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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 15343" data-attributes="member: 22">04/Oct/84: KNOTS LANDING: Buying Time v. 05/Oct/84: DALLAS: Battle Lines v. 05/Oct/84: FALCON CREST: Father's DayKNOTS LANDING is back, its characters in a similar state of emergency to those in last week’s returning soaps. Where DYNASTY kicked off with a frantic Jeff Colby shouting helplessly at the police about his missing (ex-)wife Fallon, KNOTS finds Gary Ewing doing the same thing regarding his missing (estranged) wife Abby, abducted in front of his eyes at the tail end of last season. And where the DALLAS Ewings gathered anxiously at Soap Land Memorial Hospital where Bobby was undergoing emergency surgery to remove the bullets sustained in his season finale shooting, Karen Mackenzie’s family now do the same following hers.KNOTS being KNOTS, there are differences in approach. The cop Gary deals with isn’t an anonymous bit player but a firmly established recurring character, the perennially grouchy Detective Morrison. And where Bobby’s "five-hour" surgery on DALLAS was skimmed over in a matter of screen minutes, Karen’s “very long" operation spans most of the episode. Like Bobby’s doctor, her surgeon is played by a supporting black actor, but here some attempt has been to flesh out his character — we’re shown that Dr. Garner grows irritable under pressure, has an awkward bedside manner and a penchant for Charlie Parker. Also unlike DALLAS, we follow the medical action into the operating theatre, and when she regains consciousness after her surgery there is more time spent establishing Karen’s disorientation and discomfort than there was Bobby's.While all of this is a laudable attempt by KNOTS to make a generic soap situation feel more specific and “real”, it's also a way of padding the episode out, to compensate for the comparative lack of action happening elsewhere.There is tension in the hallways of Soap Land Memorial Hospital this week, on both KNOTS and DALLAS. Diana makes it clear to Mack that she resents his presence ("My mom asked you to leave and now I’m telling you ... We don’t need you, Mack”) while Jenna points out to Pam that as Bobby’s ex-wife, she has no place at his bedside either (“You gave up all rights to him when you walked out on him”).“I know you think you still love, Bobby,” Jenna tells Pam, who doesn’t deny it. “Everything you said about Gary and me is true,” Val admits to Ben in yet another Ewing-verse hospital scene. "All my protests and all the denying — and then some stranger just mentions his name and I go running after him all over again.” In both cases, the cat is out of the bag: in spite of the full seasons' efforts they put into building new lives, Pam and Val are clearly still in love with their Ewing exes.Karen makes it through surgery, but as with Bobby, there is a caveat. For Bobby, it’s his blindness. For Karen, it’s her paralysis. Not for her a sudden “Oh my God, I can’t move my legs!” moment equivalent to Fallon’s on DYNASTY or Chase’s on FALCON CREST. Instead, Dr. Garner explains during a long and faltering speech, her paralysis will manifest itself gradually. For both she and Bobby, the long-term prognosis is grim. “The longer [his recovery] takes, the less likely he is to regain his sight,” Bobby’s doctor warns Jenna this week. “Shortly after the paralysis becomes permanent, you are going to die,” Dr Garner tells Karen. Whereas FALCON CREST's Maggie and DALLAS’s Mark Graison each learned of their terminal condition from someone with whom they already shared a strong connection — a cousin-in-law and a lifelong friend — Karen and Dr Garner have no pre-existing relationship. It’s here that KNOTS' decision to develop the doctor’s personality pays off — we get the sense of Karen talking to another human being rather than just a sympathetic talking head.In the past, I've always had a problem with the scene in this week’s DALLAS where JR explains to John Ross that it wouldn’t be fair of him to wrest control of Ewing Oil away from Bobby while he’s in the hospital: “You've got to remember, with family you play fair because there are rules to follow and if you do, you’ll be able to live with yourself.” JR’s words here felt to me like a cop-out on the part of the writers, a way of reigning in the character’s ambition, not out of a preexisting sense of family loyalty, but simply in order to preserve the show’s status quo, whereby the two brothers continue running the company together, however uneasily.However, New DALLAS has given me a different outlook. When Bobby is stricken with cancer towards the end of New DALLAS’s first season, an equally frail JR reluctantly abandons his plans to drill for oil on Southfork and instead signs ownership of the ranch back to his brother. That situation is depicted so meaningfully and poignantly that its power sort of reverberates back through the years to imbue the JR/John Ross scene with a credibility I never felt it had before. Similarly, the way Sue Ellen seems to drift back to JR’s side in this episode, after keeping him at arm’s length for so long, was something I always found frustrating and disappointing, as if the writers didn’t know what else to do with her character. Viewed from this distance, however, it seems inevitable. Regardless of the rights and wrongs (or even the dramatic highs and lows) of the matter, this is simply how their relationship functioned: Sue Ellen could only ever keep JR at bay for so long.Last week’s DYNASTY saw Blake Carrington in something of a decline, leaving other people to make important decisions about his family and business while he sat brooding in his bedroom in his pyjamas and silk dressing gown. “Stop shutting out the world!” Krystle pleaded with him. There’s an equivalent scene on this week’s DALLAS where Sue Ellen comes down to breakfast to finds JR sporting a similar pyjamas/silk dressing gown ensemble after spending a sleepless night brooding on the Southfork patio. Like Krystle, Sue Ellen tries to get her husband to open up — not to the whole world this time, just to her. Like Blake, JR is reluctant. “JR, you worked very hard to get me back in your bed again,” she snaps. "I thought that meant I’d be back in your life again too. Well apparently I was wrong!” She gets up to leave, but he stops her: “Wait a minute, Sue Ellen, can’t you see how hard it is for me to talk about this?” He then goes on to regale her with a list of his current problems — Cliff’s oil strike, Bobby appointing Donna as his deputy at Ewing Oil, a would-be assassin still on the loose — while she listens sympathetically. Again, viewed from a post-New DALLAS perspective, such a scene — JR and Sue Ellen bickering and talking almost like a conventional long-married couple — takes on a poignancy it never had before, and that it probably wasn’t even intended to have.There are yet more sleepless, pyjama-clad nights in this week’s FALCON CREST. This time, Maggie is the supportive wife attempting to comfort husband Chase who is still haunted by the plane crash. Eventually, he conquers his demons by climbing into the pilot seat of a small crop duster and flying it over the vineyards.While this week’s KNOTS ends on a downbeat note with Karen’s prognosis, DALLAS concludes with a delicious twist as Cliff, who has spent much of the preceding hour savouring his recent victory over JR in the Gulf, is abruptly arrested outside his office for Bobby’s shooting. Pam can only stand and watch as he is led away. “You can’t do this!” she protests helplessly. She then turns to see a smiling JR watching from his car across the street. As he drives off, her eyes narrow in anger.For the second week in a row, however, the prize for the most outrageous episode ending is taken by FALCON CREST. Remember the bomb that turned out not to be in Mack’s jeep at the end of last season’s KNOTS? Well it’s found its way into Johann Reibmann’s limousine instead. As Reibmann climbs into the car, which is parked in front of his Buenos Aires home, his son Gustav watches discreetly from inside the house. The bomb goes off and there is an almighty explosion. We then see the flames reflected in the window in front of Gustav’s face. He wears a grave expression but does not seem surprised. It would appear that we’ve just witnessed Soap Land’s first case of patricide.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (3) DALLAS2 (2) FALCON CREST3 (-) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?