James from London
International Treasure
28 Sep 89: KNOTS LANDING: Up the Spout Again v. 29 Sep 89: DALLAS: Cry Me a River of Oil v. 29 Sep 89: FALCON CREST: The Price of Freedom
To mark the new season, each of the surviving soaps has boldly revamped its opening title sequence. After eleven years, DALLAS has dropped its signature three-way splits of the actors’ faces in favour of bursting dams, exploding oilfields and flash shots of the actors synced to the thump of the theme music. Thirty years on, it still packs a shock-of-the-new punch. KNOTS has been even more radical, dispensing with images of its actors altogether — a Soap Land first. Instead, there’s a beach-themed montage with sandcastle representations of the cul-de-sac and surrounding buildings, accompanied by a new mid-tempo arrangement of the theme. The overall vibe is less “dramatically soapy ‘80s” and more “tastefully sophisticated [if somewhat anonymous] ‘90s”. In contrast to the Californian outdoorsiness of the KNOTS opening, FALCON CREST’s new titles evoke a feeling of darkness and claustrophobia. Familiar footage of vineyards is juxtaposed with ominous glimpses of door handles turning, guns pointing and couples cavorting in silhouette. Hardly any of the actors are smiling in their close-ups — Richard looks positively haunted while poor old Chao Li is in tears. A slowed down, more brooding version of the theme music adds to the mood.
As for who’s actually in and out of the opening credits, it’s goodbye to Jill Bennett (finally), Abby, Sue Ellen, Nick Agretti and Maggie Channing (who, for reasons that will become all too apparent, is downgraded to “Also Starring …” status). And it’s hello to KNOTS LANDING’s Olivia and Michael (promoted after nine and ten years respectively — even if their faces don’t appear), DALLAS’s Carter McKay and Cally (after one season each) and two brand new arrivals, Michelle Stevens (marking the first time a new DALLAS character has gone straight into the opening titles) and Michael Sharpe, who not only swipes Maggie’s “And …” position at the end of the FC credits, but does so aping Angela Channing’s patented “looking out of a limousine window” pose.
DALLAS returned a week earlier than the other soaps with a double bill of episodes that swiftly drew a line under Sue Ellen’s cliffhanging exit. The repercussions of the mess Abby left behind her can still be felt on KNOTS, however. This week’s premiere carries seamlessly on from a “Previously on …” recap with Paige choosing to drive away with Ted rather than stay at the ranch with Greg. Over on FALCON CREST, an unspecified amount of time has elapsed since the end of last season, when Richard was about to be arrested, and the start of this one, which opens with a montage of him arriving at the state penitentiary while the judge’s sentencing speech from his trial plays in voice-over:
“Richard Channing, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of the following crimes — five counts of unlawful manipulations of the securities markets for personal financial gain; three counts of fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud; three counts of evasion of the income tax laws of the United States; two counts of embezzlement and one count of conspiracy to violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.”
Curiously, this list of offences doesn’t seem to quite tally with those that led to Richard’s arrest in the first place. There’s no reference to his kidnap of Angela, for instance. According to falconcrest.org, which despite a clear antipathy for this season does an admirably thorough job of detailing it, his convictions have been adjusted to mirror the real-life white collar crimes of Michael Milken, “a controversial American investment dealer” who, like Richard, was subject to an SEC investigation in the late ‘80s. (Milken is even mentioned by name in this episode, along with some of his real-life contemporaries.)
“Somewhere on the books of this nation, Mr Channing,” continues the judge’s voiceover, “there may be a law relating to financial integrity that you haven’t trampled on or ignored, but I can’t imagine what it is. I’ve seen too many people walk out of here smiling like they were headed to country club prisons and I’m sick of it. So you’re not going to a country club, Mr Channing. I’m sentencing you to three years in the federal penitentiary, a REAL prison where you’ll do REAL time like the REAL criminal you are.”
Again according to falconcrest.org, the “country club prison” reference alludes to the minimum-security facility Michael Milken was sent to.
A distinction can also be made between the real prison Richard is sent to and the archaic Cool Hand Luke-style penal camp JR ended up in a year ago. For all the discomfort and hard labour JR endured, it never felt like “a real prison” in the way that the one in FALCON CREST does — JR wasn’t made to strip alongside his fellow prisoners and then undergo some kind of decontamination process the way Richard is and there were no close-ups of grimy toilet bowls like the one in Richard’s cell. Nor did he ever look as genuinely terrified for his life as Richard does later in the ep.
“I hope you and your Wall Street playmates get the message,” concludes the judge’s speech. Substitute “Soap Land” for “Wall Street” and this could almost be regarded as a message for the likes of Alexis and Abby — other white-collar fraudsters who have managed to elude prosecution altogether, and whose equivalent of a “country club prison” is a swanky governmental post in Japan.
Two “Mystery Key” storylines cropped up at the end of last season’s Ewing-verse — one involving Paige, the other Clayton and Miss Ellie. Thanks to last week’s DALLAS double bill, the Farlows have edged ahead of Paige in the race to solve their respective mystery. They have learned that Jock’s key was sent to him by an old wartime buddy, now deceased, and that it fit a safety deposit box in Massachusetts. When opened by Ellie, this box was found to contain a second key which, as she explains to JR and Bobby this week, “opens something in your daddy’s past.” Before she can learn what, she must find out the name of the town where Jock hit his first big gusher (which, for the purposes of this storyline, none of the Ewings can remember).
The equivalent story on KNOTS is even more complicated. First, Paige snatches the key from Greg’s bedroom, then Ted strong-arms her into giving it to him, then Greg has his security guy force Ted to hand it back to him. Meanwhile, Paige, Ted and Greg have each arrived in the small town of Spring Lake, having separately concluded that the key must open a safety deposit box in the local post office. One final twist: Paige has had the real key hidden in her shoe all along! Back on DALLAS, Miss Ellie gets the break she’s been hoping for when Jordan Lee tells her that Jock first hit it big in Pride, Texas. (Well, anyone who’s seen “DALLAS: The Early Years” could have told her that.)
Throughout their adventures, both the Farlows and Paige have encountered a selection of likably offbeat character actors — a lugubrious key-cutter here, a Catholic priest (DALLAS’s first) there. Best of all is Officer Jim, a goofily flirtatious cop whom Paige approaches when she first arrives in Spring Lake. His response when she asks where the nearest motel is is my favourite line of this week’s KNOTS: “Be still my heart — you big city women, you move so fast!” There’s another funny line from a minor player on FALCON CREST when Michael Sharpe, a former associate of Richard’s, arrives at the penitentiary with his entourage to visit him. As their two stretch limos pull up, a bemused security guard asks, “Who’s this — Johnny Cash?”
The first we hear of Michael Sharpe is when Richard offers to testify against him in return for a reduced sentence. “No-one knows him better than I do,” he insists. “We go back a long way … Sitting in that million dollar IM Pei office, wearing his $5,000 Brioni suits, staring at his original Rauschenbergs and Jackson Pollocks on the wall is a very guilty man.”
Cut to Michael in said office, lecturing a subordinate about the meaningless of cash. “What is this?” he asks, holding up a thousand dollar bill. “Does anybody think this is money? They don’t even print this anymore. This is what you take to the stationery store to buy a Mother’s Day card. Microchip manufacturers in Singapore, oilfields in Venezuela, genetic engineering, satellite communications — that’s money.” Here, Sharpe seems to be singing from same “There are no more borders, there are no more countries” hymn sheet as Carter McKay did in Vienna. (By comparison, the aims expressed by JR on DALLAS seem even more quaintly parochial than usual: “We’re on the verge of something big here, Bobby, something’s that gonna open up a whole new world of competition and why? Because I wasn’t afraid to take a risk, a risk that’s gonna make us the biggest oil company in Texas!”)
Sharpe’s environment — an office as impressive as Richard’s description complete with a personal gym, one of those electronic boards you see on the Stock Exchange and a bunch of preppy looking flunkies, eager to high-five the latest big deal — isn’t the kind of Ewing Oil/Denver Carrington-style business setting we’re used to seeing in Soap Land. It belongs more to the high-octane, corporate-raiding, machismo world of Gordon Gekko and The Wolf of Wall Street. All that’s missing is a pile of cocaine on a glass table. The brutal misogyny of that world is also evident in Michael’s behaviour. Later in the episode, he confronts a female former employee who has betrayed him to Richard. “You know what your trouble is, Jane?” he asks. “You never quite grasp the subtext, what’s underneath it all.” With that, he makes a sudden grab for a part of her anatomy that’s hidden below camera level. She gasps in shock and he steps away. “Don’t worry, you’re not my type,” he assures her, before catching the eyes of the other men in the room. “You’d be too grateful.”
The season’s other new arrival, DALLAS’s Michelle Stevens, is a much more familiar Soap Land figure — the gold-digging little sister who shows up without warning and immediately become a thorn in the side of her older, wealthier, more respectable sibling, in this case, the increasingly prim April. “We used to be hookers. Called ourselves the Calendar Girls. She was April, I was May,” she informs Bobby in her very first scene, wisecracking like a junior Mae West. She may be cut from the same cloth as Kristin Shepard and Terry Hartford, but she nonetheless feels like a breath of fresh air. And in the same way that DALLAS’s new opening titles still feel exciting after all this time, so Michelle’s pixie-ish, Purdey-ish cropped hairstyle still feels distinctively new and modern, even three decades on. Maggie Channing sports a very similar cut on this week’s FALCON CREST — a symbolic demonstration, perhaps, that she is putting the past, i.e., Richard, behind her, even if that proves harder to do in practice.
Alongside these new faces, three well-known characters have undergone a significant transformation — most notably, Tommy McKay who returns to DALLAS an almost unrecognisably changed man: slicked back hair (not unlike Michael Sharpe’s), a business suit and a sincere, moist-eyed desire to make up with his father. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he tells him, “for everything … all the lies, the drugs, the craziness … I need you to forgive me, I need that from you … You think I can come back, live with you for a while? I’d be home early for dinner, I’ll vote Republican, I’ll even drink my coffee decaffeinated … I love you, Dad.” He delivers all this with a kind of evangelical intensity we’ve not seen in Soap Land since the days of Joshua Rush. This is certainly not the same snarling greaser junkie who skipped town after beating up April last season (or the same Alexis-smacking architect who got shot dead by a five-year-old girl, for that matter). He attributes his transformation to a rehab facility in Florida, but it feels more as if he’s undergone some sort of futuristic reprogramming to turn him into the ideal Soap Land son — a Soap Land son who loves and reveres his daddy above all else. However, Stepford Tommy quickly begins to short-circuit: he’s not content to simply win Mack’s approval, he must take revenge against anyone who has ever crossed his father. It’s no surprise, therefore, to learn that he was the one behind April’s crank calls. He has something even more fiendish planned for Bobby — an attache case rigged with a bomb. And he also finds time in his busy schedule to push Rolf Brundin, another associate of his father’s, under a moving truck. This is the first of three shock deaths in this week’s Soap Land.
While April’s mystery caller has been identified on DALLAS, Pat Williams has a ball teasing Gary about his “hot telephone conversations” on KNOTS. “You’re practising the ultimate in safe sex!” she tells him. (There’s also a reference to AIDS prevention on DALLAS — a close up of a poster with the message: “Guess who else can get AIDS if you shoot drugs.”) It looks as if Gary is finally about to meet Sally’s Friend at the end of this week’s ep, but events take an unexpectedly Hitchcockian turn when he hears her being attacked over the phone. “Say your number! Tell me your number! … What’s your name?!” he yells helplessly.
Bobby Ewing and Richard Channing both narrowly avoid getting blown up this week. While Richard successfully foils an attempt by Michael Sharpe to bump him off with a lightbulb full of nitro-glycerine the night before he is due to testify against him, an unwitting Bobby hands Tommy McKay back the attache case he “accidentally” left in his office without realising it was rigged to explode.
Like Tommy, DALLAS’s Lucy and FALCON CREST’s Emma have both also undergone a reinvention of sorts. In order to accommodate Cally’s emergence as an up-and-coming artist (an even less convincing development than Ciji becoming a pop sensation on KNOTS, but just as enjoyable), Lucy has been recast as a societal mover and shaker who knows everyone who’s anyone on the Dallas art scene. And after introducing Cally to suave gallery owner Alex Barton, she also takes up Sue Ellen’s former mantle as the Ewing family cynic. “It’s not gonna last long,” she tells Alex, referring to Cally and JR’s marriage. “When the real JR Ewing finally comes out of his shell … she’s gonna need all the friends she can get.” If this slightly more worldly version of Lucy is an improvement, then Emma’s transformation from a whimsical daydreamer into a woman fixated with a man who knocks her about is downright fascinating. “One minute, he’s tender and loving and the next he’s frightening,” she admits to Maggie. “He pushes me over the edge and then he catches me when I fall.” When Maggie insists she break away from this man, Emma becomes suddenly angry, perhaps more angry than we’ve ever seen her. “This is coming from Richard Channing’s wife?!” she shouts. “You tell me how easy it is to break away from the wrong man!”
After a season in which things mostly happened to him, JR is back to being DALLAS’s principal mover and shaker. With West Star shipping all their oil to OPEC, he is keen for Ewing Oil to replace them as the sole supplier to a large refinery owned by a formidably moustachioed man named Shaughnessy. Bobby doesn’t think they can make the deal without cutting off supply to some of their existing customers — “and Ewing Oil would never do that.” Bobby vetoes the deal, JR goes ahead with it behind his back … and pretty soon, the problems start piling up. Cue plenty of fast-talking and double-dealing from JR while angry men in hard hats shout furious ultimatums: “Either I get my oil as promised or you pay the penalty — a million dollars a day for every day any shipment fails to arrive!” In other words, quintessential DALLAS.
Just as JR is back where he belongs, so Southfork is restored to its rightful place at the centre of the action, instead of merely being the set of Sue Ellen’s movie. There’s a really good scene where JR returns to the ranch to find April in the living room which could almost be an Adam/Fallon encounter from last season’s DYNASTY. Annoyed with his “good, decent, kind little brother”, JR starts making derogatory remarks about him: “Bobby’s never gonna make Ewing Oil a company my daddy would be proud of because he thinks small and he works small and he’s keeping Ewing Oil small.” When April comes to her man’s defence, JR turns on her, remarking that, “the Bobby I used to know would never be caught dead touching a woman I’d slept with [but] he doesn’t seem to mind you being my leftovers.” April retaliates the way Fallon used to when Adam twisted the knife, by trying to slap him. Meanwhile, Cally has overheard their exchange and is devastated to realise that JR and April once had a fling. “It didn’t mean anything,” JR tells her — but because Cally is new to the rules of the Soap Land game, she still equates sex with love and is convinced that April harbours feelings for her husband. “JR is a very attractive man and I don’t think any woman can just walk away from him,” she insists. It’s to the actress’s great credit that Cally comes across as innocent (“even sweeter and more naive than she seems,” as Lucy describes her) rather than idiotic.
An old affair also resurfaces to haunt a pair of newlyweds on FALCON CREST. In a fantastic scene, Pilar admits to Lance that “Richard and I were involved once … It was before we were married.” (File this revelation in the ‘Offscreen Events We Knew Nothing About At The Time’ folder, alongside Krystle’s diagnosis, Abby’s discovery of oil and Alexis revealing Monica and Miles’s paternity to Jason.) Echoing what JR told Cally about April (“I never loved that girl”), Pilar insists that “it wasn’t about love”, but Lance is too angry to listen. What makes this marital spat so remarkable is that it is happening at the Falcon Crest dinner table with the rest of the family in attendance. Angela, seated at the head of the table, is loving it. “Look at how happy you’re making your grandmother,” Pilar shouts. “Look at her! My God, Lance, her plan is working — we’re at each other’s throats!” This scene also succeeds in deftly resolving last season’s outstanding cliffhanger in just two lines of dialogue. “Where were you the other night?” barks Lance. “I went to visit Tommy and Kelly,” Pilar replies. “I know you don’t trust Tommy since the accident at the lake and I don’t blame you for it, but don’t blame me for loving my brother or caring about what happens to my family!” This is the only reference to any of the non-returning regulars from last season. “Wow,” says Emma at the end of the scene and I can only concur.
While DALLAS plays to its familiar strengths — sexy gold diggers, wheeling and dealing, family feuding — KNOTS’ season opener feels somewhat less knotty than usual. Although each of this week’s plots — the Karen/Mack/Paula and Ted/Paige/Greg triangles; Val and Gary’s respective romances — are individually strong and full of wit and enjoyable idiosyncrasies, none of the characters interact with anyone outside of their own storylines (aside from Pat and Gary’s fun little scene outside Val’s house). Meanwhile, almost everything on FALCON CREST feels different. The cosy quippiness has gone, replaced by dialogue that is faster, snappier and more business-literate (what’s an LPO?). In this first episode, only two characters’ objectives are recognisable from the previous season: Richard wants Maggie back and Angela wants Pilar out of Lance’s life.
Quite a few of Soap Land’s iconic couples have recently shared their last scenes together and most ended on an upbeat note: Blake and Alexis had called a halt to their feuding by the end of DYNASTY, Abby and Greg parted on amicable terms on KNOTS and Sue Ellen at least walked away from JR with a smile on her face on DALLAS. The last scene between Maggie and Richard on FALCON CREST, however, could scarcely be more downbeat. Having reluctantly agreed to Richard’s request for a conjugal visit, Maggie meets with him in a dingy cell. “You got forty-five minutes till the next couple comes,” the guard tells them. “Bottle of wine for forty bucks, clean sheets for ten.” Richard sends him away and explains to Maggie that he’s going to testify before the SEC: “It’s the only way I can get out of this hole. Things may get a little rough for a while. There’s a few people out there who'd like to shut me up … I wanted to see you one last time, just in case … I knew someday I was going to have to pay the price for all the things I did … I’m hollow inside. I’ve got to make amends. Maggie, I need you.” She is moved, they kiss, she starts to lie down on the unclean bed and the scene ends. That night, she finally puts on the ring Richard had sent to her at the start of the episode.
Previous Soap Land seasons may have peppered their scripts with references to real-world events (DYNASTY in its first year, DALLAS during the post-dream BD Calhoun era), but FALCON CREST’s attempt to weld together Richard and Michael Sharpe’s storyline with contemporary non-fiction events is something else entirely. Take this line of Richard’s, which combines fact with fiction: “The cowboy days are over, Sal. The SEC is coming down hard. See, once Dennis Levine opened his mouth, the dominoes started to fall. And the last domino falls tomorrow.”
As if long-established soap characters rubbing up against an approximation of present-day reality was not enough, there is also the significance of the dead falcon in the pre-title sequence (“There’s evil in the air!”), which adds a kind of supernatural element to the storytelling. The combination of, and the sparks created by, these opposing dramatic forces is utterly fascinating — and they all come together in the final few minutes of the ep.
It’s the morning of the day Richard is due to testify against Michael Sharpe. Maggie is at home, assuring Richard’s son that she’ll retrieve his toy soldiers (the same toy soldiers Richard was fixated with when he first arrived on the show) from the bottom of the swimming pool. We then cut to Richard shaving in his cell. Then we go back to Maggie, putting on her diving mask and going under the water. Then it’s back to Richard, now fully dressed and on his way out of the prison. We see Maggie swimming towards the soldiers. She grabs the grate at the bottom of the pool with one hand to steady herself and reaches for the soldiers with the other. Richard is now in the back of a cop car, smiling. (Suddenly, Richard's and Maggie’s timelines are no longer sequential. Time is moving faster for him than it is for her; she is now in his past.) Maggie realises that Richard's ring has trapped her hand in the grate. Cut back to Richard in the car — he turns abruptly, looking worried. Cut back to Maggie, struggling to free herself, then there's the briefest of flashbacks to her putting on the ring the night before. Back in the pool, she drops the soldiers, panicking. Cut to Richard, smiling. Cut to a flashback of Maggie’s tearful face in the prison. Then there’s a succession of quick cuts, almost too quick to process: Richard lying awake in his prison bed, Maggie struggling under the water, Richard arriving at court and getting out of the car, back to Maggie. Then flashing back to the pre-title sequence — the boy running, the dead falcon. Richard’s lawyer approaching him, taking him by the arm. Maggie still struggling. Richard smiling as the lawyer talks to him. Maggie’s body floating upwards in slow-motion, her hand still lodged in the grate. Richard suddenly collapsing in his lawyer’s arms.
And this week’s Top 3 are …
1 (2) FALCON CREST
2 (3) DALLAS
3 (1) KNOTS LANDING
http://www.falconcrest.org/english/master.php?path=show/episodes/ai/bts/9/206
To mark the new season, each of the surviving soaps has boldly revamped its opening title sequence. After eleven years, DALLAS has dropped its signature three-way splits of the actors’ faces in favour of bursting dams, exploding oilfields and flash shots of the actors synced to the thump of the theme music. Thirty years on, it still packs a shock-of-the-new punch. KNOTS has been even more radical, dispensing with images of its actors altogether — a Soap Land first. Instead, there’s a beach-themed montage with sandcastle representations of the cul-de-sac and surrounding buildings, accompanied by a new mid-tempo arrangement of the theme. The overall vibe is less “dramatically soapy ‘80s” and more “tastefully sophisticated [if somewhat anonymous] ‘90s”. In contrast to the Californian outdoorsiness of the KNOTS opening, FALCON CREST’s new titles evoke a feeling of darkness and claustrophobia. Familiar footage of vineyards is juxtaposed with ominous glimpses of door handles turning, guns pointing and couples cavorting in silhouette. Hardly any of the actors are smiling in their close-ups — Richard looks positively haunted while poor old Chao Li is in tears. A slowed down, more brooding version of the theme music adds to the mood.
As for who’s actually in and out of the opening credits, it’s goodbye to Jill Bennett (finally), Abby, Sue Ellen, Nick Agretti and Maggie Channing (who, for reasons that will become all too apparent, is downgraded to “Also Starring …” status). And it’s hello to KNOTS LANDING’s Olivia and Michael (promoted after nine and ten years respectively — even if their faces don’t appear), DALLAS’s Carter McKay and Cally (after one season each) and two brand new arrivals, Michelle Stevens (marking the first time a new DALLAS character has gone straight into the opening titles) and Michael Sharpe, who not only swipes Maggie’s “And …” position at the end of the FC credits, but does so aping Angela Channing’s patented “looking out of a limousine window” pose.
DALLAS returned a week earlier than the other soaps with a double bill of episodes that swiftly drew a line under Sue Ellen’s cliffhanging exit. The repercussions of the mess Abby left behind her can still be felt on KNOTS, however. This week’s premiere carries seamlessly on from a “Previously on …” recap with Paige choosing to drive away with Ted rather than stay at the ranch with Greg. Over on FALCON CREST, an unspecified amount of time has elapsed since the end of last season, when Richard was about to be arrested, and the start of this one, which opens with a montage of him arriving at the state penitentiary while the judge’s sentencing speech from his trial plays in voice-over:
“Richard Channing, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of the following crimes — five counts of unlawful manipulations of the securities markets for personal financial gain; three counts of fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud; three counts of evasion of the income tax laws of the United States; two counts of embezzlement and one count of conspiracy to violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.”
Curiously, this list of offences doesn’t seem to quite tally with those that led to Richard’s arrest in the first place. There’s no reference to his kidnap of Angela, for instance. According to falconcrest.org, which despite a clear antipathy for this season does an admirably thorough job of detailing it, his convictions have been adjusted to mirror the real-life white collar crimes of Michael Milken, “a controversial American investment dealer” who, like Richard, was subject to an SEC investigation in the late ‘80s. (Milken is even mentioned by name in this episode, along with some of his real-life contemporaries.)
“Somewhere on the books of this nation, Mr Channing,” continues the judge’s voiceover, “there may be a law relating to financial integrity that you haven’t trampled on or ignored, but I can’t imagine what it is. I’ve seen too many people walk out of here smiling like they were headed to country club prisons and I’m sick of it. So you’re not going to a country club, Mr Channing. I’m sentencing you to three years in the federal penitentiary, a REAL prison where you’ll do REAL time like the REAL criminal you are.”
Again according to falconcrest.org, the “country club prison” reference alludes to the minimum-security facility Michael Milken was sent to.
A distinction can also be made between the real prison Richard is sent to and the archaic Cool Hand Luke-style penal camp JR ended up in a year ago. For all the discomfort and hard labour JR endured, it never felt like “a real prison” in the way that the one in FALCON CREST does — JR wasn’t made to strip alongside his fellow prisoners and then undergo some kind of decontamination process the way Richard is and there were no close-ups of grimy toilet bowls like the one in Richard’s cell. Nor did he ever look as genuinely terrified for his life as Richard does later in the ep.
“I hope you and your Wall Street playmates get the message,” concludes the judge’s speech. Substitute “Soap Land” for “Wall Street” and this could almost be regarded as a message for the likes of Alexis and Abby — other white-collar fraudsters who have managed to elude prosecution altogether, and whose equivalent of a “country club prison” is a swanky governmental post in Japan.
Two “Mystery Key” storylines cropped up at the end of last season’s Ewing-verse — one involving Paige, the other Clayton and Miss Ellie. Thanks to last week’s DALLAS double bill, the Farlows have edged ahead of Paige in the race to solve their respective mystery. They have learned that Jock’s key was sent to him by an old wartime buddy, now deceased, and that it fit a safety deposit box in Massachusetts. When opened by Ellie, this box was found to contain a second key which, as she explains to JR and Bobby this week, “opens something in your daddy’s past.” Before she can learn what, she must find out the name of the town where Jock hit his first big gusher (which, for the purposes of this storyline, none of the Ewings can remember).
The equivalent story on KNOTS is even more complicated. First, Paige snatches the key from Greg’s bedroom, then Ted strong-arms her into giving it to him, then Greg has his security guy force Ted to hand it back to him. Meanwhile, Paige, Ted and Greg have each arrived in the small town of Spring Lake, having separately concluded that the key must open a safety deposit box in the local post office. One final twist: Paige has had the real key hidden in her shoe all along! Back on DALLAS, Miss Ellie gets the break she’s been hoping for when Jordan Lee tells her that Jock first hit it big in Pride, Texas. (Well, anyone who’s seen “DALLAS: The Early Years” could have told her that.)
Throughout their adventures, both the Farlows and Paige have encountered a selection of likably offbeat character actors — a lugubrious key-cutter here, a Catholic priest (DALLAS’s first) there. Best of all is Officer Jim, a goofily flirtatious cop whom Paige approaches when she first arrives in Spring Lake. His response when she asks where the nearest motel is is my favourite line of this week’s KNOTS: “Be still my heart — you big city women, you move so fast!” There’s another funny line from a minor player on FALCON CREST when Michael Sharpe, a former associate of Richard’s, arrives at the penitentiary with his entourage to visit him. As their two stretch limos pull up, a bemused security guard asks, “Who’s this — Johnny Cash?”
The first we hear of Michael Sharpe is when Richard offers to testify against him in return for a reduced sentence. “No-one knows him better than I do,” he insists. “We go back a long way … Sitting in that million dollar IM Pei office, wearing his $5,000 Brioni suits, staring at his original Rauschenbergs and Jackson Pollocks on the wall is a very guilty man.”
Cut to Michael in said office, lecturing a subordinate about the meaningless of cash. “What is this?” he asks, holding up a thousand dollar bill. “Does anybody think this is money? They don’t even print this anymore. This is what you take to the stationery store to buy a Mother’s Day card. Microchip manufacturers in Singapore, oilfields in Venezuela, genetic engineering, satellite communications — that’s money.” Here, Sharpe seems to be singing from same “There are no more borders, there are no more countries” hymn sheet as Carter McKay did in Vienna. (By comparison, the aims expressed by JR on DALLAS seem even more quaintly parochial than usual: “We’re on the verge of something big here, Bobby, something’s that gonna open up a whole new world of competition and why? Because I wasn’t afraid to take a risk, a risk that’s gonna make us the biggest oil company in Texas!”)
Sharpe’s environment — an office as impressive as Richard’s description complete with a personal gym, one of those electronic boards you see on the Stock Exchange and a bunch of preppy looking flunkies, eager to high-five the latest big deal — isn’t the kind of Ewing Oil/Denver Carrington-style business setting we’re used to seeing in Soap Land. It belongs more to the high-octane, corporate-raiding, machismo world of Gordon Gekko and The Wolf of Wall Street. All that’s missing is a pile of cocaine on a glass table. The brutal misogyny of that world is also evident in Michael’s behaviour. Later in the episode, he confronts a female former employee who has betrayed him to Richard. “You know what your trouble is, Jane?” he asks. “You never quite grasp the subtext, what’s underneath it all.” With that, he makes a sudden grab for a part of her anatomy that’s hidden below camera level. She gasps in shock and he steps away. “Don’t worry, you’re not my type,” he assures her, before catching the eyes of the other men in the room. “You’d be too grateful.”
The season’s other new arrival, DALLAS’s Michelle Stevens, is a much more familiar Soap Land figure — the gold-digging little sister who shows up without warning and immediately become a thorn in the side of her older, wealthier, more respectable sibling, in this case, the increasingly prim April. “We used to be hookers. Called ourselves the Calendar Girls. She was April, I was May,” she informs Bobby in her very first scene, wisecracking like a junior Mae West. She may be cut from the same cloth as Kristin Shepard and Terry Hartford, but she nonetheless feels like a breath of fresh air. And in the same way that DALLAS’s new opening titles still feel exciting after all this time, so Michelle’s pixie-ish, Purdey-ish cropped hairstyle still feels distinctively new and modern, even three decades on. Maggie Channing sports a very similar cut on this week’s FALCON CREST — a symbolic demonstration, perhaps, that she is putting the past, i.e., Richard, behind her, even if that proves harder to do in practice.
Alongside these new faces, three well-known characters have undergone a significant transformation — most notably, Tommy McKay who returns to DALLAS an almost unrecognisably changed man: slicked back hair (not unlike Michael Sharpe’s), a business suit and a sincere, moist-eyed desire to make up with his father. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he tells him, “for everything … all the lies, the drugs, the craziness … I need you to forgive me, I need that from you … You think I can come back, live with you for a while? I’d be home early for dinner, I’ll vote Republican, I’ll even drink my coffee decaffeinated … I love you, Dad.” He delivers all this with a kind of evangelical intensity we’ve not seen in Soap Land since the days of Joshua Rush. This is certainly not the same snarling greaser junkie who skipped town after beating up April last season (or the same Alexis-smacking architect who got shot dead by a five-year-old girl, for that matter). He attributes his transformation to a rehab facility in Florida, but it feels more as if he’s undergone some sort of futuristic reprogramming to turn him into the ideal Soap Land son — a Soap Land son who loves and reveres his daddy above all else. However, Stepford Tommy quickly begins to short-circuit: he’s not content to simply win Mack’s approval, he must take revenge against anyone who has ever crossed his father. It’s no surprise, therefore, to learn that he was the one behind April’s crank calls. He has something even more fiendish planned for Bobby — an attache case rigged with a bomb. And he also finds time in his busy schedule to push Rolf Brundin, another associate of his father’s, under a moving truck. This is the first of three shock deaths in this week’s Soap Land.
While April’s mystery caller has been identified on DALLAS, Pat Williams has a ball teasing Gary about his “hot telephone conversations” on KNOTS. “You’re practising the ultimate in safe sex!” she tells him. (There’s also a reference to AIDS prevention on DALLAS — a close up of a poster with the message: “Guess who else can get AIDS if you shoot drugs.”) It looks as if Gary is finally about to meet Sally’s Friend at the end of this week’s ep, but events take an unexpectedly Hitchcockian turn when he hears her being attacked over the phone. “Say your number! Tell me your number! … What’s your name?!” he yells helplessly.
Bobby Ewing and Richard Channing both narrowly avoid getting blown up this week. While Richard successfully foils an attempt by Michael Sharpe to bump him off with a lightbulb full of nitro-glycerine the night before he is due to testify against him, an unwitting Bobby hands Tommy McKay back the attache case he “accidentally” left in his office without realising it was rigged to explode.
Like Tommy, DALLAS’s Lucy and FALCON CREST’s Emma have both also undergone a reinvention of sorts. In order to accommodate Cally’s emergence as an up-and-coming artist (an even less convincing development than Ciji becoming a pop sensation on KNOTS, but just as enjoyable), Lucy has been recast as a societal mover and shaker who knows everyone who’s anyone on the Dallas art scene. And after introducing Cally to suave gallery owner Alex Barton, she also takes up Sue Ellen’s former mantle as the Ewing family cynic. “It’s not gonna last long,” she tells Alex, referring to Cally and JR’s marriage. “When the real JR Ewing finally comes out of his shell … she’s gonna need all the friends she can get.” If this slightly more worldly version of Lucy is an improvement, then Emma’s transformation from a whimsical daydreamer into a woman fixated with a man who knocks her about is downright fascinating. “One minute, he’s tender and loving and the next he’s frightening,” she admits to Maggie. “He pushes me over the edge and then he catches me when I fall.” When Maggie insists she break away from this man, Emma becomes suddenly angry, perhaps more angry than we’ve ever seen her. “This is coming from Richard Channing’s wife?!” she shouts. “You tell me how easy it is to break away from the wrong man!”
After a season in which things mostly happened to him, JR is back to being DALLAS’s principal mover and shaker. With West Star shipping all their oil to OPEC, he is keen for Ewing Oil to replace them as the sole supplier to a large refinery owned by a formidably moustachioed man named Shaughnessy. Bobby doesn’t think they can make the deal without cutting off supply to some of their existing customers — “and Ewing Oil would never do that.” Bobby vetoes the deal, JR goes ahead with it behind his back … and pretty soon, the problems start piling up. Cue plenty of fast-talking and double-dealing from JR while angry men in hard hats shout furious ultimatums: “Either I get my oil as promised or you pay the penalty — a million dollars a day for every day any shipment fails to arrive!” In other words, quintessential DALLAS.
Just as JR is back where he belongs, so Southfork is restored to its rightful place at the centre of the action, instead of merely being the set of Sue Ellen’s movie. There’s a really good scene where JR returns to the ranch to find April in the living room which could almost be an Adam/Fallon encounter from last season’s DYNASTY. Annoyed with his “good, decent, kind little brother”, JR starts making derogatory remarks about him: “Bobby’s never gonna make Ewing Oil a company my daddy would be proud of because he thinks small and he works small and he’s keeping Ewing Oil small.” When April comes to her man’s defence, JR turns on her, remarking that, “the Bobby I used to know would never be caught dead touching a woman I’d slept with [but] he doesn’t seem to mind you being my leftovers.” April retaliates the way Fallon used to when Adam twisted the knife, by trying to slap him. Meanwhile, Cally has overheard their exchange and is devastated to realise that JR and April once had a fling. “It didn’t mean anything,” JR tells her — but because Cally is new to the rules of the Soap Land game, she still equates sex with love and is convinced that April harbours feelings for her husband. “JR is a very attractive man and I don’t think any woman can just walk away from him,” she insists. It’s to the actress’s great credit that Cally comes across as innocent (“even sweeter and more naive than she seems,” as Lucy describes her) rather than idiotic.
An old affair also resurfaces to haunt a pair of newlyweds on FALCON CREST. In a fantastic scene, Pilar admits to Lance that “Richard and I were involved once … It was before we were married.” (File this revelation in the ‘Offscreen Events We Knew Nothing About At The Time’ folder, alongside Krystle’s diagnosis, Abby’s discovery of oil and Alexis revealing Monica and Miles’s paternity to Jason.) Echoing what JR told Cally about April (“I never loved that girl”), Pilar insists that “it wasn’t about love”, but Lance is too angry to listen. What makes this marital spat so remarkable is that it is happening at the Falcon Crest dinner table with the rest of the family in attendance. Angela, seated at the head of the table, is loving it. “Look at how happy you’re making your grandmother,” Pilar shouts. “Look at her! My God, Lance, her plan is working — we’re at each other’s throats!” This scene also succeeds in deftly resolving last season’s outstanding cliffhanger in just two lines of dialogue. “Where were you the other night?” barks Lance. “I went to visit Tommy and Kelly,” Pilar replies. “I know you don’t trust Tommy since the accident at the lake and I don’t blame you for it, but don’t blame me for loving my brother or caring about what happens to my family!” This is the only reference to any of the non-returning regulars from last season. “Wow,” says Emma at the end of the scene and I can only concur.
While DALLAS plays to its familiar strengths — sexy gold diggers, wheeling and dealing, family feuding — KNOTS’ season opener feels somewhat less knotty than usual. Although each of this week’s plots — the Karen/Mack/Paula and Ted/Paige/Greg triangles; Val and Gary’s respective romances — are individually strong and full of wit and enjoyable idiosyncrasies, none of the characters interact with anyone outside of their own storylines (aside from Pat and Gary’s fun little scene outside Val’s house). Meanwhile, almost everything on FALCON CREST feels different. The cosy quippiness has gone, replaced by dialogue that is faster, snappier and more business-literate (what’s an LPO?). In this first episode, only two characters’ objectives are recognisable from the previous season: Richard wants Maggie back and Angela wants Pilar out of Lance’s life.
Quite a few of Soap Land’s iconic couples have recently shared their last scenes together and most ended on an upbeat note: Blake and Alexis had called a halt to their feuding by the end of DYNASTY, Abby and Greg parted on amicable terms on KNOTS and Sue Ellen at least walked away from JR with a smile on her face on DALLAS. The last scene between Maggie and Richard on FALCON CREST, however, could scarcely be more downbeat. Having reluctantly agreed to Richard’s request for a conjugal visit, Maggie meets with him in a dingy cell. “You got forty-five minutes till the next couple comes,” the guard tells them. “Bottle of wine for forty bucks, clean sheets for ten.” Richard sends him away and explains to Maggie that he’s going to testify before the SEC: “It’s the only way I can get out of this hole. Things may get a little rough for a while. There’s a few people out there who'd like to shut me up … I wanted to see you one last time, just in case … I knew someday I was going to have to pay the price for all the things I did … I’m hollow inside. I’ve got to make amends. Maggie, I need you.” She is moved, they kiss, she starts to lie down on the unclean bed and the scene ends. That night, she finally puts on the ring Richard had sent to her at the start of the episode.
Previous Soap Land seasons may have peppered their scripts with references to real-world events (DYNASTY in its first year, DALLAS during the post-dream BD Calhoun era), but FALCON CREST’s attempt to weld together Richard and Michael Sharpe’s storyline with contemporary non-fiction events is something else entirely. Take this line of Richard’s, which combines fact with fiction: “The cowboy days are over, Sal. The SEC is coming down hard. See, once Dennis Levine opened his mouth, the dominoes started to fall. And the last domino falls tomorrow.”
As if long-established soap characters rubbing up against an approximation of present-day reality was not enough, there is also the significance of the dead falcon in the pre-title sequence (“There’s evil in the air!”), which adds a kind of supernatural element to the storytelling. The combination of, and the sparks created by, these opposing dramatic forces is utterly fascinating — and they all come together in the final few minutes of the ep.
It’s the morning of the day Richard is due to testify against Michael Sharpe. Maggie is at home, assuring Richard’s son that she’ll retrieve his toy soldiers (the same toy soldiers Richard was fixated with when he first arrived on the show) from the bottom of the swimming pool. We then cut to Richard shaving in his cell. Then we go back to Maggie, putting on her diving mask and going under the water. Then it’s back to Richard, now fully dressed and on his way out of the prison. We see Maggie swimming towards the soldiers. She grabs the grate at the bottom of the pool with one hand to steady herself and reaches for the soldiers with the other. Richard is now in the back of a cop car, smiling. (Suddenly, Richard's and Maggie’s timelines are no longer sequential. Time is moving faster for him than it is for her; she is now in his past.) Maggie realises that Richard's ring has trapped her hand in the grate. Cut back to Richard in the car — he turns abruptly, looking worried. Cut back to Maggie, struggling to free herself, then there's the briefest of flashbacks to her putting on the ring the night before. Back in the pool, she drops the soldiers, panicking. Cut to Richard, smiling. Cut to a flashback of Maggie’s tearful face in the prison. Then there’s a succession of quick cuts, almost too quick to process: Richard lying awake in his prison bed, Maggie struggling under the water, Richard arriving at court and getting out of the car, back to Maggie. Then flashing back to the pre-title sequence — the boy running, the dead falcon. Richard’s lawyer approaching him, taking him by the arm. Maggie still struggling. Richard smiling as the lawyer talks to him. Maggie’s body floating upwards in slow-motion, her hand still lodged in the grate. Richard suddenly collapsing in his lawyer’s arms.
And this week’s Top 3 are …
1 (2) FALCON CREST
2 (3) DALLAS
3 (1) KNOTS LANDING
http://www.falconcrest.org/english/master.php?path=show/episodes/ai/bts/9/206
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