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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 205513" data-attributes="member: 22">11 Jul 12: DALLAS: The Enemy of My Enemy v. 11 Feb 15: EMPIRE: Out, Damned Spot v. 01 Nov 15: BLOOD AND OIL: Convergence v. 15 Nov 17: DYNASTY: I Exist Only for Me   Medical matters make strange bedfellows this week. When DALLAS’s Rebecca suffers a nosebleed and dizzy spell at Southfork, her former love rival Elena offers to drive her to Soap Land Memorial Hospital. When DYNASTY’s Claudia is discharged from hospital, following a collision with Blake’s car last week, her former love rival Cristal insists on bringing her back to the manor to recuperate. This situation, of course, recalls the original Claudia moving into the Carrington mansion after her suicide attempt in 1982. But the medical scenario that most evokes the spirit of ‘80s Soap Land is on BLOOD AND OIL. After her brutal attack at the end of last week’s episode, pregnant Cody is rushed to Soap Land Memorial where frantic husband Billy is joined in the waiting room by almost the entire cast —  including his nemesis Hap Briggs. “She’s gonna get the finest medical care there is,” Hap promises him. “Carla and I chartered a plane out of Aspen. We got the finest thoracic surgeon there is in the country to roll his ass out of bed … Listen, I may be a son of a bitch in business, but when it comes to family, it’s everything to me. I know you feel the same.”Soap Land being what it is, the odds on Cody’s baby surviving are not good — yet survive it does. She and Cody breathe a sigh of relief. Alas, later in the episode, events take a turn for the worse and, cruelly, she miscarries after all. But as one pregnancy ends, two more materialise. During an argument with Tommy about Christopher in the final scene of DALLAS, the cause of Rebecca’s symptoms is revealed: “You’re right, I am in love with him — and I’m pregnant!” Back on DYNASTY, Claudia declines to take morphine in the hospital because she too is with child. “Even though we lived our separate lives,” she informs Cristal regarding Matthew, “we never stopped sleeping together.” No-one’s up the duff on EMPIRE, but a major character is shocked to acquire an offspring in the final scene when Olivia, a former acquaintance of Jamal, shows up with a cute little toddler named Lola. “She wanted to meet her daddy!” she tells him. However, as end-of-episode long-lost-relative reveals go, the most intriguing is on B&O where Billy’s buddy Clifton places a call to an unseen woman in New York, “with a plan for crushing your ex-husband — Hap Briggs.”Three major storylines, all introduced in the first episodes of their respective series, are seemingly resolved this week. On DALLAS, Rebecca finds a legal loophole that prevents JR from drilling on the family ranch. It seems that Grandpa Southworth set up a trust “separating the mineral rights from the land rights of Southfork.” This is pretty much the same last-minute get-out clause JR himself used in War of the Ewings to prevent Carter Mackay from drilling on Ray’s property (“When my daddy gave Ray that land, he deeded the mineral rights to our children’s trust fund”). On EMPIRE, after Lucious confesses to his attorney Vernon that he shot in Bunky in cold blood (“Everything that we built, he was gonna tear it down …” “So you play God?!” “No, he played God from the moment he showed up here and tried to shake me down — he chose his fate!”), Vernon magics the problem away by paying someone who’s already “facing a murder beef they can’t beat” to take the rap. And on BLOOD AND OIL, after Cody identifies Garry as her attacker, Wick finally alights on a way to get him out of his hair once and for all — he’s gonna kill him. Whereas Lucious’ murder of Bunky came out of the blue, Wick’s decision involves a degree of soul-searching. “My whole life, I’ve made every bad choice possible … What if I could do one thing, just one thing … that would put all this bad stuff behind me?” he asks his sister enigmatically. We don’t get to find out if Wick really is capable of murder, however, because Billy, eager to avenge his wife and the child they lost, follows him to where he is holding Garry at gunpoint and insists on pulling the trigger himself. As Wick tries to dissuade him (“Billy, one bad choice and it never ends!”), Garry makes his escape. Wick and Billy give chase, causing Garry to stumble, fall and impale himself on a conveniently sharp branch. Chip Roberts would be proud. Billy’s first instinct is to call for help, but Wick persuades him to leave Garry to die. Problem solved.However, as any seasoned Soap Land watcher knows, a storyline is never truly over. Rebecca may have provided Bobby and Christopher with the ammunition they need to prevent JR and John Ross from drilling on Southfork, but the sinister Venezuelans still expect to receive the oil they negotiated for. Indeed, Vicente has already started breathing down John Ross’s neck, both figuratively and literally, in a scene that’s as close to homoerotic as DALLAS has ever got. “Promises have been made, Mr Ewing. I intend to make sure that they’re kept,” he tells him darkly. Meanwhile on EMPIRE, Vernon may have cleaned up Lucious’s mess, but he assures his AA sponsor that “things are gonna be a lot different” from now on. (Oh yeah — Vernon’s a recovering alcoholic. In Soap Land terms, that means he’s a ticking time bomb.) On B&O, Wick makes a pact with new ally Billy: “We never turn on each other. We stay tight, we stay loyal.” “We take this to the grave,” Billy agrees. All well and good — but then Wick’s girlfriend Jules (who’s also sleeping with his daddy) finds the mask he wore when he and Garry robbed Hap back when this whole mess started.On last week’s EMPIRE, the gift of a single rose led Cookie to order a hit on someone. This week, three more Soap Land women receive flowers and, even though no-one ends up dead as a result, none of them reacts exactly positively. “Freesias, my favourite!” exclaims Ann on DALLAS, assuming the bouquet she has just received was sent by Bobby. Then she reads the accompanying card and realises they’re from her ex, Harris Ryland. However, it’s the additional gift of a locket that prompts her to collapse to the ground in tears. When Bobby finds her, he doesn’t know what the problem is any more than we do, but it doesn’t stop him from bursting into Harris’s office and backhanding him across the face. “You stay away from Ann!” he snarls. The second bouquet is delivered to Lacey Briggs on BLOOD AND OIL. Like Ann, she seems pleased until she realises who they’re from — in this case, AJ the chauffeur — whereupon she dumps them in the trash. “Flowers and a card — really? God, you apologise worse than you spy,” she tells him over the phone. Finally on DYNASTY, Cristal hand-delivers a vase of red roses to new houseguest Claudia (just as Krystle did back in the day). These get my vote for Flowers of the Week, but Claudia still ends up hurling them at a wall while shouting, “You have everything! I have nothing!” just as the previous Claudia did back in ’82.“The Costume-Test Montage” — in which a character, feeling the need to dress to impress, tries on and rejects a selection of outfits in front of a mirror before alighting on the ideal one — is a well-worn screen trope. I can recall seeing it on everything from DOCTOR WHO to FRIENDS to Educating Rita, but only once during ‘80s Soap Land — in a cloyingly cutesy sequence on KNOTS LANDING involving Frank Williams and his date Charlotte. In C21st Soap Land, however, there have been no less than four such montages in the past two weeks. Last week’s DYNASTY opened with Cristal trying out a variety of looks in preparation for her first day as COO of Carrington Atlantic. Her final choice had her looking and feeling immaculate — until she reached the office and found herself undermined by her staff and humiliated by Claudia. This week’s EMPIRE starts with Cookie likewise dressing up in a selection of outfits (accompanying music: ‘The Jump Off’ by Lil Kim & Mr Cheeks). Unlike Cristal’s, her chosen look is not revealed straight away. Instead, she arrives at a restaurant in a buttoned-up sable coat where she is greeted by Lucious. It is apparent that, following that rose he sent her last week, she is expecting an intimate dinner for two. However, like last week’s dressed-to-the-nines Cristal, she receives a rude awakening when it turns out to be a big family gathering to celebrate Lucious and Anika’s engagement. While the rest of the guests offer the happy couple their congratulations, Cookie asks for clarification. “So lemme get this straight,” she calls to Lucious across the table, “last Wednesday you come to my house and give me a rose after you propose to that bitch?” “… The rose was a friendly reminder of where we used to be,” he replies tactfully. “Friendly? You think I came here dressed like this for a friendly get together?!” she barks, opening her coat to reveal nothing but some eye-poppingly skimpy lingerie. As her sons stare openmouthed, she turns to leave, delivering one last line as she goes, “Oh and Anika — this is an ass.” Indeed it is.On BLOOD AND OIL, it’s Carla Briggs who goes through the Costume-Test Montage (accompanying music: ‘Give it to Me’ by Maggie Eckford) before deciding on a striking all-leather ensemble. “You could still walk any runway in the world and turn every head,” Hap tells her admiringly. She explains that she’s dressed for an important meeting — but once again, all is not as it appears. The meeting turns out not to be business but personal — she’s off to confront Hap’s mistress Jules. (“Does he love you?” “Who?” “My husband.”) Unlike Cristal or Cookie, Carla retains her ice-cool composure throughout. She promises Jules that if she doesn’t end the affair, she (Carla) will tell Wick all about it, “and it will destroy him.”It’s back to DYNASTY for the week’s final costume montage, which is really just about dressing up for the sake of it. “They hit you with their rich-people car. Take what you deserve — it’s payback,” Sam urges Claudia as they raid Cristal’s closet (and credit card) and try on a bunch of blingy outfits (accompanying music: ‘Drinkee’ by Sofi Tukker). It’s fun, in a surreal Hall of Mirrors way, to imagine Heather Locklear and Pamela Bellwood playing this scene in Linda Evans’ walk-in wardrobe.Actually, it’s kind of difficult to picture the likes of Pam Ewing or Alexis Colby doing a “Costume-Test Montage” back in the day. The women in '80s Soap Land mostly just glided into a scene, their image fully formed. That was part of their glamour, their status. So what’s changed? Maybe reality TV and social media have blurred the boundary between “them” and “us”, creating an illusion of accessibility around the rich and famous. Watching Cristal, Carla, Cookie and Claudia watching themselves playing dress up in the mirror, it’s almost as if they have become their own viewers, living out the fantasy of being let loose in a rich woman’s closet.EMPIRE also presents us with the inverse of a dressing-up scene as Cookie, in her capacity as record producer, persuades a washed-up diva (played gutsily by Courtney Love) to remove her all her finery — fur coat, jewellery, hair extensions, “fake-ass eyelashes”, even her lipstick — to deliver a raw, heartfelt version of ‘Take Me to the River’ in the recording studio. The contrast between Cookie’s behaviour here and the dinner table scene where she disrobes illustrates the different sides of her personality — she balances the “authentic” with the flamboyant.It’s been a turbulent week for rich girls sleeping with their daddy’s drivers. While Lacey tries to keep AJ at arm’s length, Hap insists they work together to outfox the Saudi Arabians. After much bickering, Lacey weakens and they kiss. But then the shutters go up again and she goes back to being mean to him. Meanwhile, Fallon reacts to Michael turning up to her company’s launch party as Kori’s plus one by getting drunk, following him into the john and groping him before he has a chance to zip up (“No need to put that away just yet”). After he rejects her advances (“Stop, you’re being ridiculous … You may not have any respect for yourself, but I’ve got respect for me and for Kori”), she emerges from the bathroom, catches Kori’s eye and makes a point of wiping her mouth, as if to say, “I just blew your boyfriend.” Michael manages to convince Kori that Fallon’s blow job was, in fact, a faux-job and they exit the party in disgust. Even by C21st Soap Land standards, this is pretty explicit stuff and Fallon’s behaviour is, depending on your point of view, either some of the most pitiful or some of the most unapologetically outrageous the genre has yet seen. So why do I neither cringe for her (as I have done previously for Gary Ewing or Maggie Gioberti when their drinking led them to make fools of themselves) nor relish her boldness (as I do Cookie’s when she flashes her ass at Anika)? I guess it’s because there aren’t any consequences for Fallon. After Michael leaves the party, she consoles herself by insulting a couple of tech gurus, but instead of taking offence, they are charmed by her forthrightness and want to make a deal with her. Their acceptance cancels out Michael’s rejection and nothing changes.There is no shortage of advice-givers this week. Dismayed to learn that Christopher used Fake Marta’s sex tape to threaten John Ross, Bobby counsels his son against such behaviour. “A lifetime of dealing with JR has put me on both sides of blackmail,” he tells him. “It never pays off in the end. It’s not just that it’s wrong, it’s bad business.” Meanwhile on B&O, Emma, Clifton’s granddaughter (and recent graduate of the same School of Sexy Geologists as Elena Ramos), overhears Hap offering Billy a job and cautions him against accepting. “The Devil doesn’t come at with you with a pitchfork. He helps you when you’re down and then he sucks you in with empty promises until he destroys you,” she warns him. On EMPIRE, Jamal’s star is on the rise and so Cookie gives his boyfriend Michael some relationship advice. “You need to start preparing yourself,” she tells him. “Fame changes people … Try not to be all up in his business, you know? Make sure you got your own thing going on.” Michael’s reply — “I’m at the culinary institute, studying to be a chef” — is a little ironic when one considers the large appetite of his other self on DYNASTY (“I don’t know if you can hear me over the sound of your digestive tract,” Anders tell Sam this week). “I hope that cooking school is gonna keep you busy because Jamal is gonna have less and less time for you,” predicts Cookie.Back at the Carrington manor, Blake joins Cristal in the bath before realising she isn’t Cristal, she’s Claudia in a face mask. Then Bo the dog overdoses on Claudia’s medication, which turns out not to be her medication after all. Small wonder Sam describes keeping an eye on Claudia as “crazy-sitting”. “You’re crazy,” echoes John Ross when Fake Marta shows up at his door and suggests they go away together. “You screwed me with my father, undid our business deal, drugged me and then took videos of us having sex … I wouldn’t wanna go across the street with you.”  Later on, there’s a break-in at Elena’s and John Ross finds a photo of them together with a knife through it. Is this Elena’s handiwork? Or Vicente’s? Either way, he’s taking no chances and, in time-honoured Soap Land tradition, “beefs up security” by paying a couple of ranch hands, Ace and Buck, to keep an eye on Elena. “Keep your guns handy,” he tells them. Ace and Buck are just a couple of extras — unlike Malcolm DeVeaux, Lucious’s new security chief on EMPIRE. In the same way that the doctor Hap flies in to look after Cody on BLOOD AND OIL is “the finest thoracic surgeon there is in the country," Malcolm is introduced as “the best in the business” who was “awarded the Silver Star of Excellence for courage while under fire while stationed in Iraq.” The way Cookie responds to Malcolm’s charms as he escorts her through security suggests an older woman/younger bodyguard romance of Alexis and Mark Jennings proportions might be imminent.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (2) BLOOD AND OIL2 (1) DALLAS3 (3) EMPIRE4 (4) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =