New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 15375" data-attributes="member: 22">09/Oct/84: PAPER DOLLS: Episode 2 v. 10/Oct/84: DYNASTY: The Mortgage v. 12/Oct/84: DALLAS: If at First You Don't Succeed v. 12/Oct/84: FALCON CREST: StrangersThere is some interesting cross-referencing between the soaps this week. "She’s sixteen years old, she looks like Joan Collins up there!” complains the protective mother of a young model on PAPER DOLLS, while on DALLAS, Lucy pays a nostalgic to visit to the Hot Biscuit, the diner where her mama waited tables way back in Season 1. "She's living out in California now,” Lucy tells Al, the proprietor. He asks her to say howdy to Val the next time she talks to her. "Yeah, I will — if I talk to her,” Lucy replies glumly. This is the DALLAS equivalent of Val’s admission on last year’s KNOTS that it had been “seven or eight months” since she and Lucy last spoke. Those are the only references on either show to an estrangement between mother and daughter.Speaking of silent estrangements, this week’s DALLAS also brings news of the death of Jason Ewing, Jock’s never-previously-mentioned brother. "I don’t remember Jock ever talking about him,” remarks Sue Ellen. JR explains that the brothers had a falling out back when he himself was just a little boy and never spoke again. (Jason’s death also lays the foundation for the eventual arrival into DALLAS of his son Jack, who is currently locked in a combative relationship with his present father on PAPER DOLLS.)Another Soap Land relative we’ve heard of but never seen before is Paul Hartford, Maggie and Terry’s father on FALCON CREST. Despite the enticement of great-grandchildren, brain tumours and plane crashes, he has never visited his daughters in the Tuscany Valley before this week’s episode. There’s no familial estrangement in this case, just the full itinerary of an archaeology lecturer.To varying degrees, the Carringtons, Ewings, Channings and Giobertis are all still suffering the consequences of last season’s cliffhangers. On each of the shows this week, an attempt is made to unite the respective families. On DYNASTY, Blake gathers his brood together and delivers a rallying speech: "We are all of us Carringtons,” he reminds them. "We are all of us facing desperate problems at this moment of our lives. It's when things are bad, when we have to struggle, that's when we Carringtons are tested. We have to pull ourselves together. We have to be strong. We have to be what we always are — an example to others.” Over on DALLAS, Sue Ellen does her bit by hosting the first family dinner at Southfork since Jessica’s visit. Meanwhile, on FALCON CREST, Maggie throws yet another party, this time, a picnic, in order to "mend a few fences” between the Giobertis and the Channings.In each case, the sense of family harmony is short-lived. Soon after his “Carringtons Unite!” speech, Blake turns on Krystle for selling her jewellery and furs in order to help him start over. "Dammit Krystle, I told you they were not for sale!” he shouts. Meanwhile, Jeff comes close to cracking up after identifying a body in the morgue which turns out not to be Fallon’s. (Like Chase Gioberti last week’s FALCON CREST, Jeff is tormented by nightmares of last season’s cliffhanger. Where Chase dreamt of plane crashes, Jeff dreams of disappearing brides.) Back at Southfork, Sue Ellen’s family dinner soon descends into bickering. "Family? That's a joke," grumbles JR as he surveys the jumbled assortment of Ewings, Krebbses and Farlows seated at the dining table. "The only one who qualifies is Ray and he misses by a half.” On FALCON CREST, Angela puts a pall on the party mood when she accidentally-on-purpose reveals that Maggie is adopted. Maggie’s father is dismayed ("Oh Mrs Channing, you're out of line!”) while Maggie herself is astonished.Surprisingly, Soap Land's most united clan are currently the Barneses of DALLAS. During a run-in with Pam, JR accuses her of sounding increasingly like her brother. The remark is intended as an insult but she embraces it: “That's fine with me,” she tells him, "because that means I'm beginning to sound more and more like a Barnes.” The point is reiterated during a later argument between Pam and Sue Ellen. “You are clearly a Barnes,” Sue Ellen tells her disparagingly. Finally, Pam delivers to Cliff her own pocket-sized version of Blake’s “We are all of us Carringtons” speech: "I had my doubts at first, but I'm convinced now that you didn't shoot Bobby. We’re finally gonna be a family — and we're gonna be as strong a family as the Ewings ever were.”Indeed, the Soap Land worms appear to be turning. "I've never believed in the Barnes-Ewing feud,” Pam informs JR, "but now I'm going to join it. I'm going to do everything I can to help Cliff and I'm not going to rest until all our family scores are settled!” This chimes with the vow Blake made against Alexis in the DYNASTY season opener: "I'm going to teach her a lesson that she's never going to forget. I’ll pay her back. I'll bury her just the way she's tried to bury me!” It’s exciting to hear such virtuous characters as Pam Ewing and Blake Carrington lowering themselves to the vengeful levels of their long-term foes. It opens up a whole fresh can of soapy possibilities.As the first step in rebuilding his empire, Blake has taken out a loan on the Carrington mansion. Towards the end of this week's DYNASTY, he discovers that the mortgage is held by Alexis. "I'm getting even, Blake," she gloats. "In three months' time when that note becomes due and you can't pay it, that house belongs to me.” In other words, it’s Cliff, JR and Gold Canyon 340 all over again. But where Cliff was stunned into silence when he learnt of JR’s plan at the end of last season, Blake lets Alexis have it with both barrels: “There have been times when I’ve wanted to kill you, but not now. You’ve got a murder trial coming up. When they find you guilty, I want to be there and take a look at your face … That’s the day that I can’t wait for!”While Alexis’s bail was set at $2,000,000 in the DYNASTY season opener, it costs half that to get Cliff out of jail following his arrest for Bobby’s shooting at the end of last week’s DALLAS. Both Cliff and Alexis continue to protest their innocence this week, but it is pointed out by their legal representatives, Messrs Duncan (“one of the best lawyers in town,” according to Cliff) and Ballard ("the best criminal attorney in the country,” according to Alexis) that there is compelling evidence against them. Not only is Cliff unable to provide an alibi for the shooting because he was so drunk, but the gun that shot Bobby was found in his apartment. Meanwhile, there’s the small matter of the $100,000 cheque Alexis made out to Mark Jennings and the fact that she was in the penthouse when he was killed. Whereas Alexis’s trial date is set for November ("That doesn't give us much time,” she frets), the charges are dropped against Cliff when a mysterious brunette steps forward to say they were together at the time of the shooting — and who should it be but Mandy Winger from THE YELLOW ROSE! So who planted the gun in Cliff’s condo? The answer to that lies in the closing shot of this week’s DALLAS which reveals a villainous looking Katherine poised over Bobby’s hospital bed with a syringe.Cliff and Alexis aren’t the only characters to be falsely accused of cliffhanger-related crimes this week (assuming, of course, that Alexis is as innocent as she claims to be). On FALCON CREST, Richard and Angela are each trying to pin the blame for the plane crash on Chase, but for different reasons. Richard knows that the plane was really sabotaged by the cartel, but cannot expose them without implicating himself. Angela, on the other hand, neither knows nor seems to care who was really behind the crash; she simply views it as an opportunity to get Chase out of her hair once and for all. To that end, she and Lance start a rumour that the crash was caused by Chase's alcohol-induced negligence.Whereas JR made his contempt for Pam clear at the very beginning of DALLAS (“Did your brother put you up to this, Miss Barnes?”), a veneer of civility has always existed between Angela and Chase on FALCON CREST regardless of what they’ve said or thought about each other in private. Sure, they’ve often clashed over their opposing business ethics and Angela has occasionally lashed out at Chase in extremis, but they have always then reverted to their default roles of an interfering aunt and headstrong nephew who regard each other with a grudging respect. Since the plane crash, however, there has been a shift. This week’s episode finds them freely trading insults as Angela calls Chase’s champagne dreary and accuses him of buying his way into the good graces of Wine Growers Magazine. “Bribery’s your style, Angela, not mine,” he retorts. Strangely, such undisguised animosity serves to lighten the show’s atmosphere rather than darken it: with Chase and Angela both now free to say what’s on their minds, it means there's one less secret lurking in the shadows. The arrival in the Tuscany Valley of Gustav Reibmann also contributes to the change in tone. The casting of Paul Freeman, who played a similarly artefact-obsessed villain with Nazi connections in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, is surely no coincidence. RAIDERS was itself influenced by the children’s adventure serials, full of action and gleefully daft cliffhangers, that cinemas used to show each week during the 1930s and ‘40s. The FALCON CREST Nazi treasure plot shares some of that same irresistible Saturday Morning Picture Show comic-strip-come-to-life quality.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (2) FALCON CREST3 (-) DYNASTY4 (-) PAPER DOLLS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?