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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 233419" data-attributes="member: 22">Chance of a Lifetime (KNOTS, 11 Dec 80) v A Change of Heart (KNOTS, 17 Apr 86)It’s always interesting to revisit early Abby. The way she acts all dizzy and helpless at the start of Chance of a Lifetime in order to persuade Richard to drop her kids off at school is not all that different to how Anne Matheson later behaves when she needs the concept of Garbage Day explaining. Abby is still batting her baby blues at an attorney three years later in A Change of Heart, only this time it’s Jim Westmont whose expertise she requires in order to cheat Karen out of her shares of the profits in Lotus Point.Richard doesn’t directly object when the demands of Laura’s new job necessitate him cutting short his own working day to pick Jason up from school, provide him with dinner and then head back to the office to pull an all-nighter. Instead, he waits till he’s halfway out the door before casually dropping the bombshell that Brian Dennehy’s offered him a job and they’re moving to Chicago. Laura doesn’t want to go but of course, she doesn’t say so. The Averys rarely fight or say what’s on their minds. They just simmer and brood and make jokes to paper over the tracks. Only in the closing seconds of the episode does Richard finally drop his defences and break down, but even then he can’t bring himself to tell Laura the truth — how the job offer in Chicago turned out to be a mirage and that he’s burned his bridges with his existing firm anyway. Elsewhere on the cul-de-sac, Gary cheerfully lies to Sid about making a deal with the clearly crooked Frank and Roy, but on the surface, all is calm.In contrast, A Change of Heart is fuelled by a sense of barely suppressed hysteria. Even the opening titles feel like they’re about to hurtle out of control. In the first scene, Mack silently weeps while watching Diana through a two-way mirror break down as she tells the police how Chip killed Ciji for her. When he tries to explain to Karen that Diana isn’t ready to come home, she is too manic, too frantic to listen. Meanwhile, Lilimae tearfully pleads with Val not to leave her in the sanatarium and Gary is off on some weird quest of his own by stalking Ciji’s double. (He also finds time to inherit 10% of Ewing Oil and laugh hysterically.)In Chance of a Lifetime, Laura’s meeting with her boss and an important client is rudely interrupted by a champagne-popping, ‘Chicago’-singing Richard barging drunkenly into the office. In A Change of Heart, it’s Laura herself doing the interrupting, walking into Abby’s office just as she’s about to kiss Greg Sumner. (And this is how Laura meets her future husband.) In 1980, Laura’s boss is Scooter, who describes himself as her sensai with her as his wide-eyed willing student. By 1983, she has grown more wily. Now her boss is Abby Ewing and the only way for her to find out what’s really going on with Karen, Lotus Point and H&O Management is to ply Jim Westmont with booze and stroke his ego (possibly among other things).As compelling as it is to watch Richard grovel to Brian Dennehy’s Chicago big shot, it’s even more riveting to see Karen humiliate herself in front of her evil son-in-law as she politely asks him to use his influence to persuade Diana to come home. “Please, Chip, I can’t beg you anymore,” she tells him, but all he does is smile blandly back at her. Eventually, she cracks: “I hope you rot in hell!” To think it was only eleven episodes earlier, in Celebration, when Karen lectured Val about letting go of Gary. “Your anger is such a waste,” she told her patronisingly.A Change of Heart includes the scene where Ben and Val sit in his car outside her house after visiting Lilimae, while Mack and Michael shoot hoops in the background, and Ben describes the nervous breakdown his father suffered when he (Ben) was in high school. I remember reading somewhere that this was written and filmed at the last minute after they realised the episode was under running. Although you wouldn’t miss this scene if it didn’t exist (and Ben’s father isn’t mentioned again), it seems somehow fundamental to our understanding of what makes Ben tick.And the winner is ... A Change of Heart[MEDIA=youtube]trbwqF0d7NA[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

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