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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 253331" data-attributes="member: 22">I had one job, to put the Ewing-verse in alphabetical order:And now I've gone and done it again:Dire Straits (DALLAS, 14 Feb 86) v Deserted (KNOTS, 10 Nov 88)On the plus side, as a result of my incompetence, I’ve ended up with a “Girls in Latin-flavoured Peril” double bill! While Pam is held hostage offscreen by some pesky Colombian bandits in Dire Straits, Deserted has Paige (along with Johnny Rourke, Michael and a smattering of Hispanic day players, including Salamanca from BREAKING BAD) trapped in the back of a boiling hot truck near the Mexican border for three days and nights. For a plot that was apparently cobbled together at the last minute when VP was taken ill, the DALLAS kidnap story is not too bad, if a bit vanilla. Mark Graison and Matt Cantrell’s macho competitiveness is entertaining and it’s fun to see Cliff thrust into the unusual role of peacekeeper. The KNOTS storyline is more inventive and interesting, while its premise — a group of people trapped inside a container in the hopes of achieving a better life, most of whom are turned away when they eventually reach their destination — has an even grimmer resonance today than was presumably intended at the time.Whereas DALLAS doesn’t tell us anything about the conditions Pam has had to endure as a hostage (and no-one thinks to ask her about it when she is eventually released) , KNOTS does a great job of showing how its regulars cope in such a horrible situation. While Paige, only recently the plucky heroine of the Santa Tecla storyline, behaves like a prize cow (so much so that mild-mannered Michael threatens to punch her in the face), dodgy Johnny Rourke is surprisingly likeable. He also gets to accuse Michael of being a Pollyanna two years before Gary does the same to Karen.Meanwhile, as those at home wait fretfully for news of the missing, Sue Ellen comes dangerously close to figuring out she’s living inside a soap opera when she says of Pam, “She’s the kindest person I know and the worst things in the world keep happening to her!” Anxious for word of Michael, Karen looks through old family photo albums with Val and regrets the Little League games and Tooth Fairy moments she missed out on when he was a kid. Val looks wistful — might she possibly be thinking of the things she never got to experience with her own firstborn? “You can’t make that time up to them,” Karen sighs. “I know,” she agrees. “I know you know,” Karen replies meaningfully and we realise that, yes, Val really was thinking about Lucy, who I don’t think has been mentioned on KNOTS for about four years at this point.The main subplot in both episodes involves a female character everyone is convinced is seriously unbalanced. At Southfork, the Farlows and Krebbses — or rather, the sinisterly cheerful Stepford robots they have been replaced with — try to gaslight Jenna by telling she’s nuts to still be mourning the man she’s loved all her life less than a year after his death. “When you lost your baby, did I tell you how to grieve?” she asks Donna reasonably, but is undermined by plinky-plonky 'going mad' music on the soundtrack. “There is such a thing as much too much grief,” whirrs Cyber-Donna, decreeing that Jenna, having exceeded her allotted amount, must be sent to a doctor for reprogramming. Meanwhile, everyone on KNOTS thinks Val is nuts for (a) attempting suicide, (b) claiming Jill forced her to swallow pills at gunpoint and (c) throwing a plate of h'ors doeuvres in the air during Michael and Paige's welcome home party because she thinks everyone's talking about her (which if they weren't before, they certainly are now).Whereas Abby being unusually nice to everyone at the party — offering Val moral support, playing with Julie’s hair, inviting Harold round for tea, even hugging Paige — is weird in an interesting way (hearkening back to the early years when she used to hang out with the neighbours even as she was sleeping with their husbands), Donna's intense concern for Jenna is weird in an annoying way. Even when she meets Tony, the ten-year-old deaf kid she and Ray will eventually <s>take hostage</s> adopt, the first thing she does is tell him how worried she is about Jenna. He’s a ten-year-old deaf kid — what the **** is he supposed to do about it?And the winner is ... DesertedBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]8OUqqsXVmlc[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?