Festive Names

Do you want to change your name to something festive ?

Click here for more details

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 162717" data-attributes="member: 22">11 Jan 90: KNOTS LANDING: Road Trip v. 12 Jan 90: DALLAS: Judgment Day v. 12 Jan 90: FALCON CREST: Madness DescendingThere’s a strong sense of finality about this week’s DALLAS. It really feels like it could be the last episode of the series. It opens with Cliff talking to Digger at his graveside. His words then continue over various shots of the investigative committee in Austin arguing amongst themselves. Montages are almost unheard of on DALLAS so straightaway we get the feeling this is not your average episode. “Digger, what the hell am I gonna do?” Cliff is asking his daddy. “I finally have the power to crush JR Ewing and get this — he might not even be guilty. But dammit, he has committed a crime. He knowingly bought that shoddy tanker just to fatten his own purse without giving a single thought to the environmental destruction it might cause … He acted immorally and unethically, but still he didn’t do anything legally wrong … What would you do, Digger? Would you just say the hell with it — the only good Ewing is a dead Ewing?” This is a throwback to the Cliff Barnes of early Season 1, which was the last time the character seriously considered putting morality before revenge. It has as much connection to the Cliff of a few episodes ago who was solely motivated by childlike spite as it has to the Cliff who will descend into Shakespearean evil on New DALLAS. Yet all three incarnations are hugely compelling — a testament to the mercurial nature of both of the character and the actor playing him. Speaking of New DALLAS, the dilemma Cliff wrestles with throughout this episode — whether or not to convict JR of a crime he didn’t commit — acquires an added layer of irony when one remembers that this is exactly what the Ewings will end up doing to him, i.e., framing him for JR’s murder as a way of punishing him for his other sins.Throughout the ep, there is an acute feeling of nostalgia. As well as Cliff talking to his dead father, Miss Ellie delivers an angry speech to Jock while standing on the spot where he first struck oil: “This is where your dream started, but sometimes I wish it had never ever started at all!” “Cliff, you and I have been up and down together a lot of times over the years but this is the first time my fate rests in your hands,” Bobby tells his former brother-in-law during a pivotal scene towards the end of the episode. He also refers to Pam without mentioning her by name: “We have family ties that bind us, Cliff.” Even Carter McKay catches the bug. “When I first came to Dallas, you were a good friend to me,” he reminds Bobby. “If things had gone differently, we might have stayed friends.”KNOTS doesn’t delve into its past to the same degree, but Mack does mention Anne while talking to Tom Ryan and there’s a brief but poignant moment when Karen is sorting through Meg’s old clothes and says to Val, “I already have boxes of her things out in the garage - things that - Laura bought her.” This is followed by a silent beat where the two women look at each other before carrying on with their conversation — which, somewhat inevitably, is all about Val and her complicated life: “I never thought that I would be married three times. It’s just so not me. I mean, I’m divorced twice and I’m marrying a man no-one else likes!” One can only imagine Laura’s eye-rolling response to that.Meanwhile, in Hot Young Couple Corner: Just a few weeks ago, DALLAS’s James and Michelle were all over each other while KNOTS LANDING’s Tom and Paige weren’t even on speaking terms. Soap Land being the emotional rollercoaster that it is, their relationship statuses have now reversed. While Michelle and James blank each other in public, KNOTS begins with an oddly sexy pre-credit sequence that cuts between Paige and Tom each putting their clothes on while a classy slice of yacht rock, ‘Synesthesia’ by Peter Himmelman, plays over the top — a rare use of contemporary (as opposed to ‘60s) pop in Soap Land.Paige then arrives for dinner at Tom’s place. This is our first look at his bachelor pad. It’s sort of blokey but artsy, glamorous yet macho — and about three times the size of fellow cop Zorelli’s apartment on last season’s DYNASTY. Given that Tom is on the take and Zorelli wasn’t, this makes sense. (The espionage business evidently pays well —  DALLAS’s Michelle Stevens also shows off her big new apartment this week, although how she’ll continue to afford it now she’s quit her role as JR’s spy in the house of Barnes is anyone’s guess.)Tom is also a more sophisticated chef than Zorelli. Instead of impressing Fallon by throwing spaghetti at the ceiling to see if it’s cooked, he has prepared Paige a menu of “wild greens and baby lettuce, duckling in a black bean sauce and, for dessert, creme brûlée.” Alas, dinner is interrupted when he receives an urgent phone call, from Paige’s father no less. “I’ve found Pomerantz,” Mack tells him. “I’ll meet you outside your apartment in ten minutes … We’re going to Canada.” In the first of umpteen lies Tom will deliver in this ep — not since Chip Roberts in “Man in the Middle” (KNOTS Season 4) has one man uttered so many untruths in a Soap Land hour — he tells Paige he has to meet his partner (“it’s work”), but that she should stay and eat without him. When said partner later drops by the apartment looking for Tom, Paige becomes suspicious. (Like Zorelli’s cop partner, Tom’s is non-Caucasian. Rudy was black, Ricardo is Hispanic.)En route to Canada, Mack makes it clear how highly he thinks of Tom: “Until you showed up, I didn’t think that anyone was good enough for my daughter … Today, being a cop is pretty damn noble.” (This is ironic, given that Tom has just been instructed by his Oakman boss to kill both Pomerantz and Mack.) JR may not feel as kindly disposed towards Michelle, but he nonetheless urges James to make up with “Little Miss Tight Skirt” because he needs her back in Austin spying on Cliff. “Get off your butt and start working on that girl,” he tells his son. But neither James nor Tom are in the mood for blindly following orders. As Bobby says elsewhere on this week’s DALLAS, “everything is down to your conscience” and so, while Tom goes to great lengths to avoid killing Mack and preventing his trigger happy sidekick Joe from doing the same, James makes it clear to JR he wants nothing more to do with his machinations. “I came to this city looking for a family and a home, and all I find is a combat zone fill of people trying to stick it to one another,” he complains. Whereas Tom succeeds in keeping Mack alive without arousing Oakman’s suspicions, James only succeeds in disappointing his daddy. “You don’t know what family is,” JR tells him. “All I see is a globe-trotting brat who’d skip out on his own flesh and blood the first time they put the wrong flavoured popsicle in the icebox.”When Mack and Tom meet Pomerantz, the supposedly dead bookkeeper for Oakman Industries, he turns out to be Fritz Heath, Colby Co’s controller from last season’s DYNASTY, living under an assumed name. Like Fritz, he is a morally compromised number-cruncher who knows where the skeletons are buried. Just as Fritz gave Sable the dirt on Alexis in return for her writing off his gambling debts, Pomerantz trades Mack evidence that the Oakman fat-cats were embezzling their own employees’ pension fund in return for his freedom. But whereas Fritz was all trembling hands and flop sweat, Pomerantz is all swagger and sarcasm. He couldn’t really give a toss about Mack, Tom, Oakman, the pension fund or any of it.It’s a significant week for Soap Land’s ruthless blonde gold-diggers, DALLAS’s Michelle and FALCON CREST’s Genele, and their relationships with their respective sugar daddies. Last week, Michelle moved out of Cliff’s condo and now Genele decides she too needs her own space — only she’s not going anywhere. “You’re going to have to move out,” she casually informs Frank just after they’ve had sex. “I am the breadwinner now and I need this place.” “… I’m not gonna move out of this house, not in a million years!” he insists. “I own you, Frank. Let’s not forget that,” she replies. Back on DALLAS, Michelle admits to Cliff that she’s been spying on him for JR, but manages to make herself look like the injured party: “It was a horrible mistake! He tricked me!” Her confession assists the indecisive Cliff in making up his mind. “You’ve helped me end a battle I’ve been having with my conscience,” he tells her. “It’s time to burn that man at the stake.”There are two offscreen deaths this week. While Miss Ellie and Clayton watch in dismay as a TV news reporter announces that “Jack Bouleris, the captain of the Faraway Hill, was found dead in his Galveston home earlier this afternoon — the victim of an apparent suicide, he left a signed note explaining that he could no longer live with what had happened in the Gulf”, Frank Agretti finally receives word of his nephew Chris from the new FALCON CREST sheriff: “The Las Vegas police department just found his body. Apparently, he was murdered.” To add insult to injury, Frank then returns home to find Genele and Michael Sharpe going at it hammer and tongs in his bed — a common enough occurrence in Soap Land, but no-one’s responded quite the way Michael does here: “Take a hike, old man — we’re busy!”Whereas Chris Agretti’s murder isn’t mentioned again, Carter McKay predicts that Captain Bouleris’s suicide will have life-changing consequences for the Ewings. “Bouleris’s death is going to cost you your company,” he tells Bobby, “but there is a way out … I’m willing to buy your company right now before the Barnes committee makes their decision, and for a fair price … If you sell out to me, you’re going to be able to start out all over again … with your dignity, with your future intact, not to mention those footsteps for your son to follow.” It looks like an offer Bobby can’t refuse (“Maybe I should sell Ewing Oil now, instead of letting the vultures pick it clean”), but at the eleventh hour he turns McKay down — and in so doing, returns us to the heart of the DALLAS mythology. “You know who founded this company, McKay?” he asks. “Sure, Jock Ewing was a legend,” Mack acknowledges. “And you know what he’d be doing if he was standing here right now?” Bobby continues. “He’d be escorting you out of this building headfirst through this very window, and I’m just embarrassed I didn’t do the same thing when you first brought me this stinkin’ deal!”The animosity between Frank and Genele accelerates throughout this week’s FC. “You picked a bad time to push me, Genele,” he warns her after finding her in bed with Michael. “I’m gonna take you down with me.” He then, oh so conveniently, finds a safety deposit key in her purse. Rick Hawkins’ and Tom Mallory’s similar keys led Paige and Miss Ellie to such conventional items as contracts, photographs and maps earlier in the season. But when Frank opens Genele’s box, he finds the skull of his dead wife, aka Genele’s sister. He presents it to the police, tells them where the rest of the body is buried and explains that Genele was the killer: “She shot her … Then she came to me. All I did was cover up.” But Genele has tricked him — she wanted him to find the key and she put the safety deposit box in his name. And whereas there is no evidence linking her to the crime, the sheriff now has “a three-page confession of Frank’s participation” in the murder.What a difference three episodes make. Before Christmas, Frank was a hero, having saved Sydney from her homicidal husband. Now, as far as the police are concerned, he is the homicidal husband. “I didn’t do it!” he cries as they drag him off to a jail cell. “Genele, tell them! Tell them the truth! GENELE!” And that’s the last we ever see of him — or any of the Agretti family for that matter. To be sure, the world of FC Season 9 is a cruel one. At least Genele has the decency to do a little cry while saying his name at the end of the ep.Like Frank, JR makes a legally binding confession this week. As he explains to Bobby, it is to be read to the press after Cliff’s verdict is announced: “In short, it absolves you and all your employees at Ewing Oil from any responsibility in the collision … I take full responsibility … I dragged you through hell with me, Bobby, and God knows it wasn’t the first time but I guarantee you, it’s gonna be the last. I’m prepared to go to jail for ten years … to take the blame off Daddy’s company. I haven’t been the kind of brother I’d like to have been — or son for that matter … He placed the future of Ewing Oil in my hands and I obviously failed him so I’m passing the torch on to you.” Not only the torch but Jock’s portrait as well: “This belongs on your wall, not mine.” Did I mention how final this episode feels?In the event, Bobby’s last-minute heartfelt appeal to Cliff has the desired effect and Cliff declares the tanker collision “an act of misadventure” for which no-one is to blame. Having been about to fall on his sword, JR wastes no time in snatching his confession out of Harve’s hands and tearing it up. The episode concludes with a sweetly touching look of acknowledgement between Cliff and Bobby across a crowded courtroom.Meanwhile, KNOTS ends on a great we-shoulda-seen-this-coming reveal: Greg Sumner is Oakman Industries!And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (2) DALLAS2 (3) KNOTS LANDING3 (1) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =