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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 218839" data-attributes="member: 22">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 TimeBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]deJuWlcqwAs[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =