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Falcon Crest
FALCON CREST versus DYNASTY versus DALLAS versus KNOTS LANDING versus the rest of them, week by week
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<blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 172889" data-attributes="member: 22"><p><u>17 May 90: FALCON CREST: Home Again v. 17 May 90: KNOTS LANDING: Let's Get Married</u></p><p></p><p>This time last year, DYNASTY ended — except it didn’t so much end as stop abruptly. The closest Soap Land has come to a proper series conclusion thus far is THE YELLOW ROSE, but given that show had already adopted a self-contained episode format by the time of its demise, I’m not sure it counts. So the final episode of FALCON CREST has a unique job: not just putting a finishing point on a nine-year saga, but giving each of its characters a happy ending in the process. </p><p></p><p>Of course, none of the ‘80s super-soaps was constructed with an endpoint in mind. Instead, they have been fuelled by endless hate, endless passion, eternal feuding and unfulfilled ambitions. Wrapping things up neatly seems to suggest a blunting of those passions, a loss of momentum and urgency. Indeed, during the FC finale episode, there are only a couple of flashes of intense emotion: Pilar’s anger over Angela’s treatment of Lance (“Why do you let her use you? Can’t you see she’s dangling Falcon Crest in front of you like it’s a mirage?”) and Danny’s shock when Michael finally confesses to causing his accident (“You arrogant selfish bastard!”). Mostly, the ep is about characters growing up, learning about themselves and coming to terms with their lives and relationships.</p><p></p><p>This is in stark contrast to the opening scene of this week’s KNOTS where the sound of gunfire in the cul-de-sac alerts Frank Williams to the fact that his grief-stricken daughter Julie is aiming a rifle at their neighbour, Danny Waleska. Frank persuades her to hand him the weapon — and for a second it looks like he then might be about to use it on Danny himself.</p><p></p><p>After last week’s wobbles, both Soap Land weddings — Richard and Lauren’s on FALCON CREST, Paige and Tom’s ON KNOTS — are back on. In each case, the man giving the bride away despises the groom-to-be. Whereas Mack comes right out and tells Paige, “I think you’re marrying the wrong guy”, Michael Sharpe works behind the scenes with Angela to put Richard under as much financial pressure as possible, in the hopes that Lauren will see how preoccupied with business he can be and call the whole thing off.</p><p></p><p>But instead of leaving him, Lauren forces Richard to look within. “You have another enemy,” she tells him. “Who?” he asks. “Richard Channing,” she replies. “Somehow you always end up in the middle of a battle and I am asking you, ‘Is it always someone else’s fault?’ … It’ll never change unless you do.” Richard sees the light (again) and sells Falcon Crest back to Angela, with the provision that his sons will inherit fifty per cent of it when she dies.</p><p></p><p>A frustrated Pilar proposes to Lance that they move away, “start over again … we don’t need Falcon Crest and we’re not gonna get it … It’s time to cut the cord.” He’s initially reluctant but then comes round to the idea: “I had a dream about this place, but the dream is over. It’s time to wake up.” Over on KNOTS, Danny suggests the same thing to Val: “Let’s leave.” “Leave Knots Landing?” she asks. “Why not? We’ll go where nobody knows us, where’s there’s no responsibility, no expectations,” he replies. To our surprise, she readily agrees — but it turns out to be a trap set by her and Gary to ensure Danny is caught by the police driving without a licence. Just as Cally and James teamed up last week to ensure JR ended the season under lock and key, so Val and Gary have done the same thing to Danny — although the KNOTS character who ends up restrained by the men in white coats is actually Dianne, who succumbs to an LSD-induced freakout after she is accused of being Karen’s stalker.</p><p></p><p>Richard and Lauren’s wedding takes place towards the end of FALCON CREST with all the central cast members in attendance. It’s presented in a stylised, dreamlike way: soft-focus, slow-motion, Father Bob’s voice echoey and disembodied and a synthesised version of the Wedding March. It feels strange, as if we are watching the scene from a distance or as if it has already happened. It also has the effect of, if not eliminating, then at least blurring any remaining antagonism between Richard and Michael.</p><p></p><p>The KNOTS wedding is altogether soapier. When Michael arrives with Linda on his arm, Karen becomes the third Soap Land parent to disown her child in the past two weeks. “You don’t belong to me,” Richard told his son Danny on last week’s FALCON CREST. “You’re no son of mine,” JR told his son James in the DALLAS finale. “Tell her you don’t want to see her anymore … or you will not set foot in my house and I will not treat you as part of my family,” threatens Karen. “Mom, I’m gonna marry her,” Michael replies solemnly. Later on, Val and Gary dissolve into giddy laughter in the church after he suggests they re-tie the knot. With an organ version of the KNOTS theme playing discreetly in the background, this feels like a more natural, unforced “end of series” moment than what we get on this week’s FC.</p><p></p><p>All this talk of weddings on KNOTS is somewhat ironic, given that Tom and Paige’s marriage doesn’t actually take place. Shortly before the ceremony is due to start, Greg approaches Tom in a vestibule where they have their version of James and JR’s showdown at the end of last week’s DALLAS finale — only this time it’s the older guy calling the shots. “You set me up,” Tom realises. “If you disappear before this corny little ceremony,” Greg tells him, “I’ll get the charges dropped against you. If you decide to stick around for the festivities, well, it’s up to you — you can be a single free man or you can be a married convict.” Unlike JR’s noisy reaction to being double-crossed by his son, Tom mutters just four little words to Greg, “You still love her”, before silently disappearing.</p><p></p><p>Mother of the jilted bride, Anne Matheson, immediately zooms off in one of the wedding cars: “Central Bank please, I’m in a hurry!” Meanwhile, the mother of the FALCON CREST groom, Angela, also steps away from the wedding festivities, to look out over her vineyards one last time.</p><p></p><p>THE YELLOW ROSE concluded its final episode with a prayer and FALCON CREST does something similar, with Angela voicing a eulogy to her grandfather's legacy over a montage of familiar Falcon Crest locations. The way her face is super-imposed in the top right hand corner of the screen, a smiling, benign presence watching over her kingdom, gives it a somewhat ethereal quality — almost as if she were not here among us, but still somehow existing in that comatose idyll she described last week (and where she appears to have picked up the habit of referring to her former husbands solely by their surnames: Erickson, Stavros).</p><p></p><p>There are a few moments in the KNOTS finale that dovetail with the theme of Angela’s eulogy. “I think of all the people who have passed through these vineyards,” she recalls. “There’s Chase, Maggie, Cole and Vicky — and that feisty Melissa Agretti.” “When you’re young, your whole life is new things, first times — your first date, your first prom, the first time you fall in love,” Karen reflects, “and then one day, you look up and your life is full of last times.” “We can’t go back,” Val tells Gary as they discuss their relationship. “So let’s go forward,” he suggests. “The past has its place, but I’ll keep looking to the future,” echoes Angela. As Pat is disconnected from the life support machine on KNOTS, Frank quietly sings an old spiritual song: “Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world … I’m going home to live with my Lord.” For Angela, that home, that Higher Power, seems to be the land itself. “Always the land. People come and go, but the land endures,” she concludes.</p><p></p><p>KNOTS finishes off the season with another montage, as Jeff Cameron, Karen and Dianne’s trusty middle man at OPEN MIKE, helpfully flashes back over his crimes and misdemeanours of the past several weeks, thereby revealing himself as the psycho who’s been terrorising Karen. Nor is it the first time: turns out he’s bumped off even more female news anchors than Jessica Montford has guffawing good old boys.</p><p></p><p>And this week’s Top 2 are …</p><p></p><p> 1 (1) KNOTS LANDING </p><p>2 (2) FALCON CREST</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James from London, post: 172889, member: 22"] [U]17 May 90: FALCON CREST: Home Again v. 17 May 90: KNOTS LANDING: Let's Get Married[/U] This time last year, DYNASTY ended — except it didn’t so much end as stop abruptly. The closest Soap Land has come to a proper series conclusion thus far is THE YELLOW ROSE, but given that show had already adopted a self-contained episode format by the time of its demise, I’m not sure it counts. So the final episode of FALCON CREST has a unique job: not just putting a finishing point on a nine-year saga, but giving each of its characters a happy ending in the process. Of course, none of the ‘80s super-soaps was constructed with an endpoint in mind. Instead, they have been fuelled by endless hate, endless passion, eternal feuding and unfulfilled ambitions. Wrapping things up neatly seems to suggest a blunting of those passions, a loss of momentum and urgency. Indeed, during the FC finale episode, there are only a couple of flashes of intense emotion: Pilar’s anger over Angela’s treatment of Lance (“Why do you let her use you? Can’t you see she’s dangling Falcon Crest in front of you like it’s a mirage?”) and Danny’s shock when Michael finally confesses to causing his accident (“You arrogant selfish bastard!”). Mostly, the ep is about characters growing up, learning about themselves and coming to terms with their lives and relationships. This is in stark contrast to the opening scene of this week’s KNOTS where the sound of gunfire in the cul-de-sac alerts Frank Williams to the fact that his grief-stricken daughter Julie is aiming a rifle at their neighbour, Danny Waleska. Frank persuades her to hand him the weapon — and for a second it looks like he then might be about to use it on Danny himself. After last week’s wobbles, both Soap Land weddings — Richard and Lauren’s on FALCON CREST, Paige and Tom’s ON KNOTS — are back on. In each case, the man giving the bride away despises the groom-to-be. Whereas Mack comes right out and tells Paige, “I think you’re marrying the wrong guy”, Michael Sharpe works behind the scenes with Angela to put Richard under as much financial pressure as possible, in the hopes that Lauren will see how preoccupied with business he can be and call the whole thing off. But instead of leaving him, Lauren forces Richard to look within. “You have another enemy,” she tells him. “Who?” he asks. “Richard Channing,” she replies. “Somehow you always end up in the middle of a battle and I am asking you, ‘Is it always someone else’s fault?’ … It’ll never change unless you do.” Richard sees the light (again) and sells Falcon Crest back to Angela, with the provision that his sons will inherit fifty per cent of it when she dies. A frustrated Pilar proposes to Lance that they move away, “start over again … we don’t need Falcon Crest and we’re not gonna get it … It’s time to cut the cord.” He’s initially reluctant but then comes round to the idea: “I had a dream about this place, but the dream is over. It’s time to wake up.” Over on KNOTS, Danny suggests the same thing to Val: “Let’s leave.” “Leave Knots Landing?” she asks. “Why not? We’ll go where nobody knows us, where’s there’s no responsibility, no expectations,” he replies. To our surprise, she readily agrees — but it turns out to be a trap set by her and Gary to ensure Danny is caught by the police driving without a licence. Just as Cally and James teamed up last week to ensure JR ended the season under lock and key, so Val and Gary have done the same thing to Danny — although the KNOTS character who ends up restrained by the men in white coats is actually Dianne, who succumbs to an LSD-induced freakout after she is accused of being Karen’s stalker. Richard and Lauren’s wedding takes place towards the end of FALCON CREST with all the central cast members in attendance. It’s presented in a stylised, dreamlike way: soft-focus, slow-motion, Father Bob’s voice echoey and disembodied and a synthesised version of the Wedding March. It feels strange, as if we are watching the scene from a distance or as if it has already happened. It also has the effect of, if not eliminating, then at least blurring any remaining antagonism between Richard and Michael. The KNOTS wedding is altogether soapier. When Michael arrives with Linda on his arm, Karen becomes the third Soap Land parent to disown her child in the past two weeks. “You don’t belong to me,” Richard told his son Danny on last week’s FALCON CREST. “You’re no son of mine,” JR told his son James in the DALLAS finale. “Tell her you don’t want to see her anymore … or you will not set foot in my house and I will not treat you as part of my family,” threatens Karen. “Mom, I’m gonna marry her,” Michael replies solemnly. Later on, Val and Gary dissolve into giddy laughter in the church after he suggests they re-tie the knot. With an organ version of the KNOTS theme playing discreetly in the background, this feels like a more natural, unforced “end of series” moment than what we get on this week’s FC. All this talk of weddings on KNOTS is somewhat ironic, given that Tom and Paige’s marriage doesn’t actually take place. Shortly before the ceremony is due to start, Greg approaches Tom in a vestibule where they have their version of James and JR’s showdown at the end of last week’s DALLAS finale — only this time it’s the older guy calling the shots. “You set me up,” Tom realises. “If you disappear before this corny little ceremony,” Greg tells him, “I’ll get the charges dropped against you. If you decide to stick around for the festivities, well, it’s up to you — you can be a single free man or you can be a married convict.” Unlike JR’s noisy reaction to being double-crossed by his son, Tom mutters just four little words to Greg, “You still love her”, before silently disappearing. Mother of the jilted bride, Anne Matheson, immediately zooms off in one of the wedding cars: “Central Bank please, I’m in a hurry!” Meanwhile, the mother of the FALCON CREST groom, Angela, also steps away from the wedding festivities, to look out over her vineyards one last time. THE YELLOW ROSE concluded its final episode with a prayer and FALCON CREST does something similar, with Angela voicing a eulogy to her grandfather's legacy over a montage of familiar Falcon Crest locations. The way her face is super-imposed in the top right hand corner of the screen, a smiling, benign presence watching over her kingdom, gives it a somewhat ethereal quality — almost as if she were not here among us, but still somehow existing in that comatose idyll she described last week (and where she appears to have picked up the habit of referring to her former husbands solely by their surnames: Erickson, Stavros). There are a few moments in the KNOTS finale that dovetail with the theme of Angela’s eulogy. “I think of all the people who have passed through these vineyards,” she recalls. “There’s Chase, Maggie, Cole and Vicky — and that feisty Melissa Agretti.” “When you’re young, your whole life is new things, first times — your first date, your first prom, the first time you fall in love,” Karen reflects, “and then one day, you look up and your life is full of last times.” “We can’t go back,” Val tells Gary as they discuss their relationship. “So let’s go forward,” he suggests. “The past has its place, but I’ll keep looking to the future,” echoes Angela. As Pat is disconnected from the life support machine on KNOTS, Frank quietly sings an old spiritual song: “Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world … I’m going home to live with my Lord.” For Angela, that home, that Higher Power, seems to be the land itself. “Always the land. People come and go, but the land endures,” she concludes. KNOTS finishes off the season with another montage, as Jeff Cameron, Karen and Dianne’s trusty middle man at OPEN MIKE, helpfully flashes back over his crimes and misdemeanours of the past several weeks, thereby revealing himself as the psycho who’s been terrorising Karen. Nor is it the first time: turns out he’s bumped off even more female news anchors than Jessica Montford has guffawing good old boys. And this week’s Top 2 are … 1 (1) KNOTS LANDING 2 (2) FALCON CREST [/QUOTE]
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Falcon Crest
FALCON CREST versus DYNASTY versus DALLAS versus KNOTS LANDING versus the rest of them, week by week
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