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Dynasty
Dynasty
DYNASTY versus DALLAS versus KNOTS LANDING versus the rest of them
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<blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 196446" data-attributes="member: 22"><p><u>13 Jun 12: DALLAS: Hedging Your Bets v. 14 Jan 15: EMPIRE: The Outspoken King v. 04 Oct 15: BLOOD AND OIL: The Ripple Effect v. 18 Oct 17: DYNASTY: Spit It Out </u></p><p></p><p>Two major characters were shown committing serious crimes towards the end of last week’s episodes. EMPIRE’s Lucious Lyon shot his lifelong friend Bunky in the face while BLOOD AND OIL’s Wick Briggs made off with a tanker full of oil belonging to his own father (inadvertently causing a fire in the process). Meanwhile, a third incident — Matthew Blaisdel’s death on DYNASTY — may or may not have been deliberate, and in this week’s ep the finger of suspicion is variously pointed at Blake, Fallon, Steven and Jeff Colby.</p><p></p><p>As the news of their crimes spread, Lucious and Wick both do a first-class job of feigning innocence. When Bunky’s disfigured corpse is fished out of a river, Lucious’s tears appear as genuine as the rest of his family’s. “I’m gonna find the person that did this to my friend and when I do, I’m gonna —” he begins. Likewise, Wick looks genuinely appalled when he sees the burns sustained by his father in the fire he caused. “I say we string the bastards up,” he says of the perpetrators.</p><p></p><p>There’s no rest for Soap Land’s newlyweds. Because of Bobby’s decision to sell Southfork and the police enquiry into Matthew’s death, the honeymoons of Christopher and Rebecca on DALLAS and Blake and Cristal on DYNASTY, to Tahiti and French Polynesia respectively, are postponed indefinitely.</p><p></p><p>Father/son relationships in C21st Soap Land are proving as complicated as they were back in the '80s. On DALLAS, Christopher takes Bobby’s decision to sell the ranch personally. “You don’t trust me to take over,” he tells him. Bobby denies this to his face, but not very convincingly. “He left here … like I’d personally kicked him in the gut,” he later admits to Ann. Meanwhile, even as John Ross and JR collude to steal Southfork from under Bobby’s nose, cracks in their alliance begin to show. “Dad, I’ve made it this far without your advice. Don’t start now,” John Ross warns his daddy. “Son, never pass up a good chance to shut up,” snaps JR in reply. Over on EMPIRE, Lucious gets his eldest and youngest sons to do his bidding by promising each of them total control of the family company, while threatening to disown his middle son if he publicly announces that he’s gay. “I’m sorry, Dad, the world does not revolve around you,” Jamal tells him. “<em>Your</em> world does,” Lucious points out. “I pay for everything — your clothes, that $12,000-a-month loft you live in, the credit card bills … Come out and you’re on your own.” The injuries sustained by Hap Briggs in the rig fire on BLOOD AND OIL bring his estranged son Wick to his side. “I’m really sorry for all the messed up stuff between you and I,” Wick tells him. “In spite of it all, you’ll always be my boy,” he replies. When his wife suggests that Wick might have been his anonymous attacker, Hap refuses to consider the idea. “No son of mine would put a gun in my face”, he insists. But later on, he starts to develop suspicions of his own.</p><p></p><p>Matters become further entangled towards the end of this week’s B&O when we discover that Wick’s new girlfriend Jules is an ex-flame of Hap’s. Moreover, it’s a flame may not have entirely burnt itself out: when Hap visits Jules to tell her to stay away from his son, they have as much trouble keeping their hands off each other as another secret ex-couple, John Ross and Marta Del Sol, do on DALLAS. John Ross, however, manfully resists his desires because of his involvement with Elena — an involvement that becomes strained when Elena accuses him of sending the phoney email that split her and Christopher up a couple of years earlier. In spite of his vehement denials, she tells him she wants to keep their relationship on a strictly professional basis, which suddenly leaves him free to have wild and crazy hotel room sex with Marta after all.</p><p></p><p>While Marta and John Ross are busy slamming each other against walls and tying each other up (not to mention the mickey she slips him or the secret camera she uses to record their assignation), there’s a slightly more perfunctory sex scene in EMPIRE where Andre’s wife Rhonda, her hair in curlers, ties a bib around her neck before going down on him. This is the second depiction of oral sex in C21st Soap Land after Michael the chauffeur gave Fallon a good seeing to in the back of a limo during the DYNASTY premiere. This week, Fallon returns the favour — during Matthew Blaisdel’s funeral. Rhonda’s act of fellatio is an attempt to persuade Andre to keep an important appointment: “For most people, cancelling a doctor’s appointment is just lazy, but for someone who’s bipolar it’s life-threatening … You need to recalibrate your meds again.” Andre’s manic behaviour later in the episode suggests her efforts were in vain. Hearing her ordinarily contained husband referring to himself in the third person (“Andre got it going on, baby!”) prompts her to adopt another approach. “I swear to God I will have you committed if you do not take those damn pills,” she snarls, grabbing him by the nuts.</p><p></p><p>As well as learning of Andre’s condition on EMPIRE, we also find out the source of Claudia Blaisdel’s mental health problems on DYNASTY. Whereas in the original series, the implication was that Claudia’s condition stemmed from her sensitive, even poetic nature — Steven comparing her to Emily Dickinson amongst others — here the explanation is far less romantic as New Steven explains to the police that New Claudia’s “impaired memory, paranoia, delusions” are due to a car accident she suffered the previous year (with the suggestion that the accusations she has made about Blake killing her husband should be discounted as the ravings of a madwoman).</p><p></p><p>On EMPIRE, Cookie, trailed by her galumphing new assistant Porsha, walks in on Jamal having sex with Michael. “Come on, boy, get up, we got work to do,” she urges, sitting on the edge of the bed without batting an eye. “Shut up, Dora,” she adds when Michael objects to her presence. Michael is also seen in a state of undress in his DYNASTY guise of Sam where he climbs out of the Carrington pool and invites Steven to join him in the hot tub. Steven declines, suggesting that they “press pause" on their relationship. ("We’re practically family.”) In a reversal of the KNOTS LANDING flashback to 1968, where Young Anne tricked Young Mack into believing she was swimming naked before emerging from the pool in a strapless swimsuit, we don’t realise until Steven’s line at the end of their conversation (“If you wanna borrow a swimsuit next time, you can ask me”) that Sam has been standing in front of him fully naked the whole time.</p><p></p><p>Back on B&O, when Wick and his accomplice Garry try to offload their tanker full of stolen oil onto a potential buyer, they are told that it is too hot a property for anyone to touch: “There’s oil that makes you a profit and there’s oil that puts you in a corner cell at Leavenworth.” On DYNASTY, Blake Carrington is likewise concerned with concealing evidence. “We need to erase any traces of Matthew beyond his employment at Carrington Atlantic,” he explains to his family — specifically referring to Matthew’s affair with Cristal. To this end, Fallon enlists the aid of Jeff Colby’s tech wizardry to destroy any evidence of the photo she emailed her father of Matthew and Cristal together. There is a reverse situation on DALLAS where John Ross hires a detective to trace the identity of the person who sent Elena the fake email from Christopher's account. (Rather stylishly, John Ross’s secret meeting with the private eye takes place on a funfair ride.)</p><p></p><p>DYNASTY refuses to let Cristal, and by extension the audience, grieve for Matthew’s death. Every time she tries, she is undermined by brutal wisecracks from Fallon (“I know it’s a little gauche in the wake of a man’s death, but I feel like one little decapitation shouldn’t blow the whole deal”), cold-hearted pragmatism from Blake (“If I don’t put my emotions aside, this family will bleed millions”), flashbulbs from the press and stylistic flourishes from the show itself — slow-motion sequences, flashbacks, jump cuts — that leave no time for her (or us) to process a genuine emotion. Each time Cristal comes close to any kind of catharsis, she is denied it. Moments after learning of her lover’s death, she is obliged, in her role as Carrington Atlantic’s Head of PR, to make a statement to the press about Matthew. This proves too much and she collapses — a collapse which is immediately turned into online gossip for Fallon to gloat over. Later, she returns to her old apartment to look through keepsakes of her time with Matthew — only to find Anders standing over her. “Anything that needs to be removed, I can take them off your hands,” he tells her coldly. During Matthew’s funeral, she steals away from the ceremony to weep in solitude — but Fallon won’t allow her even this moment of privacy. “You do know you’re not the star of this Lifetime movie right? The role belongs to his actual wife,” she tells her before removing Cristal’s dark glasses from her face and tossing them into an open grave. Cristal retaliates by pushing Fallon into the grave after them and then walking away with a slight smirk on her face. It’s a cool, funny moment, and you get the sense Cristal is starting to get the hang of what it means to be a Carrington in New DYNASTY — it’s not about having feelings, it’s about going for the cool, funny moment. Even Steven, the show’s Mr Nice Guy and Cristal’s one ally in her new home, can’t resist a snappy one-liner when the news of Matthew’s death first breaks. “Cristal was screwing the dead guy,” Fallon informs him. “I assume Claudia doesn’t know? Surely she would have led with that,” he quips in front of his new step-mom.</p><p></p><p>The idea of a corrupt, obsessively self-interested family who won’t rest until they’ve made over their vulnerable new addition in their own image sounds deliciously dark, and New DYNASTY <em>is</em> kind of fascinating to watch, but it lacks the vital component to make us connect emotionally with the characters. This is because the show continues to mirror Fallon’s attitude — most specifically, her humour. This is isn’t the same kind of bad sitcom humour that infected some of the ‘80s soaps, particularly FALCON CREST. That humour was broad, smug and lazy. Fallon’s (and therefore DYNASTY’s) humour is smart, brittle and almost neurotic in its determination to keep everyone (the audience included) at an emotional distance.</p><p></p><p>Soap Land's weddings may be over, but a couple of the guests have got left behind. In both cases, it’s a relative of the bride. While Rebecca Ewing’s brother Tommy gets a job at Southfork, Cristal Carrington’s nephew Sam moves into the Carrington manor and proceeds to eat everything in sight.</p><p></p><p>Only one episode into their respective marriages, it becomes apparent that neither Rebecca nor Cristal are who they claim to be. A cryptic conversation between Rebecca and Tommy makes them sound like a modern-day version of Jill Bennett and Peter Hollister. “I just wonder sometimes what the point of all of this is,” says Rebecca to her brother. “You know what the point is,” he replies. “We spent the last two years of our lives working on this job. There’s a ton of money on the line here … Keep your eye on the ball, sis, and don’t get too comfortable being Mrs Ewing.” Meanwhile, Anders wonders how Cristal will sign the guestbook at Matthew’s wake. “So many choices,” he muses. “Miss Flores? Mrs Carrington? Or did he know you best as Miss Celia Machado?” And just like Cristal isn’t really Cristal, JR discovers in the closing moments of this week’s DALLAS that Marta Del Sol isn’t really Marta Del Sol. Realising John Ross has double-crossed him, he grimly acknowledges that “he’s a chip off the old block.”</p><p></p><p>Marta, Cristal and Rebecca aren’t the only ones who appear to be hiding something. The final scene of EMPIRE reveals that the mighty Cookie Lyon isn’t quite who she seems to be either. “We had a deal. I did my part,” she tells an Agent Carter of the FBI. “I know we had a deal,” the agent concedes, “but you know what, Cookie? … We need you to testify in front of a grand jury.” Cookie looks worried: “If I testify I’m dead. You gonna get me killed.” Likewise on BLOOD AND OIL, Billy LeFever is warned that there is more to his brand new benefactor and business partner Hap Briggs than he realises: “You’re in bed with the Devil now.”</p><p></p><p>On last week’s DALLAS, Ann Ewing found a bottle of tablets prescribed to her husband Bobby, looked them up on the internet and concluded that he must be dying. On this week’s EMPIRE, Lucious’s assistant Becky finds a bottle of tablets prescribed to her boss, looks them up on the internet and concludes that he must be dying. When Ann confronts Bobby with what she has learnt, he modifies the grim diagnosis he was originally given. “There is a seventy percent remission rate … I’m gonna fight this with everything I’ve got,” he assures her. When Becky does the same to Lucious, he doesn’t pull any punches. “There’s no cure. I’m dying,” he tells her flatly.</p><p></p><p>The seemingly insignificant character who knows too much and threatens to become a liability is a familiar soap figure, and he crops up a few times this week. On DALLAS, Bobby’s attorney Mitch Lobell is the man who helped John Ross commence drilling on Southfork behind his uncle’s back. In return, he was paid $500,000. Now he wants more. “Son, if you don’t figure out how to get me $2,000,000 by the Cattleman’s Ball, not only am I gonna tell Bobby you set him up, I’m gonna tell JR you’re planning on screwing him over,” he threatens. On BLOOD AND OIL, Garry was Wick’s accomplice in the robbery that led to the fire at the end of last week’s ep. Upon learning that Hap has offered a reward for information about those responsible, Garry panics and frames a third party, shooting him dead for good measure. On DYNASTY, Matthew Blaisdel’s best buddy Willy gets drunk at Matthew’s wake and starts shooting his mouth off about Blake’s whitewashing of the truth: “You really are a great salesman, Carrington. You told Claudia what she wanted to hear and she fell for it!”</p><p></p><p>In contrast to Blake’s policy of “Carringtons unite” at the expense of everyone else (“The lengths he’ll go to and the lies he’ll tell to protect his own family — it’s like the rest of the world doesn’t matter,” observes Cristal), Lucious and Cookie actively try to pit two of their sons against each other on EMPIRE. “Your daddy’s got Hakeem performing at Leviticus on Saturday. I’m gonna get you up on that stage too,” Cookie tells Jamal. “He don’t want me there,” Jamal points out. “I don’t care what he wants,” she replies. “You are gonna show everybody you are just as talented as your brother … We gotta figure out a way to steal focus from Hakeem.”</p><p></p><p>Over on the other two soaps, quasi-sibling rivalries are brewing. On DALLAS, Christopher appeals to his cousin to bury the hatchet (“You and I, we’ve been on opposite tracks since we were born and for what? We’re family”), only for John Ross to throw it back in his face. “We ain’t family, bro,” he replies. “I’m a Ewing, deep in my DNA. Everything I am, everything I’d die for has the name Ewing on it.” On BLOOD AND OIL, there’s a brief but telling exchange between Wick and Billy, after the former realises the latter is his father’s new partner. “Well, I guess my dad will work with anyone these days, huh?” Wick says. “Yeah, anyone except for you,” counters Billy.</p><p></p><p>Save for the saintly black couple Billy and Cody befriended, the cast lineup of BLOOD & OIL’s pilot episode was a largely caucasian one. This week, however, we are introduced to the black sheriff, Tip Harrison, who heads the investigation into the rig fire and oil theft. (B&O is clearly keen on monosyllabic non-name names — Tip, Hap, Wick.) We also meet Hap's’ Hispanic daughter Lacey. Like Fallon at the start of last week’s DYNASTY, Lacey makes her entrance by private jet. Just as Fallon was, she is met by her father’s hunky driver, AJ. Unlike Michael Culhane, AJ stops short of immediately going down on her in the back of a limo, but by the end of the episode, they’re kissing passionately in the hallway as Lacey’s stepmother watches disapprovingly from the shadows. Like Michael, AJ lives in a back house on his employer’s property which could prove handy for sexy assignations. One extra twist is revealed in the final moments of the episode: AJ is spying on Hap! But for who?</p><p></p><p>Like Sheriff Tip on B&O, Sheriff Derrick on DALLAS is black. Both appear to be honest cops whereas Stansfield, the black police chief investigating Matthew’s death on DYNASTY, is in so deep with the Carringtons he’s referred to as "Blake’s pocket cop". Meanwhile, Monique Colby once again has some pointed observations to make about race as she queries her brother Jeff’s interest in her best friend: “Wherever this obsession with Fallon comes from, it’s a little cliche — recent billionaire chasing after a white chick?” But the really complicated racial stuff is still on EMPIRE. “Pay that Pakistani,” Cookie tells Lucious as she steps out of a cab without a backward glance.</p><p></p><p>After watching the opening episodes of EMPIRE and New DYNASTY, I came up with a nifty little theory about the two series based on their attitudes to their respective American President: Lucious Lyon being on first name terms with Barack Obama reflected EMPIRE’s confidence and swagger; DYNASTY making a blatant comparison between the Carringtons and the Trumps while simultaneously describing the President as evil without being able to mention him by name indicated a certain confusion about its own identity. So far, so neat and tidy. But then comes the scene in this week’s EMPIRE where a drunken Hakeem is caught on video urinating in the middle of a restaurant while declaring, “All you white people that voted for the first black president to make you feel good about not being racist — the joke’s on y’all cos Barack Obama ain’t nothing but a sellout!” Like Cristal’s collapse on New DYNASTY, Hakeem’s outburst swiftly goes viral. (“What’s viral?” asks Cookie — as well she might after seventeen years behind bars.) Lucious is then shown grovelling to the White House over the phone (“Mr President, I am so, so sorry … We all love you … Come on Barack, you know you don’t have to use that kind of language with me!”) before the line goes dead. Ironically, the scandal works in his son's favour: “Everyone wants to see Hakeem perform since that video went up. This bad boy thing has launched him,” reports Anika. So, rather than suggesting a similar kind of existential crisis to DYNASTY’s, EMPIRE’s irreverence towards Obama, as well as other black icons (“Who’s Diana Ross?” asks rising hip-hop star Kidd Fo-Fo) only reinforces its confidence about what it is and what it wants to say. While EMPIRE has all the trappings of a trashy soap, a character as flawed as Luscious Lyon can still refer to a real-life seventeen-year-old killed by the police eight months before this episode aired (“The <em>Empire</em> artists are telling the next generation that even though they live in a world where Trayvon Martin can get shot down like a dog …”) without it feeling crass or exploitative.</p><p></p><p>Back on DALLAS, Elena asks Sue Ellen to use her influence with the bank regarding a loan she needs to finance an oil exploration venture. Instead, Sue Ellen offers to finance the deal herself. “I’d be thrilled to work with such a smart and independent young woman,” she gushes before inviting Elena to be her date to the Cattleman’s Ball — which constitutes some kind of Soap Land first. This conversation might be the closest DALLAS has ever come to passing the Bedchel Test, i.e., a scene between two women where they discuss something other than a man. However, their conversation does include some endearingly clunky exposition about Elena’s father (“I was so impressed with the way you handled your daddy’s tragic passing on that rig”) as well as Sue Ellen suggesting a different alternate universe scenario for herself to the one she played out in “Conundrum”. “If I hadn’t met JR, I’d like to think that I could have been like you,” she tells her new best friend.</p><p></p><p>Most of the other female encounters in Soap Land are less mutually supportive. Every time Cookie encounters Lucious’ younger girlfriend Anika (aka “Little Halle Berry”) on EMPIRE, there’s an antagonism between them that really crackles. When Cookie shows up at Lucious’s house uninvited, Anika makes a point of “accidentally” walking in on them in her undies. Later, when Anika sniggers behind her back in a crowded elevator, Cookie loses control and has to be restrained from attacking her. Over on BLOOD AND OIL, there’s clearly no love lost between Carla Briggs and her stepdaughter Lacey. She has yet to push her into a grave the way Cristal does Fallon, but one senses she wouldn’t be entirely averse to the idea.</p><p></p><p>It’s party time on all four soaps. On DALLAS, the Ewings attend the Cattleman’s Ball. Unlike the Oil Baron’s Balls of the ‘80s, the dress code is more Stetsons and jeans than bowties and shoulder pads, but it still has all the trappings of a movie premiere — red carpets, paparazzi, TV cameras. Just as glam is the opening of Lucious’ new club, Leviticus, on EMPIRE. While the Cattleman’s Ball doubles as JR’s coming out party (it’s evidently the first time he’s been seen outside of his nursing home for quite some time, possibly years) Cookie’s new assistant Porsha suggests a different kind of coming out for the Leviticus party: “Jamal should come out as a big queen the same day Hakeem is playing and that’d steal his whole thunder for sure!” Cookie goes for the idea, but in the event, Hakeem and Jamal turn the tables on their competing parents by performing at the club together, presenting the kind of united front of which Blake Carrington would be proud. The big party on DYNASTY is Matthew’s wake, hosted by Blake at the manor. “He turned this whole thing into a PR event to control the narrative,” says Cristal. In fact, the only gathering of the week that doesn’t feel like a publicity stunt is a family dinner at the Briggs’ house — the definition of family extended to include all the major players.</p><p></p><p>The ghosts of Bobby and Blake’s first wives continue to hover over the proceedings. “It’s no secret I didn’t approve of the first Mrs Bobby Ewing,” recalls JR, before giving the third Mrs Bobby Ewing his seal of approval (“You’re his soulmate, Ann. I’m happy to have you as my sister-in-law”). Meanwhile, Fallon's entrance at Matthew’s wake in a revealing red dress prompts one guest to remark that “Fallon really is her mother’s daughter, isn’t she?”</p><p></p><p>Two of the oldest soap conventions — the mute servant and one character storming unannounced into another’s office — are verbally acknowledged on EMPIRE. After Cookie shows up at Lucious’s swanky house (the house she helped pay for by spending seventeen years in prison), she demands to be fed. Chowing down on some chicken, she whispers to a maid who appears to be a silent extra, “You ain’t got no bacon?” The maid does not respond. “Oh, you don’t talk?” Cookie asks her. “I <em>do</em> talk,” the maid replies haughtily before continuing to ignore her. In a later scene, Lucious tells Cookie to “stop barging in my office”. She responds by taking off a shoe and hurling at his retreating back. It misses, prompting the memorable line, “Porsha, get my damn shoe!” There’s an equivalent moment on DYNASTY when Fallon’s relentless bitchiness finally prompts Blake to hurl a glass in her direction. “Aw, Daddy, you missed,” she responds without batting an eyelid.</p><p></p><p>Alongside JR, Bobby and Sue Ellen on DALLAS, the most recognisable face in this new breed of soaps is another icon of ‘80s television, Sonny Crockett from MIAMI VICE, who plays Hap Briggs on BLOOD AND OIL. MIAMI VICE’s position as a time-slot rival to DALLAS led to possibly the most enjoyable meta-reference in all of ‘80s Soap Land — the Mandy Winger screen test in which she played the long-suffering girlfriend of a Crockett lookalike (played by Roger Grimes/Tommy Mackay). This week, Hap gives a sly nod to the same era when he surveys the damage caused by the rig fire and concludes, “I survived the ‘80s. I can survive this.”</p><p></p><p>Authenticity — specifically, how much of it one should sacrifice to get ahead — is a theme on three of this week’s soaps. While Hakeem accuses Obama of selling out on EMPIRE, Cookie makes a parallel observation about Lucious. “Sounds like you grew a vagina,” she tells him after listening to him being coached by media consultants prior to a TV interview. “I liked you better when you was a thug.” “Cookie, I got to go on white TV and try and talk in a way that don’t frighten these folks to death,” he explains. Being white already, Sue Ellen Ewing can afford to take a bolder stance. In fact, she makes it a condition of her running for governor. “No-one has more skeletons in her closet than I do,” she tells a group of potential backers in a scene deleted from this episode of DALLAS. “I want the people of Texas to know everything there is to know about me — that I was a drunk, an adulterer, almost homeless.”</p><p></p><p>Conversely on DYNASTY, Cristal only proves herself a Carrington when she betrays her own integrity (and her dead lover) in public. ”Matthew was in love with me,” she tells Willy in earshot of a reporter at the wake, “but as I’m sure he was too proud to tell you, it was completely one-sided.” “How can you say that about him at his own funeral?” Willy asks her. “The truth’s not hard to say. You just spit it out and kick sand over it,” she replies coolly. This last line is an echo of what Matthew told her during a flashback earlier in this same ep: “Lying is easy. You just spit it out and kick sand over it.” And <em>that</em> line was, of course. an echo of what the first Matthew told the first Krystle in the very first episode of Original DYNASTY when he was trying to pretend he was no longer in love with her: “The truth isn’t hard to say. You just spit it out and kick sand over it.” So by the time Cristal says it, the line has become a betrayal of a homage of a line that was a lie in the first place. “You <em>are</em> one of them,” Willy realises.</p><p></p><p>And the Top 4 are …</p><p></p><p>1 (1) DALLAS</p><p>2 (3) BLOOD AND OIL</p><p>3 (2) EMPIRE</p><p>4 (4) DYNASTY</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James from London, post: 196446, member: 22"] [U]13 Jun 12: DALLAS: Hedging Your Bets v. 14 Jan 15: EMPIRE: The Outspoken King v. 04 Oct 15: BLOOD AND OIL: The Ripple Effect v. 18 Oct 17: DYNASTY: Spit It Out [/U] Two major characters were shown committing serious crimes towards the end of last week’s episodes. EMPIRE’s Lucious Lyon shot his lifelong friend Bunky in the face while BLOOD AND OIL’s Wick Briggs made off with a tanker full of oil belonging to his own father (inadvertently causing a fire in the process). Meanwhile, a third incident — Matthew Blaisdel’s death on DYNASTY — may or may not have been deliberate, and in this week’s ep the finger of suspicion is variously pointed at Blake, Fallon, Steven and Jeff Colby. As the news of their crimes spread, Lucious and Wick both do a first-class job of feigning innocence. When Bunky’s disfigured corpse is fished out of a river, Lucious’s tears appear as genuine as the rest of his family’s. “I’m gonna find the person that did this to my friend and when I do, I’m gonna —” he begins. Likewise, Wick looks genuinely appalled when he sees the burns sustained by his father in the fire he caused. “I say we string the bastards up,” he says of the perpetrators. There’s no rest for Soap Land’s newlyweds. Because of Bobby’s decision to sell Southfork and the police enquiry into Matthew’s death, the honeymoons of Christopher and Rebecca on DALLAS and Blake and Cristal on DYNASTY, to Tahiti and French Polynesia respectively, are postponed indefinitely. Father/son relationships in C21st Soap Land are proving as complicated as they were back in the '80s. On DALLAS, Christopher takes Bobby’s decision to sell the ranch personally. “You don’t trust me to take over,” he tells him. Bobby denies this to his face, but not very convincingly. “He left here … like I’d personally kicked him in the gut,” he later admits to Ann. Meanwhile, even as John Ross and JR collude to steal Southfork from under Bobby’s nose, cracks in their alliance begin to show. “Dad, I’ve made it this far without your advice. Don’t start now,” John Ross warns his daddy. “Son, never pass up a good chance to shut up,” snaps JR in reply. Over on EMPIRE, Lucious gets his eldest and youngest sons to do his bidding by promising each of them total control of the family company, while threatening to disown his middle son if he publicly announces that he’s gay. “I’m sorry, Dad, the world does not revolve around you,” Jamal tells him. “[I]Your[/I] world does,” Lucious points out. “I pay for everything — your clothes, that $12,000-a-month loft you live in, the credit card bills … Come out and you’re on your own.” The injuries sustained by Hap Briggs in the rig fire on BLOOD AND OIL bring his estranged son Wick to his side. “I’m really sorry for all the messed up stuff between you and I,” Wick tells him. “In spite of it all, you’ll always be my boy,” he replies. When his wife suggests that Wick might have been his anonymous attacker, Hap refuses to consider the idea. “No son of mine would put a gun in my face”, he insists. But later on, he starts to develop suspicions of his own. Matters become further entangled towards the end of this week’s B&O when we discover that Wick’s new girlfriend Jules is an ex-flame of Hap’s. Moreover, it’s a flame may not have entirely burnt itself out: when Hap visits Jules to tell her to stay away from his son, they have as much trouble keeping their hands off each other as another secret ex-couple, John Ross and Marta Del Sol, do on DALLAS. John Ross, however, manfully resists his desires because of his involvement with Elena — an involvement that becomes strained when Elena accuses him of sending the phoney email that split her and Christopher up a couple of years earlier. In spite of his vehement denials, she tells him she wants to keep their relationship on a strictly professional basis, which suddenly leaves him free to have wild and crazy hotel room sex with Marta after all. While Marta and John Ross are busy slamming each other against walls and tying each other up (not to mention the mickey she slips him or the secret camera she uses to record their assignation), there’s a slightly more perfunctory sex scene in EMPIRE where Andre’s wife Rhonda, her hair in curlers, ties a bib around her neck before going down on him. This is the second depiction of oral sex in C21st Soap Land after Michael the chauffeur gave Fallon a good seeing to in the back of a limo during the DYNASTY premiere. This week, Fallon returns the favour — during Matthew Blaisdel’s funeral. Rhonda’s act of fellatio is an attempt to persuade Andre to keep an important appointment: “For most people, cancelling a doctor’s appointment is just lazy, but for someone who’s bipolar it’s life-threatening … You need to recalibrate your meds again.” Andre’s manic behaviour later in the episode suggests her efforts were in vain. Hearing her ordinarily contained husband referring to himself in the third person (“Andre got it going on, baby!”) prompts her to adopt another approach. “I swear to God I will have you committed if you do not take those damn pills,” she snarls, grabbing him by the nuts. As well as learning of Andre’s condition on EMPIRE, we also find out the source of Claudia Blaisdel’s mental health problems on DYNASTY. Whereas in the original series, the implication was that Claudia’s condition stemmed from her sensitive, even poetic nature — Steven comparing her to Emily Dickinson amongst others — here the explanation is far less romantic as New Steven explains to the police that New Claudia’s “impaired memory, paranoia, delusions” are due to a car accident she suffered the previous year (with the suggestion that the accusations she has made about Blake killing her husband should be discounted as the ravings of a madwoman). On EMPIRE, Cookie, trailed by her galumphing new assistant Porsha, walks in on Jamal having sex with Michael. “Come on, boy, get up, we got work to do,” she urges, sitting on the edge of the bed without batting an eye. “Shut up, Dora,” she adds when Michael objects to her presence. Michael is also seen in a state of undress in his DYNASTY guise of Sam where he climbs out of the Carrington pool and invites Steven to join him in the hot tub. Steven declines, suggesting that they “press pause" on their relationship. ("We’re practically family.”) In a reversal of the KNOTS LANDING flashback to 1968, where Young Anne tricked Young Mack into believing she was swimming naked before emerging from the pool in a strapless swimsuit, we don’t realise until Steven’s line at the end of their conversation (“If you wanna borrow a swimsuit next time, you can ask me”) that Sam has been standing in front of him fully naked the whole time. Back on B&O, when Wick and his accomplice Garry try to offload their tanker full of stolen oil onto a potential buyer, they are told that it is too hot a property for anyone to touch: “There’s oil that makes you a profit and there’s oil that puts you in a corner cell at Leavenworth.” On DYNASTY, Blake Carrington is likewise concerned with concealing evidence. “We need to erase any traces of Matthew beyond his employment at Carrington Atlantic,” he explains to his family — specifically referring to Matthew’s affair with Cristal. To this end, Fallon enlists the aid of Jeff Colby’s tech wizardry to destroy any evidence of the photo she emailed her father of Matthew and Cristal together. There is a reverse situation on DALLAS where John Ross hires a detective to trace the identity of the person who sent Elena the fake email from Christopher's account. (Rather stylishly, John Ross’s secret meeting with the private eye takes place on a funfair ride.) DYNASTY refuses to let Cristal, and by extension the audience, grieve for Matthew’s death. Every time she tries, she is undermined by brutal wisecracks from Fallon (“I know it’s a little gauche in the wake of a man’s death, but I feel like one little decapitation shouldn’t blow the whole deal”), cold-hearted pragmatism from Blake (“If I don’t put my emotions aside, this family will bleed millions”), flashbulbs from the press and stylistic flourishes from the show itself — slow-motion sequences, flashbacks, jump cuts — that leave no time for her (or us) to process a genuine emotion. Each time Cristal comes close to any kind of catharsis, she is denied it. Moments after learning of her lover’s death, she is obliged, in her role as Carrington Atlantic’s Head of PR, to make a statement to the press about Matthew. This proves too much and she collapses — a collapse which is immediately turned into online gossip for Fallon to gloat over. Later, she returns to her old apartment to look through keepsakes of her time with Matthew — only to find Anders standing over her. “Anything that needs to be removed, I can take them off your hands,” he tells her coldly. During Matthew’s funeral, she steals away from the ceremony to weep in solitude — but Fallon won’t allow her even this moment of privacy. “You do know you’re not the star of this Lifetime movie right? The role belongs to his actual wife,” she tells her before removing Cristal’s dark glasses from her face and tossing them into an open grave. Cristal retaliates by pushing Fallon into the grave after them and then walking away with a slight smirk on her face. It’s a cool, funny moment, and you get the sense Cristal is starting to get the hang of what it means to be a Carrington in New DYNASTY — it’s not about having feelings, it’s about going for the cool, funny moment. Even Steven, the show’s Mr Nice Guy and Cristal’s one ally in her new home, can’t resist a snappy one-liner when the news of Matthew’s death first breaks. “Cristal was screwing the dead guy,” Fallon informs him. “I assume Claudia doesn’t know? Surely she would have led with that,” he quips in front of his new step-mom. The idea of a corrupt, obsessively self-interested family who won’t rest until they’ve made over their vulnerable new addition in their own image sounds deliciously dark, and New DYNASTY [I]is[/I] kind of fascinating to watch, but it lacks the vital component to make us connect emotionally with the characters. This is because the show continues to mirror Fallon’s attitude — most specifically, her humour. This is isn’t the same kind of bad sitcom humour that infected some of the ‘80s soaps, particularly FALCON CREST. That humour was broad, smug and lazy. Fallon’s (and therefore DYNASTY’s) humour is smart, brittle and almost neurotic in its determination to keep everyone (the audience included) at an emotional distance. Soap Land's weddings may be over, but a couple of the guests have got left behind. In both cases, it’s a relative of the bride. While Rebecca Ewing’s brother Tommy gets a job at Southfork, Cristal Carrington’s nephew Sam moves into the Carrington manor and proceeds to eat everything in sight. Only one episode into their respective marriages, it becomes apparent that neither Rebecca nor Cristal are who they claim to be. A cryptic conversation between Rebecca and Tommy makes them sound like a modern-day version of Jill Bennett and Peter Hollister. “I just wonder sometimes what the point of all of this is,” says Rebecca to her brother. “You know what the point is,” he replies. “We spent the last two years of our lives working on this job. There’s a ton of money on the line here … Keep your eye on the ball, sis, and don’t get too comfortable being Mrs Ewing.” Meanwhile, Anders wonders how Cristal will sign the guestbook at Matthew’s wake. “So many choices,” he muses. “Miss Flores? Mrs Carrington? Or did he know you best as Miss Celia Machado?” And just like Cristal isn’t really Cristal, JR discovers in the closing moments of this week’s DALLAS that Marta Del Sol isn’t really Marta Del Sol. Realising John Ross has double-crossed him, he grimly acknowledges that “he’s a chip off the old block.” Marta, Cristal and Rebecca aren’t the only ones who appear to be hiding something. The final scene of EMPIRE reveals that the mighty Cookie Lyon isn’t quite who she seems to be either. “We had a deal. I did my part,” she tells an Agent Carter of the FBI. “I know we had a deal,” the agent concedes, “but you know what, Cookie? … We need you to testify in front of a grand jury.” Cookie looks worried: “If I testify I’m dead. You gonna get me killed.” Likewise on BLOOD AND OIL, Billy LeFever is warned that there is more to his brand new benefactor and business partner Hap Briggs than he realises: “You’re in bed with the Devil now.” On last week’s DALLAS, Ann Ewing found a bottle of tablets prescribed to her husband Bobby, looked them up on the internet and concluded that he must be dying. On this week’s EMPIRE, Lucious’s assistant Becky finds a bottle of tablets prescribed to her boss, looks them up on the internet and concludes that he must be dying. When Ann confronts Bobby with what she has learnt, he modifies the grim diagnosis he was originally given. “There is a seventy percent remission rate … I’m gonna fight this with everything I’ve got,” he assures her. When Becky does the same to Lucious, he doesn’t pull any punches. “There’s no cure. I’m dying,” he tells her flatly. The seemingly insignificant character who knows too much and threatens to become a liability is a familiar soap figure, and he crops up a few times this week. On DALLAS, Bobby’s attorney Mitch Lobell is the man who helped John Ross commence drilling on Southfork behind his uncle’s back. In return, he was paid $500,000. Now he wants more. “Son, if you don’t figure out how to get me $2,000,000 by the Cattleman’s Ball, not only am I gonna tell Bobby you set him up, I’m gonna tell JR you’re planning on screwing him over,” he threatens. On BLOOD AND OIL, Garry was Wick’s accomplice in the robbery that led to the fire at the end of last week’s ep. Upon learning that Hap has offered a reward for information about those responsible, Garry panics and frames a third party, shooting him dead for good measure. On DYNASTY, Matthew Blaisdel’s best buddy Willy gets drunk at Matthew’s wake and starts shooting his mouth off about Blake’s whitewashing of the truth: “You really are a great salesman, Carrington. You told Claudia what she wanted to hear and she fell for it!” In contrast to Blake’s policy of “Carringtons unite” at the expense of everyone else (“The lengths he’ll go to and the lies he’ll tell to protect his own family — it’s like the rest of the world doesn’t matter,” observes Cristal), Lucious and Cookie actively try to pit two of their sons against each other on EMPIRE. “Your daddy’s got Hakeem performing at Leviticus on Saturday. I’m gonna get you up on that stage too,” Cookie tells Jamal. “He don’t want me there,” Jamal points out. “I don’t care what he wants,” she replies. “You are gonna show everybody you are just as talented as your brother … We gotta figure out a way to steal focus from Hakeem.” Over on the other two soaps, quasi-sibling rivalries are brewing. On DALLAS, Christopher appeals to his cousin to bury the hatchet (“You and I, we’ve been on opposite tracks since we were born and for what? We’re family”), only for John Ross to throw it back in his face. “We ain’t family, bro,” he replies. “I’m a Ewing, deep in my DNA. Everything I am, everything I’d die for has the name Ewing on it.” On BLOOD AND OIL, there’s a brief but telling exchange between Wick and Billy, after the former realises the latter is his father’s new partner. “Well, I guess my dad will work with anyone these days, huh?” Wick says. “Yeah, anyone except for you,” counters Billy. Save for the saintly black couple Billy and Cody befriended, the cast lineup of BLOOD & OIL’s pilot episode was a largely caucasian one. This week, however, we are introduced to the black sheriff, Tip Harrison, who heads the investigation into the rig fire and oil theft. (B&O is clearly keen on monosyllabic non-name names — Tip, Hap, Wick.) We also meet Hap's’ Hispanic daughter Lacey. Like Fallon at the start of last week’s DYNASTY, Lacey makes her entrance by private jet. Just as Fallon was, she is met by her father’s hunky driver, AJ. Unlike Michael Culhane, AJ stops short of immediately going down on her in the back of a limo, but by the end of the episode, they’re kissing passionately in the hallway as Lacey’s stepmother watches disapprovingly from the shadows. Like Michael, AJ lives in a back house on his employer’s property which could prove handy for sexy assignations. One extra twist is revealed in the final moments of the episode: AJ is spying on Hap! But for who? Like Sheriff Tip on B&O, Sheriff Derrick on DALLAS is black. Both appear to be honest cops whereas Stansfield, the black police chief investigating Matthew’s death on DYNASTY, is in so deep with the Carringtons he’s referred to as "Blake’s pocket cop". Meanwhile, Monique Colby once again has some pointed observations to make about race as she queries her brother Jeff’s interest in her best friend: “Wherever this obsession with Fallon comes from, it’s a little cliche — recent billionaire chasing after a white chick?” But the really complicated racial stuff is still on EMPIRE. “Pay that Pakistani,” Cookie tells Lucious as she steps out of a cab without a backward glance. After watching the opening episodes of EMPIRE and New DYNASTY, I came up with a nifty little theory about the two series based on their attitudes to their respective American President: Lucious Lyon being on first name terms with Barack Obama reflected EMPIRE’s confidence and swagger; DYNASTY making a blatant comparison between the Carringtons and the Trumps while simultaneously describing the President as evil without being able to mention him by name indicated a certain confusion about its own identity. So far, so neat and tidy. But then comes the scene in this week’s EMPIRE where a drunken Hakeem is caught on video urinating in the middle of a restaurant while declaring, “All you white people that voted for the first black president to make you feel good about not being racist — the joke’s on y’all cos Barack Obama ain’t nothing but a sellout!” Like Cristal’s collapse on New DYNASTY, Hakeem’s outburst swiftly goes viral. (“What’s viral?” asks Cookie — as well she might after seventeen years behind bars.) Lucious is then shown grovelling to the White House over the phone (“Mr President, I am so, so sorry … We all love you … Come on Barack, you know you don’t have to use that kind of language with me!”) before the line goes dead. Ironically, the scandal works in his son's favour: “Everyone wants to see Hakeem perform since that video went up. This bad boy thing has launched him,” reports Anika. So, rather than suggesting a similar kind of existential crisis to DYNASTY’s, EMPIRE’s irreverence towards Obama, as well as other black icons (“Who’s Diana Ross?” asks rising hip-hop star Kidd Fo-Fo) only reinforces its confidence about what it is and what it wants to say. While EMPIRE has all the trappings of a trashy soap, a character as flawed as Luscious Lyon can still refer to a real-life seventeen-year-old killed by the police eight months before this episode aired (“The [I]Empire[/I] artists are telling the next generation that even though they live in a world where Trayvon Martin can get shot down like a dog …”) without it feeling crass or exploitative. Back on DALLAS, Elena asks Sue Ellen to use her influence with the bank regarding a loan she needs to finance an oil exploration venture. Instead, Sue Ellen offers to finance the deal herself. “I’d be thrilled to work with such a smart and independent young woman,” she gushes before inviting Elena to be her date to the Cattleman’s Ball — which constitutes some kind of Soap Land first. This conversation might be the closest DALLAS has ever come to passing the Bedchel Test, i.e., a scene between two women where they discuss something other than a man. However, their conversation does include some endearingly clunky exposition about Elena’s father (“I was so impressed with the way you handled your daddy’s tragic passing on that rig”) as well as Sue Ellen suggesting a different alternate universe scenario for herself to the one she played out in “Conundrum”. “If I hadn’t met JR, I’d like to think that I could have been like you,” she tells her new best friend. Most of the other female encounters in Soap Land are less mutually supportive. Every time Cookie encounters Lucious’ younger girlfriend Anika (aka “Little Halle Berry”) on EMPIRE, there’s an antagonism between them that really crackles. When Cookie shows up at Lucious’s house uninvited, Anika makes a point of “accidentally” walking in on them in her undies. Later, when Anika sniggers behind her back in a crowded elevator, Cookie loses control and has to be restrained from attacking her. Over on BLOOD AND OIL, there’s clearly no love lost between Carla Briggs and her stepdaughter Lacey. She has yet to push her into a grave the way Cristal does Fallon, but one senses she wouldn’t be entirely averse to the idea. It’s party time on all four soaps. On DALLAS, the Ewings attend the Cattleman’s Ball. Unlike the Oil Baron’s Balls of the ‘80s, the dress code is more Stetsons and jeans than bowties and shoulder pads, but it still has all the trappings of a movie premiere — red carpets, paparazzi, TV cameras. Just as glam is the opening of Lucious’ new club, Leviticus, on EMPIRE. While the Cattleman’s Ball doubles as JR’s coming out party (it’s evidently the first time he’s been seen outside of his nursing home for quite some time, possibly years) Cookie’s new assistant Porsha suggests a different kind of coming out for the Leviticus party: “Jamal should come out as a big queen the same day Hakeem is playing and that’d steal his whole thunder for sure!” Cookie goes for the idea, but in the event, Hakeem and Jamal turn the tables on their competing parents by performing at the club together, presenting the kind of united front of which Blake Carrington would be proud. The big party on DYNASTY is Matthew’s wake, hosted by Blake at the manor. “He turned this whole thing into a PR event to control the narrative,” says Cristal. In fact, the only gathering of the week that doesn’t feel like a publicity stunt is a family dinner at the Briggs’ house — the definition of family extended to include all the major players. The ghosts of Bobby and Blake’s first wives continue to hover over the proceedings. “It’s no secret I didn’t approve of the first Mrs Bobby Ewing,” recalls JR, before giving the third Mrs Bobby Ewing his seal of approval (“You’re his soulmate, Ann. I’m happy to have you as my sister-in-law”). Meanwhile, Fallon's entrance at Matthew’s wake in a revealing red dress prompts one guest to remark that “Fallon really is her mother’s daughter, isn’t she?” Two of the oldest soap conventions — the mute servant and one character storming unannounced into another’s office — are verbally acknowledged on EMPIRE. After Cookie shows up at Lucious’s swanky house (the house she helped pay for by spending seventeen years in prison), she demands to be fed. Chowing down on some chicken, she whispers to a maid who appears to be a silent extra, “You ain’t got no bacon?” The maid does not respond. “Oh, you don’t talk?” Cookie asks her. “I [I]do[/I] talk,” the maid replies haughtily before continuing to ignore her. In a later scene, Lucious tells Cookie to “stop barging in my office”. She responds by taking off a shoe and hurling at his retreating back. It misses, prompting the memorable line, “Porsha, get my damn shoe!” There’s an equivalent moment on DYNASTY when Fallon’s relentless bitchiness finally prompts Blake to hurl a glass in her direction. “Aw, Daddy, you missed,” she responds without batting an eyelid. Alongside JR, Bobby and Sue Ellen on DALLAS, the most recognisable face in this new breed of soaps is another icon of ‘80s television, Sonny Crockett from MIAMI VICE, who plays Hap Briggs on BLOOD AND OIL. MIAMI VICE’s position as a time-slot rival to DALLAS led to possibly the most enjoyable meta-reference in all of ‘80s Soap Land — the Mandy Winger screen test in which she played the long-suffering girlfriend of a Crockett lookalike (played by Roger Grimes/Tommy Mackay). This week, Hap gives a sly nod to the same era when he surveys the damage caused by the rig fire and concludes, “I survived the ‘80s. I can survive this.” Authenticity — specifically, how much of it one should sacrifice to get ahead — is a theme on three of this week’s soaps. While Hakeem accuses Obama of selling out on EMPIRE, Cookie makes a parallel observation about Lucious. “Sounds like you grew a vagina,” she tells him after listening to him being coached by media consultants prior to a TV interview. “I liked you better when you was a thug.” “Cookie, I got to go on white TV and try and talk in a way that don’t frighten these folks to death,” he explains. Being white already, Sue Ellen Ewing can afford to take a bolder stance. In fact, she makes it a condition of her running for governor. “No-one has more skeletons in her closet than I do,” she tells a group of potential backers in a scene deleted from this episode of DALLAS. “I want the people of Texas to know everything there is to know about me — that I was a drunk, an adulterer, almost homeless.” Conversely on DYNASTY, Cristal only proves herself a Carrington when she betrays her own integrity (and her dead lover) in public. ”Matthew was in love with me,” she tells Willy in earshot of a reporter at the wake, “but as I’m sure he was too proud to tell you, it was completely one-sided.” “How can you say that about him at his own funeral?” Willy asks her. “The truth’s not hard to say. You just spit it out and kick sand over it,” she replies coolly. This last line is an echo of what Matthew told her during a flashback earlier in this same ep: “Lying is easy. You just spit it out and kick sand over it.” And [I]that[/I] line was, of course. an echo of what the first Matthew told the first Krystle in the very first episode of Original DYNASTY when he was trying to pretend he was no longer in love with her: “The truth isn’t hard to say. You just spit it out and kick sand over it.” So by the time Cristal says it, the line has become a betrayal of a homage of a line that was a lie in the first place. “You [I]are[/I] one of them,” Willy realises. And the Top 4 are … 1 (1) DALLAS 2 (3) BLOOD AND OIL 3 (2) EMPIRE 4 (4) DYNASTY [/QUOTE]
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DYNASTY versus DALLAS versus KNOTS LANDING versus the rest of them
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