KNOTS LANDING versus DALLAS versus the rest of them week by week

[Mel O'Drama]

I recall watching it when it was released on VHS and thinking, "Once is enough." I mentally filed it away it in the same category as "Conundrum". So the last thing I expected this time around was to totally enjoy it.

It's great when that happens.

how incredibly naff the naff bits are,

Not naff, per se, but I've always found the vision of 'Allo 'Allo's Gruber being on Knots a little surreal. I think he even trips over the furniture at one point, but carries on like a trouper.

the good bits - like the ending - hold up pretty well.

Yes. You'd have to go a long way to top the ending of the series, but fortunately the ending to BTTCDS is satisfying enough.

I think there's something about the feel of early 80s soap -- DALLAS and DYNASTY'S second seasons, maybe KNOTS's fourth -- that almost crosses over into '60s pop art kitschiness: the lurid closeups, the giddy pace, the frenetic score. It's all teetering on the edge of ... of ... something.

Now you mention it... yes. I hadn't really thought of it until you said.

Oh, now that's interesting -- especially that it was Val who said it first. Back then, she was the stable one.

Yes - it's quite the role reversal.

I kinda love that Gary and Val have traded the stability hat back and forth over the past nearly 60 years.

It's mindblowing to think of their relationship spanning six decades. That takes us back to before Victoria Principal was born(!)

it became one of those Val/Gary callbacks, right alongside Gary's frequent use of "give-us-a-kiss".

It's odd that I never really noticed the callbacks.

The Loudest Word was the first Knots episode I watched and, as a seven year old, I wasn't familiar with the expression "piece of cake" and had to ask my Mum what it meant. So it's stuck in my mind as one of the more memorable pieces of dialogue.

Incidentally, I've always thought of the expression as an Americanism (perhaps because of the Knots connection) but turns out it could well be a terribly British RAF thing.

 

[Seaviewer]

I know I'm in the minority here but I liked the Henery the Eighth scene. Like the two characters I remember when the song was a bonafide hit and I thought it was a nice way for two old friends to blow off some steam.

 

[James from London]

This week’s DYNASTY, KNOTS and FALCON CREST all boast juicy scenes of confrontation between two women, each following in a different Soap Land tradition. On DYNASTY, Alexis strides into Blake’s office and immediately starts talking to him, even though his chair is turned away from her. In due course, the chair spins round to reveal … Dominique sitting in his place! A crisp exchange of insults, threats and vague ultimatums follows. (“If you persist in pursuing this rather reckless course of action, you better be looking behind you because I’m going to be watching you every step of the way!”). The equivalent scene on KNOTS is the only one of the week to pass the Bedchel test (i.e., it features a conversation between two women which isn’t about a man). This time, it’s Karen barging into Abby’s office (“Don’t bother knocking, Karen, just come right in”), armed with accusations, to deliver what Abby describes as “this morning’s tirade.” (“You couldn’t resist, could you? … You knew I was gonna get that appointment so you went after it yourself … I’m gonna fight for it, with every bone in my body!”)

One KNOTS instalment that would score extremely highly on the Bedchel test is "The Three Sisters", the haunted house ep from Season Three that I re-re-watched yesterday. Its only male character is a Scooby Doo-ish creepy caretaker who appears in one scene and is soon forgotten about. Apart from brief mentions of Laura’s boss Scooter and the unhinged father of the titular sisters, no other men are even referred to. Everyone else who appears or is spoken about for the entire episode is female, corporeal or otherwise.

 

[Stillwitty]

29/Dec/82: DYNASTY: The Locket v. 30/Dec/82: KNOTS LANDING: The Block Party v. 31/Dec/82: DALLAS: Mama Dearest v. 31/Dec/82: FALCON CREST: ...Divided We Fall

1982 ends as it began in Soap Land. At the start of the year, the Ewing brothers flew to South America to look for their daddy Jock, missing presumed dead after a helicopter crash. Fifty-one weeks later, Blake and Alexis fly to Bali to look for their son Steven, missing presumed dead following an oil rig explosion in the Java Sea.

Back then, Miss Ellie decreed that “the family should pull together when there’s trouble.” Krystle has the same wish now but lacks the matriarchal authority to enforce it. “I guess I’ll just never understand this family,” she tells Fallon sadly. "At a time when most people need to pull together, you go off by yourselves like wounded bears.”

“Don’t shut me out, you need me now,” she pleads as Blake leaves for Bali without her. "I don’t need anybody to help me fight my battles, Krystle,” he replies coldly. This exchange is echoed by other couples in this week’s Soap Land. “Mack, don’t shut me out,” says Karen in KNOTS LANDING as Mack wrestles with parental problems. “I’ll work this out myself - alone!” he shouts back. In this week’s DALLAS, in the wake of a family row following Miss Ellie’s shock decision to break Jock’s will, Bobby elects to take a drive. “I’ll go with you,” offers Pam. "I'd just as soon be by myself,” he replies, more gently than either Blake or Mack, but just as firmly, before driving off into the night. Sue Ellen observes this exchange from the shadows and when she later finds JR deep in thought, is mindful not to impose herself upon him the way Pam did Bobby, Karen did Mack or Krystle did Blake. "Would you rather be alone?" she asks him carefully.

It’s interesting how much angrier and more dysfunctional the Carringtons seem in their time of crisis than the Ewings did a year ago. On their way to South America, the Ewing boys huddled together on a crowded plane, fondly sharing childhood reminiscences and refills of bourbon. Travelling separately on the same flight to Bali, Alexis locates Blake in the first class lounge and first berates then physically attacks him. The contrast continues when both parties reach their destination. While the Ewings, even JR, accepted without question Punk’s assurances that everything was being done to find their precious daddy, Blake immediately pulls rank with Cassidy, Punk’s equivalent: “What are you doing? That’s what I wanna know! It’s been forty-eight hours since the explosion and you don’t have one scrap of information about the survivors?”

And while the Ewing family as a whole (apart from Sue Ellen) remained optimistic about Jock’s chances of survival, the Carringtons (except Blake) all seem resigned to Steven’s death. Ironically, Fallon’s description of Steven as "probably dead somewhere at the bottom of the ocean where nobody will ever find him” will ultimately prove more applicable to Jock.

Things are far less harmonious in DALLAS these days, however. In this week’s instalment, “Mama Dearest", everyone’s turning on everyone. As well as the Ewings fighting amongst themselves, Punk nearly comes to blows with Cliff - and the sight of Ellie turning to ice when Harve Smithfield reluctantly tells her he will be unable to represent her in court is one of the most effective moments in an episode full of effective moments. Meanwhile, Rebecca’s chastisement of her son (“I won’t be a party to any violence!”) takes on fresh resonance in light of Cliff’s actions in New DALLAS. Add to this Miss Ellie’s scolding of her eldest son (“I don’t think you give a damn about your daddy’s wishes - all you care about is yourself!”) and this episode could be renamed, in the parlance of modern day DALLAS, “Mama No Like".

After initially shutting her out, Bobby later unburdens himself to Pam. Over on KNOTS, Mack does the same with Karen. Both men admit that they are the way they are because of how their fathers raised them - the primary difference being that while Bobby always tried to emulate and please Jock - "I wasn't just a road man for Ewing Oil, I was the best road man for any oil company because that's what Daddy expected, and that's what I expect from myself” - Mack’s life has been determined by a doomed attempt not to turn out like his father. “I’m like him, you see?” he explains to Karen. "And that’s the worst part. I hate his lousy guts and yet I’m like him and I know it. That’s probably why I never got married - because I knew I’d be just as crappy a father and husband as he was.” “That's why Daddy turned away from Gary,” Bobby continues. "'The Ewings must succeed' and Gary didn't care about that, but Pam, JR and I do."

On DYNASTY, Blake repeatedly insists that his search for his son is "just between Steven and me.” On KNOTS, the scenes between Mack and his father, Pete, who is terminally ill, also have a life and death intensity to them. Jeff Corey’s performance as Pete brings a fresh layer of authenticity to the show. There aren’t many Soap Land characters whom I genuinely feel I could have met in the real world, but Pete is one of them. (Granted, this might have something to do with Pete’s Scottish brogue, which the character is meant to be faking, but which the actor pretty much nails.)

While the significance of the father/son relationship cannot be underestimated, what of those Soap Land sons who grew up without either a father or a mother - what of Adam Carrington and Richard Channing? This week, Richard confronts Jacqueline Perrault, the mother who abandoned him as a baby. It’s interesting to compare this scene with the equivalent one between Cliff and Rebecca in DALLAS Season 3. Where Cliff invited his mother to his apartment for coffee and cake (not to mention liquorice), this is a much more businesslike arrangement: Richard receives Jacqueline in his office where he makes a point of placing a clock timer on his desk in order to limit their conversation to half an hour.

Both Cliff and Richard are looking for straight answers. "I was barely five years old and you pretended to be dead … why?” asks Cliff. "Why did you put me in an orphanage?” demands Richard. So confronted, both women prevaricate, adopting a similarly martyred tone, as if to suggest that they themselves are the real victims. "It’s so hard to explain,” sighs Rebecca. "Oh Richard,” pleads Jacqueline, "I never wanted to choose between my sons.” Both men then let their mothers have it. While Cliff becomes emotional, ("Do you have any idea what it’s like to be five years old and be told that your mother’s dead only to find out the truth is that she didn’t want you, that she was only thinking about herself?!”) Richard keeps his feelings under control. "I’ve spent my life searching for my mother,” he tells Jacqueline calmly. "As a kid, I always dreamed of greeting her with open arms, but as I got older, my resentment grew to the point where the only excuse I’d accept was death. I wanted my search to lead to my mother’s grave.” Jacqueline gasps in shock, then begs Richard to keep her identity as his mother a secret (much as Rebecca did when she first met Pam).

Meanwhile, on DYNASTY, Adam is put in the strange position of mourning a brother he has never met. "Growing up alone the way I did, I’d have given a lot for a kid brother,” he tells Fallon with apparent sincerity. Then while flirting with Kirby a few minutes later, he blithely dismisses Steven as “just a name to me”. This duality is mirrored by Richard in FALCON CREST. ”I sort of like the idea of having a brother,” he bashfully admits to his newly acquired sibling Chase. "Even more, I like the idea of having you as a brother.” Later in the episode, Miss Hunter asks him if he honestly has any feelings for Chase. “Yes,” he replies coldly. "Hatred.”

Jacqueline Perrault is central to another FALCON CREST scenario that hearkens back to early DALLAS this week. Her consequences-be-damned insistence on visiting her great-grandson Joseph at Falcon Crest echoes Digger Barnes’ determination to peak a sneak at his supposed grandson Baby John in “Rodeo”. In order to see the child, Jacqueline, like Digger, must keep her blood tie to him a secret and instead suffer the humiliation of kowtowing to her nemesis, who smugly believes that she is the child’s direct ascendant. Just as Jock did when Digger cradled John Ross, Angela keeps a beady eye on Jacqueline during her visit with Joseph.

Compared to Jacqueline, Chase and Maggie don’t appear overly concerned about their new grandson - or perhaps it’s just that they are occupied with other story-lines. A possible downside of FALCON CREST's focus being split between multiple plots, each of equal importance, is that it’s hard to keep track of where the characters’ emotional priorities lie. Whereas Digger's pilgrimage to the Southfork nursery was a significant and poignant part of that particular DALLAS episode and had a lasting impact on him, Jacqueline’s equivalent visit is dealt with in a couple of minutes, after which the characters swiftly move on to other stories. This isn’t to say the plot won’t yet resurface and bite us on the ass when we're least expecting it - which is a possible upside of FALCON CREST being such a busy show.

The week before Christmas, there was the La Mirage opening in DYNASTY and the Southfork barbecue in DALLAS. Now it’s party time in FALCON CREST and KNOTS. Like DALLAS, KNOTS’ celebrations are of the daytime, al fresco variety, with a bit of local fundraising thrown in - a “block party”, or what we English might call a fete - with the added bonus of rising rock star Ciji Dunne belting out power pop cover versions on a makeshift stage.

FALCON CREST plays host to no less than two gatherings this week. First, there’s the Founder’s Day Parade which, like the block party and the barbecue, is a wholesome community event (“This whole thing smacks of an office picnic,” observes Miss Hunter drily) and also has a period dress theme. (The exact period I’m a little vague on - somewhere between THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and THE GREAT GATSBY it appears - with Nick Hogan and Lance both sporting the same style of white Gatsby-esque hat that Mark Jennings wore at La Mirage two weeks ago). This is followed by a more glamorous party at Angela’s house. For a change, there’s no dress code here - but while there are plenty of low cut gowns with spangly sequins, there are, strangely, no shoulder pads.

Soap Land parties are almost always an excuse to bring estranged or feuding characters together in the same environment - see Blake, Alexis and Neil McVane at La Mirage, Cliff, the cartel and the Ewings at Southfork, Angela, Richard and Jacqueline at this week’s party at Falcon Crest - and then watch the sparks fly. Not so at the KNOTS LANDING block party, where Abby and Gary drop Olivia off at the entrance to the cul-de-sac and then disappear off-screen for the rest of the episode. (As a result, Gary is referenced more in DALLAS this week than KNOTS, thanks to Miss Ellie’s controversial decision to sell Ewing Oil “and give half the money to a drunk and a cowboy.”) Consequently, the block party is a somewhat tame affair, the highlight of which is Ciji and Lilimae duetting on “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

There’s something dreamlike about the scene at the end of this week’s KNOTS, where Pete Mackenzie comes to Seaview Circle looking to make up with Mack, with whom he has argued. It is dark and the party guests have all left. He finds Lilimae amongst the streamers and other party debris blowing gently around in the cul-de-sac, searching for a random piece of paper. As she roots about, she distractedly imparts unhelpful advice to Pete about how she and Val came to terms with their differences: “We don’t talk about them. All we do is not do them anymore.”

Pete carries with him his own father’s kilt, which he plans to present to Mack as a symbol of reconciliation. This is mirrored by Mark Jennings' gesture towards Krystle on DYNASTY when he returns her grandmother's locket which he stole from her and pawned during their marriage years before. After thirty years, I’ve finally forgiven Mark for not being Matthew Blaisdel and the gradual reconciliation between he and Krystle has actually been quite sweet to watch.

KNOTS closes on an emotional embrace between Pete and Mack, their differences nonetheless unresolved. Angela’s party on FALCON CREST concludes more dramatically. Just like the La Mirage opening and the Southfork barbecue, the celebrations are disrupted, this time by an impromptu toast from Richard “to my mother, Jacqueline Perrault.” Cue a “You bitch!” from Angela, and an if-looks-could-kill freeze frame of Lana Turner. Very funny.

And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are … wow, this one was close ...

1 (1) DALLAS
2 (4) DYNASTY
3 (3) FALCON CREST
4 (2) KNOTS LANDING

Knots should have scored higher based alone on Mack crying his eyes out - tough guys crying is never easy to witness and even harder to perform...

 

[James from London]

Knots should have scored higher based alone on Mack crying his eyes out - tough guys crying is never easy to witness and even harder to perform...

Had I been ranking individual performances rather than episodes as a whole, Mack's might have well have been at the top of the tree (although I don't think I'd have taken how "hard it is to perform" into account; as a viewer, that's not really any of my business), but as it is, context is everything. That said. it's a while since I watched all these eps back to back, so I may well feel differently about them now. In fact, I kind of hope I would.

 

[Stillwitty]

30/Nov/83: DYNASTY: Peter De Vilbis v. 01/Dec/83 KNOTS LANDING: Homecoming v. 02/Dec/83: DALLAS: The Buck Stops Here v. 02/Dec/83: FALCON CREST: The Double Dealing

While Soap Land’s quartet of female newcomers can be loosely grouped together as everyday "working girls" (in fact, Angela uses that precise term to describe Terry’s chequered past in this week’s FALCON CREST) this season's male arrivals are a more disparate bunch. Dr Michael Ranson has been established as a morally upstanding authority figure on FALCON CREST, but is possibly too avuncular (i.e., old) to fit the mould of dashing romantic hero. That is a role more suited to Ben Gibson on KNOTS or Dex Dexter on DYNASTY, who are as different from each other as they are from the women they have fallen for, Val and Alexis respectively. Where Ben is solemn and thoughtful, Dex is quick tempered and cocksure. If Ben had invited himself into Val’s home after their first meeting and then kissed her without warning before complimenting her on her fantastic mouth — as Dex does Alexis in this week’s DYNASTY - she would mostly likely have run a mile (barefoot along a beach, obviously).

Dex is closer in personality type to KNOTS’ other newcomer, Greg Sumner, but Greg is really in a category of his own. Striding through every scene with a phalanx of advisers and minders, he regards the KNOTS regulars with amused irreverence. “What’s with this Ewing character?!” he asks of Gary. “You’re nuts!” he says to Abby. What makes him so much fun, and such a different sort of character, is that he gives no indication of being in somebody else’s soap opera. As far as he’s concerned, this is THE GREG SUMNER SHOW and all the Mackenzies and Ewings merely supporting players.

This leaves the two Peters - Peter Richards on DALLAS and Peter de Vilbis, the latest addition to DYNASTY’s opening titles. At first glance, the two could not be more different. DALLAS's Peter is the embodiment of the All American Boy: young, wholesome, athletic. DYNASTY’s Peter is archetypal Eurotrash: dead-eyed, decadent and drug-taking. In their opposing ways, each feels like a Soap Land anomaly. Neither is rugged or manly in the traditional sense. Peter Richards’ boyish innocence, the contrast between his lack of sexual awareness and his eagerness to display as much of his hairless young body as he can get away with, renders him, by DALLAS standards, somewhat effete. Peter de Vilbis’s exotic (i.e., unAmerican) dissoluteness, thick foreign accent and silken smoking jacket create a similar effect. Two sides of the same coin, it’s not hard to imagine Helmut Berger raping and murdering Christopher Atkins (not necessarily in that order) in one of those disturbing Nazi-themed flicks he used to make with Luciano Visconti. As it is, both Peters make unlikely love interests for the women they have been cast opposite, Sue Ellen and Fallon respectively. On DALLAS, this incompatibility is addressed and explored; on DYNASTY, it remains unacknowledged. Admittedly, Fallon has yet to be exposed to the seamier side of de Vilbis's character.

That is revealed to the audience in a scene between Peter and his lawyer (Jeff Munson from KNOTS, who presumably crossed over to the dark side after being dumped by Val). We see De Vilbis racking up lines of coke and learn that he is in debt for six million dollars. His solution to the latter, it transpires, is Fallon herself, aka "a fascinating girl whose father has millions”. In an equivalent scene in this week’s KNOTS, between Greg Sumner and an as yet unnamed associate, we discover that Greg is not who he appears to be either. He is involved with mysterious off screen figures referred to only as “they".

“They know about Mackenzie - we talked it out on the phone,” he assures his unknown acquaintance enigmatically. “They didn’t know he’d get this close this fast,” the acquaintance replies. “They’re overreacting … What do they want me to do?” Greg asks. “Get rid of him … The feeling is very strong about this, Greg,” the associate instructs him. Greg promises to resolve the “situation”.

Greg’s circumstances are paralleled on FALCON CREST where Richard Channing has his own share of mysterious off screen figures to contend with. “Your debt to the company did not die with Henri Denault,” his attorney/emissary John Osborne informs him this week. “You’re not free until they say you’re free ... They want absolute control of the race track … These people are ruthless. They’re accustomed to getting what they want.” Richard is less acquiescent than Greg, however. “Nobody pulls my strings,” he snarls. “Power belongs to those who take it!” he adds for good measure, sounding just like Jock Ewing.

Another connection between Soap Land’s new men: the oldest and youngest of the bunch, Michael Ranson and Peter Richards, are each at the centre of a hopeless crush. Michael finds himself the object of Emma’s wide-eyed adoration in FALCON CREST and when Terry flirts outrageously with him in front of her, Emma is as crushed as Peter is by Sue Ellen’s rejection of him on this week’s DALLAS. (“The way you feel about me is a complication I don’t need in my life,” she tells him sternly.) When confronted by Maggie, Terry denies any interest in Michael (“He’s old enough to be my father,” she protests - providing a gender variation on Sue Ellen and Peter's May/December story-line). However, later Terry seduces Michael in a beautifully shot vineyard scene where Michael's self doubt and vulnerability — could this gorgeous young thing really desire him? — are touchingly conveyed.

While Sue Ellen has already likened Peter (Richards) to a young Bobby Ewing, Fallon tells Peter (de Vilbis) that he reminds her of her father in this week’s DYNASTY. Over on KNOTS LANDING, there is no doubt as to who Cathy Geary reminds Gary of. This results in one of two attempted make-overs in this week’s Soap Land. The first comes in DYNASTY where Claudia takes offence at Alexis going through her wardrobe “like a tornado” and offering to buy her "a few new chic things” — in other words, to make Claudia over in her own image. "You have to accept that the world and society judges us by the way we act and dress,” Alexis lectures her new daughter-in-law. An unsuspecting Cathy, meanwhile, is more than happy for Gary to treat her to a new dress and hairstyle. (Gary’s half-brother Ray also delves into the world of women’s clothing this week when as he surprises Donna with a fur coat he purchased from “a cute little sales girl” in New York. The snooty saleswoman Gary and Cathy encounter, meanwhile, is cut from the same designer cloth as the one Sue Ellen and Pam dealt with in the first episode of this season’s DALLAS.)

Pretty soon, Cathy is looking more like Ciji than Ciji did. As Gary encourages her to mime along to one of Ciji’s old songs, he simultaneously flashes back to Ciji singing the same song — and KNOTS reaches a whole new level of strangeness. Factor in the replica of Ciji’s space vixen dress that Cathy is now wearing and it almost feels like we’re in science fiction territory — albeit intriguing, emotionally-fuelled science fiction. What’s most interesting is the tension between the characters and the plot — especially when Laura walks in on Gary and Cathy/Ciji and we see the weirdness of the situation through her eyes (“What a scene, huh? … Like something out of wax museum!”) Clearly the writers came up with the idea of a Ciji lookalike first and then worked backwards to explain it. In the same way, the characters on screen are struggling to make sense of the situation they’re in (“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Gary admits). As a result, the story feels somehow contrived and organic at the same time. It’s a heady mix.

As KNOTS takes a turn for the fantastic, this week’s DALLAS feels almost … well, one hesitates to use the word “realistic” in relation to DALLAS, but this ep, which focuses almost exclusively on the Ewings in their leisure time (the scenes of JR trying to root out the company mole being the exception), might just be the closest the series has come to depicting the characters as real people. (Miss Ellie’s continued absence, which frees the rest of the Ewings to behave more like adults, helps in this regard, as does the source lighting, which adds a subtle sense of — OK, I’ll say it — realism to the interior scenes.)

The motivations and ambitions of Soap Land’s new girls come under scrutiny this week, as well how far they are willing to go to achieve their goals. On KNOTS, Laura questions Cathy’s reasons for hanging around Gary. “Nobody’s ever taken care of me before,” she replies simply. "It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and he hasn’t even asked for anything in return, but if he did I’d probably go along with it.” Jenna Wade isn't so easily bought, however. “I’ve had offers to marry rich, but I’d never trade my self respect for that,” she tells Bobby on DALLAS. Nor is she impressed by Katherine Wentworth’s attempt to pay her to dump Bobby and move to Houston. Over on FALCON CREST, Richard playfully offers to turn the New Globe over to his assistant Pamela "in return for the intimate favours you guard so closely.” “Is that an offer?” she asks gamely. “So you can be bought! Well, now we’ve established our marketplace, why can’t we haggle the price?” he replies, this time channeling Donna Krebbs. Meanwhile Angela summons Terry to tea and threatens to expose her sordid past: “You’ll do as I say or you’ll find yourself back in the Park Avenue hotel lobby you came from”. When Terry agrees to do her bidding, Angela laughs and calls her an opportunist.

From an ex-Park Avenue girl to a former Madison Avenue one: “Ambition is not a dirty word in my dictionary,” says Tracy Kendall on DYNASTY before kissing the boss’s son. It doesn’t seem to be for Laura Avery either, who justifies her betrayal of Karen and Gary to Abby on KNOTS thusly: “Gary’s got his millions. You’ll get yours if you haven’t already. Karen’s husband died and she’s happily remarried. Val’s husband left her — she’s got a bestseller, new boyfriend, more money than she’s ever had before. Well, my husband left me too and the little I’ve got is five percent of Lotus Point. I think I’m entitled to that small piece of the pie, don’t you?" (It’s kind of cool to know that said husband was on set during this infamous speech, Richard Avery having directed this week's KNOTS.)

Two bizarre job appointments in Soap Land this week: On DYNASTY, Alexis hires Mark Jennings, the man who was arrested for her attempted murder only two months ago, as her personal bodyguard. On KNOTS LANDING, Gary hires Cathy, a lookalike of the woman he was in jail for murdering only two months ago, as a ranch hand. As part of their respective new working arrangements, Mark moves into Alexis’s penthouse and Cathy onto Gary’s ranch. At this, Alexis’s suitor Dex raises an eyebrow while Gary’s wife Abby looks stunned. (Even knowing what we do in hindsight, I'd like to think Abby is genuinely taken aback when she sees Cathy and Gary together for the first time — it’s more interesting that way.)

“Lucky horses,” murmurs Abby upon hearing that that the Ciji lookalike is going to be working the ranch. Horses and/or gambling provide a loose theme that runs through the week’s soaps. Fallon, Blake and Krystle have a day at the races during a visit to Los Angeles, it’s the annual Good Ole Boys Charity Rodeo at Billy Bob’s on DALLAS and on FALCON CREST, Richard reveals his plans to build a racetrack: “An endeavour that will soon tear the Tuscany Valley apart like carrion being savaged by packs of hyaenas.” This scheme sounds remarkably similar to the plan his previous self, Michael Tyrone, had to build a casino on FLAMINGO ROAD, even down to the shadowy gangster types lurking in the background. Then it was a sinister syndicate of investors, now it’s the cartel wanting in on the action.

Peter de Vilbis’s horse Allegree wins the DYNASTY race while the Krebbses are the victors at the DALLAS rodeo. Pam puts on an impressive show as Donna’s runner up in the ladies’ mechanical bull competition — especially when one remembers that the last time there was a rodeo on DALLAS, she was too timid even to watch Bobby compete. Jenna #3 fares less well, but her performance brings back memories of the last woman to ride a mechanical bull in Soap Land - Jenna #1, aka Constance Carlyle, on FLAMINGO ROAD. Back then, her display won her some unwanted attention from some cowboys which led to Mark Graison’s former self, Sam Curtis, coming to her rescue. Subsequently, Jenna #1 and Mark - I mean, Sam - adjourned to a nearby motel room for the rest of the afternoon. This time around, Jenna #3 and Bobby put on a public display of affection which prompts Pam to take Sam - I mean, Mark - back to her place for the night. (This makes Pam also the runner-up in the Former Ewing Wives Getting On With Their Lives Competition, Val having embarked upon her first post-divorce sexual relationship - with Ben - on last week’s KNOTS.)

Another Soap Land trend: drugs. Peter de Vilbis is on cocaine, Karen Mackenzie and Julia Cumson are spaced out on pills and the FALCON CREST sheriff is snacking on some unspecified medication which leads to him collapsing on a tennis court, Jeff Colby-style.

While Mark carries Pam upstairs at the end of this week’s DALLAS and we learn that Diana hiding is Chip on Gary’s ranch at the end of KNOTS, DYNASTY and FALCON CREST both close with a discovery of “Oh my God!” proportions. “Oh my God, you’re carrying Adam’s baby!” realises Jeff on DYNASTY. “My God, why would anyone want to do this?” exclaims Richard on FALCON CREST, kneeling over the slain body of John Osborne.

And this week’s Top 4 are …

1 (3) DALLAS
2 (2) KNOTS LANDING
3 (4) FALCON CREST
4 (5) DYNASTY

Always loved the character of Dex on Dynasty, but he has a lot in common with Mack - maybe more so than Greg. The over-the-top Machismo for one thing. He was also faithful to Alexis while married although frequently tempted. And let's not forget the hairy chest....

 

[Stillwitty]

09/Jan/84: EMERALD POINT N.A.S.: The Assignment v. 11/Jan/84: DYNASTY: Lancelot v. 12/Jan/84: KNOTS LANDING: Reconcilable Differences v. 13/Jan/84: DALLAS: Offshore Crude v. 13/Jan/84: FALCON CREST: Queen’s Gambit v. 14/Jan/84: THE YELLOW ROSE: Hell Hath No Fury

On this week’s DYNASTY and KNOTS LANDING, Blake Carrington and Lilimae Clements are equally bemused by the respective break-ups of Kirby & Jeff and Val & Ben. "There is a child involved,” Blake reminds Jeff, "an unborn child to whom you and Kirby have a tremendous responsibility.” "It’s not just you and Valene now,” Lilimae chides Ben. "You have your child to think about.”

Much to Ben’s frustration, Val continues to keep the reason for their break-up, the fact that she is really pregnant by Gary, a secret from both Lilimae and Gary himself. “You have a separate set of lies for each of us,” he tells her angrily. Conversely, on DYNASTY, Adam finally admits to Blake that he raped and impregnated Kirby. "In another time, they'd have dragged you out to the centre of the square and horse-whipped you, branded you an animal!” Blake shouts, appalled. There is a juicy paradox at work here. Earlier in the same episode, Jeanette the maid happens upon Adam looking at Little Blake and Danny. "The Carrington heirs,” she sighs. "How your father loves them. He'd give their parents the world for what they've given him." "Yes, the world,” he murmurs in agreement. So by incurring his father’s wrath, even offering to move back to Montana with Kirby and the baby, Adam is actually securing his place in the Carrington dynasty. "You're my son and dammit, you're gonna stay right here in this house and you're gonna learn what it is to behave like a man, like a Carrington!” bellows Blake.

Blake’s disgust is notable for another reason. His description of what Adam did to Kirby — “it's an act of violence, it's an act of abuse and violence” — is the first time a Soap Land character has defined and condemned rape so unequivocally. (I may be overlooking the FLAMINGO ROAD episode “Victim”, which I disliked so much I’ve erased most of it from my memory.) It’s ironic that it should fall to Blake to take such a stand. Like JR on DALLAS, he is a former rapist himself but has never been characterised as such. The “r” word crops up on this week’s FALCON CREST too, when Maggie brands Richard’s racetrack development as "the rape of the Tuscany Valley”. There’s also "an act of abuse and violence” between a male and female in this week's EMERALD POINT where the Russian Rashid Ahmed abruptly punches Tiffany Case in the face sending her sprawling onto some handily situated trash cans. This, however, was a moment so unexpected and absurd it made me laugh out loud.

As part of her complicated espionage plan, Tiffany does a Claudia Blaisdel and seduces the guy with access to the information she needs, then rummages through his pockets while he’s otherwise occupied. Her Jeff Colby equivalent is Lucy Ewing’s former English professor/lover, Greg Forrester, who is still the same good looking bespectacled nerd with a wife and kids that he was in DALLAS Seasons 2 and 3. Tiffany isn’t the only Soap Land redhead mixing business and pleasure this week as Laura Avery winds up in bed with Greg Sumner in KNOTS. Their getting together is depicted with such tantalising economy one can only speculate at what has motivated such a union: an attempt by Greg to keep Laura on side, an opportunity for Laura to exact some long-awaited revenge on Abby, or just good old fashioned physical desire. Most likely it's a combination of all three.

Random Soap Land trend of the week: minor characters in mortal jeopardy. FALCON CREST's recurring law enforcer Sheriff Robbins collapses with an aneurysm and refuses to let anyone but Michael Ranson operate on him. Michael, however, hasn’t performed surgery since losing a patient on the operating table years earlier. So far so Nick Toscanni, but whereas Nick rose to the challenge when faced with a similar crisis on DYNASTY, Michael freezes in the operating theatre and has to be replaced by another surgeon. Meanwhile, almost exactly two years after Jock Ewing’s fatal helicopter crash in DALLAS, a plane malfunctions on EMERALD POINT and a character we’ve never seen or heard of before, but whom we learn was a surrogate son to Harlan Adams, is killed. We learn of a similar bond on this week's YELLOW ROSE between Chance and the elderly Toat Gilmore who looked out for each other when they shared a prison cell for five years. Toat is still behind bars but now dying of a heart condition so Chance devises a convoluted scheme to get him out of jail and reunite him with his long-lost grandson.

Having introduced Jane Russell as the controversial Rose Hollister in last week’s YELLOW ROSE, this week’s ep doesn’t even refer to her. Instead, we have a wacky prison break plot involving rodeo clowns and identity-swaps. Soap Land hasn’t been this schizo since the story of Gary and Abby’s affair kept getting interrupted by tales of haunted houses, silent movie stars and Lilimae’s cross country trek with Jackson Mobeley in KNOTS Season 3. (Speaking of Jackson Mobeley, he makes his second Soap Land appearance of the season in the guise of a horse trainer on this week's DYNASTY.) But however implausible the YELLOW ROSE story, we buy into it because we believe in the characters.

Just as KNOTS LANDING’s Abby began this season by describing herself to Jim Westmont as “the next Mrs. Gary Ewing” before she had even been proposed to so Terry confidently informs Angela she is to be “the next Mrs. Michael Ranson” on this week's FALCON CREST. Like Westmont, Angela is skeptical, but blonde ambition will out. By the end of this week’s ep, Michael has confided to Terry that the patient he lost on the operating table ten years earlier was his own wife.

Other characters have their secrets too. Gary learns in this week's KNOTS that Cathy spent four years in prison. On THE YELLOW ROSE, Caryn Careiba, Jeb Hollister’s tightly wound personal assistant, lets her hair and her guard down to reveal to Roy Champion that she is the girl whose virginity he took when they were teenagers and she’s been obsessed with him ever since (it’s Jenna Wade's back story mixed with Katherine Wentworth's psychological profile). Even Michael Ranson’s DALLAS counterpart, the incorruptible Edgar Randolph, turns out to be susceptible to blackmail when JR unearths something unimaginably heinous from his past.

This week's DYNASTY and KNOTS each ends with a married couple in an emotional embrace, one partner supporting the other who has collapsed in tears. In both cases, there's a bit of a role reversal going on. Claudia Carrington and Mack Mackenzie may each have been the stronger, more dependable spouse in their relationship so far this season — Claudia helping Steven retain custody of his son and then reconcile with his father, Mack supporting Karen through her estrangement from Diana and problem with pills — but now they are the ones in need. While Claudia is in shock after receiving a bouquet of violets apparently from her dead husband Matthew, Karen eavesdrops on a phone conversation between Mack and his father. “I’m OK, I’m gonna get through this … Karen’s like the rock of Gibraltar … She’s the one that’s getting me through this,” Mack is saying bravely. It’s only after the call that he starts to break down. The way Mack struggles in vain to contain his emotions — at one point biting on his bathrobe to stop himself from crying — is compellingly authentic.

This is also the episode that establishes Mack and Ben as close friends. First, they team up to clear Mack’s good name (which was besmirched in last week’s ep by his former best bud Greg Sumner) by investigating the Wolfbridge Group, then gradually begin to confide in each other about their emotional lives — the way ordinary men rarely do but Soap Land characters are compelled to. KNOTS navigates this transition via three separate scenes between the two men. In the first, Mack asks Ben how he is feeling with regard to his break up with Val. In the second, Ben does the same to Mack apropos of his problems with Karen. Each man avoids answering the other’s question, which kind of tells us what we need to know. Then in the third scene, having broken the macho ice, they are free to openly discuss their relationships and feelings. “Maybe men and women don’t belong together,” Mack concludes. "They sure as hell don’t seem to understand a damn thing about each other." (Friendships between men aren’t really a factor on the other soaps where nearly all male relationships are drawn along familial lines. The exception would be Blake Carrington’s friendships with Andrew Laird and Joseph Anders, but it’s notable that both of those men are/were in his employ.)

Broadly speaking, masculine emotions — deeply felt but rarely articulated — are what drives THE YELLOW ROSE and gives it its unique flavour. The most powerful scene in this week’s episode is between Roy Champion and his son Whit. When Whit calls his mother — who is suing Roy on Whit’s behalf — a pregnant slut, Roy’s intuitive response is to punch him. Whit retaliates in kind. Seconds later they’re hugging each other fiercely and exchanging “I love you”s. On any other soap, this would be as icky as it sounds but here it feels primal and real.

And this week’s Top 6 are …

1 (3) DALLAS
2 (4) KNOTS LANDING
3 (1) THE YELLOW ROSE
4 (2) FALCON CREST
5 (5) DYNASTY
6 (-) EMERALD POINT N.A.S.

Very few people have ever mentioned the biting the bathrobe which I also thought was pretty brilliant. Nonverbal communication is often far more powerful than words.

 

[Stillwitty]

9 Jan 85: DYNASTY: The Will v. 10 Jan 85: KNOTS LANDING: #14 with a Bullet v. 11 Jan 85: DALLAS: Winds of War v. 11 Jan 85: FALCON CREST: Insult and Injury

There are plenty of visiting-the-sick scenes in DYNASTY and KNOTS this week — Tom Carrington is dying at his home in Sumatra, Indonesia, while Karen Mackenzie is about to undergo life or death surgery in Soap Land Memorial Hospital.

In order to convey the gravity of Karen’s situation, KNOTS once again employs the kind of storytelling devices one is unlikely to find in any of the other soaps — the ep is bookended by scenes of Mack visiting a Catholic church to pray for his wife, voices from one scene play over the visuals of another, there’s a prolonged close-up of Karen’s eyes after her operation as her reflexes are tested to see whether the surgery has been a success, and to offset the pathos, there’s even a spot of physical comedy where Karen’s clumsy attempts to manoeuvre a wheelchair are accompanied by appropriately jaunty music. For once, however, KNOTS’ inventiveness works against it. It’s not that any of these touches are bad per se, but collectively they give an impression of an episode striving to be more meaningful and significant than it is. This story-line wants to evoke the same sense of realism and gnawing anxiety that Sid’s operation did at the beginning of Season 3, but actually Karen’s plight is no more “real" or less escapist that Maggie Gioberti's one-chance-in-a-million-that was-never-going-to-fail brain-tumour surgery from last season’s FALCON CREST. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with a melodramatic medical storyline with a predictably happy outcome -- it's just that KNOTS won’t admit that that’s what this is, and the whole thing feels somewhat heavy-handed as a result.

Tom Carrington’s story on DYNASTY, meanwhile, functions within conventional soap parameters (it colours inside the lines if you will) and feels the more honest for it. It is also surprisingly touching. It's a variation on a scenario we’ve seen in Soap Land before: an estranged (i.e., never previously mentioned) relative shows up (e.g., Miss Ellie’s brother or the fathers of Mack Mackenzie or Lane Ballou), old wounds are reopened, a terminal condition is revealed and an eleventh-hour reconciliation takes place just in time for the closing credits.

While DYNASTY sticks by and large to this narrative blueprint, there are some nuanced differences. Usually, it’s a case of the dying man returning to his family in search of forgiveness. Here it’s Blake, closely followed by Dominique and Alexis, who visits Tom on his deathbed in Sumatra. Moreover, Tom himself is far from repentant, at least initially. "You want to make amends, tie everything nice and pretty, getting everything off your chest you've been pushing down all these years, like telling me what a nasty wretched old man I am?” he asks Blake mockingly. He’s even meaner to Dominique when she asks him to acknowledge her as his daughter. "My mother loved you,” she insists. "She never would have given herself to you if she didn't love you." "I hardly knew the woman," he blithely replies. "You are a LIAR! You are a LIAR!" she spits. It’s a great scene, as electric as it is long-awaited. We also get to see Blake and Alexis swap roles — for once, he is the cold resentful figure unable to forget or forgive Tom his past transgressions while she is warm and humorously affectionate towards her former father-in-law.

Alexis and Tom's bedside exchange reminded me of the final scene between Abby and the dying movie director Andrew Douglas in the stand alone KNOTS episode “Silver Shadows”. Douglas was fixated on Abby’s resemblance to the silent film actress Teri Clarington, while Tom tells Alexis she is "prettier than any moving-picture star”. Where Douglas promised to leave Abby his fortune, Tom makes a similar assurance to Alexis. In each instance, there is a twist: in his confused state, Andrew bequeaths his wealth to the long dead Teri herself rather than Abby, and although Alexis does indeed receive a slice of Tom’s estate, she is dismayed to learn she must share it not only with Blake but also “that cabaret singer” Dominique — Tom having had the requisite last-minute reconciliation with both his children.

As poignant as Tom’s farewell is (and it’s possibly Soap Land's most moving deathbed scene since Digger’s in DALLAS Season 2), the strongest emotional moment of the Soap Land week belongs to Charlotte Pershing on FALCON CREST. Desperate to raise the cash to get her daughter’s stolen pearls out of hock, she approaches Richard at Tuscany Downs and timidly begs him for a small loan in order to place a bet on a rank outsider in an upcoming race. He gently but firmly refuses. Charlotte can’t help but watch the race anyway and her silent scream as her chosen horse romps to victory is as vivid a depiction of the agony of addiction as any of Gary Ewing’s drunk tank freak-outs.

While Ray and Donna come up with corroborative proof that Jock, Jason and Digger really were equal partners in Ewing Oil on this week’s DALLAS, we’re also granted some intriguing glimpses into the DYNASTY and KNOTS backstories. We learn that Blake has yet another estranged relative — a brother, Ben — and that Greg's ties to Mack are much stronger than has previously been supposed. "His family practically raised you,” Paul Galveston reminds Greg. "Someone had to,” he replies.

There’s also a small, but revealing, insight into Abby’s past this week, during a short scene which finds her working late at the TV station, editing Joshua's sermon to make it more effective. She is clearly enjoying herself and Joshua is impressed and surprised at her skill. “I was an English major,” she tells him by way of explanation. That Abby should be both sensitively creative enough to make a positive contribution to Joshua’s work and ruthless enough to exploit him for it is part of what makes her character so beguiling. It’s a duality that most of Soap Land’s other antagonists do not possess — certainly not Angela Channing or JR, nor even the painterly Alexis. Richard Channing might be an exception, however.

Even though he has found Val in Shula, Abby has instructed her detective, Peter Freilich, to file a report for Gary’s benefit claiming that his search has reached a dead end. This week, Freilich decides to blackmail Abby in return for his silence. She reluctantly agrees to pay up until he explains that it’s not money he’s after, but sex. This potentially places Abby in the same situation that Afton Cooper, Laura Avery and Holly Harwood have each previously found themselves — as a woman coerced (but not necessarily physically) into having sex with a man against her will. It’s very strange to see Abby in this position — not only does she make an unlikely sexual victim, but the men who forced themselves on Afton, Laura and Holly (Gil Thurman, Chip Todson and JR respectively) were each in a position of power; Freilich is Abby's financial and social inferior. Whether or not Abby would have ultimately submitted to his demands we’ll never know because that’s where Paul Galveston gets involved ...

… whereupon an interesting parallel emerges between the situation unfolding on KNOTS and the one being simultaneously played out between Melissa, Joel McCarthy and Richard Channing on FALCON CREST. At the end of last week’s FC, Joel admitted to Richard that Melissa had paid him to discredit Lance (which resulted in Lance getting arrested for the attempted murder of his grandmother). On this week's KNOTS, under duress, Freilich confesses to Paul Galveston that Abby paid him to keep silent about Val’s whereabouts. (In exchange for his information, Richard spared Joel from the hoodlums who were after him for unpaid debts and instead shipped him off to a kill-or-cure rehab centre. Galveston is less generous — he has Peter Freilich beaten up for the hell of it.)

I have a soft spot for small-time hustlers like McCarthy and Freilich — seemingly insignificant characters whom their shows’ major players (in this case Melissa and Abby) underestimate at their peril and who end up playing a pivotal role in their respective show’s narrative.

As a result of these juicy plot twists, Richard Channing and Paul Galveston now know that Lance didn’t really try to kill Angela and that Val’s babies didn’t really die. Will they go public with the good news? Will they hell. Instead, both men use their newly acquired knowledge to further their own agendas. This leads to a great scene on KNOTS where Abby, in an equivalent scenario to the one in DALLAS where Holly Harwood was summoned to JR’s office after hours, nervously waits for Peter Freilich in her own office after the rest of the staff have gone home. Instead of Freilich, however, Paul Galveston himself appears. “I’m not sure what I have in mind for you yet,” he tells her. "I’ve found Val. Now I’m going to find the babies. Then I’m going to find out what the hell you had in mind when you started all this … Then, unless you give me an incredible explanation, I’m going to turn it all over to Gary!" By comparison, the parallel scene in FALCON CREST where Richard uses Joel’s information as leverage to force Melissa into selling him her share in a racehorse she co-owns feels a bit anti-climactic, but perhaps the other shoe has yet to drop.

Whereas Tom’s eventual recognition of Dominique as a Carrington feels like a big pay off in this week’s DYNASTY, JR finally acknowledging that Jamie is a Ewing in this week’s DALLAS is so thrown away, one would be forgiven for missing it altogether. ("Is she really a Ewing?" Mandy asks him. "Well, I guess that's true enough," he shrugs, before changing the subject.) In any case, by the end of their respective episodes, Dominique’s and Jamie’s relationships to their new families could not be more different. As far as she is concerned, Dominique has finally got what she is entitled to — one-third of her father’s fortune. “It's time for us to face the fact that we're all one big family now,” she tells Alexis firmly. Meanwhile, Jamie has moved off Southfork, quit her job at Ewing Oil and given Sue Ellen back the keys to the car she bought her a few weeks earlier. "The way I feel right now, I don't want to have anything to do with any of the Ewings, and that includes you!” she tells her.

Freeze frame-wise, Mack’s thumbs-up to God after Karen gets the all clear at the end of this week's KNOTS always makes me cringe slightly, while Cliff’s crooked smile of delight when Jamie agrees to join forces with him against the Ewings at the end of DALLAS never fails to make me laugh.

And this week’s Top 4 are …

1 (3) DYNASTY
2 (4) DALLAS
3 (2) KNOTS LANDING
4 (1) FALCON CREST

As the most Christian of non-churchgoing Catholics, I absolutely understood and identified with both scenes in the Church. When else in this busy, modern world do we call out a higher power for personal communication? Mack, being Irish, is more likely than others to reach for that relationship when overtaken by fear and guilt.

 

[Stillwitty]

One bit that has always bothered me about KL's "not-quite-dead" Paige:

The camera panned across "Paige"'s tombstone dramatically, showing her buried alongside several Matheson family relatives. This really doesn't jive with the established history, which states that Anne was only briefly married to "Mr. Matheson" (I don't think they even gave his name) when Paige was little. After the divorce, Paige was raised at the Winston mansion with her grandparents as Anne led a jet-set lifestyle (and wishing to remain unencumbered by a small child). After the divorce, Mr. Matheson had no real contact with step-child Paige. If Paige died in a boating accident as the Winstons were led to believe, it would make more sense that Paige would be buried in the Winston family plot, not among a bunch of Mathesons who were basically strangers. Not that there was a body to bury in any case...

Good catch. Also, when Paige confesses her reasoning for faking her death, she insinuates her step-father molested her ("If you knew what he did to me") which conflicts with Anne's short marriage.

 

[Stillwitty]

It's also worth reminding everyone that while this 180-degree turn for Ben seems abrupt and more than a little mind-blowing, it played out a bit more believably (a BIT more, not a lot more) in the original, one-episode per-week format. It added some time to digest the individual plot points. Or, put another way, gave you some time to talk yourself into believing it might actually happen.

The limited appearances of Constance McCashin in the story were disappointing for me. At the time I just assumed she was not being used as much due to her pregnancy, but I did not know the proverbial knives were out behind the scenes. When she did appear, her character was well-used, and of course Laura was as observant and witty as always; her absence from so much of the action was glaring when you take into account how much more of an ally/confidant Laura was to Greg when suddenly...she wasn't. The producers/writers proved that they could put Greg into a front burner story threatening his life and not have his own wife play a significant role. Can you picture such a story written for Mack and not have Karen playing a major role in the story?

After watching the entire 14 Season run, it kind of amazes he that Mack was never the target of an attempted assassination in his capacity as federal investigator and going after as many big shot bad guys as he did. Not once did we see Mack laying up in a hospital bed, Karen wringing her hands in agony. Seems like a missed opportunity

 

[Stillwitty]

12 Nov 87: KNOTS LANDING: Love In v. 13 Nov 87: DALLAS: Hustling v. 13 Nov 87: FALCON CREST: Sweet Revenge

Bobby may consider Pam “a closed subject” following her request for a divorce, but there’s still a gaping hole in DALLAS left by her absence. In contrast, FALCON CREST has absorbed the loss of Chase Gioberti very smoothly — by pushing Richard together with Maggie and making Angela his mother, the show has effectively sealed the gap Chase previously occupied.

Though visibly wounded, DALLAS staggers manfully on. Of this week’s shows, it’s the one that sticks most closely to its traditional format with JR continuing to marshal his forces in order to launch a revenge attack against West Star later in the season. FALCON CREST, on the other hand, has become a show that’s as much about a revolving door of vaguely motivated guest characters trying to kill off the main stars as it is about the core cast interacting with each other. KNOTS LANDING, meanwhile, somehow manages to make each episode feel freshly inventive, with its own tone and sense of identity.

This week’s KL is a romantic soufflé of an ep which unfolds leisurely over the course of an evening. It starts with Abby accepting a dinner invitation from her old flame Charles and ends with them sitting across from each other in a restaurant a few hours later. In-between, the episode cuts back and forth between Abby getting ready at home while chatting to Olivia, and other regular characters, either in couples or as families, eating dinner and/or hanging out together. I think the last Soap Land episode to be structured around such a concentrated time period was the DYNASTY ep immediately preceding the first instalment of THE COLBYS, which took place over a single, stormy night.

This week’s KNOTS even comes with its own catchphrase. “It’s not a date, sweetpea — we’re just going out for dinner,” Lilimae insists as she waits for Al to pick her up for the evening. “Mama, it’s not a date with Gary … He’s just coming over here to see the kids,” clarifies Val. “Honey, it’s not a date really — it’s just dinner with an old friend,” Abby tells Olivia. Even the twins get in on the act: “Mommy, are we on a date?” Bobby enquires over dinner. “No, honey, we’re not — we’re just having a nice time together,” Val replies, smiling at Gary. Contrarily on DALLAS, Bobby surprises Miss Ellie by announcing: “I’m taking you out on a date!” Clayton plays along: “I got strict rules about the curfew — no later than midnight, Bobby!” Bobby whisks his mama off for hot dogs where the forced jollity briefly recedes. “I’ve got a lot of things inside me now that I just don’t feel like I wanna talk about right now,” he admits, “but … everything’s gonna be all right.” Then it’s back to the faux flirting. “More than any other woman, you look dynamite in denim!” he tells her.

While out dancing, Al asks Lilimae to marry him. “Marry you? I don’t even know you!” she exclaims. “Well, we’re bound to get acquainted if you marry me,” he replies logically. Over on DALLAS, Jenna decides to follow Miss Ellie’s advice (“Marry a good man and wait for the bells to ring later”) and so finally accepts Ray’s proposal. Meanwhile, there’s news from Washington of Donna’s engagement to Senator Dowling.

When Melissa travelled to Australia on last week’s FALCON CREST, she was surprised to find Cole with a new wife, Kathleen. When Eric arrives home from college on this week’s KNOTS, Karen is utterly gobsmacked to find that he too has a bride, Linda. While Kathleen was a minor character with only a few lines, the same cannot be said for the awesomely opinionated Linda. Put her and a lovestruck Eric on one side of the Fairgate/Mackenzie dinner table, Michael and his uninhibitedly affectionate new girlfriend Jodie on the other, and a traumatised Karen in the middle trying desperately to bite her tongue, and hilarity — genuinely, for once — ensues.

In-between courses, Karen seeks refuge in the kitchen where Mack tries to console her: “You haven’t lost a son, you’ve gained a —” “Spokesperson for the FDA,” she interrupts. She even threatens to “open the oven, blow out the pilot, turn on the gas.” Mack argues that a bad first impression doesn’t mean Karen has to kill herself. “I’m not talking about me,” she explains. “Call those two women in here, then we’ll run out and toss in a match.” Where the suicide/murder mislead is a fun gag on KNOTS, it’s a grimly bizarre reality on FALCON CREST.

Just as Pam is officially “a closed subject” on DALLAS, the story of FC’s Dina, another former aerobics instructor horrendously injured in a car crash, also comes to an end this week. Poor, poor Dina: having narrowly escaped death at the hands of one homicidal maniac (an ex-boyfriend who tampered with Lance’s car), she is then placed in the care of another, entirely unrelated homicidal maniac (her nurse) who manipulates her into writing a suicide note and then force-feeds her a fatal overdose of pills. Even by Soap Land standards, that’s pretty bad luck.

The other major aspect of this week’s KNOTS is its flashback sequences. Just like last season’s, they are set in 1967 and accompanied by a Motown soundtrack, but instead of focusing on Mack and Anne’s teen romance in New York, they're about Abby and Charles’s love story in Philadelphia. We also get to see Young Karen (still campaigning) and Young Sid (still tinkering with engines). In truth, these sequences aren’t quite as evocative as last season’s, but they’re interesting nonetheless and it’s especially nice to see a youthful version of Sid. There’s another blast from the past on FALCON CREST where Michael Channing’s second birthday party (a far grander affair than the twins’ bash on last week’s KNOTS) is juxtaposed, GODFATHER-style, with Richard’s henchmen abducting Carlton Travis’ associate Colonel Anand so that Richard can interrogate him over the reasons behind Travis’ vendetta against him. Anand explains, in the first Pakistani accent we’ve heard in Soap Land, that Travis wishes to avenge the wrongs done to him by Henri Denault, Richard’s late guardian. “The sins of the father are visited on the sons,” says Richard ruefully, echoing Sean Rowan, echoing Zachary Powers, etc., all the way back to Michael Tyrone, i.e., Richard himself.

Travis claims he wants to call a halt to the feud, but then Anand keels over with a heart attack while in Richard’s custody, and the episode ends with Travis holding both Richard and Angela at gunpoint. There is also talk of a ceasefire between JR and West Star on DALLAS. JR even invites Wilson Cryder and his wife Kimberly to dinner where, in the episode’s final scene, he suggests they “let bygones be bygones.” “You must know that Wilson has no intention of giving up the feud,” Kimberly tells JR once they are alone together. “Of course I do,” he replies, “but the way I figure — if he’s free to go after whatever’s mine, I’m free to go after whatever’s his.” He and Kimberly clink champagne glasses and exchange knowing looks as the episode ends. KNOTS concludes similarly. Like JR and Kimberly, Abby and Charles are sitting opposite one another in a restaurant. “Tell me that … your life has been miserable and leaving me was the biggest mistake you ever made,” Abby asks. Charles replies by proposing a toast. “To the most miserable man in the world — me.” Then the clink of champagne glasses, the knowing looks, the freeze frame.

And this week’s Top 3 are …

1 (1) KNOTS LANDING
2 (3) FALCON CREST
3 (2) DALLAS

Much more importantly, Mack's gray sweatpants return as he helps Karen set the table. The woman must have ice in her veins if the spoons and forks ended up in the right place...

 

[Stillwitty]

I'm sure she would have done a great job, but personally I'm not eager to watch a long, slow cancer-death.
I don't mind crying a little (or a lot) when I watch my stories, and the whole implication of her departure and how it was done was sad enough imo.
But when it's so overwhelmingly sad and depressing it could even take the melodrama out of it. I like the sad moments ,but dying of cancer is too much of a process and I'd end up waiting for that final moment.

Having lived through a good friend dying of a brain tumor at 44, leaving behind a husband and 3 daughters, I can attest to its tragedy, but in the world of TV Soaps, the opportunity for dramatic storylines is undeniable.

 

[James from London]

it kind of amazes he that Mack was never the target of an attempted assassination in his capacity as federal investigator and going after as many big shot bad guys as he did. Not once did we see Mack laying up in a hospital bed, Karen wringing her hands in agony. Seems like a missed opportunity

I guess the image of Karen collapsing in Mack's arms, having being shot as a result of his most notorious investigation, would have been a tough act to follow. Like Paige getting shot in Season 13, it might have seemed a bit vanilla in comparison. Granted, Gary and Greg both took a bullet (or at least, appeared to) with juicily dramatic results, but both of those storylines were far knottier than a straightforward "good guy opposes bad guys; bad guys attempt to off good guy" situation. Sid driving off the cliff pretty much had that scenario covered. (Now I think about it, Mack did take a beating at the hands of the Wolfbridge Group in Season 5 and that felt satisfying brutal.)

 

[Stillwitty]

I guess the image of Karen collapsing in Mack's arms, having being shot as a result of his most notorious investigation, would have been a tough act to follow. Like Paige getting shot in Season 13, it might have seemed a bit vanilla in comparison. Granted, Gary and Greg both took a bullet (or at least, appeared to) with juicily dramatic results, but both of those storylines were far knottier than a straightforward "good guy opposes bad guys; bad guys attempt to off good guy" situation. Sid driving off the cliff pretty much had that scenario covered. (Now I think about it, Mack did take a beating at the hands of the Wolfbridge Group in Season 5 and that felt satisfying brutal.)

Yeah, I remember that beating - but he reciprocated some episodes later when he saw one of the perps, ran him off the road, and beat the crap out of him while Ben attempted unsuccessfully to stop him. His Kojak training kicked in...

 

[Stillwitty]

17 Dec 87: KNOTS LANDING: Weak Moment v. 18 Dec 87: DALLAS: Daddy's Little Darlin' v. 18 Dec 87: FALCON CREST: Twist and Shout

This week’s KNOTS and FALCON CREST are both named after songs that feature during their respective episodes. KNOTS opens with ‘Weak Moment’, a country number that plays over a montage of Gary leaving Val’s bed and getting dressed, and Abby taking receipt of some flowers from Charles Scott and throwing them onto an open fire. On FALCON CREST, a generic version of ’Twist and Shout’ is playing at The Max as Eric Stavros sends his wife Vicky off to dance so that he can talk to FC’s latest murderous guest star in private. ‘Twist and Shout’ is the latest example of Soap Land’s preoccupation with sixties pop music. Classic Motown tracks accompanied both KNOTS LANDING’s recent run of flashback sequences and Melissa’s farewell party on FALCON CREST, while DALLAS's Ray and Jenna returned from their honeymoon last week to find Charlie and Brad Pitt cavorting to the sound ‘Mony Mony’, a 1968 hit for Tommy James and the Shondells. Given that it’s pretty much unheard of for DALLAS to use well-known music in its scenes, it felt like a significant choice. The song gave a kind of retro vibe of Charlie and Randy’s relationship which continues in this week's ep. The scene where Ray gives Randy a fatherly talking to before allowing him to escort Charlie to a dance feels like something out of the fifties. “I don’t want Charlie in any car where the driver’s been drinking,” he tells him firmly — might he be thinking back to Mickey and Sue Ellen’s fateful car crash five years earlier?

DALLAS makes several other references to its own past this week. The ep opens with Bobby flashing back to the moment in Season 4 where he bought Christopher from his real father. (As with pop music, flashbacks might be commonplace on the other soaps, but are something of a novelty on DALLAS.) His subsequent visit to Sue Ellen at Valentine Lingerie to tell her “there’s a girl in Dallas who claims she’s Jeff Farraday’s sister … and she’s suing me for custody of Christopher” echoes their conversation in her townhouse six years earlier when he admitted that Kristin was Christopher’s real mother. In both scenes, Bobby uses the phrase “it’s a long and complicated story” to skim over any unnecessary exposition. “If this goes to trial,” he warns Sue Ellen, “a lot of Ewing dirty linen is gonna be aired all over again … I’m worried about you and JR.” Bobby’s previous revelation had left Sue Ellen in bits, but she’s not the same lip trembling pushover she was then. “Believe me, nothing could come up in the trial that would change our relationship,” she assures him coolly. Her parting line to Bobby, “I told you before, I married the wrong brother” recalls another conversation between them, this time at Brooktree Sanatarium at the end of Season 1. “If I’d only met you first, Bobby, I’d have married you instead of JR,” she told him then.

Back at Southfork, Miss Ellie hosts a DOA meeting, just as she used to in the show’s early days. This leaves Clayton, still recovering from a heart operation, feeling as redundant as Jock did following his bypass surgery in Season 1. Whereas Jock gravitated towards a younger woman (Julie Grey), Clayton is drawn to a painting of a young woman hanging in an art gallery. “It’s almost haunting,” he murmurs. So taken is he that he buys the picture for $6,000 — small potatoes next to the $35,000 Laura shelled out for the Fuentes painting on KNOTS shortly before her death. Greg returns to the gallery where Laura bought the painting during this week’s ep and the owner informs him that, thanks to Laura’s generosity, Fuentes has been able to quit his job and take up painting full-time. “I hope I get first crack at what he produces,” Greg replies. “I’m very interested in this man’s work,” echoes Clayton with regard to his up and coming artist. To my untrained eye, both paintings are very pretty — the Fuentes looks more like "art" art while Clayton’s is kind of "soap opera" art.

This being Soap Land, however, aesthetics take second place to matters of commerce. On DALLAS, the gallery owner assures Clayton he has made a sound investment: “The artist will be famous one day.” On KNOTS, the gallery owner’s assistant — who just happens to be Paige Matheson — is more circumspect. “He’s got a lot of potential,” she says of Fuentes. “Artistic potential or investment potential?” asks Greg. “Investment art would be nice.”

Only a week after we heard Laura refer to Greg as Ace for the final time, Paige calls him Pops for the first time. He looks amused — and a new double act is born. There’s a similar “out with the old, in with the new” vibe on FALCON CREST where Lance, on his way home from pushing his dead girlfriend’s car off a cliff as a sort of symbolic tribute (or maybe just as an excuse for a cool explosion), meets his next romantic interest, Shannon, who just happens* to have broken down by the side of the road. Meanwhile on DALLAS, it’s Pam who? “I am getting on with my life now,” Bobby tells April just before they share their first kiss.
(*In other words, she's been planted by Lance's grandmother.)

Whereas DALLAS is full of familiar moments, there is a strange reversal of roles on KNOTS. It's as if Laura’s passing has somehow upset the series’ delicate “earth, wind and fire” ecosystem, causing "wind" and "fire" to swap places. Val is now the other woman while Abby has claimed the role of the victim. “You could give lessons in manipulation to Abby Ewing,” Jill tells Val (the KNOTSian equivalent of Afton Cooper’s kiss-off line to Cliff: “You make JR Ewing look like a saint”) after learning that she and Gary have been sleeping together. Abby, meanwhile, is plagued by romantic indecision over Charles Scott. “I was the real victim of your lousy decision,” she cries towards the end of the episode, “the woman who loved you, who trusted you, who would have done anything for you, the little coed who cried herself to sleep every night for weeks and weeks and weeks because of what you did to her!” There’s also a tinge of Alexis Colby’s irrationality in this unfamiliar version of Abby as she allows her personal feelings for Charles to influence their business dealings. And it’s somewhat dismaying to catch her reading a novel by slimy old Jeffrey Archer (come on, Abs — you’re better than that!). This must be the first reference to a Tory politician in Soap Land, in spite of a hastily applied piece of tape across the cover of the book in a vain attempt to conceal the author’s name (come on, KNOTS prop department — you’re better than that!) Another Soap Land first is the use of “thought bubbles”, i.e., voiceovers that allow us to hear what the characters are thinking even as their dialogue suggests the opposite, in a scene between Charles and Abby. For such a fascinating character, Abby’s thoughts are disappointingly generic: “God, his eyes are blue!” By the time we find her in Charles’s bed at end of the ep, Abby has become a kind of Judith Krantz mini-series version of herself, her jagged edges rubbed away in order to fit more smoothly into this extravagantly romantic storyline.

Val, Gary and Jill are the new Frankie, Jason and Sable. After leaving Val’s place, guilty Gary goes home to break the news to Jill. “I guess I don’t love you,” he admits. Jill reacts bitterly (“Well, there’s backbone — you can’t even commit to non-commitment!”) before giving Val the kind of tongue-lashing Sable would have approved of: “You’re the one who keeps this victim routine going, Valene. Everyone thinks you’re so sweet, so put upon, so all alone in the world, so victimised, so damn pathetic.” Whereas Sable proved impossible to dislodge from the Colby mansion, Jill is packed and gone from Gary’s ranch within a matter of screen minutes. By the end of the episode, however, she’s back, suitcase in hand. “I don’t wanna beg,” she tells Gary who looks as helpless as Charlton Heston used to.

Soap Land has been in the party mood of late — the Ewing barbecue and Alexis’s English fair last week, and now a black-and-white themed surprise party in honour of Maggie and Richard’s engagement on FALCON CREST and the second annual Lotus Point Christmas party on KNOTS. (As has become customary, KNOTS is the only soap to acknowledge the Yuletide season.)

The final scene of this week’s DALLAS — the first meeting between JR and Dr Herbert Styles, the country doctor who wound up owning fourteen percent of West Star — is great: darkly lit and full of atmosphere. The doctor’s proposition to JR — that he’ll help him assume control of West Star on the condition that he divorce Sue Ellen and marry Kimberly — is another DALLAS déjà vu moment, strongly echoing Leslie Stewart’s similar ultimatum to JR back in Season 3. A wheelchair-bound despot playing God with his children’s lives, Dr Styles reminds me of Martin Peyton in PEYTON PLACE (who, in turn, reminded me of Angela Channing at her most ruthless). But then the final twist of the ep suggests that Dr S is simply following his daughter’s orders (“How’d I do, darlin’?” he asks after JR has gone. “Perfect, Daddy. Just perfect,” replies Kimberly, emerging from the shadows) and that she is the real power behind the wheelchair.

It’s a bit of a stretch perhaps, but I’ve always thought that as an ageing Texas belle with daddy issues, Kimberly is the closest DALLAS gets to an archetypal Tennessee Williams’ heroine. During this re-watch, I’ve also noticed some implications regarding her marriage to Wilson that add an extra layer of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-style complexity to their situation. In last week’s episode, there was the couple’s obvious discomfort as Sue Ellen gushed over what a passionate marriage they must have and now here’s Dr Styles, voicing his distaste for his son-in-law: “Never thought Kimberly should have married him ... Man pays too damn much attention to the way he looks.”

Styles might be played by a minor member of the DALLAS repertory company (he previously appeared in a small role as a retired senator in Season 5), but he exudes a kind of effortlessly sinister authority that KNOTS LANDING’s Charles Scott and FALCON CREST’s revolving door of ruthless tycoons, for all the big name castings, lack. FC’s latest big bad, a European high roller by the name of Dimitrov, is an honourable exception. He’s played by Theodore Bickel who is as charismatically menacing towards Eric Stavros as he offers him a way to pay off his gambling debts as he was to Dominique Devereaux following the Moldavian massacre. The ultimatum he gives Eric — commit murder or we'll kill your entire family (“I have seven passports. I can be in Bulgaria before the police can even identify your wife’s body”) — is the same one Jean Hackney gave Ben on last season’s KNOTS. I have to admit, I’m kind of a sucker for these reluctant assassin stories. Surprisingly, Eric’s intended target isn’t a central character like Greg Sumner (my money was on Richard Channing) but a judge we’ve never previously heard of.

And this week’s Top 3 are …

1 (2) DALLAS
2 (1) KNOTS LANDING
3 (3) FALCON CREST



Yeah, it wasn't as much of an ordeal as I remembered. And the teddy bear turning its head 360 degrees like Linda Blair in The Exorcist was kind of fun.



I really do! I dislike her far more than any other Soap Land character I've encountered this time around. It's such a shame because in the first three seasons especially, she's just great.



I don't know ... in her scenes with Melissa and Emma, it feels like Angela's stuck, repeating the same eye-rolling punchline over and over, like a character trapped in the same scene of a never-ending sitcom. But in her scenes Richard and Maggie, and to a lesser extent Lance and Dan, she's still reasonably interesting.



Aw thanks!



You should -- it's really fun!



What a good idea -- and then you could watch TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN alongside New DYNASTY — what an amazing double bill that would be

17 Dec 87: KNOTS LANDING: Weak Moment v. 18 Dec 87: DALLAS: Daddy's Little Darlin' v. 18 Dec 87: FALCON CREST: Twist and Shout

This week’s KNOTS and FALCON CREST are both named after songs that feature during their respective episodes. KNOTS opens with ‘Weak Moment’, a country number that plays over a montage of Gary leaving Val’s bed and getting dressed, and Abby taking receipt of some flowers from Charles Scott and throwing them onto an open fire. On FALCON CREST, a generic version of ’Twist and Shout’ is playing at The Max as Eric Stavros sends his wife Vicky off to dance so that he can talk to FC’s latest murderous guest star in private. ‘Twist and Shout’ is the latest example of Soap Land’s preoccupation with sixties pop music. Classic Motown tracks accompanied both KNOTS LANDING’s recent run of flashback sequences and Melissa’s farewell party on FALCON CREST, while DALLAS's Ray and Jenna returned from their honeymoon last week to find Charlie and Brad Pitt cavorting to the sound ‘Mony Mony’, a 1968 hit for Tommy James and the Shondells. Given that it’s pretty much unheard of for DALLAS to use well-known music in its scenes, it felt like a significant choice. The song gave a kind of retro vibe of Charlie and Randy’s relationship which continues in this week's ep. The scene where Ray gives Randy a fatherly talking to before allowing him to escort Charlie to a dance feels like something out of the fifties. “I don’t want Charlie in any car where the driver’s been drinking,” he tells him firmly — might he be thinking back to Mickey and Sue Ellen’s fateful car crash five years earlier?

DALLAS makes several other references to its own past this week. The ep opens with Bobby flashing back to the moment in Season 4 where he bought Christopher from his real father. (As with pop music, flashbacks might be commonplace on the other soaps, but are something of a novelty on DALLAS.) His subsequent visit to Sue Ellen at Valentine Lingerie to tell her “there’s a girl in Dallas who claims she’s Jeff Farraday’s sister … and she’s suing me for custody of Christopher” echoes their conversation in her townhouse six years earlier when he admitted that Kristin was Christopher’s real mother. In both scenes, Bobby uses the phrase “it’s a long and complicated story” to skim over any unnecessary exposition. “If this goes to trial,” he warns Sue Ellen, “a lot of Ewing dirty linen is gonna be aired all over again … I’m worried about you and JR.” Bobby’s previous revelation had left Sue Ellen in bits, but she’s not the same lip trembling pushover she was then. “Believe me, nothing could come up in the trial that would change our relationship,” she assures him coolly. Her parting line to Bobby, “I told you before, I married the wrong brother” recalls another conversation between them, this time at Brooktree Sanatarium at the end of Season 1. “If I’d only met you first, Bobby, I’d have married you instead of JR,” she told him then.

Back at Southfork, Miss Ellie hosts a DOA meeting, just as she used to in the show’s early days. This leaves Clayton, still recovering from a heart operation, feeling as redundant as Jock did following his bypass surgery in Season 1. Whereas Jock gravitated towards a younger woman (Julie Grey), Clayton is drawn to a painting of a young woman hanging in an art gallery. “It’s almost haunting,” he murmurs. So taken is he that he buys the picture for $6,000 — small potatoes next to the $35,000 Laura shelled out for the Fuentes painting on KNOTS shortly before her death. Greg returns to the gallery where Laura bought the painting during this week’s ep and the owner informs him that, thanks to Laura’s generosity, Fuentes has been able to quit his job and take up painting full-time. “I hope I get first crack at what he produces,” Greg replies. “I’m very interested in this man’s work,” echoes Clayton with regard to his up and coming artist. To my untrained eye, both paintings are very pretty — the Fuentes looks more like "art" art while Clayton’s is kind of "soap opera" art.

This being Soap Land, however, aesthetics take second place to matters of commerce. On DALLAS, the gallery owner assures Clayton he has made a sound investment: “The artist will be famous one day.” On KNOTS, the gallery owner’s assistant — who just happens to be Paige Matheson — is more circumspect. “He’s got a lot of potential,” she says of Fuentes. “Artistic potential or investment potential?” asks Greg. “Investment art would be nice.”

Only a week after we heard Laura refer to Greg as Ace for the final time, Paige calls him Pops for the first time. He looks amused — and a new double act is born. There’s a similar “out with the old, in with the new” vibe on FALCON CREST where Lance, on his way home from pushing his dead girlfriend’s car off a cliff as a sort of symbolic tribute (or maybe just as an excuse for a cool explosion), meets his next romantic interest, Shannon, who just happens* to have broken down by the side of the road. Meanwhile on DALLAS, it’s Pam who? “I am getting on with my life now,” Bobby tells April just before they share their first kiss.
(*In other words, she's been planted by Lance's grandmother.)

Whereas DALLAS is full of familiar moments, there is a strange reversal of roles on KNOTS. It's as if Laura’s passing has somehow upset the series’ delicate “earth, wind and fire” ecosystem, causing "wind" and "fire" to swap places. Val is now the other woman while Abby has claimed the role of the victim. “You could give lessons in manipulation to Abby Ewing,” Jill tells Val (the KNOTSian equivalent of Afton Cooper’s kiss-off line to Cliff: “You make JR Ewing look like a saint”) after learning that she and Gary have been sleeping together. Abby, meanwhile, is plagued by romantic indecision over Charles Scott. “I was the real victim of your lousy decision,” she cries towards the end of the episode, “the woman who loved you, who trusted you, who would have done anything for you, the little coed who cried herself to sleep every night for weeks and weeks and weeks because of what you did to her!” There’s also a tinge of Alexis Colby’s irrationality in this unfamiliar version of Abby as she allows her personal feelings for Charles to influence their business dealings. And it’s somewhat dismaying to catch her reading a novel by slimy old Jeffrey Archer (come on, Abs — you’re better than that!). This must be the first reference to a Tory politician in Soap Land, in spite of a hastily applied piece of tape across the cover of the book in a vain attempt to conceal the author’s name (come on, KNOTS prop department — you’re better than that!) Another Soap Land first is the use of “thought bubbles”, i.e., voiceovers that allow us to hear what the characters are thinking even as their dialogue suggests the opposite, in a scene between Charles and Abby. For such a fascinating character, Abby’s thoughts are disappointingly generic: “God, his eyes are blue!” By the time we find her in Charles’s bed at end of the ep, Abby has become a kind of Judith Krantz mini-series version of herself, her jagged edges rubbed away in order to fit more smoothly into this extravagantly romantic storyline.

Val, Gary and Jill are the new Frankie, Jason and Sable. After leaving Val’s place, guilty Gary goes home to break the news to Jill. “I guess I don’t love you,” he admits. Jill reacts bitterly (“Well, there’s backbone — you can’t even commit to non-commitment!”) before giving Val the kind of tongue-lashing Sable would have approved of: “You’re the one who keeps this victim routine going, Valene. Everyone thinks you’re so sweet, so put upon, so all alone in the world, so victimised, so damn pathetic.” Whereas Sable proved impossible to dislodge from the Colby mansion, Jill is packed and gone from Gary’s ranch within a matter of screen minutes. By the end of the episode, however, she’s back, suitcase in hand. “I don’t wanna beg,” she tells Gary who looks as helpless as Charlton Heston used to.

Soap Land has been in the party mood of late — the Ewing barbecue and Alexis’s English fair last week, and now a black-and-white themed surprise party in honour of Maggie and Richard’s engagement on FALCON CREST and the second annual Lotus Point Christmas party on KNOTS. (As has become customary, KNOTS is the only soap to acknowledge the Yuletide season.)

The final scene of this week’s DALLAS — the first meeting between JR and Dr Herbert Styles, the country doctor who wound up owning fourteen percent of West Star — is great: darkly lit and full of atmosphere. The doctor’s proposition to JR — that he’ll help him assume control of West Star on the condition that he divorce Sue Ellen and marry Kimberly — is another DALLAS déjà vu moment, strongly echoing Leslie Stewart’s similar ultimatum to JR back in Season 3. A wheelchair-bound despot playing God with his children’s lives, Dr Styles reminds me of Martin Peyton in PEYTON PLACE (who, in turn, reminded me of Angela Channing at her most ruthless). But then the final twist of the ep suggests that Dr S is simply following his daughter’s orders (“How’d I do, darlin’?” he asks after JR has gone. “Perfect, Daddy. Just perfect,” replies Kimberly, emerging from the shadows) and that she is the real power behind the wheelchair.

It’s a bit of a stretch perhaps, but I’ve always thought that as an ageing Texas belle with daddy issues, Kimberly is the closest DALLAS gets to an archetypal Tennessee Williams’ heroine. During this re-watch, I’ve also noticed some implications regarding her marriage to Wilson that add an extra layer of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-style complexity to their situation. In last week’s episode, there was the couple’s obvious discomfort as Sue Ellen gushed over what a passionate marriage they must have and now here’s Dr Styles, voicing his distaste for his son-in-law: “Never thought Kimberly should have married him ... Man pays too damn much attention to the way he looks.”

Styles might be played by a minor member of the DALLAS repertory company (he previously appeared in a small role as a retired senator in Season 5), but he exudes a kind of effortlessly sinister authority that KNOTS LANDING’s Charles Scott and FALCON CREST’s revolving door of ruthless tycoons, for all the big name castings, lack. FC’s latest big bad, a European high roller by the name of Dimitrov, is an honourable exception. He’s played by Theodore Bickel who is as charismatically menacing towards Eric Stavros as he offers him a way to pay off his gambling debts as he was to Dominique Devereaux following the Moldavian massacre. The ultimatum he gives Eric — commit murder or we'll kill your entire family (“I have seven passports. I can be in Bulgaria before the police can even identify your wife’s body”) — is the same one Jean Hackney gave Ben on last season’s KNOTS. I have to admit, I’m kind of a sucker for these reluctant assassin stories. Surprisingly, Eric’s intended target isn’t a central character like Greg Sumner (my money was on Richard Channing) but a judge we’ve never previously heard of.

And this week’s Top 3 are …

1 (2) DALLAS
2 (1) KNOTS LANDING
3 (3) FALCON CREST



Yeah, it wasn't as much of an ordeal as I remembered. And the teddy bear turning its head 360 degrees like Linda Blair in The Exorcist was kind of fun.



I really do! I dislike her far more than any other Soap Land character I've encountered this time around. It's such a shame because in the first three seasons especially, she's just great.



I don't know ... in her scenes with Melissa and Emma, it feels like Angela's stuck, repeating the same eye-rolling punchline over and over, like a character trapped in the same scene of a never-ending sitcom. But in her scenes Richard and Maggie, and to a lesser extent Lance and Dan, she's still reasonably interesting.



Aw thanks!



You should -- it's really fun!



What a good idea -- and then you could watch TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN alongside New DYNASTY — what an amazing double bill that would be!

Baby Meg is wicked cute, but if my husband gifts me a vacation to Tahiti, we gone...

 

[Stillwitty]

30 Mar 88: DYNASTY: Colorado Roulette v. 31 Mar 88: KNOTS LANDING: Mother Knows Best v. 01 Apr 88: DALLAS: Never Say Never v. 01 Apr 88: FALCON CREST: Flying Blind

The same lakeside cabin where Lute-Mae Sanders fought off her rapist on FLAMINGO ROAD and Chase watched Dr Lantry take a fatal overdose on FALCON CREST this week becomes a hideout on DYNASTY for Sean Rowan, who has snatched Adam’s baby, aka “Blake and Alexis’s precious little grandson.” Leslie is his accomplice-cum-hostage who gets on his good side by serving up a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast. “I never knew you were such a good cook,” he remarks — which is probably the nicest thing he’s ever said to her. This is one of several noteworthy breakfasts in this week’s Soap Land. On KNOTS, Mack whips up a romantic feast of blueberry pancakes for Karen which she runs out on because of a prearranged breakfast meeting with Manny Vasquez. That breakfast takes an unexpected turn when Manny kisses her. The following morning, Karen cooks breakfast for Mack in return and he jokingly accuses her of having a guilty conscience. He doesn’t know how right he is. “I enjoyed it,” she confesses to Pat, referring to Manny’s kiss. On FALCON CREST, the mere sight of Garth’s home-cooked breakfast has Maggie, undergoing alcohol withdrawal, running for the bathroom. On DALLAS, it isn’t breakfast but dinner that is the significant meal as Connie, aka “the lady with the flat tyre”, shows up at Ray’s door with groceries and offers to cook for him. Feeling lonely and abandoned in Jenna’s absence, he accepts.

When Sean overhears Leslie revealing their whereabouts over the phone, he becomes demented with anger. As the character teeters on the verge of madness so the man playing him, James Healy, reaches the edge of his acting abilities. Consequently, there’s an out-of-control quality to his performance that is quite compelling. Healy reminds me of George Lazenby, the weakest actor to play James Bond who nonetheless starred in the best Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Just as Lazenby’s limitations worked for that film (or at least didn’t impede it), Healy has proven a perfect fit for this B-movie revenge storyline. Ergo, Sean Rowan is the George Lazenby of Alexis’s husbands. (Broadly speaking, that means Blake is Sean Connery, Cecil is Roger Moore, Dex is Pierce Brosnan and New Blake is Daniel Craig.)

Sean then beats up Leslie in Soap Land’s most overt display of male-on-female violence yet. It’s brutal without being very realistic and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

The Farlows on DALLAS have been married almost as long as the Mackenzies on KNOTS and there’s a sense that both couples have been taking each other for granted of late. Last week, when Karen told Mack that Manny had been flirting with her at Lotus Point, she was disappointed by his lack of reaction and miffed by the suggestion that Manny’s attentiveness might simply have been a business tactic. Whereas Karen and Mack’s relationship insecurities result in small moments of character observation (Mack comparing Manny’s dress sense with his own) and humour ("What'd you do?" asks Pat when Karen tells her about Manny's kiss. "I shot him," she replies), Clayton and Ellie’s marital disharmony manifests itself plot-wise. Clayton’s discontent was first signified by his preoccupation with a painting. This led to the introduction of a whole new subset of characters, resulting in blackmail, accusations of an affair, a marital separation and now Clayton being arrested on a murder charge.

“The Ewing family has always banded together against trouble from the outside,” Ellie says when Clayton thanks her for standing by him following his arrest. That attitude is reflected on DYNASTY where Adam and Steven finally bond after banding together to rescue Adam’s baby. “I never thought I needed you,” Adam tells his brother. “You’ve always struggled to belong and in my own way, so have I,” Steven replies.

Towards the end of this week's DYNASTY, Steven leaves an envelope addressed to Blake in the library. We’re not privy to its contents, but from the “Goodbye, Dad” he utters to an empty room, we can make a pretty good guess. KNOTS kicks off with the discovery of another letter. “My housekeeper found a note from Olivia saying she and Harold had run off to get married,” Abby informs Manny Vasquez before ordering him to stop the wedding. There’s more letter action elsewhere in the ep as Jill drops by the airport and persuades a man on his way to Honduras to mail a letter addressed to Val once he arrives. Over on FALCON CREST, in the Swiss prison where she and Eric are being held without trial as if they were starring in a unisex version of Midnight Express, Vicky goes to even more circuitous lengths to send a letter to Maggie — of which more later.

Three of this week’s soaps include a scene where one female character visits another to discuss a man with whom they are mutually involved. “You called?” asks Fallon sarcastically after being summoned to Delta Rho by Sammy Jo. “I know I should have called first, but it was hard enough for me to come over here at all,” Jill says after surprising Val in the cul-de-sac. “If you’re looking for Clayton, he’s at the office,” says Miss Ellie after Laurel Ellis shows up at Southfork. Sammy Jo, Jill and Laurel each then offer an olive branch. “You don’t like me and I don’t like you, I wouldn’t be so dumb to suggest we’d ever become friends, but we can’t be enemies,” says Sammy Jo to Fallon. “I’m not saying that I think we could ever be friends, but I would really like to try to stop being enemies,” echoes Jill, extending her hand to Val. “It’s you I want to talk to,” Laurel explains to Miss Ellie, “to tell you the truth about Clayton and myself … Nothing ever happened between us … I’m truly sorry I’ve been responsible for any of this.” While Fallon is unconvinced by Sammy Jo’s words (“You wanted to be a Carrington so you married Steven — now you wanna be a Colby so it’s Jeff’s turn,” she replies), Val is taken in by Jill’s and agrees to a truce (“Maybe when Ben gets back, we can all go for pizza,” Jill suggests wickedly). Meanwhile, Ellie’s discussion with Laurel about Clayton mirrors one she had with Julie Grey about Jock a decade earlier. “There aren’t many women who intimidate me — you’re one of them,” Julie told her back then. These days, Ellie cuts a less imposing figure. “At my age, it’s hard to put your dreams back together once they’ve been shattered,” she tells Laurel.

Laurel’s visit to Southfork serves another narrative purpose — it brings her into the orbit of JR, who immediately propositions her and later has Harry McSween bring her to his office where he can behave like even more of a pig. “I don’t know about Clayton, but if you’d have been with me, you would have been properly and frequently bedded, my dear,” he leers. JR’s on excitingly obnoxious form this week.

Following her scene with Sammy Jo, Fallon winds up in bed with Jeff. They are enjoying a full-blown montage sex scene (the first we’ve seen since Greg and Laura’s last night together) when the doorbell goes — it’s Sammy Jo accepting Jeff’s proposal! Meanwhile, Johnny Rourke and Paige are rolling around in bed in the Mexican village of Santa Tecla when the phone rings — it’s Manny Vasquez ordering Johnny to prevent Harold and Olivia’s marriage! Later in the same episode, Paige is the one who does the interrupting when she finds Johnny in bed with Debbie, a sexy archaeologist whose interest in pre-Colombian artefacts Paige shares. Refreshingly, Paige takes Johnny’s dalliance in her stride and by the end of the ep, they’re canoodling once more.

The penultimate scene of this season’s DYNASTY includes a moment that couldn’t be soapier if it tried — Alexis is taking a bubble bath when the champagne glass she holds is shot at point blank range by her back-from-the-dead husband. “That’s for my father!” he snarls. A struggle over the gun then ensues between her third and fourth husbands as Alexis, now clad demurely in a peach bathrobe, watches in alarm. Suddenly the gun goes off! But before we can see who took the bullet, Claudia or Krystle — I mean, Dex or Sean — it’s all over. Bye-bye, everyone; see ya next season. But wait! There’s one more scene to go! Back at the mansion, Blake finds his and Krystle’s bedroom in a state of disarray. (In reality, it’s no more untidy than the average teenager’s. However, this is Soap Land.) Jeanette tells him that Krystle left the house a little while ago and he swears her to secrecy. But it’s the season’s final line — “My God, Krystle, I thought we had more time!” — that pulls the narrative rug out from under us, in the same way that Bobby Ewing’s “Good morning” and the disembodied voice asking, “You want out, Mrs Mackenzie?” did at the end of the 1985/6 season.

The ailing Dr Styles is also running out of time on DALLAS. In this episode’s penultimate scene, his daughter Kimberly brings Cliff Barnes to meet him in the hope that he will join forces with them to defeat JR. But Cliff no longer seems to care about winning. “You know what I hope?” he asks the doctor. “I hope this war between you and JR just explodes and blows the both of you all to hell and back.” He flounces off and Styles reaches for his oxygen supply. “I think we’ve lost,” he tells Kimberly. She then goes to JR and essentially begs him to spare her father’s life. “I’ll convince my daddy to back you. You can have West Star,” she promises. (Anyone else getting a vaguely Shakespearean vibe from all this?) “What about you?” JR asks. “You don’t have to marry me,” she replies. “I’ll be yours whenever you want.” “What makes you think I want you at all?” he sneers. “And as far as calling it off, I’m afraid that’s impossible … Your daddy wanted a war and he got one. There’ll be no truce. I want an unconditional surrender. I’m gonna break him and take West Star away from him.” As one Soap Land war rages on, another is declared. At the end of last week’s FALCON CREST, Richard learned, to his alarm, that the Thirteen are “plotting the economic destruction of the United States … There are going to be riots in the streets, people are going to be killing each over a slice of bread. You’ll be destroying everything this country stands for and for what?” “For us,” Rosemont replied simply. (Anyone else getting a not so vaguely Trumpian vibe from all this?) This week, Richard decides to stop them. “I will do whatever is necessary,” he vows. “Very well — so shall we,” counters Rosemont.

While Vicky Stavros is in Geneva bribing a prison orderly into mailing a letter to her mother, Paige Matheson is in Santa Tecla “making a donation to the preservation of Mexican national treasures”, i.e., bribing the local police into delaying the construction of a highway through the site of the archaeological dig. The political system in Washington proves no less corrupt as Kay Lloyd introduces Bobby to Senator O’Dell, with a view to getting the Ewing Oil name back. In his previous Soap Land incarnations, O’Dell was Titus Semple on FLAMINGO ROAD and Paul Galveston on KNOTS LANDING and appears to share their amoral streak. And like Galveston, he’s not particularly keen on discussing business matters with women, referring Kay as “a mighty pretty little thing” (at least he didn’t call her Cookie) and instructing her to leave him and Bobby to talk man-to-man. “I was mighty fond of your daddy,” he tells him. “Some of my fondest memories are of deals that he and I put together — JR too, for that matter.” (Paul Galveston wheelin’ and dealin’ with JR and Jock — now there’s an image to conjure with.) “Yes, sir, the two of them really knew the bottom line when it came to making a deal,” he continues. Whereas Galveston encouraged Gary to believe himself the equal of his Ewing brothers, O’Dell challenges Bobby to show his true Ewing mettle by forking out for “a little retirement place” — a castle in the Scottish Highlands worth $2,000,000. (This rare Soap Land reference to Scotland partially compensates for Karen describing Mack to Manny as “a smiling Irishman who makes terrific blueberry pancakes.” When he first arrived in KNOTS, Mack identified himself as Scots-Italian.)

After a full FALCON CREST hour of sleep-walking, sweats, nightmares and mood swings, Maggie Channing appears to licked her four-episode booze problem and she and Richard are happy once again. Back on KNOTS, Gary and Jill have their first argument about her drinking. “Do you think I have a problem?” she asks challengingly. “You tell me,” he replies. “You’re the one that’s been sitting around here all day drinking — alone.” This culminates in Jill holding out a glass of wine to Gary, inviting him to drink with her. (“That’s an incredibly sick stupid way of trying to get my attention.”) Jill’s gesture is mirrored by Maggie in the final scene of this week’s FC when Richard returns home to find her nursing a bottle of brandy, as yet unopened. What has happened? She’s received Vicky’s letter, that’s what. (“Eric and I are in jail in Geneva,” it reads. “I don’t know anyone but Richard who could be doing this to us.”) Bitterly, she opens the bottle, pours a drink and raises it towards Richard, just as Jill did her glass to Gary: “What we need here, Richard, is a toast — to my daughter in Switzerland.” Then she spills it on the floor.

And this week’s Top 4 are …

1 (-) DYNASTY
2 (1) KNOTS LANDING
3 (2) FALCON CREST
4 (-) DALLAS

Very minor point, but I do believe Mack was Scots-Irish/Italian. He did in fact quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, arguably the most famous non-Kennedy Irish-American, at Laura's funeral: To be Irish is to know, in the end, the world will break your heart. Sumner responded something to the effect that the Irish are only happy when they're sad. Another time, referred to Mack as "shanty Irish". Oh, and his Italian side was Sicilian - a very distinct subspecies according to my Sicilian friends...lol.

 

[Stillwitty]

14 Apr 88: KNOTS LANDING: Just Desserts v. 15 Apr 88: DALLAS: Top Gun v. 15 Apr 88: FALCON CREST: King's Gambit

Following her father’s fatal collapse at the end of last week’s DALLAS, Kimberly Cryder wastes no time in assigning blame. “You killed him, you bastard! You killed him!” she yells at JR in this week’s opening scene. Somewhat creatively, JR then shifts the responsibility to Sue Ellen. “If you’d have given me a divorce when I asked for it, that old man would be alive today,” he tells her.

Underneath her anger, the person Kimberly really blames is herself. “I feel so awful, responsible,” she admits later in the ep. “If hadn’t tried to force [JR] to marry me, then maybe …” Self-recrimination is a bit of a trend in this week's Soap Land. “This whole thing between Shulton and Lomax was entirely my fault,” Clayton tells Laurel Ellis, somewhat bizarrely, in her final scene. Meanwhile on KNOTS, characters are lining up to take the blame for Olivia’s suicide attempt. “I should have spent more time with her … All the symptoms were there and I didn’t do anything,” frets Michael. “I should have seen it coming, I should have known,” insists Karen. “She did this because of me,” concludes Abby. All this angst is nicely undercut by Manny Vasquez who dismisses Olivia as “some screwed-up little teenybopper with a hormone problem … As far as I’m concerned, anyone stupid enough to try to commit suicide should succeed.” Perhaps to discourage any screwed-up little teenyboppers watching from trying the same thing at home, when Olivia is found following her overdose there is dried vomit around her mouth and nose. There was no evidence of anything so unglamorous when Amanda Carrington or Anne Matheson or even Cliff Barnes OD’d.

Abby and Kimberly are each burdened by guilt. While the former keeps a vigil at her daughter’s bedside, Sue Ellen finds the latter praying in a Catholic church. (This is the Ewingverse’s second venture into Catholic territory this season following Meg’s baptism on KNOTS.) Both women attempt to atone by pulling out of a business venture. Abby, who has been cooking up a shady takeover scheme with Greg, changes her mind at the last minute. “It’s just not right,” she declares. “Right? What the hell has right got to do with anything?” asks Greg, baffled. Meanwhile, Kimberly chooses to withdraw from the battle for West Star just as it is about to reach its climax — until, that is, Sue Ellen persuades her otherwise. “JR’s drive to get West Star is what killed your daddy and that’s why we have to stop him,” she insists. “If we let JR win, it’ll be as if your father died for nothing.”

Just as Abby appears to have drawn a moral line in the sand on KNOTS so Richard Channing does the same thing on FALCON CREST. Having contacted the FBI at the end of last week’s ep, he now warns them about “the economic holocaust” the Thirteen are planning to unleash upon America. There’s only one problem: all evidence of his association with Rosemont — in fact, all proof of the Thirteen’s existence — has been mysteriously erased, leaving the FBI with no-one to prosecute but Richard himself.

Back on KNOTS, Jill Bennett is also wiping evidence. Having copied a key, she lets herself into Val’s house and proceeds to erase the recording of Ben’s fake phone message. How tense when Val and the kids arrive home unexpectedly and she has to make a dash for it! There’s more home invasion on DALLAS when clingy Connie steals into Ray’s house in the middle of the night, climbs the stairs to his bedroom and playfully puts a pillow over his face. He is not amused. An unusually ugly scene follows where Connie refuses to get the message and Ray has to spell it out for her: “I don’t want you, now or ever!” Even then, she gets the last word — the following morning, he finds a big red heart with both their initials painted on his front door. Like Ray, FALCON CREST's Maggie is asleep when she too is disturbed by an intruder. This time, it’s husband Richard and there is a happier outcome: he comes clean about the mess he’s in and promises to not keep any more secrets from her, and she agrees to return home with him.

With David Shulton dead, Brett Lomax behind bars and Laurel on her way back to England, it’s farewell to the artsy youngsters on DALLAS and hello to a whole new set on KNOTS as Paige joins the archaeology dig in Santa Tecla. The two guys, Chava and Joel, immediately have the hots for her (“That woman’s gonna marry me and bear my children!” "I saw her first!") while the two girls, Rebecca and Debbie, roll their eyes as soon as her back is turned. (“I wonder how long she’s gonna last?” “Till she breaks her first nail.”)

Among other things, this plot serves to show that, contrary to appearances, there’s more to Paige than just being a spoiled princess. Her interest in the dig seems genuine, she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty and, in order to keep the excavation from being closed down by the authorities (who are in the pay of Manny Vasquez), is resourceful enough to steal a piece of sculpture from the gallery where she works, smuggle it into Mexico and plant it on the site to make it look like “a genuine pre-Colombian artefact finally found in Santa Tecla.” None of which prevents her and Johnny from being caught red-handed by Chava in a really well-staged scene at the end of the ep. The handheld camera work, the fire set by Johnny to cause a distraction, the general sense of chaos and urgency all serve to turn a potential non-event (why, exactly, should we care about any of this?) into something quite exciting.

While most foreign settings in Soap Land are depicted by little more than an establishing shot and a couple of hotel ceiling fans, we’re given what looks like an entire village to represent Santa Tecla. With its array of secondary characters (the young students, a corrupt police official, a kindly professor), it feels like a soap-within-a-soap — a Mexican version of the Hot Biscuit in DALLAS or Shula, Tennessee in KNOTS, if you will.

“It’s probably gonna sound like it’s out of a movie,” Nicholas Pearce tells Sue Ellen before filling her in on his family’s Witness Protection Programme storyline. “It sounded like science fiction,” scoffs one of the FBI agents Richard is trying to convince of the Thirteen’s existence. Of course, Soap Land adapting scenarios from cinema and other literary sources is nothing new: William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams and Alfred Hitchcock have all proved recurring influences over the years. The current Ray/Connie storyline on DALLAS, as well as being a gender reversal of the familiar stalker scenario (Jeff Wainwright and Maggie Gioberti, Roger Larsen and Lucy Ewing) echoes both FATAL ATTRACTION (a hit movie only the previous year) and PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Even more blatant is the resemblance between a current plot on FALCON CREST — Dan Fixx, strapped for cash, agrees to drive a truck of highly explosive nitroglycerin across the country — and that of the 1953 movie THE WAGES OF FEAR — Yves Montand, strapped for cash, agrees to drive a truck of highly explosive nitroglycerin through the mountains. FC being FC, there’s an obligatory murder/revenge twist tacked on for good measure. On the plus side, this means a groovy explosion, and as with Paige in Santa Tecla, an opportunity for Dan’s kid sister Carly to show her moxie as she rides to his rescue, but otherwise it’s just more anonymous would-be killer filler.

Two devious faces from the past resurface unexpectedly this week. Jeremy Wendell makes a victorious return to West Star at the end of DALLAS — turns out he’s joined forces with Kimberly and Sue Ellen to stop JR getting his hands on the company. Meanwhile, Ursula Andress’s Madame Malec pops up in the back of a limousine with Eric Stavros on FALCON CREST — turns out she’s connected to the Thirteen and they have assigned her and the enjoyably unpredictable Eric to silence Richard once and for all!

And this week’s Top 3 are …

1 (2) KNOTS LANDING
2 (1) DALLAS
3 (3) FALCON CREST

Interestingly enough, this episode was written by William Devane and directed by Kevin Dobson...

 

[James from London]

I do believe Mack was Scots-Irish/Italian.

Yes, that makes sense. For some reason, it never occurred to me before that Mack could be Scottish and Irish.

 

[Stillwitty]

Yes, that makes sense. For some reason, it never occurred to me before that Mack could be Scottish and Irish.

Yeah, after doing a lot with Ancestry.com, I've found that the Irishmen have really gotten around-seems like everyone has a spot of their DNA...Which is particularly interesting since they're also noted for marrying later in life for the first time. Demographics are fun...lol

 

[Stillwitty]

I recall at the end of the episode, Mack and Karen are in bed, post-lovemaking.
Karen: "Dear Ann Landers...if the sex was any better---"
Mack (interrupting): "I'd be a dead man!"

Which kinda proved out Karen's theory of quality over quantity apparently cause she had waaay too many headaches and distractions for Mack's taste...