Re-watching the Ewingverse ... alphabetically!

[James from London]

Birds Do It, Bees Do It, but JR refuses to do it, which leads Sue Ellen to adopt a Black Market Baby

KNOTS (23 Mar 89) v DALLAS (15 Oct 78)

Birds Do It, Bees Do It, in which the eye of every character, from billionaire tycoon Greg Sumner to schoolgirl Julie Williams, is drawn to an Ann Landers survey claiming that sex goes downhill after marriage, is a special KNOTS-goes-comedy episode. But fear not: this isn't the cutesy or heavy-handed comedy of Season 12, but the kind of comedy that is airy and witty and playful and, you know, actually funny.

Granted, humour is hard to quantify. What makes Frank and Pat silently turning their newspapers at the same time in Birds Do It funnier than Val and Karen stirring and then sipping their tea in perfect unison during 'Back to the Cul-de-Sac'? It’s hard to say exactly, but I think it’s to do with a lightness of touch. The emphasis of the scene is less on the Williams’ choreographed actions (the way it is on Karen and Val’s) than it is on Julie feeling excluded by her parents and their antagonistic silence. So the scene remains based in character and truth, and the humour feels like a byproduct of that.

Likewise at the beginning of Black Market Baby, why is Jock’s nonplussed reaction to JR and Sue Ellen’s anniversary gift of a piece of abstract sculpture (“What the hell is it?” he asks blankly) so much funnier than April and Bobby’s smirky remarks about an expressionist painting in And Away We Go! during Season 11? Again, I think it’s a question of emphasis. We’re not necessarily being asked to share Jock’s opinion of the art (as we are Bobby and April’s) because the humour is really about JR and Sue Ellen’s discomfort at having failed to impress their patriarch. As such, it’s not just a gag for its own sake — it’s a symptom of a much larger, more complex problem.

As Ewingverse episodes go, Birds Do It and BMB could not be more different, yet both feature one half of a married couple trying to seduce the other, and failing miserably until the end of the episode. On KNOTS, Mack is anxious to prove that he and Karen are not part of the 82% of the populace for whom sex has gone downhill and so makes a series of attempts to woo her. But each time, Karen is so preoccupied with her latest disaster (Abby’s appointment to the coastal commission, Murakame’s plan to drill for oil on Lotus Point) that she doesn’t even notice she’s being wooed. Conversely, Sue Ellen’s blatant attempt to get JR into bed during the first act of Black Market Baby is such a turnoff (“Maybe the Ewin' man I married isn’t all the man he claims to be,” she slurs) that he drives off into the night, leaving Ray Krebbs to take advantage of his drunk and rejected wife. While Mack and Karen’s situation is light and amusing in a screwball comedy sort of way, both of JR and Sue Ellen’s bedroom scenes in BMB feel like a Texas version of 'Scenes from a Marriage' — they just drip with atmosphere. The fact that the Southfork interiors in this ep are filmed in a real house is a big help in that regard. You really get the sense of the couple living inside a pressure cooker, hemmed in by the rest of the family, their attempts at keeping up appearances in front of Mama and Daddy becoming increasingly strained, especially when compared to Bobby and Pam’s effortlessly radiant happiness (when they’re not squabbling over Pam’s decision to go back to work).

KNOTS ends with Karen and Mack lying in bed, having finally done the deed, in a state of blissed-out catatonia. “‘Dear Ann Landers,’” Karen murmurs, “‘if sex was any better —‘“ “I’d be a dead man,” Mack gasps. DALLAS likewise concludes with JR and Sue Ellen having managed to get it together between the sheets — but only after a confused, angry, passionate, borderline violent struggle (“Is that what you want: somebody who doesn’t want you? I don’t want you! I don’t want you!” Sue Ellen moans eagerly) that leaves her unable to look him in the eye. As the frame freezes on Sue Ellen’s inscrutable expression, it becomes evident that, after only ten instalments, DALLAS is already starting to outgrow its stand-alone episode format.

Similarly, although Birds Do It is a unique episode of KNOTS, as underlined by the bespoke score that also plays over the end credits, it’s more than just a self-contained diversion. In its light and witty way, it cleverly sets up some key plot points that will take the rest of the season into much darker territory — Abby revealing to Ted Melcher that she is really Murakame and Paige inveigling herself into the pink apartment that belongs to the Sumner Group. (Ah, how do I love Vincent Schiavelli’s two-scene cameo as the dog-carrying property manager? Let me count the ways.)

And the winner is ... Black Market Baby

BONUS BEATS

 

[James from London]

Blast from the Past (DALLAS, 16 May 86) v Blind Side (KNOTS, 20 Sep 90)

Blast from the Past mostly consists of characters smiling and telling each other how happy they are. The few moments of intrigue and pathos stem from an on-the-lam Angelica plotting JR’s demise in a variety of ridiculous outfits, Ben Stivers acting all mysterious in front of Miss Ellie and Mark Graison wondering how much longer his remission will last (about twenty screen minutes as it turns out). His and Pam’s wedding is pleasant enough but nowhere near as enjoyable as Pam and Bobby’s will be in nine episodes time when everyone’s back to giving each other filthy looks. It’s not that I necessarily begrudge the DALLAS gang a bit of happiness, but the happiness we see in this ep (save for Pam and Mark’s) lacks nuance, subtext or wit. It’s the kind of generic TV happiness where everyone says exactly what they’re thinking and feeling, and occasionally someone makes a corny joke. Still, the final few minutes — Angelica being led away by the police (“It’s too late, JR, it’s too late!”), a couple of bombs going off and Pam waking up to Bobby’s morning resurrection — make the whole thing worthwhile.

Blind Side Paige is kind of Blast from the Past Pam in reverse. Whereas everyone looks on with dewy-eyed affection as Pam marries Mark, Paige's work colleagues bombard her with unwanted commiserations following the wedding that didn't happen. Her deadpan response is just great. (“No wonder he left her at the altar,” mutters Mort under his breath.) Whereas Pam assures Mark serenely that however long he has left, they’ll live each day to the fullest, Paige is taken aback when Greg tells her the rumours are true, that he too is dying. She agrees to join him on a six-month cruise but then abruptly changes her mind when she discovers it was he who sabotaged her and Tom’s wedding: “This is perverse ... Am I supposed to be flattered that you went to so much trouble?”

While Angelica points a gun at JR in DALLAS, Tom Ryan keeps one trained on Greg in KNOTS. Angelica wants $2,000,000 while Tom is after written confirmation that the trumped-up charges against him have been dropped. “What does that gun weigh? Doesn’t your arm get tired holding it up?” Greg asks him. But it’s Danny Waleska wielding a baseball bat in the Barn of Death that you really wanna watch out for.

And the winner is ... Blind Side

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

The Block Party (KNOTS, 30 Dec 82) v Blocked (DALLAS, 20 Nov 81)

In these two episodes, Karen and JR are, in very different ways, each attempting to turn the clock back to a more rose-tinted, harmonious time. “Kind of hard to recognise the neighbourhood,” Karen remarks on KNOTS. “That’s why I wanted to give this block party … for us to all get together as a community, a neighbourhood.” “When you get home, John Ross’ll be here and we’ll all be one big happy family again,” JR assures Jock when he calls from South America, as he explains his scheme for pressuring the Farlows into evicting Sue Ellen and John Ross from the Southern Cross.

Block Party has a similar vibe to the first Barbecue on DALLAS, with all the cul-de-sac residents involved in setting up the party and the arrival of a significant character’s father. Then it was Digger Barnes, now it’s Pete Mackenzie. He and Mack are so utterly convincing as father and son you don’t even notice how good they are. Theirs is a fascinatingly uneasy relationship — for all the joshing and backslapping, there’s an underlying tension which means you’re just waiting for it all to turn sour.

“I used to knock you around,” Pete admits after a few drinks. “Big deal, didn’t hurt that much,” shrugs Mack. There’s a direct line between Mack's reply and the moment eight years later where he tells Jason Lochner, “It’s hard for me to say out loud that he abused me and it was wrong, and he was wrong.” Mack is touched that his father wants to make up for the past, but it turns out he has an ulterior motive. Like Miss Ellie’s long lost brother Garrison in Home Again (DALLAS Season 1), Pete is terminally ill. More pertinently, he wants Mack to help him die. Mack is hurt and reacts angrily.

It’s only been three weeks since The Best Kept Secret (aka The One Where Karen Finds Out Mack’s Been Sleeping With The Woman Down The Hall) and this ep seems partially designed to show Mack (who is, of course, being groomed as St Sid’s replacement) in a more sympathetic, vulnerable light.

Just as the focus in The Block Party is on the future Sid, it becomes apparent during Blocked that JR’s real adversary at the Southern Cross isn’t Sue Ellen or even Dusty, but the future Jock. It’s still early days for Clayton — he and Ellie won’t be on first name terms for another year — but when he and JR come face to face at the end of the episode, he cuts an impressive figure. He remains calm and unruffled by JR’s threats and ultimatums, and he gets the last word: “By the time your Daddy gets back from South America, there just might not be a Ewing Oil.”

Cool and collected Clayton is everything in the final scene of Blocked that Mack isn’t during the final scene of The Block Party where he and Pete have a messy, emotional reconciliation and end up doing a jig together. We don’t hear what happens to Pete after this ep, just as we didn’t Garrison after Home Again, and KNOTS won’t return to the subject of euthanasia until Alex Barth shows up to blackmail Claudia Whittaker in Season 12.

The Ewingverse’s two songbirds, Cathy and Afton, sing two songs apiece in these eps. While Chip urges Ciji to sign 25% of her earnings over to him, JR tries to strong-arm Afton into sleeping with Vaughn Leland, and both seem powerless to resist.

Elsewhere on DALLAS, Bobby is worried that Pam is headed for “a full-blown psychotic depression” and tells Miss Ellie that adoption might the only solution. Mama is a lot more circumspect about the subject here than she was in Black Market Baby. “If a child can help your marriage, you do what you have to,” she recklessly advised Sue Ellen back then. “Do you think that Pam’s well enough to care for a baby?” she asks Bobby more warily now.

And the winner is ... The Block Party

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Blow Up (DALLAS, 06 Apr 84) v The Blushing Bride (KNOTS, 11 Feb 88)

Blow Up has an interesting mixture of styles. A lot of it is really funny. You’ve got JR on high, manipulating the likes of Sue Ellen, Peter and, through Vaughn Leland, Cliff, until they’re all a bunch of twitching nervous wrecks, while also turning Lucy into a human time bomb who explodes drunkenly at Lady Jessica’s party at Southfork. Meanwhile, Pam is engaged to a man who doesn’t know he’s dying, but she does, which is a plot straight out of a three-hankie women’s picture from the 1940s or ‘50s. And then there’s Lady Jessica herself, who has wandered in from a schlocky horror flick and is shown caressing carving knives and defacing polaroid photos from a variety of creepy camera angles. Somehow it all slots together perfectly — the moment where Sad Pam tells Cartoony Cliff to stay away from Mark is particularly lovely — and it all looks gorgeous.

The Blushing Bride has lots of different plots going on, but feels tonally more consistent. Determined not to let Gary have any legal claim to the twins, Val insists he’s not their father, which puts Karen and Mack right in the middle of things because they know he is. The history of all four characters’ relationships with each other is in play and it all feels very emotional and serious. The same sense of gravity is applied to the Mackenzies’ mysterious new neighbours, Frank and Pat. Karen’s nosiness about them could easily be played for comedy, but the show is eager to impress upon us how much the Williamses have at stake. (However, this is slightly undermined by the geography of the cul-de-sac where, all of a sudden, it seems as if Karen can see into the Williams’ house from her kitchen and bedroom windows, which doesn’t really make sense.)

Just as Mack rolls his eyes at Karen’s suspicions about Frank and Pat, Ray does the same at Donna’s regarding Lady Jessica, but by the end of their respective eps, Mack has come round to his wife’s way of thinking and we know Donna is bang on the money about Lady J.

Like Mark Graison, Abby Ewing is engaged to someone who’s keeping A Big Secret. But whereas Mark remains blissfully ignorant, Abby smells a rat when she learns that Charles has had designs on her marina, so to speak, since before he came back into her life. In the same way that Blow Up begins with Pam trying to talk Mark into a fast wedding (lest he finds out he’s dying before the big day), The Blushing Bride ends with Abby just as eager to tie the knot. “The sooner the better — I don’t want Charles to get away,” she says ominously.

The architect who inadvertently lets Charles’s cat out of the bag isn’t given a name, but is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott who must qualify as minor soap royalty: she was long-suffering Maggie Evans in DARK SHADOWS, Cecil Colby’s English secretary Jennifer in the first season of DYNASTY (her plummy pronunciation of “peanit butter” is a particular highlight) and the loud American tourist (and secret West Star agent) who befriends Cally during her and JR’s European honeymoon on DALLAS.

Paige doesn’t appear until the final third of KNOTS and brings a more playful element to the ep as she flirts with Johnny Rourke in order to make Greg jealous. Johnny and JR share a distaste for May/December romances — at least those involving women they covet for themselves. “What kind of a woman does she think you are?” JR asks Sue Ellen following Lucy’s hilarious outburst. “Peter’s just a kid. He’s half your age. The things she said about you and him absolutely disgusted me.” “That’s your boyfriend?!” sneers Johnny when he sees Paige looking at Greg across the Lotus Point dance floor. “The man is old enough to be your father. Perhaps you like the paternal type.”

And the winner is ... Blow Up

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Daniel Avery]

To say that Karen (and the rest of the residents of 16972) can easily overhear the fights/problems next door at 16975 (AKA the Williamses) would mean that they also overheard the numerous arguments and disagreements of the Averys when they lived in that house. Spoiler alert: they didn't. I recall being irked by that plot point in the episode at the time.

 

[James from London]

Borderline (KNOTS, 03 Nov 88) v Bottom of the Bottle (KNOTS, 20/27 Mar 80)

In both episodes, Val is the truth-teller no-one believes (at least, not at first). While everyone else in Bottom of the Bottle assumes Gary has just had one drink too many, she alone knows he’s an out of control alcoholic. While everyone else in Borderline believes Val herself has attempted suicide, she alone knows that Jill is an out of control psychopath who tried to kill her. She eventually manages to persuade the Fairgates and the Averys round to her way of thinking in 1980 (Sid’s reaction is the most moving, Richard’s the funniest) but has a tougher job in '88 where only Frank and Pat are willing to even entertain her story.

In Bottle, Val keeps an all-night vigil by the phone waiting for news of Gary after he disappears on a three-day bender. In Borderline, Karen is the one not sleeping as she waits in her office at Lotus Point for Mack to call with news of Michael and Paige who have been kidnapped by Manny Vasquez in Mexico. While Karen sits with Val, Abby (of all people) waits with Karen. During a rare (and fascinating) moment of introspection, Abby admits that she “understands the mentality” of men like Manny. “You’re not a gangster,” Karen assures her before adding, “maybe a gangsterette.” Karen likewise reassures Val when she worries that she may not have the strength to deal with Gary’s relapse, calling her “the little engine that could.”

Another unexpected parallel between the two eps — in Part 2 of Bottle, Laura does a Jill. She stops short of putting on a wig and rubber gloves but nevertheless makes it appear that the injuries Gary sustained while breaking into her liquor cabinet were from a suicide attempt. Gary subsequently ends up an inmate on a psych ward, desperately trying to convince Val there’s nothing wrong with him. In Borderline, their roles are reversed.

In the hospital, Gary is befriended by Kahil, a basketball-playing alcoholic whose clothes he steals when he makes his escape. Val’s roommate is Sheila, who keeps her makeup with her at all times so Val doesn’t have a chance to steal it. Kahil and Sheila are played by the equally alliterative Happy Hairston and Billie Burke.

As KNOTS’ first two-parter, Bottom of the Bottle has the same higher-stakes-than-usual vibe as those SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN/BIONIC WOMAN crossover episodes in the 70s. Wildly out of control moments like Gary swinging a pool cue during a bar fight or Ginger smashing Kenny’s groovy stereo equipment feel like the suburban equivalents of Jaime Sommers rejecting her bionics. And Gary furiously driving over his neighbours’ trash cans foreshadows Billy Corkhill furiously driving over his neighbours’ lawns in BROOKSIDE.

After he drives off, Val tells Sid not to go after him this time. For once, she’s letting him go. She explains that she’s going to an AA meeting on her own because “I need some answers for me.” Of course, Gary shows up at the meeting at the eleventh hour and it becomes all about him again. But what if he hadn’t? Perhaps Val would have continued to put her own well-being first and wouldn’t have ended up as the high maintenance neurotic Jill felt so compelled to terrorise. But what would the fun have been in that?

And the winner is ... Bottom of the Bottle

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Bouncing Babies (KNOTS, 25 Feb 88) v Boxed In (DALLAS, 15 Sep 14)

In C21st parlance, Bouncing Babies is a game-changing episode of KNOTS. Its main focus is on Val and Greg, each of whom eventually overcomes their own self-interest to make an irrevocable decision for the sake of their kids. For Val, that means legally acknowledging Gary as the twins’ father. For Greg, it means giving Meg to the Mackenzies to raise on a permanent basis. The two storylines complement each other neatly.

Boxed In is very different. It’s all action, with little time for introspection or soul-searching. Whereas Bouncing Babies focuses on existing conflicts between the main characters, Boxed In places the Ewings and the Rylands in a wider context, pitting them against a common enemy in another country. The KNOTS episode Boxed In most closely resembles is Borderline — two principal characters (Paige and Michael then, Ann and Emma now) are held captive in Mexico by gangsters who threaten to kill them unless their families ensure drugs are transported across the border on their behalf.

The stakes feel even higher on Boxed In than they did on Borderline. There’s a whole layer of artifice missing. When Karen sat by the phone all night waiting anxiously for news of her loved ones, she still managed to look glamorous, When Judith Ryland does the same thing, she looks utterly demented with fear. It’s quite a performance. The moment where she, Harris and Ann are tricked into believing Emma has just been executed is especially harrowing. Whereas Paige was able to deliver sarcastic quips in captivity, Emma is far too terrified to come up with any clever one-liners — not after glimpsing a truck full of corpses in the backyard. This is very much the Ewingverse in a post-24 world. You also get a much stronger sense of the bigger picture than you used to during international storylines in ‘80s DALLAS — whenever JR financed an overseas revolution, it felt like an abstract notion with all the violence and bloodshed occurring off-screen in some unspecified location. Here, we are shown news footage of riots and civil unrest in Mexico City which is directly linked to the bad guys’ deal with the Ewings.

Like Mack Mackenzie in Borderline, Bobby Ewing is the would-be rescuer wading into enemy territory to find his family, but there is none of the action man heroics he used to exhibit on Old DALLAS whenever the script required it. Instead, the ep ends with his anguished expression after he is given a Sophie’s Choice by the kidnappers. He can bring only one hostage home — Ann or Emma?

And the winner is ... Bouncing Babies

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Willie Oleson]

He can bring only one hostage home — Ann or Emma?

Spoiler:

 

[James from London]

A Brand New Day (KNOTS, 30 Sep 82) v Breach of Faith (KNOTS, 08 Jan 81)

Two episodes about adulterous shenanigans, both involving Gary and Abby. In Breach of Faith, he starts an affair with Judy Trent while she continues one with Richard Avery. In A Brand New Day, they’re with each other.

What stands out the most in Breach of Faith is what dutiful wives Laura and Val are. Even with Richard and Abby more or less making out in front of the entire neighbourhood, Laura just puts up and shuts up. Likewise, Val seems to suspect something’s going on with Gary and Judy from the beginning, but rather than confront him, her instinct is to cling to and dote on him — even making him breakfast in bed after he’s been out all night. It's as if their primary function is to be a devoted wife and their ability to deny and/or forgive their husbands’ transgressions is what defines their worth. Maybe that’s part of what gave KNOTS such a strong foundation — each of the wives, save Karen, is as dysfunctionally loyal to her husband as the Ewing brothers were to Jock on DALLAS. And maybe that’s why the first shot of A Brand New Day (the opening ep of Season 4) — a grimly determined Val running alone along the beach before heading up to her single motel room — feels weirdly poignant and liberating at the same time. It’s ambiguous — by staying away from the cul-de-sac, is Val asserting her independence or avoiding reality? Or both?

Things have changed back at Seaview Circle too. Instead of everyone keeping up appearances and pretending not to notice what's going on underneath their noses the way they did in Breach of Faith, societal norms have all but broken down — Gary is openly conducting an affair with the woman across the street while continuing to live under the same roof as his mother-in-law with whom he is barely on speaking terms (an estrangement which will continue for the next three seasons).

If Laura and Val are reluctant to confront their errant husbands, Karen isn’t. In Breach of Faith, she tells Richard he's making a complete ass of himself and then in Brand New Day, she fires Gary from Knots Landing Motors (the start of another long-lasting estrangement). Both confrontations are enjoyably ugly.

Remarkably, Gary and Richard are not the only cheating husbands in Breach of Faith. Kenny is shacked up with Sylvie. She and Judy Trent are pretty similar: needy, demanding and totally unconcerned with the timid little wife left at home. Whereas Sylvie is mischievous and little girly, deep-voiced Judy is drama with a capital D.

The most melodramatic scene of both episodes involves a husband who has no right to be jealous but is. In Breach, Kenny turns up at Ginger’s in the early hours after seeing her on a date with boring Carl. In Brand, Gary turns up at likeable Rusty’s place late at night after hearing that Val is staying there. “You are my wife!!” shouts Kenny/Gary angrily. While Ginger slaps Kenny across the face, Gary and Rusty trade cartoon punches. For both wives, this is the last straw. While Ginger tells Kenny to leave his keys on the table and never come back, Val returns to the cul-de-sac, ditches Miss Ellie’s furniture and tells Gary to take a hike.

Each episode ends with Gary getting in deeper — in '81, he agrees to keep seeing Judy; eighteen months later, he's snogging Abby's face off after being evicted by Val.

And the winner is ... A Brand New Day

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Willie Oleson]

Even with Richard and Abby more or less making out in front of the entire neighbourhood

So good, so dirty.

deep-voiced Judy is drama with a capital D

Not to start an argument or anything but I think she deserved that bonus beat.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Jane Elliot (Judy) will always be one of my favorite soap actresses, having become a household name playing spoiled rich-bitch Tracy Quartermaine on General Hospital. She also played split-personality patient Carrie Todd Marler on Guiding Light before getting her gig on Knots Landing. It's a shame they wrote Judy Trent as such a depressing, clingy dishrag because there was no hope for Elliot to continue on the series with such an unlikeable character. She's like that Debbie Downer character from Saturday Night Live.

 

[James from London]

Breakup (KNOTS, 09 Apr 87) v The Briar Patch (KNOTS, 15 Dec 88)

There’s a scene in Breakup where Karen is trying to untangle some wool that could serve as a metaphor for the entire series. Things are especially knotty in these two episodes where nearly everyone is tied up in lies, lies and more lies. For instance, Gary is the only character in Breakup who knows that Peter and Jill are brother and sister, but because he believes Sylvia and Peter were mother and son, he also assumes Jill must be Sylvia's daughter and insists on accompanying her to her mother's funeral. (I don't think Sylvia and Jill ever even met.) At the funeral, Greg, who's pretending to believe Peter's lie that he's his half-brother, doesn't know Peter and Jill are brother and sister and asks Peter why Jill is there. So Peter has to come up with yet another lie. Meanwhile, Peter is secretly seeing Abby, Paige and Olivia at the same time and lying to all of them.

Olivia is carrying a letter from Sylvia which would prove that Peter has been lying all along about being her son, but she doesn't know what to do with it. Olivia's a totally empty-headed nitwit at this point, but in a way that’s useful to the plot. When she takes centre stage, such as during her drug storyline, her histrionics can be grating, but here she’s more like an emotional pinball, ricocheting from one storyline twist to another, and it's really fun to watch.

Elsewhere in Breakup, the Mackenzies are trying to figure out whether Anne (never more feline) is lying or if her overdose was a genuine suicide bid. In The Briar Patch, Val is busy trying to prove that her overdose wasn’t a suicide bid, but a genuine murder attempt by Jill. This leads to a whole other web of lies as Jill 'admits' to Gary that she was in bed with another man at the time Val was attacked.

Having recently watched a double bill of Breach of Faith and A Brand New Day, both of which dealt with Gary’s infidelities, it’s really interesting to watch his reaction when he’s the one that’s been cheated on. “It was just a single indiscretion which, God knows, I, Gary Ewing, have been guilty of on more than one occasion in my life …” he concedes sarcastically. His bitterly jaundiced attitude throughout the ep is very funny. (“It’s too early in the day to feel this tired. It’s too early in life,” he sighs wearily.) The real irony, of course, is that Jill hasn’t cheated on him at all, but is trying to convince him she has, even as it's costing her the very relationship she has gone to such extraordinary lengths to preserve. Meanwhile, Val is intent on proving that Jill has remained faithful to Gary. Even poor old patsy David Lamb gets roped in — when Val asks if he really spent the night with Jill and he denies it, he thinks he’s lying, but he’s actually telling the truth.

I've always liked the bit in Breakup where Mack puts Anne in her place by giving Karen the hot dog sausages and making his “I love how quiet it is on a cul-de-sac” speech. Probably because I'm watching it out of context, it now seems a bit precious, as does Karen’s misty-eyed response. Karen's attempts to go for another misty-eyed moment in The Briar Patch, following the sale of Lotus Point, are undermined, first by Gary and Abby rolling their eyes cynically at each other, and then by Abby’s secret glee at defrauding her partners. Yes, this is the episode where Nice Abby is replaced by the return of Wicked, Wicked Abby who's actually more like Vicious, Vicious Abby. Abby on the warpath, as she is over Peter and Olivia's relationship in Breakup, is exciting, but Abby having a ball scheming under everyone’s noses, as she does as she plants drugs in Harold's locker and introduces the Murakame storyline in The Briar Patch, is even better.

And the winner is ... The Briar Patch

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Willie Oleson]

when Val asks if he really spent the night with Jill and he denies it, he thinks he’s lying, but he’s actually telling the truth.

Very knotty indeed!

 

[James from London]

Brothers and Mothers (KNOTS, 06 Nov 86) v Brothers and Sisters (DALLAS, 25 Feb 83)

The eponymous brother/mother relationships on KNOTS are between Karen Mackenzie and Michael Fairgate, and Peter Hollister and Sylvia Lean, with a little brother on brother action thrown in for good measure — Eric finding Michael canoodling with Paige results in their very first fist-fight that leaves the Mackenzie living room in shreds and both boys crying in a heap. As with many things to do with Eric and Michael, it’s a bit strange and a tad embarrassing but ultimately very touching and endearing. Neither son lets on to Karen what the fight was about which neatly taps into her ongoing sense of feeling like an outsider in her own home, a consequence of her recent kidnapping by Phil Harbert (who this week wins the award for the Ewingverse’s most sparsely attended funeral ever, with only Greg and Mack showing up to pay their [dis]respects).

More exciting than the Fairgate/Mackenzie stuff is Peter alternately gaslighting and poisoning fake mom Sylvia — making her believe she keeps forgetting to take her heart medication then causing her to overdose as a result. His resultant crisis of conscience, all flop sweat and wild-eyed staring at his own reflection, is almost as thrilling as his wicked scheme. And then Sylvia disappears!

Brothers and Sisters is the DALLAS episode in which Clayton sells the Southern Cross Ranch, a milestone which is treated quite casually. At this point, the writers don’t really care about Clayton’s family history — they’re mainly concerned with establishing him as a viable suitor for Miss Ellie and having him relocate to Dallas is simply the next step. But this unthinking act will have major ramifications for years to come, serving as fuel for Jessica’s murderous resentment the following season and Clayton’s own feelings of discontent when he moves into his Laurel Ellis phase in five years time.

This season of DALLAS, which covers JR and Bobby’s yearlong fight for Ewing Oil, is undoubtedly one that repays repeated viewings. Only with hindsight can one can fully appreciate how skilfully all the story elements fit together and are then paid off. Attempting to follow all the business-related twists and turns the first time around, however, often felt a little baffling. Likewise, dropping in on this episode out of sequence, where JR, Walt Driscoll and Holly Harwood are already knee-deep in a complicated plot about oil that’s being made to look like it’s being shipped to Puerto Rico when it's really on its way to Cuba — is pretty hard to keep track of, but on a basic soapy level, still feels quite exciting.

As if to offset the complexity of the business plots, the characters mostly relate to each other in big broad strokes and none more broadly than Katherine Wentworth (presumably the sister to whom the episode title refers) whose eyes flash evilly and brain schemes visibly even as she flashes Pam her brightest smile.

And the winner is ... Brothers and Mothers

BONUS BEATS:

 

[J. R.'s Piece]

As KNOTS’ first two-parter, Bottom of the Bottle has the same higher-stakes-than-usual vibe as those SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN/BIONIC WOMAN crossover episodes in the 70s. Wildly out of control moments like Gary swinging a pool cue during a bar fight or Ginger smashing Kenny’s groovy stereo equipment feel like the suburban equivalents of Jaime Sommers rejecting her bionics.

Yeah. Like on the three episodes (The Return of Bigfoot 1, Kill Oscar 1+2), where there is a credit to say that the adventure continues on the other show. Except if you are watching the syndicated versions, where it isn’t present on the Kill Oscar ones. And titles and guest credits are altered on Kill Oscar part 2, so that Lee Majors looks like a guest star on his own show. And a further version of it removes his guest credit too, so he isn’t credited at all. It is that big. And Lee Majors is weirdly credited as star and special guest star on what is really an episode of The Bionic Woman, which then fails to credit Lindsay Wagner at all. But higher stakes than usual, yes. They even talk about Gary’s ordeal on the next two-part episode of Dallas.

 

[valkaren]

I love these James. I always remember your early threads covering Season 10, 11, 12 of Knots. Plus the amazing thread the A to Z of Knots Landing (or was it B to Z?), so I'm happy to see you keeping the tradition alive!

I wonder how much impact the episodes will continue to have you on watching them out of order. I always imagine Knots to be far more disorientating watching them out of order, not just because of the plots, but because some of the subtleties of the character beats / evolution may get lost if you just drop in on them as opposed to the other shows, plus particularly as the series shifted significantly in tone across the years. I never saw Dallas, but I always imagined it to be a far more satisfying episodic show then Knots where you instinctively know the key players and their positions without much need for the specific delicacies. But, having not seen Dallas, what do I know!

 

[James from London]

I love these James. I always remember your early threads covering Season 10, 11, 12 of Knots. Plus the amazing thread the A to Z of Knots Landing (or was it B to Z?), so I'm happy to see you keeping the tradition alive!

Gosh, what a good memory you have! Lovely to "see" you after so long!

I always imagine Knots to be far more disorientating watching them out of order, not just because of the plots, but because some of the subtleties of the character beats / evolution may get lost if you just drop in on them as opposed to the other shows, plus particularly as the series shifted significantly in tone across the years.

Well, in a way, being less caught up in the plot and what's gonna happen next gives you more of a chance to observe the characters and those little subtleties.

 

[James from London]

The Buck Stops Here (DALLAS, 02 Dec 83) v The Burden of Proof (KNOTS, 03 Mar 83)

There are a few themes linking these two episodes. The first is “Former Ewing Wives Acting Strangely”. In the case of DALLAS, that means Pam behaving moodily towards boyfriend Mark and ex-husband Bobby while being openly jealous of Bobby’s old-new girlfriend Jenna. Even the saintly Mark finally runs out of patience. “When is it time for you to give?” he snaps at her before driving off. Paradoxically, Pam’s somewhat childish behaviour makes her seem more like a relatable, recently divorced real-life adult and less like a gorgeous plot device as she often has in the past. KNOTS, meanwhile, has Val confessing to a murder her ex-husband has already been arrested for. She insists that she caused the head injury that killed Ciji, yet cannot explain how Ciji’s body subsequently ended up in the ocean.

The reason for Pam and Val’s behaviour, it is suggested by other characters, is that they are each still in love with their ex. Mark reckons Pam is “still emotionally tied to Bobby” while Abby sees Val’s confession as a desperate attempt to win Gary back: “She’s never given up hope of that.”

“This is so Val I could scream,” Abby mutters. “Jenna Wade has always bothered me,” Pam snaps.

In each case, a female relative acts as an advocate: Katherine, allegedly on behalf of her sister, offers to set Jenna up with a swanky new job in Houston if she breaks things off with Bobby; Lilimae, worried sick about her daughter, publicly accuses Abby of committing the very crime Val has confessed to.

Whereas Jenna casually refuses Katherine’s money, Abby has to suppress her glee as a disinterested Gary signs over control of his fortune from the other side of the glass in the prison visitor’s room. (There’s a parallel between this scene and the one on the previous season’s DALLAS when a similarly despondent Ray handed over his Ewing Oil voting shares to JR through the bars of a jail cell.)

The second common theme is “Older Women Trying to Disentangle Themselves From the Younger Men They’ve Become (Sort Of) Romantically Involved With.” While Lilimae finally telling Chip to pack his bags (“This all started with you”) is satisfying and sad at the same time, the three DALLAS scenes that deal with Sue Ellen’s non-relationship with Peter Richards are very interesting. An argument between her and JR contains some fun lines (“What’d you do, Sue Ellen, pick up a case of whooping cough from your teenage lover?”), but the animosity between them is real — this is one very unhappy marriage. Despite her insistence that they have no future together, Peter can’t let go of his obsession with Sue Ellen. The poor sod looks genuinely exhausted — the way one does when one is entirely at the mercy of one’s own emotions. I’m struck by the dissonance between these scenes and the way the storyline had been originally publicised in the press. As I recall, this was the first time an upcoming DALLAS guest appearance had been so aggressively hyped, complete with photos of Christopher Atkins pouting sleazily, his arms draped around Sue Ellen and Pam, amidst rumours that his character was set to seduce them both.

These salacious hints of a “toyboy lover” scenario with its Joan Collins overtones bear no resemblance to the confused, tentative romance we were eventually presented with. No wonder we were confused — and still are. Even now, people seem to blur this actual storyline with the one they were expecting: complaints that Atkins was miscast as a stud when that wasn’t what he was playing any more than Sue Ellen is supposed to be a man-eating cougar.

The third common theme: “Private Scenes Between Characters Played Out in a Public Arena.” In DALLAS, this means the Good Ol’ Boy Charity Rodeo, where Pam and Bobby dance under the watchful gaze of Mark and Jenna before Jenna stakes her claim by landing a smacker on Bobby's mouth in full view of the crowd. (This is the only time the charity rodeo ever appears on screen yet we’re told it’s an annual event and that Pam and Bobby have been regular attendees. Moreover, Ray and Mark both competed the previous year — even though that was before Mark’s first onscreen appearance, which is when he met Pam for the first time. Hmm, kind of feels like there are alternative timelines emerging in the Ewingverse already — maybe the one in which Mark competed against Ray is also the one where he hung out with Angelica Nero in Paris in the mid-70s.)

The private is made public on KNOTS too where everything happens in front of the eyes of the law: Lilimae’s yelling match with Abby in the lobby of the police station, Abby laughing uncontrollably when she hears Val has confessed and then blurting out the wrong thing in front of Detective Baines, and nuttiest of all, Val and Gary running into one another in Ciji’s apartment while each is separately in police custody. Upon seeing each other, they both start screaming and shouting and going crazy and have to be restrained. It’s just NUTS. While the DALLAS gang are mostly acting like recognisable human beings for once, the KNOTS lot are completely out of control.

The character behaving the most calmly amidst the chaos on KNOTS is Richard — but that’s only because he’s already planned his escape route. His lonely drive out of Seaview Circle, pausing to put a family photograph in his bag, mirrors Laura’s out of Greg’s ranch, Mack’s at the end of Back to the Cul-de-sac Part 1 and Heather Haversham’s out of Brookside Close. This is the “actor’s own” photo of Richard I mentioned on the Versus thread:

View attachment 21093

Both episodes end on a delicate, piano-scored point of no return: Richard leaving the cul-de-sac never to return and Mark carrying Pam upstairs to bed for the first time.

(This episode of KNOTS is also the one where Abby has her one-sided phone conversation with Miss Ellie. To head off any possibility of a crossover appearance, she adopts the same tactic Pam and Bobby did with Gary regarding Lucy’s disappearance the previous year — she plays down the seriousness of the situation and suggests Mama’s presence on KNOTS might even be counterproductive.)

And the winner is ... Burden of Proof

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Julia's Gun]

I think Burden of Proof is the best episode from Season 4 - I forgot that all those memorable scenes were in this one episode.

With Season 4, the climax/cliffhanger had already happened with Ciji's death. The final few episodes dealt with everyone's Knutty reactions to this, and the emotional intensity of it all was pure Knots gold. Strangely, the finale 'Willing Victims' was more of a muted wind-down to end off the season. Most of the drama had already happened, and you knew people's lives would never be quite the same again.

 

[James from London]

Business with Pleasure (KNOTS, 07 Nov 91) v Buying Time (KNOTS, 04 Oct 84)

Of these two episodes, Buying Time has the enormous advantage of not featuring Benny Appleman at his most insufferable — using his dialogue as a vehicle to demonstrate his array of “funny” voices, “hilariously” deploying the handle of his vacuum cleaner as a pretend microphone as he bellows along with Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ (at least I think it’s Barrett Strong's version — it’s impossible to be sure thanks to Benny drowning him out). Most nauseating of all is when he hugs Anne and pulls a sad face behind her back indicating that he has Feelings For Her and that this is some 'Tears of a Clown' crap we’re meant to care about.

Everything else in the episode is genius by comparison: Kate and Professor Joseph’s first kiss (sweet), Greg and Paige going head to head over Tidal Energy (kinda sexy) and Greg’s detective getting bumped off by Brian Johnston in what looks suspiciously like the house Terry Hartford inherited from Michael Ranson who inherited it from Jacqueline Perrault on FALCON CREST (i.e., the one where Maggie fell down the stairs).

Karen spends most of Business with Pleasure nursing Claudia following her overdose, while trying to figure out the mystery of the name Rosa (an allusion, perhaps, to the mystery of the name Rosebud in Citizen Kane, only Rosa turns out to be a nurse, not a s*****). In Buying Time, the opener of Season 6, Karen herself is the patient having been shot at the Belmar Hotel.

After such a thrilling, edge of the seat season finale as Negotiations, Buying Time cannot help but feel a bit anti-climactic. Scenes of Karen’s family and friends waiting anxiously as she undergoes major surgery also invite comparison with The Vigil and Abby’s Choice, the eps when Karen’s husband and daughter were the ones under the surgeon’s knife, but it lacks the emotional impact of either — possibly because Karen, the heart of the show and the audience’s supposed point of identification, is offscreen undergoing surgery rather than emoting in the hospital waiting room. When she finally does wake up, ten minutes before the end of the ep, she’s as disoriented and bewildered as she will be in two years time when she comes to to find herself locked in Phil Harbert’s cellar.

Instead, the episode’s main focus is on Mack, who wrestles with his anguish over Karen, anger towards Wolfbridge and guilt regarding his own role in what's happened while keeping most everyone at an emotional distance (although he does find time for a sweetly affecting reconciliation with Diana). The rest of the characters are also pretty helpless: Abby’s being held hostage and Gary is reduced to yelling impotently at the cops the same way Mack does at Karen’s doctors. Most fascinating are the characters on the periphery of the action — Greg, coolly adopting a veneer of plausible deniability in the face of a lot of angry questions, and Laura, whose righteous indignation towards Greg is, in turn, a way of avoiding her own culpability.

And the winner is ... Buying Time

BONUS BEATS: