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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 117781" data-attributes="member: 22">27 Jan 88: DYNASTY: The Bracelet v. 28 Jan 88: KNOTS LANDING: If Not Now, When?As Soap Land shootings go, Alexis’s is a pretty casual affair. (“The bullet only grazed her skull,” reports her doctor — the same doctor Pam Ewing met in Jamaica when she was looking for Mark Graison, only without the cool Caribbean accent.) She’s out of the hospital by episode's end and doesn’t even require a Sable-style turban to hide her tiny bandage. However, she’s still determined to pull out of the election (“This campaign’s almost cost me my life!”) — until she realises that the shooting has dramatically increased her chances of winning. “You’re a heroine,” Gordon Wales, ace reporter and a recurring thorn in both Alexis’ and Blake’s sides, informs her during his final DYNASTY scene. “The sympathy and concern is pouring in … If you ran for the presidency tonight, you’d give the front runners a run for their money.” This is presumably a reference to the real-life US presidential elections of 1988, which means that Wales’s remark that “digging up dirt on candidates may be hot right now” most likely alludes to the scandal surrounding Gary Hart, the Democratic nominee who had recently dropped out of said election due to allegations of an extramarital affair. These references follow on from Dave Culver’s mention of Iran and the Contras during last week’s DALLAS, and Alexis’ and Abby’s recent shout-outs to Margaret Thatcher and Ayatollah Khomeini. Now that the primetime soap is no longer the hot cultural item it once was, placing the shows’ fictional events in a present real-world context might be an attempt to keep them seeming relevant and contemporary. There’s further blurring between truth and fiction when Alexis receives a get-well message “from The White House”. The last time Reagan impacted Soap Land so directly was when he called Senator Dowling during last season’s DALLAS.Elsewhere on DYNASTY, Jeff and Sammy Jo draw closer together. First, he offers to help her out of a financial hole by investing in Delta Rho and then he saves her from an attack by a downtown rapey guy who gets the wrong idea when she offers him a campaign button on Blake’s behalf (“In this neighbourhood, what you show you owe!” he snarls). To the seasoned soap viewer, it looks as if Jeff and Sammy Jo might be the next Ray and Jenna or Richard and Maggie, i.e., two long-running but hitherto separate characters gradually forming a bond that leads to romance. That’s certainly the conclusion Steven jumps to and he’s not happy about it. “You’ve messed up my sister’s life. I am not gonna let you do that to Sammy Jo!” he tells Jeff before offering him a deal: he’ll capitulate on a decision involving the Colby pipeline (which is still proving a useful Macguffin even after THE COLBYS itself has ceased to exist) if Jeff severs his ties with Sammy Jo. I must admit I’m very much liking this leaner, meaner, slightly power-mad Steven who has taken over his father’s company. Jeff, on the other hand, responds by instructing a nameless someone “to buy as much available stock in Denver Carrington as you can get your hands on … It’s for me, but keep my name out of it. Grab all you can get.” There’s a lot of that sort of thing going on in Soap Land lately: for the past few episodes of DALLAS, JR has had April, Sly, Casey Denault and even Cliff acquiring stock, just as anonymously, in West Star. Meanwhile on this week’s KNOTS, when Charles breaks the news to Abby that he and Judith will have to delay their divorce until their company’s acquisition of Eastern Mining Group is complete, she retaliates by teaming up with Greg to secretly purchase shares in EMG, thereby sabotaging the deal.Given that KNOTS’ original focus was the relationships of four married couples living in a cul-de-sac, it’s always interesting to observe scenes from other marriages on the show. So far, we’ve seen Earl and Judy Trent’s (brittle), Greg and Jane Sumner’s (estranged), Cathy and Ray Geary’s (abusive) and Harry and Sheila Fisher’s (unstable). This week, we’re shown several scenes from Charles and Judith Scott’s marriage, which might best be described as businesslike (save for the scene where Judith humiliates herself, Adrienne Cassidy-style, by lying in wait for Charles in his bed). As with Charles and Abby’s grand romance, there’s something oddly self-conscious about Charles and Judith’s scenes together, as if there were "inverted commas" surrounding their relationship. By comparison, an equivalent scene from an extraneous marriage on DYNASTY — between Karen Atkinson, the surrogate carrying Adam and Dana’s baby, and her husband Jessie — feels refreshingly earnest.Up until now, DYNASTY has presented Karen a single mother. “That’s the thing,” Jessie explains to her. “We’re not divorced. I couldn’t bring myself to sign the final papers.” Likewise on KNOTS, Karen Mackenzie assumes that new neighbour Pat is raising her daughter Julie alone — until she pops over to invite them round for dinner and Pat’s jumpy husband Frank puts his head around the door. “I have never met two more secretive people,” Karen tells Mack later. “It’s almost as if Pat and Frank have done something — robbed a bank, I don’t know, kidnapped their daughter.” Indeed, the Williamses give off a weirdly artificial vibe. Obviously, that’s part of their storyline — for whatever reason, they’re posing as a normal suburban family just as the last occupant of their house, Anne Matheson, played at being an everyday suburban neighbour. But it also ties in with the contradiction at the heart of KNOTS itself — a series that still purports to be about a regular folk like “us” when really it’s about “them”: incredibly rich and glamorous people, some of whom still live in a cul-de-sac because … well, for the same only-on-TV reason that the Ewings of DALLAS all live under the same roof even though they don’t have to. A third layer of artifice stems from the actors playing the Williamses, each of whom is very appealing, but who have yet to fully gel into a convincing family unit. Sweet little Julie, in particular, looks as nervous when saying goodnight to her father as she does when interacting with her strange new neighbours. As a result, it’s hard to see where one strand of artificiality ends and another begins.While DYNASTY concludes with Alexis making an unpleasant discovery about her new husband (“You bastard!” she says to Sean’s photo after finding Leslie Carrington’s bracelet on the floor of their bedroom), KNOTS ends with the audience making one about Abby’s new fiancee. “Is there anything to tell the investors?” a mystery man asks Charles over the phone. “Everything’s going according to plan … we’re right on schedule,” Charles assures him. “Congratulations, Charles. We all want you to have a long and happy marriage,” replies the caller. Like the phone conversation Sean Rowan had at the end of the ep in which he and Alexis were married (“It’s already done — I married the woman”), the suggestion is that Charles’s relationship with Abby is part of a larger, somewhat sinister, agenda. As vague as this suggestion is, it’s a relief to discover Charles isn’t quite what he appears to be — because what he’s appeared to be thus far isn’t all that interesting. The Charles we’ve been introduced to is a smarmy pushover who acquiesces to Abby’s every whim. It seems odd that someone like that should have gotten under her skin in the first place, much less continued to have the emotional hold over her that he does. Adding to this lopsidedness is the sense of importance KNOTS has placed on their relationship (it’s not every proposal of marriage in Soap Land that gets the end-of-episode cliffhanger treatment). We know that Charles is the love of Abby’s life because the characters say that he is and we know that their romance is A Big Deal because the show presents it as such, but we don’t necessarily feel these things ourselves. Therefore, anything that undermines the elevated nature of that relationship is welcome. DYNASTY, on the other hand, makes no such claims regarding Alexis and Sean’s relationship and so we’re free to just sit back and watch the whole tawdry affair unravel, as it inevitably will.KNOTS nevertheless boasts the best scenes of the week — those involving Gary and Val’s ongoing dispute over his access to Betsy and Bobby. At one point, their argument spills out into the cul-de-sac and Mack has to physically restrain Val from attacking Gary. Instead, she screams at him that he’s a son of a bitch — just one week after Bobby Ewing yelled the same insult at JR, while also physically attacking him. (Miss Ellie must be so proud.) Now that all the external obstacles to Gary and Val’s happiness (save Jill) have been removed — Ben, Abby, the secrecy surrounding the twins’ paternity — it’s fascinating that their relationship has never been more openly hostile. In a way, it’s not dissimilar to what happened to Jeff and Fallon following their return to Denver. Without the complications of living under the same roof as Miles and the rest of the Colbys to distract them from each other, their relationship lasted about five minutes. One wonders how well Bobby and Pam’s second marriage might have fared had they not had Jenna’s pregnancy to agonise over.And this week’s Top 2 are …1 (2) KNOTS LANDING2 (1) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?