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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 206057" data-attributes="member: 22">Best Intentions (KNOTS, 11 Mar 82) v. Best Interests (KNOTS, 26 Oct 89)Best Intentions lands right in the middle of KNOTS' Season 3 sweet spot. At this point, the self-contained episode format hasn’t totally been abandoned in favour of purely continuing drama and so we get the best of both worlds. The exploration of the characters and their dilemmas is thorough and uncompromised, and yet those dilemmas are too richly complicated to be neatly resolved in a televisual hour.The episode begins with Laura in the soapiest of scenarios: her marriage is on the rocks, she’s been sleeping with her boss and now she’s pregnant. But Laura being Laura, she deals with the situation in the least soapy way possible. She calmly and swiftly ends her affair with Scooter, assuring him that he cannot be the father, and then tries to summon up the nerve to tell Richard about the baby. We see her sitting alone in her car, rehearsing various ways of breaking the news. “Would all the men whose wives are not pregnant move to the other side of the room — not so fast, Avery,” she mutters, foreshadows the circuitous way she will eventually get around to telling her second husband that she’s gonna die.Elsewhere, it’s a treat to see Abby and Lilimae conspire over Val’s manuscript — one of the very few times in the series when their interests align. When Abby gives Val’s fictionalised expose of her life with the Ewings to Joe Cooper, she is acting in her own self-interest. Even so, and purely as a by-product, she just so happens to unleash Val’s potential — effectively transforming a homework assignment into a future best-selling novel —  just as she already has Gary’s (via the methanol project) and later will Joshua’s (by allowing him to take over Reverend Catherine’s TV show). It’s also similar to what Sue Ellen will do for Mandy Winger when she turns her into the Valentine Girl.Just as JR struck Sue Ellen across the face when she implied that he was not the father of her unborn baby in Act of Love, Richard slaps Laura when she tells him she wants an abortion. Although we started off the episode complicit with Laura (until she confides in Karen, we alone know the burden she is carrying), by the end, we’re with Richard. Fascinatingly, the turning point is that slap — that’s when it goes from being her story to his. In the final scene, we are his only witness when he returns to an empty house and cannot bring himself to read the note he finds on the kitchen table.Best Interests is so different, I kind of had to keep reminding myself that it belongs to the same series. There is, however, a parallel between Richard and Laura’s relationship in ’82 and Greg and Paige’s in ’89. In both instances, the couple are in close proximity to each other yet the woman remains unattainable to the man, which drives him a little bit crazy. But whereas the Averys’ situation is a relatable domestic one, Greg and Paige’s unfolds in the slick corporate environment of their adjacent offices at the Sumner Group. Whatever the characters are really feeling is masked by witty badinage and games of sophisticated oneupmanship. They are more Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday than Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann in Scenes from a Marriage.Meanwhile, I’m a total sucker for the triple-whammy coincidence reveal that Sally’s Friend, Danny’s wife and Bobby and Betsy's kindergarten teacher are all one and the same person. The brilliant touch is that when Danny and Amanda both separately describe the difficulties of living with their needy, insecure, high-maintenance spouse, Val and Gary are each reminded of each other. And yet the more they try to pull away from one another in the present, the more entangled they become, precisely because of their involvements with Danny and Amanda. As KNOTS knots go, this one is especially tight.And then, two-thirds of the way through, the episode takes an abrupt left turn and becomes all about shady corporations, a pension fund scam and an old lady going splat on the sidewalk.Seasons 3 and 11 are just so ridiculously different from each other, but I have a real soft spot for both them.And the winner is ... Best IntentionsBONUS BEATS[MEDIA=youtube]i-_HMJH2FEw[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?