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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 251285" data-attributes="member: 22">Dial M for Modem (KNOTS, 06 Apr 89) v Discovery (KNOTS, 28 Apr 88)In Devil on My Shoulder, Paula Vertosick spoilt Anne’s fun by insisting Greg wasn't well enough to party. In Dial M for Modem, she tries to spoil Murakame (aka Abby)’s fun by highlighting the harmful environmental effects of its drilling for oil on Lotus Point. Whereas Paula was a wholly benign influence on Greg in Devil ..., she is a more subversive one on both Mack and Karen in Dial M ..., albeit in different ways. Her presence in the Mackenzie house so discombobulates Mack that he ends up putting a pot of coffee in the fridge, while she actively encourages Karen to break into what used to be Lotus Point to see what the drillers are up to.Anne dealt with Paula's interference by sending her away on a conference; Abby does the same by letting a virus loose on her college's computer system, thereby ruining all the evidence she has collated against Murakame. Karen manipulates Paula too, by trying to match-make her and Gary. They hit it off, but Gary’s next romantic storyline has already been introduced earlier in the episode when a ditzy woman who can’t figure out how to store her phone numbers correctly calls him by mistake and they hit it off.Almost exactly a year earlier in Discovery, Gary has to deal with another flaky woman confused about her telephone devices — Val, who is convinced she has received an answering machine message from Ben but then can’t produce it for Gary to listen to. What we know, but Val and Gary have yet to discover, is that the message was faked by Jill as part of some mysteriously elaborate gaslighting plot. So far it’s working — Val’s on edge and she can't sleep. Gary's advice, that she chill out and take in an afternoon movie, is the same that Aunt Ginny will give her a year later in Dial M ... when she’s just coming out the other end of her Jill-induced ordeal. Ginny also tries to persuade her to start dating again, thus setting in motion her next year-long ordeal-by-psychopath.In both of these episodes, Karen's precious Lotus Point is violated — first by Manny Vasquez who is running drugs through it, and then by Murakame who is drilling for oil under it. In the former situation, Abby is determined to take down the bad guys whom she holds responsible for her daughter’s addiction; in the latter, she is the bad guy. Plucky Paige, meanwhile, is on the side of justice in both stories — in Discovery, she plants a fake artefact on an archaeological excavation site, thereby sabotaging Manny's transportation plans, and in Dial M, she exposes Murakame's supposed representative as another fake when she recognises him as an actor in one of those Japanese monster movies. What a gal!And the winner is ... DiscoveryBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]FymLt2szbtQ[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?