15 Mar 90: KNOTS LANDING: Home Sweet Home v. 16 Mar 90: DALLAS: Will Power v. 16 Mar 90: FALCON CREST: Dark Streets
It’s hard to imagine how Jock Ewing would have reacted to one of his daughters-in-law discussing her marriage on a TV talk show, but that’s exactly what Cally does on this week’s DALLAS — and we’re not talking about a respectable series like OPEN MIKE (“the thinking person’s talk show” as it was described on KNOTS a few weeks ago), but the far more tawdry LIZZIE BURNS SHOW, with its provocative host and a studio audience primed to boo and cheer at the slightest opportunity. While Karen interviews someone about compost on this week’s OPEN MIKE, Lizzie Burns interrogates four young women who have married “rich and powerful Texans old enough to be their fathers.” Ironically, Lizzie is played by Susan Philby, Sid Fairgate’s ex-wife, who looked down on Karen so imperiously during KNOTS’ first season. As talk show rivals, they have now swapped positions: while Karen occupies the high-minded Oprah role, snooty Susan is now the lowest common denominator equivalent of Sally Jessy Raphael, Jerry Springer, et al.
To Cally’s dismay, it soon becomes apparent that Lizzie Burns is intent on portraying her and the other women on the show as gold-digging home-wreckers. At least one of the other wives, Nancy Ann, is only too eager to play up to that stereotype, referring to her husband’s first wife as “a dried-up old Texas matron” who “deserved what she got … It’s a fact of life — men don’t go for a diet of prunes if they can have fresh plums!”
Women passing judgement on other women is a recurrent theme throughout this week’s Soap Land. “I didn’t realise that women like you still existed,” Paula Vertosick tells Anne Matheson on KNOTS, referring to the air of shameless decadence she exudes. It’s the same air Abby and Alexis used to give off in their first seasons before they started power dressing and taking themselves seriously. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Anne smiles. “You would,” Paula replies.
Anne makes an observation of her own: “I don’t see what the big deal is about women in the workforce — nobody seems to be having any fun.” This would certainly apply to Michelle Stevens, who argues loudly with everyone she comes into contact with — her boyfriend, her sister, her contractor — over her and April’s warehouse project on this week’s DALLAS. During an introspective moment, she admits to James she’s plagued by the fear that “it will all disappear and I’ll be on the outside again, my face pressed up against the candy store window. Everybody’s inside, they all have what they want, and all I can do is look.” This echoes what April told Casey Denault a couple of seasons ago: “You’re just all the other bitter little people on the outside — you’re just trying to figure out how to get what you don’t have.”
Soap Land being what it is, it’s not just women who are criticising women in the workforce. JR makes a comment about Stephanie Rodgers which must rank as one of the darkest lines he’s ever delivered: “She’s the kind of woman a man likes to see kneeling at his feet, begging for mercy.”
Even Miss Ellie is uncharacteristically mean-spirited when she hears that Arlen Ward’s squeeze (and alibi) Honey North is an actress and model. “Actress and model indeed!” she scoffs. “I can just imagine the kind of films she was in!” I’m pretty sure that’s the first time Southfork’s matriarch has made a reference to porn.
Two of Soap Land’s wives decide to revisit their pasts this week, incurring their husbands’ disapproval in the process. On KNOTS, Pat Williams’ decision to resume the medical career she was forced to abandon when she entered the Witness Protection Programme prompts Frank to pack a suitcase and threaten divorce. Over on FALCON CREST, the race is on to find Johnny Sacco, the junkie Michael Sharpe paid to tamper with Sydney’s car and whom he now wants dead. Overriding Lance’s objections, Pilar volunteers to draw on her experiences as a teenage runaway and go undercover on Skid Row. (Her claim that she has “lived in the streets, in the dirt” requires some creative tweaking to her backstory. Previously, we’d been told she left the Tuscany Valley as a teenager to have a baby but was taken in by relatives.) This affords FC another opportunity to take one of its rich characters for a walk on the wild side. First, there was Lance playing Scorpion Roulette in Juarez, then Lauren slinging hash and delivering babies in Chinatown and now it’s Pilar’s turn to adopt the homeless-but-chic look. (As ever, Soap Land’s depiction of how poor people live is kind of wonky.)
It doesn’t take long for Pilar to befriend Johnny’s girlfriend, Mooshy Tucker, “part-time waitress, part-time hooker and a full-time survivor.” Pilar doesn’t look down on Mooshy the way Miss Ellie does on Honey and neither does FALCON CREST itself. When Clayton and Ellie, in their capacity as self-appointed super-sleuths, visit Honey at a photo shoot, they find her posing provocatively in lingerie. So far so Mandy Winger, except that Honey looks to be at least forty. That, combined with her claims to artistic legitimacy (“You may think you’re talking to a dumb blonde with big assets, but I’ve got a BA in Theatre Arts, I’ve got talent!” she squeaks), makes her seem kind of delusional, like a low-rent Norma Desmond or Baby Jane Hudson. FALCON CREST’s Mooshy also has artistic aspirations, but FC takes them more seriously — perhaps a little too seriously. Just as FC’s last hooker, Samantha Ross, was also a photographer, Mooshy turns out to be a painter (of homeless people, obviously). Unlike Soap Land’s current artist in residence, Cally, she refuses to even consider selling her work. “No way!” she tells Pilar. “I do a lot of things for money, sell a lot too, but sell my paintings? That’d be like selling my soul and that’s something I ain’t never gonna do!”
Back on KNOTS, Danny Waleska’s refusal to vacate the cul-de-sac results in Val, Ginny and the twins decamping to Gary’s ranch until further notice. Danny marks the occasion by throwing Val’s clothes and belongings off the balcony of “his” house in the same way JR did Sue Ellen’s off of Southfork’s the last time she left the ranch. “She’s not setting foot in here again — never again!” Danny instructs his lawyer. JR, meanwhile, is having a harder time getting rid of his present wife. “You hypnotise her or tranquillise her or do whatever you have to do, but get that woman out of my house!” he barks at the marriage counsellor he hired to break them up. Conversely on FALCON CREST, Michael Sharpe is determined to have his ex-wife Anne living back under the same roof as him and their son Danny. “She belongs with me,” he insists.
KNOTS’ Harold Dyer also wants his wife back. He calls Olivia from Miami to deliver a speech that manages to be both anti-romantic and romantic at the same time. “I hate talking about feelings,” he begins. “I think it’s stupid, dumb, and I wanna gag when I hear somebody say that they’re always gonna be there for you. I wanna ask them, where are they gonna be — on the corner of 3rd and Hudson? But I have to say all those things I hate because I miss you …”
Even though Karen is the one Abby asked to keep an eye on her daughter, it’s Val to whom Olivia turns in her hour of need. “I, me, Valene Ewing Gibson Waleska of the three husbands and the three broken marriages, I still believe in love,” Val tells her. “I still believe that love is the most important thing in your whole life. So I would still, if I were you, base my decision on whether or not I loved the man.” Whereas Val has been married thrice, April’s mother on DALLAS has been married only once, “to a man who died far too soon.” Nevertheless, she feels the same way Val does. “I’m glad I married him,” she tells her daughter. “I’m glad I had those years with him, no matter how few they were because I got to love and be loved back and you don’t ever want to walk away from that.” This sweet little speech becomes all the more resonant when one remembers how brief April’s own marriage to Bobby will be.
Olivia and April each act on the advice they’ve been given. Olivia joins Harold in Miami, thus becoming the third young character to depart Soap Land in recent weeks, following her own cousin Eric and FALCON CREST’s Sydney. Whereas Sydney left a goodbye note behind for Pilar and Lance, Olivia leaves a five thousand dollar cheque for Gary — the same cheque she tricked him into signing, but then couldn’t bring herself to cash. April, meanwhile, surprises Bobby not just by returning to Dallas unannounced, but by filling his office with fake snow for good measure. Paige is even more shocked when she walks into her apartment to find her boyfriend and her mother together. “You were practically on top of her and she was practically naked!” she yells at Tom who promptly gets down on one knee and proposes.
Starting with the freak drowning of Maggie in FALCON CREST, it’s been a remarkably grim year in Soap Land. Since then, we’ve seen a husband rape his wife, wives stab and shoot their husbands, three young characters fatally shot down in their prime and elderly people variously tossed out of windows, pushed down stairs, suffocated, poisoned and even hanged. This week’s DALLAS ends with the most luridly gruesome image in its history: Arlen Ward drowned in his own fish tank, mouth agape, eyes partially open. Nice!
This macabre atmosphere even begins to permeate the studio of OPEN MIKE when Karen’s producer, Dianne, recounts the tale of a female newscaster she once worked with who was strangled to death by a sexually obsessed fan. There’s a ripped-from-the-headlines quality about this story — such tragedies have occurred in real life — yet KNOTS approaches it with an air of campy black comedy. Dianne is cautioning Karen against becoming too familiar with a particular fan — or she simply trying to keep her in line by making her paranoid? “Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe he’ll bring a gun and shoot her,” she wisecracks to her assistant. Later, the overzealous fan does indeed sneak backstage where he is wrestled to the floor, but he then turns out to be a harmless dweeb who has knitted Karen a sweater. Meanwhile, we see another man lurking outside the studio. The episode ends with him watching Karen from afar as she reads a note he has apparently placed on her car windscreen. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” she reads. “I would love to have a photo of you … in your birthday suit … My love always.” Karen looks around nervously. At least she’s not dead in a fish tank with her mouth open. Yet.
And this week’s Top 3 are …
1 (1) KNOTS LANDING
2 (3) DALLAS
3 (2) FALCON CREST