot of terrible things happened to this family because of my brother and I am so sorry,” Elena tells the Ewings on DALLAS. “I’m sorry for the part that I played in that and for all the lies and the hurt that followed.” “I know that things haven’t been pleasant among us all and I fully recognise the role that I played in that,” Anika tells the Lyons on EMPIRE. “I am taking full responsibility for my actions. I’m sorry. I’m trying to make amends.”

Both apologies sound impressively sincere but aren’t the whole story. Earlier in the same ep, Elena visited Cliff in jail where she railed angrily against the Ewings (“They kicked me out of a company I helped start. They took away my oil leases. They accused me of helping my brother when they would have done the same to help their own!”) before agreeing to help bring them down. Meanwhile, Anika’s expression of regret omits the fact that she deliberately caused Rhonda’s miscarriage. She does, however, come clean about her own pregnancy. While Cookie is almost as sceptical as Alexis was about Melissa Daniels’ pregnancy on DYNASTY (“Are you that thirsty, you trick ass ho?”), Lucious asks Anika what she is after. “I want something very valuable, something almost priceless,” she replies. “I want my child to have a family.” Elena wants something too — a job at Ewing Energies, or Ewing Global as it has been renamed since the family acquired two-thirds of Cliff’s empire.

While Elena and Anika’s apology scenes are great, the scenes that follow — between Elena and Christopher, and Anika and Lucious — are even better. When Christopher tells Elena he wants to reconcile with her, she is caught off guard. “You said you never wanted to see me again. You threw me out of that hotel room,” she reminds him. He says he’s sorry and reaches out to touch her face. She backs away. Even though she still has feelings for him, she has started down a dark and soapy path of revenge and can’t turn back. “I think we’re both still broken,” she tells him gently. I think we need to take some time to fix what’s broken in us before we can know if this is right.” Christopher accepts this but asks her not to move away from Southfork: “You’ve lived here since you were nine years old. We’ve always been friends … Stay on the ranch. It’s your home too.” Lucious is similarly solicitous towards Anika when she finds him waiting in her apartment. “I want you to take your prenatal, get good rest, bring the baby to term,” he tells her — before dropping the other shoe. “Then when you have it, give it to Hakeem and I’m-a give you ten million dollars.” When she turns this offer down, he gets angry. “If you wanted a family, why did you betray me? … You slept with my baby boy, my son!” he yells. It’s been over a year since Lucious first saw Anika and Hakeem together, but this is the first time he has confronted her about it. “You cheated on me first. You slept with Cookie,” she reminds him. “You broke my heart. You made me behave like some kind of lunatic.” “… Take my offer. Please don’t make me get ugly,” he warns her. These last two lines are very interesting: Anika acknowledging her lunacy isn’t typical psycho bitch behaviour. Could this mean she has come to her senses? Meanwhile, Lucious’s threat (“Please don’t make me get ugly”) is a reminder that this is a man who shot his best friend in the face. But then the dynamic between them shifts again. “My baby, he is making me believe in myself again, Lucious,” Anika continues, “and if that is something you cannot understand then I will have to do what I need to do too — just like you.” He asks what she means. “When the FBI was coming for you, I never dimed on you,” she says. “What could you possibly know about me that would be of any interest to the FBI?” he scoffs. “Five years of being with you, Lucious, living under your roof, working for you — I know more than you think,” she replies, suddenly sounding more like Julie Grey than Katherine Wentworth. He advises her to be careful. “You know, a lot of women, they don’t survive childbirth.” Hmm, so which of them is the more dangerous — the baby killer or the murderer?

Bobby calls a board meeting to announce that he’s made a deal to sell Ewing Global’s consumer division (which originally belonged to Barnes Global) to finance some aquatic thing that, according to John Ross, is going to make the company “bigger than Exxon and BP combined!” Backs are slapped and champagne is called for, but then they are interrupted by one of those brilliant surprise-boardroom-entrances, which also doubles as the debut appearance of a character we know is important because we’ve already seen him in the opening credits. (Oh yes — DALLAS’s classic three-way split-screen title sequence is back!!) “My name is Nicolas Treviño and I’m here on behalf of Cliff Barnes,” the newcomer announces smoothly, oozing charisma. Reminding the Ewings that “Cliff still owns one-third of this company”, Nicolas invokes something called a supermajority clause which means that “no sector of Barnes Global will ever be sold. Cliff Barnes would rather destroy this company than see the Ewings profit from it.” “That’s insane!” gasps Bobby. (It’s also pretty much what JR said in 1980, "I'm gonna bring Bobby down if I have to destroy Ewing Oil to do it!”) Elena is present for Nicolas’s announcement and seems as shocked by it as everyone else is — but then we discover Nicolas is really Elena and Drew’s childhood friend Joaquin, a homeless child her family raised as one of their own in Mexico, who is now an unspeakably rich businessman. (Joaquin follows in the path of Ray Krebbs and Frank Ashkani, two other poor kids who were taken in off the streets and semi-adopted by Jock and Cliff.)

Just as Anika threatens to expose Lucious’s past crimes on EMPIRE, Nicolas warns the Ewings that Cliff is determined to prove that they framed him for JR’s murder. “If Cliff can prove anything against us, it’ll land us behind bars!” panics Christopher. “And if Pamela or Sue Ellen find out —“ “Christopher, there are no loose ends,” Bobby replies firmly. “Carlos Del Sol and Bum and I made sure.”

While Sue Ellen’s line about “this house [being] too small even when I lived here” finally acknowledges the unspoken paradox at the heart of DALLAS — that the incredibly rich Ewings choose to live on top of each other for no logical reason — EMPIRE and DYNASTY each have a different kind of self-aware moment. In response to the idea that Anika’s unborn baby will automatically replace Rhonda’s as the heir to the Empire fortune, Jamal remarks that “this family uses the term ‘heir’ like we’re in a Shakespearean play.” Sam, meanwhile, lowers the cultural bar to describe Alexis’s fling with Anders as “Downton Abbey After Dark.”

The question Lucious asked Andre at his mother’s graveside, “What do you say, man — we good?” remains unanswered until the shareholders meeting where it emerges that Empire’s new streaming service app has been sabotaged, thereby severely damaging Hakeem’s credibility. Rhonda turns to Andre and whispers, “Did you do what I think you did?” He smiles and replies, “That’s how we get back to us!” This is when we realise Andre and Rhonda have, for the sake of their marriage, calmly decided to turn bad again. An even bigger shock comes in the very last scene of the ep where it is revealed that Lucious’s dead mama ain’t so dead after all ...

And the Top 3 are …

1 (2) EMPIRE
2 (1) DALLAS
3 (3) DYNASTY

 

[James from London]

03 Mar 14: DALLAS: Trust Me v. 27 Apr 16: EMPIRE: More Than Kin v. 09 Nov 18: DYNASTY: Queen of Cups

Female jealousy is a theme common to each of this week’s eps. On DALLAS, Pamela sees John Ross flirting with his pretty new secretary Candace and suspects him of sleeping with her. On DYNASTY, Fallon answers Culhane’s phone to a sexy-voiced woman who declines to leave her name and thinks the same thing. Pamela and Fallon are both wrong — unlike Sue Ellen who rightly suspects her son of having an affair with Emma Ryland and assigns Bum the task of confirming her suspicions.

Sue Ellen’s jealousy-by-proxy is intriguing. Might obsessing over her son’s infidelities be a way of keeping the memory of her own dysfunctional relationship with JR alive? “I spent forty years being cheated on. I’m pretty good at picking up the signals,” she tells Bum. “It took JR most of his life to realise the pain that he had caused me and if he were alive, he would have told John Ross that the path he’s on leads to nothing but heartache and misery.” Maybe she’s right — or maybe she’s romanticising JR even in death. It’s just as possible he would have encouraged John Ross to do whatever it takes to keep one step ahead of Harris Ryland, up to and including bedding his daughter. Her conversation with Bum concluded, Sue Ellen discreetly takes a flask from her purse and drinks from it. It’s a poignant, lonely moment.

While Pamela confronts John Ross about Candace (“You were all over her this morning”), Fallon asks Culhane about his mystery caller (“Is there something you need to tell me?”). Although both men are innocent of what they’re being accused of, each is still guilty of deception. “Hand to God, nothing’s going on with my secretary,” John Ross insists, neglecting to mention that something is going on with his step-cousin. And while Culhane isn’t cheating with the woman on the phone, he nonetheless pretends she’s his solicitor rather than evil boss lady Ada Stone from whom he is trying to extricate himself without Fallon's knowledge.

Over on EMPIRE, Cookie is not happy about the growing attraction between Lucious and sexy reporter Harper Scott and addresses it with her customary forthrightness. “Ooh, it smell fishy in here!” she declares when she finds them together in his office. Harper gives as good as she gets. “This woman has a tracker device on your sack or something,” she mutters to Lucious. She may have a point. In a later scene, Lucious and Harper are alone in his club, indulging in a little afternoon S&M (slapping, choking, all that fun stuff), when Cookie interrupts them yet again, this time by phone. Harper describes her as “the manipulative bitch that has Lucious Lyon wrapped around her little finger.” “You’d do really good not to say anything bad about her ever again,” snaps Lucious in reply, bringing their relationship to an abrupt end.

Back on DALLAS, Bum is caught in the middle: he already knows Sue Ellen’s hunch about John Ross and Emma is correct but doesn’t want to hurt her by telling her so. Nor does he inform John Ross about his mother’s concerns, for fear of jeopardising their relationship. (As he points out to Sue Ellen, “Things have been pretty good between you and John Ross since JR’s passing. Him finding out you put a tail on him — that’d end that real quick.”) Instead, he gives John Ross a warning: ”Your father was a great man. He did great things, but the way he ran around on your mother was a sin and he figured that out too late. Grow into your father’s greatness, not his weakness.”

Like Bum, Carmen the cook finds her loyalties divided. Thus far in the series, she hasn’t been given much to sink her teeth into — even when Drew disappeared, she mostly just sat in a corner and cried — but here she gives great angry as Elena asks her to keep quiet about the fact that “the wayward boy we took in by the name of Joaquin” and Cliff’s representative Nicolas Treviño are the same person. “If Cliff Barnes is involved, this is about destroying the Ewings and I will not be part of that!” she insists passionately. Despite her better judgement, however, she agrees to keep quiet and instead delivers a moral warning to Nicolas similar to the one Bum gave to John Ross: “Since we took you in from the street as a boy, I have seen the darkness and light fight for your soul … If, even for a moment, I sense that you are leading either of my children into the darkness, not even St Christopher will be able to save you.” Interestingly, there’s a religious element to both Bum and Carmen’s warnings — he describes JR’s infidelities as “a sin” while she invokes the name of a saint.

Two fun characters, Judith Ryland and Hank, aka Fake Adam, return to DALLAS and DYNASTY this week. “Let’s not shoot Mommy on her first day home,” suggests Judith when Harris, alarmed by an ominous thumping approaching his study, pulls out a gun, before realising that it is the sound of his mother’s new walking stick. Judith’s one-liners keep on coming. “I made my bones dealing with psychopaths and criminals while you were still playing with your Easy-Bake oven,” she snarls at her son. “Mama like!” she declares after snorting a couple of lines of the cocaine Harris has been smuggling for the Mendez Ochoa cartel. “Your grandfather had a saying,” she continues. “‘Money and morality are like two cars on a one-lane road. When they meet, morality’s gonna end up in the ditch’.” One can just hear JR attributing the same quotation to Jock. Ordinarily, I don’t go a bundle on fan-fiction, but a version of events where Judith and Jock once knew each other (and maybe even knew each other) is one I could get behind.

Hank’s most recent appearance was in a funny scene a few weeks ago where Alexis tried to give him a Rembrandt painting she’d stolen from Blake as collateral for the money she owes him, but he had no idea what she was talking about. This week, that one joke is stretched into a full subplot with, alas, diminishing returns. First, Fake Adam tries to sell the Rembrandt (which is also fake) to an art gallery, thereby alerting Blake (who still thinks he shot Dead Cristal) to his whereabouts. So then Alexis, fearing her prior involvement with Hank will be exposed, pretends it was she who tried to sell the painting instead. The explanation she offers Blake (“I was desperate. I have nothing … I’ve never been good at looking after myself, you know that … Really, it’s your fault that I had to go to such lengths!”) sounds remarkably like the kind of self-justifying excuse Alexis’s former mother, Anne Matheson, used to come up with whenever she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

Even as preparations for John Ross and Pamela’s wedding continue, the Ewings still find time to throw a traditional Southfork barbecue. “In the old days, these things would end up with a fistfight in the pool,” recalls Sue Ellen. Meanwhile, Fallon and Liam on DYNASTY and Lucious and Cookie on EMPIRE both decide that the best way to keep their respective shareholders onside is to throw a big party. I’m not sure I entirely follow the logic, but as the Van Kirks’ acquisition of Carrington Atlantic was predicated on Fallon and Liam’s marriage, they are now obliged to have “an amicable celebration of our separation," aka a divorce party, to demonstrate that everything is still cool between them. “It’s called conscious uncoupling and it’s all the rage,” Fallon sort of explains. Meanwhile, now that Empire’s board have removed Hakeem as CEO, there’s a good chance an outsider might be brought in to replace him unless the family present a united front. “We need to get that board to officially reinstall Lucious or I don’t know who the hell is gonna run my company,” frets Cookie. (Given that Lucious made such a big deal of taking a black-owned company public in the first place, it’s kind of ironic that it’s a largely white board of directors that he now has to appease.) “I’ll put something together really big,” Cookie decides. “Seeing all of us up there, we’ll remind that board what they get when the Lyons run the Empire.” Andre has an idea to make the event even more impressive: ”Tie in a fundraiser with the National Alliance for Bipolar Disorder and make me the spokesperson … It would really show the board family values.” While Cookie and Lucious are impressed that he is willing to go public about his condition to help his father regain his power, the fact that Andre is Officially Bad again means he has an ulterior motive. “If this gets [Lucious] reinstated as CEO, you know what that means?” he asks Rhonda. “With Jamal and Hakeem out of the running, that leaves you solidly in place for his number two,” she replies. “Mm, just a heartbeat away from the throne, baby!” he smiles. In other words, he’s willing to exploit his own mental health issues for his own ends, which puts a nice little twist on things.

Female jealousy resurfaces at both the Ewing barbecue and Fallon’s divorce party. Angry when she sees John Ross flirting again, this time with an attractive blonde extra, Pamela asks Nicolas to dance and it soon gets very sexy between them, much to John Ross's displeasure. Nicolas also manages to get under Christopher’s skin by asking Elena to show him some Dallas nightlife. “I know it’s not my place to tell you not to go out with him, but don’t go out with him,” Christopher tells her.

Elsewhere at the barbecue, Bum pretends to Sue Ellen that he has found no evidence of an affair between John Ross and Emma. “Is it possible that maybe you’re projecting the wrongs that JR did you onto your son?” he asks her. Culhane makes a similar suggestion to Fallon regarding her suspicions about him: “Maybe you’re projecting because this is your divorce party?” Unconvinced, Fallon gets drunk and kisses Liam passionately. New DYNASTY being New DYNASTY, this kiss doesn’t take place privately in the shadows, or even on a dance floor like Pamela and Nicolas’s bit of bump ’n’ grind, but on a stage in front of a room of people. Meanwhile, at the bipolar benefit on EMPIRE, the man who is meant to be on stage, Andre, goes missing after Harper the reporter, to get back at Lucious for dumping her, shows him pictures of “a group home outside Philadelphia … That woman’s name is Leah Walker. I believe she’s your grandmother.” To distract from Andre’s conspicuous absence, Cookie rashly announces to the assembled guests that, “For the first time ever, the Lyon family will be performing at this year’s ASA Awards … The first family of music — Hakeem, Jamal and Lucious Lyon — all on the same stage at the same damn time!” How she’s gonna accomplish this is anybody’s guess.

Michael, aka Sam on DYNASTY, pops up on EMPIRE again to cater Andre’s fundraiser. He and Jamal pay a nostalgic visit to the coffeehouse where they first met and where Jamal did one of his early gigs. Tired of the show-biz politics and family infighting that constantly surround him, Jamal takes the opportunity to reconnect to his roots by getting up on stage and delivering a scorching impromptu performance with the house band as Michael, aka Sam, watches admiringly. Meanwhile, Sam, aka Michael, has a musical moment of his own (sort of). Pining for his husband who is busy finding himself in Paraguay or something, he tunelessly hits a few random notes on Steven’s piano. “I don’t really play. Steven does,” he explains to New New Cristal. “You miss him,” she observes shrewdly. “More than I thought I would,” he admits.

In an act of whimsical indulgence, Sam then flies a psychic named Adriana over from Paris. Except for the Great Karlotti, Emma’s bigamist husband on FALCON CREST, previous Soap Land psychics have either been consulted as a last resort (such as when a character is seeking assurance that a missing-presumed-dead loved one is still alive) or portrayed as a one-scene harbinger of doom (the original Adriana whom Alexis consulted in Rome; Odessa the fortune teller whom Fallon encountered on honeymoon in Jamaica). New Adriana, however, is featured much more prominently and even drives the action forward as she predicts imminent plot twists for each of the Carringtons. (Cue much predictable eye-rolling and sarcasm from Fallon.) In Sam’s case, she actively instigates a new storyline as he interprets her cryptic references to “growth or new life” as a sign that he and Steven should have a child, and he immediately starts interviewing for a potential surrogate.

This inevitably leads to a “Terrible Interviewees Montage”, a TV trope that felt tired when KNOTS deployed it nearly thirty years earlier during Frank Williams’ speed-dating phase. In quick succession, the potential surrogates are shown to be too stupid, too greedy, too spaced-out or too slutty for the job. According to tvtropes.org, the “Terrible Interviewees Montage” often ends with “the interviewer calling it a day, only to find the perfect person for the role outside of an interview situation a scene or two later.” Such is the case here as Sam finds himself telling his strapped-for-cash half-sister-in-law Kirby about the situation and suddenly realising she’s the ideal woman for the job.

It seems pointless to keep complaining about New DYNASTY not being a traditional soap when it clearly doesn’t want to be, but then once again it redeems itself during the closing minutes of the ep. After much whimsical waffle about how New New Cristal losing her job is a sign that she and Blake are destined to be together (“It was fate,” he tells her, “because this is where you belong”), it is revealed that it wasn’t destiny, but Blake himself who was responsible — he deliberately bought the clinic where she worked so he could shut it down. Then we discover Hank is shacked up with Claudia Blaisdel and her newborn baby, Matthew. The highlight of the episode is Hank removing his false finger and putting it in Matthew’s mouth like a pacifier. And while Adriana’s end-of-episode prediction may not be quite effective as it was in 1981, it’s nonetheless intriguing. Apparently, “a powerful man … who may or may not be Blake” is going to ask Alexis to marry him. She will accept and they will wed, but then “he will expire — like death.”

EMPIRE doesn’t feel like much a soap either this week. There’s a lack of momentum and the characters seem to be going round in circles. (A few weeks after nearly killing each other, Lucious and Hakeem are reconciled once again while Jamal has resumed the role of family rebel.) That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of individually great moments. The scene where Hakeem’s brothers find him nursing a champagne hangover following a three-day strip-club bender is reminiscent of one of those effortlessly natural domestic scenes between the Mackenzies on KNOTS (although I don’t think Karen ever told Mack, "You smell like stripper ass”). Hakeem’s been drowning his sorrows because, not only has he been removed as CEO of Empire, but his fiancee’s dumped him because “I got this kid coming.” Andre, who recently lost his own kid, isn’t impressed by this tale of woe. “Yeah, you got it pretty rough, Hakeem,” he tells him sarcastically. “I guess I just had it easy … No, no, let’s just baby the baby boy, okay? You know, I mean, I lost my kid, right? But let’s just pamper Hakeem — again.” “Bro, that’s not what I’m trying to say,” Hakeem replies earnestly. “It’s just that right now, I just suck at every point of life.” “He really does —seriously,” agrees Jamal. And then they all crack up laughing.

After he sobers up, Hakeem tells Anika that he wants to do right by her and their baby, but she has other things on her mind. “Your father threatened my life the day the baby is born,” she tells him, adding that she is considering moving away for her own safety. “If Anika leaves, you won’t see me or the baby again,” Hakeem warns his parents. Cookie decides to take charge of the situation (“Let me handle Boo-Boo Kitty”) and as she knocks on the door of Anika’s apartment, we gird ourselves for a juicy confrontation. Instead, we’re as surprised as she is when the door opens and Anika is carried out on a stretcher by two ambulance men. It’s an arresting moment, but it turns out she is simply suffering from a panic attack. Elsewhere, Jamal’s stripped-down musical numbers are truly fantastic. So there’s plenty of good stuff going on, it’s just kind of hard to sense where all it’s headed and how — or even if — these individual moments are gonna pay off dramatically. But, hey, you know, at least it’s not predictable.

The episode ends with two of Empire’s board members approaching Lucious and Cookie at the fundraiser. “The board had been looking at an outside candidate for CEO,” one of them says, “but we’re now unanimous in our thinking that it should be —” He looks at Cookie, but before he can continue, Lucious interrupts. “Well, before you go any further,” he says with faux-modesty, “I just wanna say that without the help of Cookie Lyon, my number one, this would not have been possible.” “That’s just what we were getting to,” chips in the second board member. Aha, we think, we know where this is headed, but then she continues: “Considering the fact that the two of you co-founded Empire and now continue to work together so well, the board would like you to come on as co-CEOs … Control of Empire would be split down the middle between the two of you.” This sounds very similar to the way Jock’s will split control of Ewing Oil between JR and Bobby. Lucious and Cookie are both taken by surprise. For a second, it looks like Lucious is going to object, but then he declares it “a fantastic idea … I wouldn’t have it any other way!” Then, as he and Cookie embrace, we see his eyes go cold. “I got your back,” he says quietly, managing to make it sound reassuring and threatening at the same time, just as JR’s toast to Bobby after the reading of their daddy’s will (“To your good health and very long life”) did.

The closing moments of DALLAS also take us in an unexpected direction as it emerges that Harris Ryland, while still evil, maybe isn’t quite as evil as we previously thought. “He’s not working for a drug lord, he’s working for us,” a CIA agent informs Bobby and Ann. But if the drug lords find this out, Harris tells Ann, “they’ll kill both you and Emma.” Jeff Colby receives a similar warning when he tangles with Ada Stone on DYNASTY. “If I wanted to threaten you, I’d mention your sister getting hit by a delivery truck or your father going back to jail for drugs he didn’t know were in his possession,” she tells him ominously.

And the Top 3 are …

1 (2) DALLAS
2 (1) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY

 

[Willie Oleson]

“This woman has a tracker device on your sack or something,” she mutters to Lucious.

The freewheeling/anarchic dialogue in the new soaps (especially Empire and Dynasty) may seem delightfully progressive, but it leaves little room for shock value when it's supposed to matter.
Mama like!/Bobby's "bitch-wife!"/Elena the "thieving whore" still have that "oh my!" effect. I think Empire would struggle to make it sounds equally effective.

First, Fake Adam tries to sell the Rembrandt (which is also fake) to an art gallery

Dynasty sure loves to Russian doll the fakery, maybe it's a modern thing that literally everything has to be twisty, but it usually doesn't pay off in a way a soap like Knots Landing would have handled it.
Give Abby Ewing a fake Rembrandt and the whole season spirals out of control.

Harper Scott

Too bad they didn't think of Harper GLASS before Another Life did it. Still, a very soapy name, in the tradition of the Channing Carters.

“With Jamal and Hakeem out of the running, that leaves you solidly in place for his number two,” she replies.

I LOVE the scheming couples. Lance & Melissa did it sometimes, and GREENLEAF had them too (unfortunately, none of their characters are allowed to become truly wicked). Sneaky bedroom conversations and all that stuff, I love it. Vicky & Eric Stavros, the Hogans - it could have been a Soap Battle!

Cookie rashly announces to the assembled guests that, “For the first time ever, the Lyon family will be performing at this year’s ASA Awards … The first family of music

I'm trying to think of record company that had this kind of Big Impact On Everything. It's all very believable within that particular circuit, but I feel they want to make it bigger than it really is, like Falcon Crest did with its wine. Falcon Crest only felt genuinely big as the dominator of the Tuscany Valley.
A little off-topic, but back in the 90s there was this "rivalry" between Almighty Records and Klone Records, although it was mostly invented by the fans of these record labels.
Since I liked both I could play the devious double-crosser.

“You miss him,” she observes shrewdly

LOL
To be fair, it's the same kick-in-an-open-door-comment that original Krystle would have given to a brooding Steven/Kirby/Dominique in Dynasty circa season 4 and onwards.

(Cue much predictable eye-rolling and sarcasm from Fallon.)

And that's exactly what original Fallon did in Dynasty's first seasons, and yet it looks so different. Probably because new Fallon plays it to the hilt, which takes the real blaséness out of it.

Then we discover Hank is shacked up with Claudia Blaisdel and her newborn baby, Matthew

That, I liked.

And the Top 3 are …

I really should scroll more carefully.

 

[James from London]

The freewheeling/anarchic dialogue in the new soaps (especially Empire and Dynasty) may seem delightfully progressive, but it leaves little room for shock value when it's supposed to matter.

I think the difference is that on EMPIRE, for the most part, you believe that that's how these people talk. Cookie is the most outspoken character yet is always totally believable. On DYNASTY, nearly everyone talks in the same arch bitchy way, like they're performing all the time, and after a while, it all blurs together.

Mama like!/Bobby's "bitch-wife!"/Elena the "thieving whore" still have that "oh my!" effect.

Yes, no-one else on DALLAS talks like Judith so it still feels fresh and different. And there's an ongoing tension between the old-fashioned polite "Southern gentleman" way of talking and behaving on DALLAS, and the C21st freedom to say anything you want, so when someone does swear on the show, it still packs a punch.

Dynasty sure loves to Russian doll the fakery, maybe it's a modern thing that literally everything has to be twisty, but it usually doesn't pay off in a way a soap like Knots Landing would have handled it.

Yeah, a lot of the time it feels like the contrivances are there to pad out an episode rather than further an ongoing story. So it becomes more about being tricksy for the sake of it than it does about the characters.

Give Abby Ewing a fake Rembrandt and the whole season spirals out of control.

Yes! (Although give one to Anne Matheson in Season 12, and it's two episodes tops.)

Harper GLASS

HA!

I LOVE the scheming couples. Lance & Melissa did it sometimes, and GREENLEAF had them too (unfortunately, none of their characters are allowed to become truly wicked). Sneaky bedroom conversations and all that stuff, I love it. Vicky & Eric Stavros, the Hogans - it could have been a Soap Battle!

Totally. There were surprisingly few of them in the '80s.

I'm trying to think of record company that had this kind of Big Impact On Everything. It's all very believable within that particular circuit, but I feel they want to make it bigger than it really is, like Falcon Crest did with its wine. Falcon Crest only felt genuinely big as the dominator of the Tuscany Valley.

Yes, the Tupac/Biggie feud was epic, but within the relatively small world of hip-hop. Even the Ewings were only big in Texas. When EMPIRE begins, it's already so colossally successful, it does sometimes feel like there's nowhere for it to go.

To be fair, it's the same kick-in-an-open-door-comment that original Krystle would have given to a brooding Steven/Kirby/Dominique in Dynasty circa season 4 and onwards.

You could argue that by then Krystle had earned the right to wander around stating the obvious, just like Miss Ellie had. With New New Cristal, we're still at the "Sorry - who are you again?" stage.

And that's exactly what original Fallon did in Dynasty's first seasons, and yet it looks so different. Probably because new Fallon plays it to the hilt, which takes the real blaséness out of it.

Also, '80s Fallon picked on bigger targets -- politics, business, the whole Carrington way of life. Making fun of a psychic -- anyone can do that.

 

[James from London]

10 Mar 14: DALLAS: Playing Chicken v. 04 May 16: EMPIRE: The Lyon Who Cried Wolf v. 16 Nov 18: DYNASTY: That Witch

Soap Land’s two current love triangles are between Pamela, John Ross and Emma on New DALLAS and Culhane, Fallon and Liam on New DYNASTY. Emma and Liam are both pretty shameless in their respective pursuits of John Ross and Fallon. While Emma opens her robe to give John Ross a flash of her skimpy bikini right under his wife’s nose (Pamela may not notice but Sue Ellen certainly does), Liam issues Fallon with a challenge. “Try and go the whole weekend without thinking about me or that kiss,” he tells her, referring to their divorce party snog. “When you can’t stop replaying it, then you’ll know you should be with me and not Culhane.”

“See? I knew you couldn’t stop thinking about me!” he says when Fallon later encounters him in her subconscious during a godawful 'Wizard of Oz'-themed fantasy sequence. “I wasn’t thinking about you,” she insists. “You forced your way into this crazy dream.” Emma likewise forces her way into John Ross’s head, by the most devious of means. During a girly shopping trip, she encourages Pamela to buy herself some sexy underwear as a treat for her new hubby. A few hours later, Emma surprises John Ross in his office by unzipping her dress to reveal an emerald corset of her own. “What do you think — is green my colour?” she asks. He nods appreciatively and starts to peel it off her. “Keep it on,” she insists. “I want you to remember me wearing it.” The following night, he returns home to be greeted by Pamela wearing the exact same thing. As they kiss, he can’t help but flash back to Emma, like something from a weird erotic nightmare. He mumbles some excuse and heads for the door, leaving Pamela behind, semi-naked and humiliated, just as Sue Ellen was when her attempts to seduce JR with a sexy negligee in the original mini-series similarly backfired. The scenario also echoes what Sue Ellen told Mandy when she was the Valentine Girl: “JR likes trashy lingerie, but not on the women he cares about.”

Fallon’s 'Wizard of Oz' parody-dream-thing occurs after a milk jug flies through the air, cartoon-style, hitting her on the head and knocking her unconscious. There is a similarly minor, though less stupid, mishap on EMPIRE where Rhonda is accidentally pushed by a workman, triggering a flashback to the night of her miscarriage. “I was at the top of my stairs and felt hands on my back,” she recalls. Up until now, she had assumed her fall to have been accidental. “Are you saying that you think somebody pushed you?” asks Anika, full of concern. In a later scene, a glimpse of Anika’s distinctive red-soled shoes has a similar effect on Rhonda as the sight of Pamela’s emerald corset had on John Ross: she again flashes back to her fall, this time seeing someone wearing the very same shoes walking away as she lies helpless at the bottom of the stairs.

If one were so inclined, one could draw connections between both Emma’s emerald corset and Anika’s red shoes, and Fallon’s 'Wizard of Oz' dream (Emerald City; Dorothy’s ruby slippers), but why bother? DYNASTY’s 'Oz' parody is as uninspired and unoriginal as DALLAS’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ homage during the final episode of its original run, but whereas it took DALLAS thirteen seasons to reach its creative nadir, DYNASTY has got there in little over a year. And while 'Conundrum' was merely lame and boring, 'Fallon Goes to Oz' is horribly smug and self-satisfied. This is perfectly illustrated by Fallon (who to all intents and purposes is New Dynasty) coming face to face with another version of herself (who knows or cares why) and kissing herself passionately.

“My uncle is the past and I’m looking into the future,” insists John Ross as he and Bobby feud over his decision to frack for oil on Southfork. “I’m tired of singing songs from the past, this is new stuff,” says Jamal, arguing with his father over whose material they should perform at the ASA Awards.

Now that Cookie and Lucious are jointly running the Empire and Jamal in direct competition with his father for an ASA, there is plenty of familial infighting over who gets to sing what during the award ceremony. But despite the ASAs being “the biggest stage in the world” and Cookie urging the Lyon men to “put your big girl drawers on ‘cos we gonna come together and do this as a family,” it’s hard for us to care how many minutes of stage time the Lyons will be granted or whose song will be featured most prominently. I mean, the Oil Baron’s Ball was always fun on ‘80s DALLAS, but we were never expected to worry about who got to present the Oil Man of the Year Award, or even who won it. But then, just as the drama’s starting to feel too predictable and insignificant, into the rehearsal room walks Andre, accompanied by a surprise guest. “It’s OK, Grandma,” he says quietly before introducing her as “Leah Walker, Lucious’s mother.” While the rest of the family are simply bewildered, Lucious is in shock. “What — you got nothing to say?” Andre asks him. “You wanna tell them how you sent her away to a home for twenty-one years and never looked back?” As Lucious’s mama reaches out to touch her son’s face, he backs away, terrified. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” he says to Andre.

In due course, Lucious fills Cookie in on the missing pieces of the puzzle. “I didn’t lie about anything,” he tells her. “My mother did try and drown me. She did put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger … Just turns out there was no bullets in the gun … My mother died the day that they locked her up.” The next bit of back story is particularly interesting as it incorporates some real-life political history from Soap Land’s heyday, the 1980s. “Remember how, under Reagan, the government took all the mentally ill patients and dumped them out on the street?” Lucious asks. “Well, one day in front of 30th Street Station, I damn near tripped over her. You and me were on welfare with two and a half kids. We couldn’t have taken care of her if we wanted to … I needed her to stay dead … None of y’all understand how dangerous she really is.” There are echoes of previous Soap Land characters in Leah: Amanda Ewing (another mentally ill woman locked away and forgotten about), Rebecca Wentworth (another mother unwilling or incapable of raising her children) and even, in a lovely scene where Lucious finds his mother singing at the piano and gently harmonises along with her, Lilimae Clements (another songbird who never got the chance to truly realise her potential).

Trend of the week: soap tropes given a fresh spin. First, two women wearing identical outfits — it’s happened a few times in Soap Land over the years (Alexis and Krystle, April and Michelle, Anne Matheson and Paula Vertosick), but Emma’s naughty little scheme takes it to a different level. Then there’s furious anger erupting into unbridled passion — how many times have we seen that happen? But never between two men and never ever between two black men. “Dude, this the ASAs … If you wanna be on it, I wouldn’t be throwing some hissy fit,” the show’s super-cool musical director Major-D snarls at Jamal. The next thing you know, mouths are being kissed and bodies slammed against walls. While EMPIRE gives us a genuinely raunchy scene between two men, New DYNASTY gives us Sam camping it up as the Cowardly Lion in Fallon’s dream. “I’m loving the outfit you chose for me and I’m thrilled to help you with this triangle,” he gushes to Fallon (dressed as Dorothy), Culhane (the Tin Man) and Liam (the … oh, just kill me now).

EMPIRE cuts back and forth between Jamal and Major-D getting it on and Hakeem and Tiana recording a sultry little duet together. There’s some similarly sexy cross-cutting at the end of DALLAS. While Nicolas Treviño is making gorgeously photographed love to Elena in his apartment (“I never wanted a woman more than I want you”), Christopher is in Mexico meeting Nicolas's wife and kids. A married man having an affair is probably the soapiest trope of them all, but DALLAS somehow manages to make the revelation feel urgent enough to end the episode on.

Inspired by the piece of music his mother plays on the piano, Lucious comes up with an arrangement for the ASA Awards that the rest of the family agree on. Hakeem, urged by his father to rap from the heart (“You gotta be a hundred per cent honest [about] the way we really are with each other”), improvises a rhyme that sums up the whole Lyon family dynamic: “Blood is supposed to be thicker than water/Nowadays we can’t even stomach the thought of it/It’s like we can’t even get along/Who right and who in the wrong?/Too busy pointing fingers like it’s politics … Too much dysfunction … Ain’t nobody here to mediate it/And you would think we wasn’t even related/Why are we even throwing blows in the first place?/We fight at cookouts, picnics and birthdays … It’s time for Plan B/If Bloods and Crips can reconcile/Why can’t we?” Jamal chips in with some “ooh oohs” and “yeah yeahs”, the family wipe away tears and slap each other on the back, and suddenly everything’s all happiness and rainbows. It’s well done … but lets all the tension out of the drama. (Talking of unexpected displays of affection, Anders telling Sam, “I love you, mate,” on DYNASTY made my toes curl slightly — but that might be because I still associate Anders with his emotionally repressed ‘80s predecessor.)

When the Ewings got similarly loved-up towards the end of the Dream Season, it was the characters on the outskirts of the show — Angelica Nero, Mark Graison — to whom one looked to continue the drama and intrigue, and so it proves on EMPIRE. As well as Rhonda finally figuring out the truth about Anika, there’s also Harper Scott, the reporter who let the cat out of the bag about Lucious’s mother in the first place. We see her being driven by Thirsty, supposedly to Lucious’s house for an interview, before he abruptly pulls over in a side street. “What are you gonna do — kill me and leave me by the side of the road?” she asks him casually. “I resent that,” he replies. “I’m a gentleman. I wouldn’t touch a hair on your head.” Annoyed, she gets out of the car. Out of nowhere, two men grab her and carry her away screaming while Thirsty drives off. Such is the unpredictable nature of EMPIRE that this incident could be the start of a whole new storyline or might never be referred to again.

EMPIRE concludes with a truly strange scene where Lucious is woken by his mother in the early hours of the morning and finds she has been baking cakes throughout the night. Brandishing a knife, she insists that he sit down and eat. She switches back and forth between maternal and cruel ( “Do you love me?” she asks him tearfully. He nods. “Liar!” she replies before cutting him another slice of cake. “I’m sorry,” she says, “sorry I was too weak to kill you when I had the chance”), yet ultimately is old and powerless. She cannot be the EMPIRE equivalent of either Judith Ryland or Miss Ellie — she’s simply too ill — and so it feels kind of truthful that the scene doesn’t really go anywhere.

Needless to say, EMPIRE’s sensitive depiction of mental illness is not matched by DYNASTY's. This week’s episode opens with Anders referring to Claudia Blaisdel as “a lunatic woman with a gun” and ends with Alexis finding a baby on her doorstep with a note attached saying, “Please look after me … My mom is Claudia and she is crazy.”

And the Top 3 are …

1 (1) DALLAS
2 (2) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY

 

[Willie Oleson]

on EMPIRE where Rhonda is accidentally pushed by a workman, triggering a flashback to the night of her miscarriage

I had hoped she would never find out.

As they kiss, he can’t help but flash back to Emma, like something from a weird erotic nightmare

Aha, but then later Pamela is going to pay them back with her nightmarish association scenario.

Anders telling Sam, “I love you, mate,” on DYNASTY made my toes curl slightly

I thought the affection was already evident, to say it out loud makes it unnecessary sentimental. And "mate" shouldn't even be in Anders' vocabulary.

 

[James from London]

I had hoped she would never find out.

Oh, that would have been torture!

"mate" shouldn't even be in Anders' vocabulary.

"Mate" is very much not a majordomo/butler type of word, but is a very Australian word. That conflict, between the uptight and the laidback, could have been interesting aspect of Anders' character to explore - if New DYNASTY was an exploring-aspects-of-characters type show.

 

[James from London]

17 Mar 14: DALLAS: Lifting the Veil v. 11 May 16: EMPIRE: Rise by Sin v. 30 Nov 18: DYNASTY: A Temporary Infestation

While all of this week’s DALLAS occurs on the day of John Ross and Pamela’s wedding, EMPIRE begins on the day before the ASAs, aka “the 54th annual American Sound Awards,” and ends on the night of the ceremony itself.

Last week, I was finding hard to get too excited about the ASAs, but from this episode’s opening sequence, which shows Lucious drilling his musicians obsessively through the night (“Tomorrow’s the ASAs and this song has to be the highlight of the show. I want the whole world talking about it … There’s no room for error”), the stakes feel very high. Paradoxically, this is partly because it’s not the awards themselves that are dramatically important, but what lies beneath them. As Cookie points out to Lucious, “This ain’t about the ASAs. This is about you avoiding your mother … You’re working yourself so hard so you can avoid. You have to deal with this.” Over on DYNASTY, where Fallon has thrown herself into her latest whim, starting a record label, there is a watered-down version of the same scenario. “Fallon, what is this really about?” Monica asks. Whereas Lucious is reluctant to discuss what’s really going on with him (“Stay in your lane, Cookie,” he warns), Fallon cannot wait to rattle off her latest romantic dilemma: “I just need to keep my head in something other than my head. I love Culhane so much so that I told Liam that I couldn’t talk to him anymore. I just wish that meant I didn’t think about him either.”

When it comes to its use of language and depictions of sex, C21st Soap Land is, of course, far more explicit than it was in the ‘80s. In a genre driven by the sensational, the danger with everyone doing and saying increasingly outrageous things is that it will turn into shock for shock's sake: the audience become inured and it all becomes so much white noise. That’s the risk DALLAS takes this week when it goes further in its depiction of sexuality than it ever has before.

While John Ross is after a permit from the Texas Railroad Commission that will allow him to overrule Bobby and frack for oil on Southfork, Harris Ryland is after the files Emma stole from him at the end of last season on John Ross’s behalf (he’s particularly eager to retrieve the flash drive containing evidence of his involvement with the CIA). The two men strike a deal which necessitates John Ross visiting C21st Soap Land’s very first whorehouse (an establishment we later learn is run by Harris’s mother Judith), and it’s a lot more David Lynch than Lute Mae Sanders. Previously, the only gay characters to ever appear in the Ewing-verse were Kit Mainwaring and his erstwhile boyfriend Sam in 1979. Both were gentle, unassuming and essentially sexless. Now, sauntering across the screen, arms draped around each other, come a tall black man clad in short shorts and a see-through leopard print blouse and a shorter, whiter man in a business suit. But this is as nothing compared to what comes next. Joining Harris in a private room, John Ross watches on CCTV as Stanley Babcock, the all-important Texas Railroad Commissioner, plays sex games with a woman dressed as a dog. The two men share a macho laugh at Babcock's expense. “What kind of sick, twisted, messed-up dude is this?!” asks John Ross. “I think his dog got hit by a car when he was a kid so he comes here to get his Rosebud rocks off,” Harris sneers in reply. (Gee, imagine that — a man being driven by urges that stem from an unhappy childhood.) “And now that you know, I’m sure he’ll do whatever you need to make sure you can drill your ranch.”

One might argue that dressing a hooker in a dog suit is a gratuitous step too far — the kind of stunt New DYNASTY might pull in search of nonexistent laughs. Viewed from a different perspective, as grist for what Dallas Decoder’s critique of this episode describes as John Ross’s “ever-growing hubris," it’s something else. John Ross has already started emulating his late father in several ways: wearing his watch and buckle, addressing the women in his life as darlin’, cheating on his wife in the name of business. Given that this is C21st Soap Land, however, he is obliged to go further. Sure, JR screwed around, but not even he was so audacious as to service his wife and mistress under the same roof the way his son is. Sure, JR caught countless patsies in compromising sexual positions and blackmailed them over it, but these days, merely finding a politician in bed with a hooker is so 1980s, so instead, John Ross must catch Babcock with a hooker dressed as a dog. And if John Ross is determined to be a more extreme version of his daddy, his enemies must, in turn, come up with more extreme ways of cutting him back down to size.

To this end, Harris gives John Ross a little pre-wedding present: he turns a couple of hookers, Sapphire and Chastity, loose on him. (John Ross suddenly finding himself in the middle of a threesome: foreshadow alert.) He manages to fend them off and escape to his wedding, but not before a couple of compromising-looking photographs have been taken.

In 1983, it was enough for Holly Harwood to leave a lipstick stain on JR’s collar to sow suspicions of an affair in Sue Ellen’s mind. In 2014, Harris has devised a way of upping that ante, as he explains to his mommy madam. “Remember Monica Lewinsky and how she kept her dress from her special time with the President and how on that dress there was evidence implicating him in foul play? Well, the girl wearing that dress in that photograph is only sixteen.” “That’s a very exciting plan, Harris,” Judith purrs, “but … it’s still lacking a key substance and for the life of me I can’t imagine how you intend on getting it.” Enter Harris’s secret weapon: John Ross’s secretary. “Candace here has been working double duty,” Harris explains, “and that dress is gonna fit her just fine.” While JR managed to sleep with every one of his secretaries in the original series sooner or later (Julie, Louella, Kristin and Sly), Harris has helpfully accelerated that process for John Ross by supplying him a secretary who’s already a prostitute. Add to this a mistress who gets inside his head by wearing the same lingerie as his wife and it’s as though the world of New DALLAS has conspired to present John Ross with a distorted hall of mirrors, David Lynch-meets-Alice in Wonderland version of his father’s sex life and is saying to him, “You really wanna be your daddy? OK — but be careful what you wished for.” Bum sums it all up perfectly when he issues him the following warning: “You’re flying mighty close to the sun in all this, John Ross.”

Harris’ political reminiscence, “Remember Monica Lewinsky and how she kept her dress from her special time with the President?” echoes Lucious’s from last week: “Remember how, under Reagan, the government took all the mentally ill patients and dumped them out on the street?”

Whereas Alexis and New New Cristal are involved in a relentless game of oneupmanship on this week’s DYNASTY that involves dead plants and ghosts and sprinkler systems and the Baby Jesus and so much double and triple-crossing that I probably couldn’t have kept track of it if I’d been interested enough to try, bitchiness between female characters is pretty rare on New DALLAS (just as it was in the original series). This makes Afton and Sue Ellen’s exchange on the day of their children’s wedding all the more enjoyable. John Ross has been delayed at the whorehouse and Afton is not pleased. “After all the despicable things JR did to you through the years,” she remarks to Sue Ellen, “I would think you’d have taught your son better than this.” “Just so you know, Afton,” Sue Ellen replies, “the most despicable thing JR ever did was you.” “How dare you? How DARE you?” Afton exclaims. There’s also a deleted scene where Sue Ellen tells Emma, somewhat clunkily, how much she reminds her of her sister Kristin: “She loved fooling around with married men — lying, scheming, drugs too. Didn’t care about anybody else other than herself. She ended up face down in the pool. Tramps don’t last too long around this house.”

The best scenes in this week’s DALLAS and EMPIRE both involve a son arguing with a disapproving parent about his sex life. The one on DALLAS is classic soap opera: it slots into the same “home truths delivered on the morning of a wedding” category as Blake confronting Steven about his sexuality before tying the knot with Krystle in the opening episode of ‘80s DYNASTY, and then confronting Adam over his relationship with Claudia prior to the royal wedding in Moldavia five years later. Like Blake, Sue Ellen is concerned about her son’s choice of sexual partner. “I know you’re sleeping with Emma,” she says as he straightens his tie in his bedroom mirror. “All this time I was hoping that you wouldn’t make the same mistakes that your father did. Apparently, the blood of JR runs too pure in your veins.” Flushed with his victory at the whorehouse, John Ross smoothly deflects the accusation. “I don’t know what you think is going on, but I guarantee you do not understand what I am doing — or why,” he tells his mother. “I understand the pain you are causing Pamela,” she argues. “She doesn’t know anything about this and she doesn’t need to. This is just business,” he insists. “Just like your daddy, finding a way to explain infidelity,” Sue Ellen replies, her voice cracking, her eyes filling up. “I will not stand by and watch you destroy Pamela like JR destroyed me!” John Ross takes a step closer to her. “Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?” he asks her coolly. “Perhaps your drinking is making you forget your loyalties, Mama.” “If you don’t stop doing what you’re doing, I’m gonna tell Pamela myself,” she replies. John Ross responds with one last zinger before exiting the scene: “You have looked the other way your whole life, Mama. One more time’s not going to hurt.” It’s the old JR/Sue Ellen dynamic — she accuses him of having an affair, he justifies it in the name of business, she makes a threat, he taunts her about her drinking and then annihilates her with a final one-liner — repurposed for mother and son, and with that extra New DALLAS ingredient: a deeper emotional resonance. Sue Ellen has lived through all this before and is now powerless to do anything but watch history repeat itself while knowing that she is at least partially responsible for the way John Ross has turned out. Dallas Decoder’s critique makes the great observation that this ep "serves as a kind of companion piece to the funeral episode. The first one shows Sue Ellen grieving the loss of JR; in the second, she mourns his ‘return’ through the sinful nature of their son.”

Critique: TNT’s ‘Dallas’ Episode 29 — ‘Lifting the Veil’

“Lifting the Veil” reveals new truths about several “Dallas” characters, beginning with John Ross. We’ve always known he was as ambitious and as charming as J.R., but in the scene where Sue Ellen c…

dallasdecoder.com

While this mother/son scene is familiar in all the best ways, the equivalent father/son confrontation on EMPIRE continually subverts our expectations. It takes place in the control booth of one of Empire’s recording studios and actually begins as an intimate chat between Jamal and his new lover, Major-D. Still in the closet, Major is assuring Jamal that, even though he’ll be arriving at the ASAs with a supermodel called Chanel on his arm, it’s all for show. “Don’t let that mean anything to you,” he says, pulling Jamal close to him so their foreheads are touching, “it’s just one night.” At the sound of a door opening, his demeanour instantly changes and he pushes Jamal away. “Get off me man!” he yells as Lucious appears. “Bro, don’t you ever come at me like that again!” he continues before storming out. There’s a tense pause as father and son look at each other warily, and we assume that an argument is about to erupt over whether or not Lucious believes Jamal to be a predator. But then Lucious laughs. “I see D-Major’s still on the DL,” he says. “You knew?” Jamal asks in surprise. “A real dog can always tell a fake bitch,” he replies. “I’ve been in this business so long, you don’t think I know a little about everybody in this industry? Even though D-Major’s a talented producer, his secret life is not so secretive and everybody knows how he likes to turn rich boys into his little bitch.” This rankles Jamal. “How do you know I didn’t make him my little bitch?” he asks. “He came onto me, I didn’t come onto him.” “Exactly — I bet you he’s on top,” replies Lucious. “You’re disgusting, Dad,” Jamal mutters. “No, what’s disgusting is what you’re doing in my studio,” counters Lucious, suddenly angry. “Anybody could have walked in here and saw you. I taught you better than that. You don’t crap where you eat … You think I enjoy watching my son become some closet phoney’s little bitch?” His voice is trembling and he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “Look man,” he continues, “I’ve tried to be sensitive to your way of life … I’ve tried to tolerate something that is intolerable to my nature. I’ve tried to understand and be respectful of your choices but you don’t respect me — you just keep throwing this unnatural way of life into my face. I’ve tried to talk to you as a man, but all you do is turn into some little girl, mad about something I did to you twenty years ago.” “Twenty years ago?” Jamal replies mockingly. “You’re crying like a little bitch about your mother throwing you in some water forty years ago. What does that say about you? Can’t even look the woman in the eyes without crying. I’m not crying. Always telling me, ‘Jamal, don’t be a sissy bitch, put it in the music.’ Well, don’t be a sissy bitch, put it in the mu —“ Lucious suddenly grabs him by the throat with one hand and raises his other like he’s about to punch him. He’s properly crying as he says, “You ain’t nothing to me but a disappointment and the day you die from AIDS, I’m gonna celebrate.” Again, one is reminded of Blake and Steven’s pre-wedding scene back in DYNASTY ’81, specifically Blake’s comparably homophobic line about endowing “the Steven Carrington Institute for the Treatment and Study of Faggotry.” But whereas Blake’s delivery of that line was laced with withering, icy contempt, Lucious’s is full of emotion and passion. His words come at a cost and that’s why, even though the AIDS reference is dated, they still have an impact.

Compared with the nuptials at Southfork and the ASAs on EMPIRE, DYNASTY’s party of the week — a music showcase for Fallon's new label — is pretty inconsequential, but all three gatherings attract unwanted guests: Nicolas Trevino (“Elena, you don’t even know this guy,” objects Christopher. “Did you know he’s married?”), Lucious’s mother Leah (“They say the whole family’s performing but nobody’s invited me,” she complains to Andre, “I don’t like being left out”) and Evil Ada Stone (who freaks out Culhane by showing up in a black wig) respectively.

Andre takes pity on his grandmother and agrees to sneak her into the ASAs, but insists that she can’t tell anyone who she is because Lucious has already been lauded for the “authentic” video which depicts his mother killing herself: “It would destroy his credibility if anybody found out.” Leah promises to keep her mouth shut, but we’re pretty sure how this is gonna go — she’s gonna arrive at the ASAs, lose her mind in all the excitement and say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Instead, just as Andre and Leah are leaving for the show, Thirsty arrives with a couple of heavies who lock them in Lucious’s panic room to make sure she can’t say anything.

When Nicolas assures Elena that he and his wife are in the process of divorcing, one assumes he’s lying — until the penultimate scene of the episode when he returns to his penthouse apartment to find Lucia waiting for him and we realise she is the C21st equivalent of THE COLBYS’ Adrienne Cassidy, i.e., a woman who is determined to hold onto her husband despite knowing he has been in love with another woman his entire adult life. “A divorce would only colour us poorly in the church and we have too much invested in our life together to not give this another try,” she reasons. “At the very least, Nicolas, we owe it to our children … The Ewings seem determined to know who you really are. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll tell them what you owe and who you owe it to … It would also put an end to what you have going with Elena.”

Lucious’s mother is not the only loose cannon relative in this week’s EMPIRE. While Harris Ryland is eager to conceal his five-year involvement with the CIA, it takes Cookie about five seconds after her sister Carol starts dating Tariq Cousins, an ex-cop from their hometown of Philly, to figure that “he’s a Fed now … Why [else] would he wanna get mixed up with Carol? Everybody know Carol’s a crackhead and she’s got three illegitimate kids.”

Just as John Ross confronts his mother about her drinking (“Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?”), Cookie does the same thing to her sister: “You had a drink last night with Tariq, didn’t you? … Man, I told you if you fall off again your ass was out and I meant that!” Carol responds by accusing Cookie of snatching away the life that rightfully belongs to her. In the same way that Caress Morelle once told Blake that “my sister stole you from me” so Carol claims that Lucious should have been hers: “He met me first then here you come — 'here come Cookie!'” Cookie ain’t buying it: “Well then, bounce, Carol, bounce your ass out of my company … and you know what, forget about the ASAs because I’m not taking no washed up crackhead to no ASAs!”

Earlier in the season, Cookie paid homage to Dominique Devereaux when she asked her other sister, Candace, to “stop acting like Diahann Carroll,” and now it’s time for another shout out to ‘80s DYNASTY. Throughout this week’s ep, Cookie has been teasing Lucious about his failed attempts to lose weight in time for the ASAs and which generic supermodel he plans to take as his date. Meanwhile, her own plan to bring Carol as her plus one has just gone up in smoke. Finally, when Lucious and Cookie are both dressed up to the nines and ready to go to the party, he looks at her admiringly, tells her that “a woman that beautiful shouldn’t walk the red carpet alone,” and extends his arm to her by way of invitation. Momentarily surprised, she does not respond. “You want my arm to fall off?” he asks. Recognising this as a line Billy Dee Williams, aka Brady Lloyd, delivered to Diana Ross, aka Billie Holliday, in Lady Sings the Blues, she laughs and says, “Shut up, Billy Dee!” Given that the character of Brady Lloyd was at least partially inspired by Williams’ impresario role in Lady Sings the Blues, this only strengthens the psychic link between that film, Brady and Dominique, and Lucious and Cookie. (That said, I heard on a podcast recently that Sylvia Robinson, the mob-connected singer/producer/label owner/mastermind behind ‘Rappers Delight’ by the Sugarhill Gang was the original inspiration for Cookie.) But Cookie is also eager to clarify what she is not. Unlike Karen Fairgate, who introduced her family on the first episode of KNOTS as “the neighbourhood Brady Bunch”, Cookie insists on the ASAs red carpet that “we’re not the Brady Bunch, we’re not the Partridges, hell, we ain’t even the Jacksons. We are the Lyons!”

Meanwhile, Fallon’s decision to start a record company with Monica could be read as payback for Cookie naming her label Lyon Dynasty at the beginning of the season. “Welcome to Broken Glass Recording Artists, bringing the next generation of women into the spotlight,” Fallon declares smugly as if she’s just casually invented feminism. Alas, there’s less female solidarity in the music biz on EMPIRE, as Cookie, having realised that “the Feds are still coming for us”, is forced to tell Jamal the real reason he needs to sever all ties with sweet little Freda Gatz, with whom he has been collaborating on his new album. “You ever wonder how I got out on good behaviour?” she asks him. “Honestly, I assumed you informed on somebody,” he replies. “Frank Gathers,” she admits. “You snitched on Freda’s dad? … And he ends up in lock-up with our father. Ma, did Lucious have something to do with his murder?” “… He would have killed all of us without batting an eye. And Freda? Well, that apple didn’t fall far from the tree so I need you to let her go, Jamal. It’s dangerous for all of us.”

Cookie on Freda: “Well, that apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
Afton on John Ross: “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh, Sue Ellen?"

Storylines collide at the ASAs as Jamal tries to let Freda down gently on one end of the red carpet (“I’ll set you up with a new label … Trust me. Get away from Empire”) and Carol shows up at the other, high as a kite and yelling her head off. Mindful of the cameras, Cookie pulls her sister into an embrace while telling her to “walk away before I drag your drunk ass by your nappy weave!” A confused Freda and a stoned Carol then come face to face. Carol asks for Freda’s help in getting into the party. When Freda politely refuses, Carol gets mean: “You think you’re better than me, huh? You know what, you wouldn’t even be here if Lucious didn’t feel guilty about what he did to your daddy!” As Carol is dragged away by security, Freda goes into a flashback montage, which enables her to figure out precisely what Lucious did to her daddy. Then everything goes into silent slow-motion as Freda runs down the red carpet towards Lucious, snatching a gun from a security guard’s holster as she goes. Suddenly, the ASAs becomes the lobby of Belmar Hotel at the end of KNOTS Season 5: Jamal turns to see Freda raise the gun and aim it at Lucious. “No, no, no, stop, Freda, no!” he shouts, stepping in-between them. He takes the bullet and sinks to the ground. Then everything speeds up again and chaos descends. It feels like the end of the season, but it isn’t. It isn’t even the end of the episode.

Just as John Ross was late for his wedding, Andre is conspicuous by his absence at the ASAs. It’s hard to say which of them has the more bizarre excuse for not being where they should be: John Ross, watching the Texas Railroad Commissioner playing sex games with a woman dressed as a dog, or Andre, pounding on the door of a panic room as he and his delusional grandmother watch his brother get shot on live TV.

Andre and Leah are eventually freed and join the rest of the glamorously dressed Lyon family in the waiting room of Soap Land Memorial Hospital where Jamal is, of course, in critical condition and undergoing emergency surgery. It’s very much Soap Land business as usual, but with an extra layer of EMPIRE-style verisimilitude — the designer gowns are stained with blood, the emotions are raw, the characters are genuinely traumatised. (“Get your hands off me!” screams Cookie at Lucious. “This is your fault, you son of a — hey, put them damn cameras down!”) In a brilliant moment of irony, the family realise the ASAs are on the hospital TV and they gather round to see the Award for Song of the Year, the category for which both Lucious and Jamal were nominated, go to … someone we’ve never previously heard of. “They split the votes,” Hakeem realises before turning to his father: “All that fighting between you and Jamal for what? Nothing!”

With all that’s going on at the hospital, everyone momentarily forgets about Lucious’s mother who wanders outside and is immediately besieged by reporters. “Are you part of the family, ma’am?” “Yes, I am part of the family.” “What is your relationship to Lucious Lyon?” End of episode.

And the Top 3 are …

1 (2) EMPIRE
2 (1) DALLAS
3 (3) DYNASTY

 

[Willie Oleson]

but these days, merely finding a politician in bed with a hooker is so 1980s, so instead, John Ross must catch Babcock with a hooker dressed as a dog.

Agreed.

Harris has helpfully accelerated that process for John Ross by supplying him a secretary who’s already a prostitute. Add to this a mistress who gets inside his head by wearing the same lingerie as his wife and it’s as though the world of New DALLAS has conspired to present John Ross with a distorted hall of mirrors, David Lynch-meets-Alice in Wonderland version of his father’s sex life

Now that's a good thing to keep in mind during a rewatch!

Whereas Alexis and New New Cristal are involved in a relentless game of oneupmanship on this week’s DYNASTY that involves dead plants and ghosts and sprinkler systems

I think I cried a little.

Sue Ellen has lived through all this before and is now powerless to do anything but watch history repeat itself while knowing that she is at least partially responsible for the way John Ross has turned out.

And the very idea that we can watch the ramifications of old soap in a new soap is almost surreal.

It feels like the end of the season, but it isn’t. It isn’t even the end of the episode

Gasp! Gasp! And how wonderful that all this should happen because of a seemingly insignificant supporting character. They can do so much damage.
You said Belmar Hotel, I say IMOS awards conference (without slow-motion, but with cameras).

1 (2) EMPIRE

Well done Empire, and so well-deserved!

Caress Morelle

No, no, I can't bite my tongue any longer! It's Morell, not Morelle!

 

[James from London]

And the very idea that we can watch the ramifications of old soap in a new soap is almost surreal.

Yes!!!!

And how wonderful that all this should happen because of a seemingly insignificant supporting character.

Two seemingly insignificant supporting characters - Carol and Freda - who I don't think have previously interacted on screen, but when they do ... watch out!

Well done Empire, and so well-deserved!

It is the most unpredictable of soaps. You just don't know where it's going.

No, no, I can't bite my tongue any longer! It's Morell, not Morelle!

Why do I do that? I remember when I first joined Soap Telly Talk Chat, I spent about three years calling Cecil Colby 'Cecile' before someone else similarly exploded at me.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Two seemingly insignificant supporting characters - Carol and Freda

Right, during a seemingly insignifcant incident.

Why do I do that?

A bit of French blood running through your veins, Frosty De Laplande?

 

[James from London]

17 Mar 14: DALLAS: D.T.R. v. 18 May 16: EMPIRE: Past is Prologue v. 07 Dec 18: DYNASTY: A Real Instinct for the Jugular

This week’s DALLAS and EMPIRE each begin by jumping forward in time as John Ross and Pamela, last seen exchanging wedding vows at Southfork, return from their honeymoon (“Hot, rainy, a ton of iguanas … You’d have hated it,” John Ross assures Emma) and Jamal, last seen bleeding from a gunshot wound on the ASAs red carpet, returns home from the hospital in a wheelchair.

Just as Steven and Sam’s wedding coincided with New DYNASTY’s first season finale, so Hakeem and Laura’s coincides with EMPIRE’s second. Preparations are also afoot for Fallon and Culhane’s big day, which affords Fallon the opportunity of turning into Bridezilla with predictably “hilarious” results: first, she enlists the services of a wedding planner whose sole function is to make suggestions which Fallon then rejects with a succession of catty one-liners; then there’s a wedding dress montage where Fallon tries on a variety of gowns, which Alexis then rejects with a succession of catty one-liners. (Sitting through New DYNASTY has now become a genuinely depressing experience.) Whereas Fallon is adamant that she does not want her family involved with her wedding plans (at least until the very end of the episode, when she decides that’s exactly what she does want, thereby rendering the entire episode even more pointless than it already was), Hakeem and Laura’s nuptials are arranged to be very much a family affair. “Dre even got ordained so he can do the ceremony,” Hakeen tells Jamal before asking him to sing at the wedding. But Jamal has other ideas. “I ain’t singing no more, all right?” he tearfully informs his family. “I’m just tired. Ain’t y’all tired? The same damn cycle all the time, just death and incarceration.” It’s Soap Land fatigue, C21st style. “We could change that cycle — I ain’t singing again until we do,” he vows. It’s a powerful resolution, which Jamal manages to keep until halfway through the episode when the creative muse descends upon him once more.

While DYNASTY’s Sam is all goo-goo-eyed about the baby that was left on Alexis’s doorstep a few weeks ago, DALLAS’s Christopher immediately bonds with Michael, the five(ish)-year-old son of his new girlfriend Heather and her ex-husband Bo (the Southfork ranch hand who sold drugs to Emma last season before being poached by John Ross to run his fracking crew). This storyline reminds me of ‘The Lost Child’, the 1979 episode where Bobby (grieving the loss of his own baby just like Christopher is) strikes up a friendship with Luke, the son of another ranch hand called Bo.

Grannies got it going on this week. While Leah drops some tantalisingly cryptic hints about the Lyon family history in front of her grandsons on EMPIRE (“Dwight, you and them kids are paying for the crimes of your daddy”), much to Lucious’s displeasure (“This is my house — I’m the only one that talks to my children about my past — is that clear?”), Judith has some blistering advice for granddaughter Emma on DALLAS: “Never let a man screw you for nothing. My girls … allow a man to believe he’s in control, but my girls are always in control and because they are, they are richly rewarded. On the other hand, a whore who gives without receiving is not only a whore, but a fool. You think John Ross cares about you, loves you? You think he’ll leave his wife for you? Why would he buy the cow when he gets the milk for free?” “John Ross does care about me,” Emma insists. “John Ross degrades you!” replies Judith. “If you think that’s love, then you are a worthless creature.”

When Sue Ellen approaches her old adversary Governor McConaughey, he explains that he can’t stop and chat because he has a speaking engagement with the Daughters of the Texas Revolution, “three hundred daughters with three hundred guns in their purses — that’s a group of ladies you don’t keep waiting.” The DTR would appear to be the C21st equivalent of the DOA, aka the Daughters of the Alamo, the charity organisation Miss Ellie, Sue Ellen, Donna, Cally and Mavis Anderson all belonged to at various points in ‘80s DALLAS, only far larger in number and (even) more right-wing in temperament. It sounds like Fallon could be describing the Atlantan equivalent when she recalls the “cabal of blonde, big-haired headcases [Alexis] used to slither with.” Before the Governor leaves, Sue Ellen gifts him a decanter of JR Ewing bourbon which he has placed in his office, not realising it is equipped with a listening device. “A bug in a bourbon cork — I think JR would see the humour in that,” Bobby tells Sue Ellen as they listen in on an incriminating conversation between McConaughey and the railroad commissioner with the dog fetish from last week’s ep.

A decanter is also used as a plot point on this week’s DYNASTY. Sam is carrying one when he pays a late-night visit to the bedroom of Manny the live-in nanny whom he has hired to look after the abandoned baby. He and Manny have been flirting — so does this mean Sam is about to follow John Ross’s lead and cheat on his brand new spouse in the family home? And that DYNASTY is about to give us a frank, passionate sex scene between two men the way EMPIRE did with Jamal and Major D a couple of weeks ago? The answers are no and no: Sam is ultimately too childlike for either option. Instead, he and Manny get as far as almost kissing before he accidentally knocks the decanter to the floor, thereby breaking the moment. “I can’t do this,” he realises.

While Manny mentions having a brother who died when he was a child, Culhane learns that Evil Ada Stone had a young daughter who was murdered. Presumably, these dead kids are an attempt to make Manny and Ada seem more "complex" than merely a doe-eyed sex doll and one-dimensional villain respectively. If so, it doesn’t work.

Using the dirt she now has on him (evidence of “conspiracy and illegal campaign contributions”), Sue Ellen coerces McConaughey “to ask Stanley Babcock, the Texas Railroad Commissioner, to resign … Stanley gave my son a permit [to frack Southfork] and I want you to replace Stanley with someone who will revoke it.” When John Ross finds out from the TV news that Babcock’s replacement is none other than his very own Uncle Bobby, he goes brilliantly nuts, first declaring war on his mama (“I thought we were allies, but now I know I got another enemy I gotta look out for — I ain’t gonna forget this!”) and then shouting at Bobby. “You disrupt my drilling operation, which means we won’t have the capital to buy the Artic leases, which means we lose the race to the Arctic, which means we lose!” Bobby’s defence is unexpectedly stirring: “Southfork is my trust from Aaron Southworth, a man who understood the value of preserving this family’s heritage, of protecting it, that was passed down to me by Mama and, I’ll be honest, sometimes I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse, but … you listen well, boy, I am the steward of Southfork and I will not forsake it!”

The words Bobby uses to describe himself in this speech are revealing. It would have been very easy for New DALLAS to make him merely a watered-down version of his father: the crusty but benign patriarch who rules his family with a firm but fair hand, yada, yada. But Bobby does not regard himself as a patriarch, or even as “the head of this family” as Jock used to. Instead, he refers to himself as “the steward of Southfork” — a far more humble title, and one that was thrust upon him. “Sometimes I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse”: the ambivalence expressed in that line ensures means the New DALLAS version of Bobby is more three-dimensional than “the good brother” or “the romantic hero” he mostly was in the original series.

While Bobby evokes the memory of his grandfather, the rarely mentioned Aaron Southworth, on DALLAS, Leah brings up the subject of Lucious’s father, about whom we previously knew nothing other than that he died violently, on EMPIRE. “My daddy was a cop,” Lucious now adds. Meanwhile on DYNASTY, Alexis makes an even rarer reference to her mother, recalling that she was “the most militant bitch about my bridal gown.”

Towards the end of last week’s action-packed EMPIRE, we caught a glimpse of Anika in a police interview room, about to be questioned by Tariq Cousins, the undercover FBI agent who has been dating Cookie’s sister. This week, Anika assures the Lyons that she didn’t tell the Feds anything. “They’re gonna try to subpoena her,” Thirsty predicts. “We can’t let that happen.” Ordinarily, the issuing of subpoenas in Soap Land, often accompanied by a sneaky “you have just been served," is a minor soap trope which serves as an indication that some dramatic courtroom scenes are on the way. Here, however, the subpoena itself — or more specifically, how Anika can avoid being served with one — is the drama. “We’re gonna get twenty-four-hour security around you,” Lucious promises her. But so terrified is Anika at the prospect of testifying that she winds up perched on a balcony threatening to jump: “They’re gonna make me testify, they’re gonna put me in the witness protection programme, I can’t do that!” Of all people, it falls to Cookie to talk her round: “Anika, look, I know we had bad blood between us but you are carrying a life, my grandson, so you’ll never be alone … You’re a Lyon now, okay? Isn’t that what you always wanted — to be one of us?”

As if this were not enough drama for the pregnant Anika to contend with, Rhonda chooses this week to finally accuse her, in front of the family, of causing her miscarriage. “I know you pushed me, bitch!” she yells with her hands around Anika’s throat, “I saw your shoes, the bottoms of those red Louboutins you love so much!” Much to her — and our — astonishment, Rhonda realises that no-one believes her. “You really think pearl-clutching debutante Anika pushed you down the steps?” asks Cookie incredulously. So Rhonda now finds herself in the Val Ewing position of everyone thinking she’s crazy, including her bipolar husband. Furious, she leaves town, ostensibly to visit a girlfriend in Los Angeles.

What’s a wedding without a few unwelcome guests? Just as Christopher was unhappy to see Nicolas at John Ross and Pamela’s nuptials last week, so Sam is shocked, when looking through his and Steven’s wedding album, to spot a picture of escaped mental patient Claudia Blaisdel in attendance. “Maybe it wasn’t Hank who killed my aunt, maybe it was crazy Claudia!” he exclaims. The equivalent person at Hakeem and Laura’s wedding is Shyne Johnson, “one of the most notorious thugs in hip-hop.” After Anika describes her questioning by the Feds, Lucious concludes that it's his connection to Shyne that they are most interested in. I’m a little unclear on the details, but it seems as if Shyne could tie him to the murder of a drug dealer back in the day. Shyne’s unpredictable, a loose cannon, and so to keep him sweet, Lucious and Cookie invite him to Hakeem’s wedding — even though it’s meant to be a high-class affair and Shyne is anything but high-class. “He shot up that club in Vegas, he did time for beating up that white rapper,” protests Arturo, the father of the bride. “He’s just someone I wouldn’t feel too comfortable having at my daughter’s wedding.” Hakeem politely explains to his in-laws-to-be that Shyne is “my parents’ people. I respect where they come from.” He then turns to Cookie and Lucious and tells them solemnly, “Mom, Dad, one of the main reasons I’m marrying Laura is to break away from that history.” Finally, he addresses his fiancee, the sweet but anonymous Laura. “You and me gonna break the cycle, baby,” he promises her.

In the event, Shyne shows up to the wedding with a posse of hookers, acting all loud and vulgar. Then, just before the ceremony, someone dressed as a waitress hands Anika a piece of paper: “Anika Calhoun, you’ve been served. See you in court.” The waitress flees, knocking over a tray of drinks in the process, and Lucious’s security give chase. In the confusion, Shyne gets involved, smashing a champagne bottle over the security guard’s head, and then, just all hell is breaking loose, the bride and her father make their entrance. “I can’t … This isn’t gonna be my life. I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” Laura sobs before dashing out. Before we have time to process this, Lucious comes up with a brainwave: “If Anika and I get married … the Feds can’t force her to testify.” Thirsty agrees that it’s a good idea. “Man, are we sick or something?” Hakeem protests. “We supposed to end the cycle!” “Cycle ends when it’s ready to end, till then we do what we have to do,” replies Andre (or, as Sue Ellen puts it even more succinctly, “The family that blackmails together stays together”). This is a plot twist too far for Cookie, however. “I did not save this bitch’s life so she could ruin mine! … Y’all know I love you, right?” she says to her sons, “but … I can’t do this.” She leaves, and Lucious and Anika are married in place of Hakeem and Laura. As they walk back down the aisle together, Lucious whispers the five words every girl longs to hear on her wedding day: “I know you pushed her.” Then FBI agent Tariq shows up. “Why you keep chasing me, man, when you keep coming up empty? Why waste the tax-payers money like that?” taunts Lucious. “Believe me, we’re just getting started,” Tariq assures him. “What’s your half-brother doing here?” Leah asks Lucious, looking at Tariq. Lucious is confused, so Tariq explains: “Our father was a good cop, Dwight, but a bad man. I guess we each got half of him.”

The final scene of this season’s EMPIRE finds new bride Anika taking a breather on the balcony when a hooded figure comes up behind her. It’s Rhonda. What ensues is less a girly catfight and more a struggle to the death. “You wanted that devil child to be the only heir to the throne, didn’t you?!” shouts Rhonda. “You’re damn right I did, you bitch!” yells Anika. As they fight, they move perilously close to the edge. Just then, Andre appears. The camera stays on him as we hear a bloodcurdling scream. “NO!!!” he shouts. Blackout, end titles, see you next season. If a cliffhanger can be predictable and exciting at the same time, then this one is.

(Oh and there’s more bridal-themed violence on DYNASTY, where Fallon, Alexis and New New Cristal are all wearing wedding dresses for no real reason, and Fallon and New New Cristal both start trying to tear out Alexis’s hairpiece, again for no real reason.)

And the Top 3 are …

1 (2) DALLAS
2 (1) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY

 

[Willie Oleson]

“John Ross does care about me,” Emma insists. “John Ross degrades you!” replies Judith. “If you think that’s love, then you are a worthless creature.”

Telling someone who's in love not to be in love is like telling the sun not to shine, or the rain not to be wet. (should I copyright that...)

Sam is ultimately too childlike for either option. Instead, he and Manny get as far as almost kissing before he accidentally knocks the decanter to the floor, thereby breaking the moment. “I can’t do this,” he realises.

I get it that they want to portray Sam as a very likeable character - and he usually is - but without the "bad" there's no way for improvement or forgiveness.
I find him more interesting as the cute little parasite who can't resist his urges.

he goes brilliantly nuts, first declaring war on his mama

I can't decide what's more fun: Sue Ellen plotting for or against John Ross.

While Manny mentions having a brother who died when he was a child, Culhane learns that Evil Ada Stone had a young daughter who was murdered. Presumably, these dead kids are an attempt to make Manny and Ada seem more "complex" than merely a doe-eyed sex doll and one-dimensional villain respectively. If so, it doesn’t work.

No, it doesn't. But this

“My daddy was a cop,” Lucious now adds

immediately creates an interesting background. I'm not sure why, maybe it's that authority/hero thing that mostly works in American stories.
And then there's the whole untold story of "what went wrong?"
I also loved the original idea of Blake Carrington's father being a preacher or pastor and how that contrasted with corporate greed. And imagine if Ben...oh never mind.

This week, Anika assures the Lyons that she didn’t tell the Feds anything

I wondered if she was going to be Adriana La Cerva'd.

Lucious comes up with a brainwave

Lucious whispers the five words every girl longs to hear on her wedding day: “I know you pushed her.”

“What’s your half-brother doing here?” Leah asks Lucious, looking at Tariq

Ah, the shock revelations, it's so classic soap opera. Even more so because of the formal "half-brother" title.

Anika taking a breather on the balcony when a hooded figure comes up behind her. It’s Rhonda

To elevate the who-thuddit I would have had André getting involved with the struggle.

 

[James from London]

31 Mar 14: DALLAS: Like Father, Like Son v. 21 Sep 16: EMPIRE: Light in Darkness v. 21 Dec 18: DYNASTY: Crazy Lady

EMPIRE’s Season 2 opener picks up the story a couple of minutes before the end of the previous season, this time focusing on events happening outside the hotel where Hakeem and Laura’s Lucious and Anika’s wedding has just taken place. Still upset at being jilted, Hakeem runs out of the building, ignoring Jamal and Lucious’s entreaties to come back inside. Instead, he jumps into the back of his wedding car, complete with a sign saying ‘Just Married’ on the trunk, and speeds off into the night. Lucious eyes the extras on the street suspiciously. “Look at all these damn people out here,” he says. “Any one of them could be Feds.” Then he tells Jamal to take his grandmother home and look after her. Suddenly, a body falls out of the sky, landing with a thud on top of a car, Marta Del Sol-style. It’s Rhonda. Not Anika. Rhonda. Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Spookily, New DYNASTY chooses this week to re-enact the scene from the original series where Claudia Blaisdel drops a baby off a roof (of a cheap motel, as opposed to the swanky hotel on EMPIRE). Whereas we’ve just been on ground level with the Lyons, we’re now up on the roof with the Carringtons, just as we were in ’83. The aerial view of the baby smashing onto the car below is still a surreally gruesome sight, even when you know it’s a doll.

Seconds before Rhonda fell (unless she was pushed — we can’t be sure), Anika finally admitted to killing her baby. Likewise, just before the DYNASTY doll flies through the air, Claudia finally confesses to killing New Cristal at the end of Season 1 (“and I would do it again if it would bring Matthew back”). In both scenes, the drama doesn't end with the fall. As in the original DYNASTY, the Carringtons’ relief upon discovering that the child Claudia dropped wasn’t real is swiftly followed by another realisation — that the actual baby is still missing (“If Claudia doesn’t have the baby then —” “Who the hell does?”). Meanwhile on the EMPIRE balcony, Andre is still screaming the same “NOOO!!” he was at the end of last season. After seeing his dead wife down below, he turns back to Anika and starts choking the life out of her — “What did you do? What did you do? You killed my wife!” — only for her waters to break. In one smooth movement, he goes from strangling her to scooping her up in his arms and carrying her inside.

And so for the second time in three episodes, the EMPIRE gang all wind up in Soap Land Memorial looking anxious but glamorous in their wedding outfits (everyone, that is, but Hakeem, the father of Anika’s baby, who has passed out drunk in another woman’s apartment, kind of like ‘80s Jeff Colby did when his first child was being born). As the doctors prepare for Anika to give birth six weeks prematurely, the cops show up to talk to her. “Those aren’t Feds,” Lucious realises before barging into the delivery room. “Sir, unless you’re the father, I’m gonna have to ask you —” a nurse begins. “That’s my wife,” he replies and no further explanation is required. While the medical staff are at one end of the bed delivering the kid, Lucious is at the other, saying appropriate words of encouragement to Anika (“You can do it … push, baby, that’s it …”), before whispering in her ear, “Speaking of push, you see the cops out the window right now? Nobody pushed Rhonda. She jumped, you tried to stop her, she overpowered you, tried to take you with her, grabbed you by the throat — which is what’s gonna happen if you don’t go with the story.” There’s a parallel moment following the rooftop incident on DYNASTY. The real baby has been found and Claudia is being handcuffed and led away by the cops. “You said you’d help me!” she protests to Blake. “Look, I am helping you,” he replies reasonably, before whispering in her ear in the same menacing way that Lucious does in Anika’s, “I’m helping you understand the pain you caused me and my family by taking away what you love. I know it’s cruel — he’s only a baby. Will it make things equal? I don’t know, but it’s a hell of a start.”

Back on EMPIRE, one final push and Anika’s child is born. Lucious looks every bit the proud step-father/grandfather — until the doctor says “it’s a girl.” This is not what Anika had led him to believe. “You wanna cut the cord, Dad?” the doc asks him. “No,” he replies coldly before snarling at Anika: “You lied to me!” His disappointment, however, does not prevent him from having himself registered as the father on the birth certificate or from taking the baby away from Hakeem when he tries to hold her later in the episode. Over on DYNASTY, Blake may have taken Claudia’s baby away from her to raise as a Carrington, but then St Sam insists that he be given to Matthew’s parents to raise. So I guess Mother Blaisdel won out in the end.

Tariq, Lucious’s recently acquired half-brother and the federal agent determined to bring him down, tells Cookie that he knows Lucious married Anika “just to keep her from testifying. If I can prove that marriage is fake, I could subpoena her.” Consequently, Lucious and Anika are obliged to reenact Fallon and Liam’s storyline in which they pretended their sham marriage was genuine, only this time playing it for soapy drama rather than farce. When Anika moves back into Lucious’s house with the baby, she receives a warm welcome from her new mother-in-law. “You about as trustworthy as a snake in a hamster cage,” Leah hisses at her while wielding a kitchen knife. “I got my eye on you — and don’t touch any of this food. I know you’re trying to poison me.”

Meanwhile, a grieving Andre (“I’m done with God and his plans!”) receives a ghostly visit from Rhonda who berates him for not preventing her death. “Without me, you’re just one more Philly thug with mental problems,” she sneers at him. It’s too soon to say whether this visitation is the same kind of Soap Land daydream that allowed Bobby to keep “seeing” April after her death in DALLAS or a symptom of a deeper malaise, similar to that which caused Claudia to believe Matthew had returned from the dead on DYNASTY. Speaking of whom, when Claudia threatens to expose Alexis's involvement with Hank (i.e., the fact that she paid him to pretend to be her son), Alexis cleverly plays on Claudia’s mental history by convincing her that she has imagined the whole thing: “Who’s Hank, dear — another doll of yours? … Is he here with you now?”

Thanks to the missing baby storyline, there’s a seam of seriousness running through this week's DYNASTY — not even this show can play a kidnapped baby plot entirely for laughs — which makes it a bit more watchable than it has been recently. Fallon and Blake’s dispute over whether to call in the FBI or handle the kidnapping privately is the same argument abductees’ families have been having in Soap Land since Bobby Ewing was snatched in 1979. Their opposing views are informed by their own previous kidnapping experiences, which means the conflict feels rooted in character rather than existing solely as a vehicle for Fallon’s latest collection of tiresome wisecracks.

“I grew up in a family where if you don’t stab someone in the back before dinner, you don’t get dessert,” Fallon tells Culhane in this ep, echoing what Bobby told Christopher a couple of seasons ago: “I grew up in a family where stabbing everybody in the back was encouraged.”

On this week’s DALLAS, it’s John Ross who feels that his family have stabbed him in the back. “You can justify your actions to kingdom come, Mama,” he tells Sue Ellen, referring to her and Bobby’s plot to prevent him fracking on Southfork, “but we both know the real reason you did this … I may be drunk on power but you — you’re just drunk. This wasn’t the tough love of a mother. These are irrational decisions of an alcoholic.” “Malign me all you want,” he tells his Uncle Bobby, “but if you get off your high horse, maybe you’d see that I was the only one offering you a real solution to get around Treviño. It wasn’t personal. But you and my mother, you stabbed me in the back so don’t talk to me about the importance of sticking together. That stunt you just pulled? That doesn’t make you a Ewing. Makes you a damn hypocrite.”

In their ongoing efforts to bring down the Ewings, Nicolas and Elena adopt a two-pronged attack. They decide that the best way to alienate Pamela from the rest of the family is to provide her with proof that John Ross is cheating on her. To that end, Elena enlists the aid of Jasper, an extremely sexy female private eye, who sets up surveillance devices in both John Ross’s office and his apartment. Meanwhile, hoping to take advantage of the rift that has developed between John Ross and his mother and uncle, Nicolas invites him out for a drink — and guess who they run into!

Back in 1989, Dennis Grimes, son of Roger Grimes, arrived on DYNASTY two decades after his father’s untimely demise. On this week’s DALLAS, we are introduced to Hunter McKay, son of Roger’s other self, Tommy McKay, twenty-five years after his father’s sudden death. But whereas Dennis was a long-haired extortionist just like his father, Hunter doesn’t appear to have much in common with his daddy. Tommy was a motorbikin’ rebel; Hunter is a computer geek. When he encounters John Ross (“my oldest friend”) in a bar, he is celebrating the success of taking his gaming company public. “One day I realised the video game I really wanted to play didn’t exist,” he explains, “so I just decided to create it myself … Who knew being a video game junkie would pay off?” A junkie trying to capitalise on his addiction? Maybe he and his dad do having something in common after all. It’s just that Tommy’s business plan — smuggling cocaine in clay pots from South America — didn’t really work. That scam of Tommy’s is also echoed on DYNASTY where Culhane discovers Ada Stone has tricked him into smuggling heroin inside supposedly valuable antiques (except that this then turns out to be part of one of those tricksy plot-within-a-plots I didn’t really follow).

Inspired by Hunter’s story (“The best part about going public — I was able to buy up the controlling interest in the company!”), John Ross decides to do the same thing with Ewing Global. Knowing Bobby and Christopher will never agree, he sets about getting the other shareholders on his side. After convincing Pamela and Nicolas, he turns his attentions to his mother. “I want a vote to take Ewing Global public. It’ll get us the capital we need for the Arctic leases and it will dilute Cliff’s shares,” he explains — but all Sue Ellen wants to know is whether or not his affair with Emma is over. “Yes, yes it is,” he insists. “I wanna make this point very clear: I love my wife. The last thing I’d ever wanna do is hurt her.” She believes him, a bit like how she used to believe JR whenever he promised he’d turned over a new leaf — only John Ross sounds like he truly means it. “You have my support,” she tells him. Over on EMPIRE, Lucious also has a new business plan, which he pitches to real-life rapper Birdman (a rare example of a “playing himself” Soap Land cameo that genuinely works). “I’m relaunching Swiftstream under a brand new banner called Empire XStream and I wanna make an offer for exclusive rights to your music,” he tells him. Birdman proves a harder sell than Sue Ellen, however. “Empire’s fallen to the bottom of the ocean, man,” he sneers. Lucious retaliates with a potent cocktail of mixed metaphors: “I know you think y’all smelling blood in the water, but I think you better check your own damn panties cos I don’t lose. I always ride the wave because I am the King!”

John Ross’s secretary Candace, under pressure from Harris Ryland to seduce him, slips into his office while he’s working late to ask if there’s anything he needs. To spell out what she means, she starts taking off her dress. Staying true to the promise he made his mama, he shows her the door (“I’m a married man … It ain’t ever gonna happen”) — but who should emerge from the elevator just in time to see Candace leaving John Ross’s office with her dress half off but Sue Ellen? “That son of yours is something else,” says Candace coolly as she walks past her. Sue Ellen is devastated, as devastated as she used to be when she’d find JR in bed with another woman after he’d sworn he’d changed — except this time, of course, John Ross is innocent.

The following day, the Ewing shareholders gather to vote on taking the company public. As Christopher and Bobby argue with John Ross (“This company is our family’s legacy … You take it public, you’re putting it in play for anyone to buy for controlling interest!” “The only reason he’s doing this is to get the company for himself!”), an agonised Sue Ellen stands with her back to the rest of them — she and Bobby inadvertently paying homage to Abba in the process.



John Ross is confident of victory, especially after Pamela and Nicolas vote in his favour. Finally, Sue Ellen turns around to face her son. “I vote no,” she says.

This leads to one of the most powerful scenes in the entire history of Soap Land as John Ross storms into his mother’s house and finds her in the kitchen, drinking. She doesn’t even bother to hide it. She’s really drunk and they’re both really angry. He accuses her of stabbing him in the back for a second time; she accuses him of lying to her face. “I didn’t lie to you!” he insists. “I told you the truth — it is over with Emma.” “How clever you are with your words — just like JR,” she replies bitterly. “I saw her coming out of your office. I saw her, John Ross!” He looks baffled for a second, then the penny drops: “Candace?” “Once a cheater always a cheater. I should have learned that lesson the first time around.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mama. Yeah, Candace was in my office and the crazy bitch was all over me — and I turned her down!” “BULLSHIT!” screams Miss Texas 1967. “I know what I saw!” “You don’t know, because you’re drunk! I am telling you the truth!” he insists. “Even drunk, I know the sound of a lie, and you are an expert at it, just like your father.” “I AM NOT MY FATHER!” he explodes. Suddenly, the scene isn’t about marital infidelity or corporate betrayal anymore, it’s about a son trying desperately to communicate with his alcoholic mother. ‘80s DALLAS always glossed over this aspect of John Ross and Sue Ellen’s relationship — understandably, as it wasn’t really equipped to convey the damage wrought by a drunken parent on a little boy — but now it’s made three-dimensionally real. “Are you so hell-bent on punishing JR for his sins that you’re willing to destroy the relationship with your only son?” he asks her, his voice choking with tears. “I’m your son. You remember that? Or are you too damn addled to remember who I am? Why are you doing this to yourself again, huh?” “Don’t you get it?” she sobs. “You did this to me — you and your father.” “No, Mama, you did this to yourself. You’re so busy seeing the ghost of JR in me that you cannot stop to take a hard look in the damn mirror. You want me to take responsibility for my actions? Then you take responsibility for yours.”

He leaves the house, slamming the door behind him. Outside, he hesitates, considering his next move. Then he makes a call: “Hey, I need a favour.” We don’t know it yet, but having just vehemently denied that he is the same as his father, he is about to prove the exact opposite is true. The call was to Emma. He needs something from her father’s files. They meet at his apartment. “Gimme that file on the judge,” he tells her. “It’s always about you,” she replies, casually removing her dress, “your schedule, your needs — but I have needs, too.” Following her lead, he starts to undress as well. After all, he has no choice — she holds all the cards. “Oh, don’t bother,” she says. “Tonight, it’s about my needs.” She reclines on the sofa in her underwear, legs splayed, and beckons him with her finger. He hesitates. “I said come here — now,” she tells him. Reluctantly, he obeys. When Culhane went down on Fallon in the opening scene of New DYNASTY’s first episode, there was something liberating, even celebratory about it. When Emma pretty much blackmails John Ross into doing the same thing, it’s about power. “Now go home and kiss your wife!” she tells him when the task is completed. “John Ross degrades you,” Emma’s grandmother told her last week. Well, now the tables have been turned. Two episodes ago, John Ross watched with smug amusement as Stanley Babcock and his dog-suited companion did their thing on CCTV. Now, thanks to the surveillance installed by her private eye, Elena is the one watching John Ross and Emma doing their thing on her computer, a look of appalled fascination on her face.

There’s more bedroom surveillance on EMPIRE. The final scene of this week’s ep shows Lucious cradling his brand new daughter/granddaughter/step-daughter/whatever she is in the nursery. “They are coming for us from all sides, Bella,” he whispers gently, “but we’re gonna show all these haters just what time it is.” We cut to a row of stuffed animals on a shelf, a big brown teddy bear in the middle. Then we see and hear Lucious and the baby through the bear’s eyes. Then we cut to Tariq seeing what the bear is seeing on his computer screen. New DYNASTY has already done the camera-inside-the-cuddly-toy thing (which is how everyone found out Steven was Anders’ son), but again that was played for cheap laughs, whereas this episode concludes with an ominous close-up of the bear’s face as Lucious says to the baby, “Wait until we show them how dark Hell can get.”

Back on DALLAS, the sexual degradation continues as John Ross hands the file he obtained from Emma to an old friend of his daddy’s, Judge Robbins. “A gift from that whorehouse you like to frequent,” he explains. The pictures contained within are not as salacious as the CCTV footage of Stanley Babcock or, indeed, the S&M snaps of the judge who presided over Lucious’s bail hearing last season, but are nonetheless sufficiently compromising for the judge to sign a court order to have Sue Ellen taken into custody "for a mandatory psychiatric evaluation.” “You certainly are just like your father,” he tells John Ross. “You hear that enough, eventually, you start to believe it,” John Ross replies darkly. Kirby applies the same rationale to her behaviour on DYNASTY. “My dad keeps treating me like an immature bratty child,” she complains. “I’m tired of trying to prove him wrong … I should just embrace it. Screw it, right? If he doesn’t think I’m an adult, why act like one?”

By the time the medics arrive to take her away, Sue Ellen is a befuddled, pathetic mess. The fact that they are so gentle with her as they help her into the ambulance somehow makes the situation even more poignant, and you start thinking that maybe John Ross is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Then, just as the doors slam shut, he appears, lit in hellish red by the ambulance lights. He doesn’t chuckle as Sue Ellen is taken away like JR did when he had her committed thirty-five years earlier. (“You boys take care of her now!” he said cheerfully back then). And she doesn't swear revenge on John Ross the same way she did on his father as she was being dragged off (“Somehow I’ll get back at you!”). Claudia does, though, as she is led away by the police on DYNASTY. “You’re gonna pay for this, you hear me? I’ll be back!” she yells at Blake.

In a great deleted scene on DALLAS, Pamela instructs Candace to stop flirting with her husband at the office and tells her that her revealing outfit is inappropriate and "an insult to every woman who works here.” God knows what she’d have made of the skimpy dresses Paige Matheson used to wear to work at the Sumner Group back in the day.

And this week's Top 3 are ...

1 (1) DALLAS
2 (2) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY

 

[Rove]

From DYNASTY's first moments, we are presented with a world far more opulent than that of the Ewings

I've just begun to watch Dynasty - again - after many, many years. To be fair Dynasty was a creation to counter the already established, ratings climber Dallas. I've watched Oil, part 1,2 & 3. There is no doubt a large sum of money was invested in Dynasty to offer the viewer a look into the lives of the rich. I like how the writers are using Krystle as a vehicle for us to peer into the lives of the uber rich. I'm really enjoying the time spent on lengthy scenes. Blake and Steven's confrontation is memorable for both its subject matter and acting. The pain etched on Al Corley's face during this tense standoff is breath-taking. But what was more memorable was the journey to get there. We find Steven and Matthew on the same plane. Steven wishing to numb the pain, knowing he is returning to Denver. Blake sending the limo to collect Matthew while Steven is left at the curb to catch a taxi.

When Steven makes it back to the Carrington mansion the air is riff with cold. The evening meal consists only of Blake, Fallon and Steven. There is the creepy butler, Joseph. I'm loving Fallon's brutal honesty towards Krystle and those around her. I guess with the Carrington money comes the freedom to say whatever you like. Yet weirdly I don't feel any malice from her. It's like she is attuned to the fact Krystle might not be around for long so why bother.

Silly me. I recall I couldn't stand the characters of Matthew, Claudia and Lindsay but during this re-watch I'm loving them. They give us commoners someone to cling to. Interesting to see the writers create an early scene between Steven and Claudia at the oil field. It gives Steven something to think about.

I'll stick with watching Dynasty. I always enjoyed the first season and yes the thrill of what is to come is exciting...until the silliness creeps in.

 

[Alexis Colby Carrington]

I thought season 1 of dynasty was really strong.

 

[James from London]

07 Apr 14: DALLAS: Like a Bad Penny v. 28 Sep 16: EMPIRE: Sin That Amends v. 18 Jan 19: DYNASTY: A Champagne Mood

After a high-octane few episodes which have included a shock wedding, a premature birth, a long-lost brother, the shooting of one major character and the tragic death of another, this week’s EMPIRE understandably takes its foot off the gas a little. DALLAS isn’t quite as emotionally devastating as last week's was either.

Less than a full episode after John Ross had her committed to a psychiatric unit, Sue Ellen is released into Bobby’s care — which means bringing her back to live at Southfork. The words ‘frying pan’ and ‘fire’ spring to mind. Nor is she the only Soap Land character to be receiving medical care in a home environment. Jeff Colby, who ended last week’s DYNASTY in a car crash after being shot, wakes up in a hospital bed surrounded by all the usual Soap Land Memorial paraphernalia — IVs, heart monitors, doctors with clipboards, anxious relatives — but when the screens around his bed are pulled back, we see that he is actually in a guest room at the Carrington Manor. Blake explains to Monica that it’s to conceal his involvement with Ada Stone from the authorities. “Believe me, there was no other choice,” he tells her. “You, Blake, should never start a sentence with ‘Believe me,'” she replies.

Strange as these domestic arrangements might be, however, the award for Most Toxic Household of the Week belongs to Lucious Lyon. “Who in the hell are all these people in my house?” he demands to know when he arrives home to find Anika quizzing a group of potential nannies (not, thankfully, as part ‘Terrible Interviews’ comedy montage). After ordering them all to leave, he asks, “Who gave you the permission to hire a nanny?” “I need permission?” Anika replies indignantly. “In my house you do,” he tells her, before adding in a whisper, “I don’t need people I don’t know looking in my life, okay?” Then we hear the sound of a baby crying in another room. “Oh my God, Lucious,” Anika pleads, “I need help — I cannot do this by myself!” At this point, Lucious’s mother Leah, who has been silently observing all of this, offers to see to the child. “No! You keep your crazy hands off of my baby!” Anika yells. “You got one job in this house and that’s a mother,” Lucious snarls at his wife. "Get in there and do your damn job!” So we’ve got a paranoid despot, a spoilt princess and a bi-polar granny, each of whom has a history of homicidal violence, all living under the same roof with a newborn. Sounds nuts, but it’s played completely straight, which makes it fascinating.

While Tariq kept tabs on the goings-on in Lucious’s house via a camera secreted in the nursery on last week's EMPIRE, Elena watched surveillance footage of John Ross and Emma having sex on DALLAS. This week, Elena shows Nicolas the sex video, but then tells him she’s changed her mind about sending it to Pamela. “It was one thing when we thought he was cheating with Candace,” she explains, “but if I had to watch video of someone I love betraying me with someone I thought was my friend, I couldn’t get over that. I’m not gonna do that to her.” Nicolas nods in agreement … but later texts the tape to Pamela anyway. The penultimate scene of the ep finds Pamela in bed with John Ross, too preoccupied to notice the buzzing of her phone — an indication that Nicolas’s message is incoming — just inches away from her. Before anything so incriminating can happen on EMPIRE, Anika discovers the bug hidden in the teddy bear and Lucious destroys it.

For the most part, the tone of this week’s EMPIRE is comparatively light. Lucious’s primary concern is trying to woo Cookie back. Rather than the traditional romantic gestures of a Soap Land leading man — buying out a florist’s worth of flowers; hiring an entire restaurant for an intimate dinner — he showers her with an array of rather more idiosyncratic gifts including a statue of a lion, an espresso machine and a gold-plated gun with matching bullets. He also deploys one of the most potent weapons a Soap Land character has at their disposal: flashbacks!

Back in the ‘80s, the majority of Soap Land flashbacks could be divided into two categories: the romantic flashback, whereby a character, often at a hospital bedside, would go into a reverie, causing the screen to go all wibbly-wobbly as he or she summoned up a sentimental montage of days gone by, and the revelation flashback, most commonly deployed during the resolution of a whodunit, where a character follows up an “It was you!” style accusation by flashing back to previously unseen events that led up to the crime in question. Of the flashbacks that did not fit into either category, arguably the most memorable were those that told the ongoing story of Mack and Anne’s youthful romance during KNOTS Season 8. EMPIRE now adopts the same approach to show us how Cookie and Lucious first got together back in the day. Just like rich Anne and poor Mack, it’s a case of opposites attract as good Catholic schoolgirl Loretha (as Cookie was known back then) sees young punk Lucious beatboxing on a street corner with his crew and shocks her friends by going over to dance with him. It’s quite touching to see these two hard-bitten characters back when they were young and relatively innocent. As much as present-day Cookie insists that Lucious “can’t keep hitting me over the head with this when-we-first-saw-each-other sentimental crap," it feels like it can only be a matter of time before she succumbs to his charms once again.

In the same way that the story of Young Mack and Young Anne was expanded to include additional flashbacks from the perspective of Young Greg Sumner, here we also see Tariq flashing back to the same street corner when he was a little kid trying to join in with the beatboxers, only for his mother to drag him away. “How many times have I got to tell you — stay away from that boy!” she scolds, referring to Lucious. “But, Ma,” protests Young Tariq, “you said he’s my brother.” “Tariq, you listen to me,” she replies gravely, “you do not ever, ever say that out loud again, not to anybody, least of all to him … Him and his crazy ass mama are the worst things to ever happen to us!”

The romantic style flashback of ‘80s Soap Land seems to have died out in C21st, replaced by what might be termed as PTSD-style flashbacks, where an event in the present will trigger a traumatic memory for a character — conveyed in a series of short, sharp cuts — causing him or her to lose control. An example of this occurs on DALLAS where the reappearance of Drew Ramos in a parking garage transports Christopher back to the loss of his babies. As he beats the crap of Drew, he flashes back to the explosion on the rig, then the flatlining of the twins' heart monitors in the hospital. While the beating takes place in slow motion, the flashbacks occur in rapid succession, making it seem as if what Christopher is remembering is more real to him than what is happening in the present. “Finish it," pleads Drew finally, as Christopher's fist hovers over his bloodied face. This is enough to snap Christopher out of the past. “If I have to live with this pain, so do you,” he tells Drew, before leaving him in a heap on the ground. Back on EMPIRE, Jamal has a similarly visceral reminder of a recent traumatic event. Lucious is giving a speech at a charity event when he spontaneously invites him to get up and perform. The yelling of the crowd and the flashing of the cameras is enough to transport him back to his shooting on the red carpet. He runs for the exit then collapses, hyperventilating, outside.

Meanwhile, Drew's guilt turns to rage after he finds the documents showing how JR swindled his father out of his land. “I watched Papi die ... for nothing,” he realises. “He wasted his life on a dream that was already taken from him and I wasted mine hating myself for not being able to save him. Everything that’s happened is because of JR’s betrayal. Their greed took everything from our family.” Elsewhere in the ep, Nicolas is not pleased to learn that Drew is back in town. “Besides Carmen, he’s the only one who knew we grew up together … He could ruin all our plans,” he tells Elena anxiously.

There’s one more, very C21st use of the flashback convention in this week’s DALLAS. In the final scene, Nicolas has a clandestine meeting with — surprise, surprise — Hunter McKay. “Sorry I’m late,” he says. “I had to deal with some family issues.” We then quickly flash back to John Ross’s introduction to Hunter in last week’s ep (“Hunter McKay — his granddaddy and my daddy fought their fair share of battles back in the day”). This doesn’t represent a character’s memory; it’s simply there to remind the audience of who Hunter is, like a “previously on Dallas” style recap in the middle of a scene. Maybe it shouldn’t work, but such is the increasingly non-linear nature of television drama that one doesn’t even question it.

“When you offered me a chance to take down the Ewings, you didn’t say anything about midnight meetings with Mexican gangsters … with guns,” Hunter complains nervously. This is how we realise that not only are Nicholas and Hunter in cahoots, but they’re both working for the Mendez-Ochoa cartel — the same bad boys that Harris Ryland is secretly plotting against with the CIA. “When the company goes public, we’ll buy enough shares to give you controlling interest,” Nicolas is assuring boss man Luis, referring to Ewing Global. “By the time the Ewings and Cliff Barnes realise what happened, you’ll be in control of the company, free to launder billions of drug profits for years to come.” Luis warns Nicolas that his plan better work or there will be fatal consequences for his children. At the same time as widening the narrative to include the cartel and Hunter in the “Ewings go public” storyline, DALLAS also tightens it as Nicolas asks Luis for a favour: “I need your help finding Drew Ramos.”

As well as flashbacks, a couple of characters experience otherworldly moments this week. Andre continues to receive visitations from dead wife Rhonda on EMPIRE, only now he just hears her disembodied voice rather than seeing her, which I guess is some sort of progress. Jeff Colby, meanwhile, has a kind of near-death experience in his hospital bed. Thankfully, rather than another horrible Wizard of Oz-style dream sequence, it takes the form of a short and stylish vision in which he sees the silhouette of a glamorous black woman in a turban singing into a microphone, evoking both Billie Holliday in Lady Sings the Blues and Dominique Devereaux in ‘80s DYNASTY. I don’t think it has yet been established that Jeff and Monica’s mother is the C21st version of Dominique, but viewers who remember the original series are clearly being invited to make that connection here.

Twisty-turny schemes-within-a-scheme where things turn out to be other than as they originally appear, and then turn out to be different again, are part of what makes the Soap Land world go round. However, New DYNASTY has given this kind of story-telling a bad name with its various twists and turns becoming tediously convoluted with scant regard for character or even logic. This week's DALLAS and EMPIRE, however, each give us a reminder of how such an ever-shifting narrative, where different layers of a story are gradually peeled away, revealing different truths, can be both fascinating and fun.

As part of his plan to seize control of Ewing Global once its IPO goes through, John Ross flies with Pamela to Vegas to renew a business acquaintance with an old friend of JR’s — Sheik Sharif Ali, no less: “We cut him in on the Arctic leases if he agrees to give us the necessary capital to purchase the controlling interest in the IPO.” The sheikh mostly communicates through his son, Prince Nasir. I don’t think we’ve encountered such regally titled characters in Soap Land since DYNASTY’s Moldavian era — although the protocol and etiquette required to deal with the sheikh is more reminiscent of the Sumner Group’s encounter with Murakame, the bogus Japanese company on KNOTS LANDING. John Ross immediately finds himself in the sheikh’s bad books for not approaching him with the Arctic deal when JR originally promised he would. “Your actions are callous and selfish and not only have you disrespected my father, but you have brought dishonour to your father’s name as well,” Prince Nasir informs him. To turn things around, John Ross embarks on a scheme-within-a-scheme which also serves as a metaphor for his complex feelings about his father.

Using Pamela’s priceless earrings (previous owners include Catherine the Great and Katherine the Wentworth) to buy into a high-stakes poker game with the sheikh, John Ross also puts the watch he inherited from JR on the table. “If my father was king, this watch would be his crown, a symbol of everything he was,” he explains. He then deliberately loses the game and the watch. Humbled, he apologises to the sheikh for “disgracing myself, my father and you by not following through on his promise. And I can only hope one day to be worthy of the legacy he left me.” Later, Pamela asks him why he threw the game. “I kept seeing that damn watch as an albatross around my neck,” he replies. “Without it, maybe I’ll be free to be my own man instead of the man everybody else wants me to be.” But that’s not the only reason: “Sometimes the only way to win is to show the other person you’re not afraid to lose,” he smiles knowingly.

After their return to Southfork, John Ross receives a surprise visit from Prince Nasir who hands him back JR’s watch. “My father has had a change of heart,” he explains. “When you gambled the watch, my father saw JR in you. You were humble enough to know you were wrong and brave enough to risk something you cared deeply about to prove it.” John Ross is moved. And there’s the conundrum at the heart of his character: he desperately wants to escape JR’s shadow but is just as desperate to be worthy of him. It’s an ambivalence JR himself never experienced — you can’t imagine him gambling so recklessly with a sacred possession of Jock’s — his medallion, say, or his portrait.

EMPIRE introduces the wonderfully named Angelo Dubois this week. He’s a slick black politician who heads the not so wonderfully named W.O.K.E. (aka We Organise for Knowledge and Empowerment), a social work programme for young kids. He and Jamal get into a heated debate on a radio show after he refers to Jamal as a victim of gun violence. “If anyone’s a victim, it’s actually Freda Gatz,” Jamal argues. “Why don’t we all try to grow up where she grew up?” “See, it’s that line of thinking that does a tremendous disservice to black folk,” replies Angelo. “How are we meant to deal with these circumstances if we marginalise ourselves?” He then extends an on-air invitation to Jamal to attend one of W.O.K.E.’s anti-violence summits. Cornered, Jamal has no choice but to agree. Having witnessed this discussion, Cookie is unimpressed with Angelo: ”That bougie bitch — he wouldn’t know the streets if it shot him in the ass.” Nor does she think it wise for Jamal to continue their association. “We got a FBI agent up our ass,” she reminds him, “we don’t need a politician too.” Nonetheless, Jamal’s interest in Angelo’s organisation grows and Lucious, under the misapprehension that Cookie is equally enthusiastic, offers to host the summit himself and finance it and “stream the whole thing live on Empire XStream.”

On the surface, this isn’t the soapiest of storylines, but dig a little deeper and it becomes apparent that everyone involved has an ulterior motive for doing what they’re doing. While Lucious’s generosity is really a (misjudged) attempt to impress Cookie, Lucious himself suggests that Jamal’s newly acquired social conscience is a smokescreen for him to hide behind: “This whole ‘I wanna end the cycle’ thing is some BS to cover the fact that that boy can’t sing no more.” Cookie, meanwhile, accuses Angelo of “exploiting my son’s situation for your political tricknology” in front of Lucious and Jamal: ”I know you … with your little summits and town hall meetings … Those kids carry a pain that people like you can’t even begin to imagine. See, you ain’t never had to overcome nothing, have you?!” “Well, damn, only person I ever seen her go off on like that is you!” Jamal tells Lucious as they watch her storm off. The implication here is that Cookie’s dislike of Angelo masks a strong sexual attraction towards him.

Racial politics also raise their head on DYNASTY, albeit in a more superficial way. In return for helping to save his life, Blake asks Jeff for a favour: “I need a diverse investment partner to get this soccer team. All it’ll cost you is ten million for 20% ownership and a call to the Urban Outreach Programme pushing our bid.” When Jeff refuses, he resorts to blackmail, threatening to expose his involvement with Ada Stone unless he co-operates. Jeff comes up with a condition of his own: “You want your soccer team? I want Culhane to suffer.” This sounds juicy enough, but as both Blake’s desire for a football team and Jeff’s thirst for revenge against Culhane have come pretty much out of nowhere, they don’t mean very much.

Like EMPIRE’s summit, DYNASTY’s Party of the Week is charity-based, a fundraiser in aid of the Steven Carrington Foundation. While things go badly for Jamal at the summit — his PSTD panic attack thingy when Lucious invites him to sing — they don’t go much better for Sam, who is obliged to act as host in Steven’s absence and is then rewarded for his efforts by receiving divorce papers in the mail with no explanation.

Following a nice brotherly bonding session between Jamal, Andre and Hakeem where they all pledge to support each other during their current upheavals (PTSD, widowhood and fatherhood respectively), a newly optimistic Andre returns to the house he used to live in with Rhonda to collect some belongings. As he loads his car, he is approached by a couple of cops who want to know what a black man is doing in such a nice neighbourhood: “Lot of break-ins in this neighbourhood. You know anything about that? … Got any ID on you, yo?” “My wallet’s in my car — yo,” mimics Andre, and that’s enough to get him arrested, slammed on the ground and handcuffed, with a gun pointed at him. It feels both ugly and plausible — a reminder that no matter how rich your family or how escapist your soap opera, a black man living in America is still a black man living in America.

And this week's Top 3 are ...

1 (1) DALLAS
2 (2) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY