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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 17119" data-attributes="member: 22">27 Feb 85: DYNASTY: Life and Death v. 28 Feb 85: KNOTS LANDING: The Deluge v. 01 Mar 85: DALLAS: Dead EndsDeath, in various guises, looms large in this week’s Soap Land: Dominique Devereaux faces life or death heart surgery on DYNASTY, Paul Galveston finally expires on KNOTS LANDING and Bobby and Jenna deal with the consequences of Veronica Robinson’s shock demise on DALLAS.Dominique’s heart valve problem is unique in the history of Soap Land ailments insofar as it exists, from a dramatic perspective, entirely in isolation. While the illness that led to Paul Galveston’s brain haemorrhage may have been nonspecific, the reverberations caused by his death are positively Shakespearean. Dominique’s condition, however, has no ramifications on any other story line nor will it yield any. Whereas Miss Ellie’s and Val’s respective brushes with cancer at least impacted their marriages, Dominique’s decision (echoing Karen Mackenzie's at the beginning of the season) not to inform her estranged husband of her medical situation (“I don’t want his pity”) means that that dramatic avenue is also sealed off. Even Maggie Gioberti’s random brain tumour in last season’s FALCON CREST provided Dr. Ranson with an opportunity to face his demons on the operating table. Maybe the fact that a black character has now been deemed sufficiently important for her fate to carry an entire story-line is significant enough.Nevertheless, Dominique’s plight affords us the pleasure of observing the small traditions that almost always accompany a medical emergency in Soap Land. The following are all present and correct: anxious family members in full evening dress congregating in the hospital corridor; a doctor’s plea that everyone "go home and get some rest" falling on deaf ears; someone (in this case Blake) insisting on personally calling the best medically-relevant specialist in the country (in this case a cardiologist); ongoing familial conflicts being played out against a backdrop of hospital hallways and waiting rooms.Amongst the latter, the most interesting involves Steven effectively coming out to his father for the second time when he admits his feelings for Luke (“I think I love him”). This time around, Blake responds with a display of acceptance rather than anger (“No matter who you are or what you are, I'll be damned if I'm going to lose you,” he tells his son before embracing him). However, this doesn’t stop Blake later urging Claudia not to give up on Steven, describing her as "his only chance”. More unusually, DALLAS also touches on the subject of homosexuality a couple of times this week, albeit fleetingly. First Bobby and Jenna question Mr. Parrish, an enjoyably fastidious antiques dealer with a John Waters-style pencil moustache, who was on the same plane as Veronica Robinson when she was killed. When he recalls a "well-dressed” man who was also on the flight, there’s enough of a flicker on his face to suggest that the man’s clothing wasn’t necessarily what drew his eye. And a week after Pamela Lynch and Lorraine Prescott were mistaken for a gay couple on FALCON CREST, DALLAS comes up with a faux-lesbian reference of its own. In Hong Kong, Sue Ellen comments that the romance of the city's nightlife is wasted on her and Pam. “Wait a minute — aren’t I a fun date?” asks a mock-offended Pam. “A million laughs, you’re just not my type,” she replies.No Soap Land week is complete without a weird wedding story these days, and this one is no exception. While there have been non-divorces before — DYNASTY’s Krystle and FALCON CREST’s Terry have both been dismayed to find themselves still married to their ex-husbands — it’s now time for Soap Land’s first non-wedding. “What do you mean the marriage never happened?” asks Jeff on DYNASTY when Alexis tells him that his wedding to Nicole was entirely fabricated by the bride: "You were drunk, Jeff. She shoved a piece of paper in your face, said you were married and you bought it … She lured an innkeeper to proclaim you man and wife.” When confronted, Nicole admits the whole thing. "I've been in love twice,” she tells Jeff sadly. “The first time Peter de Vilbis destroyed it and this time it looks like I did it all by myself.” Over on DALLAS, Eddie Cronin is equally remorseful regarding his recent deception. "I wish I hadn't done what I did,” he tells Lucy, "and I wish that you and I could start over again, but I know that ain't gonna happen.”On this week’s KNOTS, as part of his regular segment on Reverend Catherine’s religious cable show, Joshua Rush delivers a powerful sermon direct to camera in which he movingly exhorts his audience (which includes us real life KNOTS viewers as well as the fictional ones watching Pacific World Cable) to take the road less travelled (“Easy doesn’t do it … It is not the way that is difficult, but difficult that is the way”). It’s a truly captivating performance by both Alec Baldwin and the character that somehow combines compassion and morality with Joshua’s increasing megalomania. In fact, one can almost glimpse the seeds of Baldwin's 30 ROCK character from twenty years in the future, the loopily autocratic TV executive Jack Donaghy, being sewn. In place of Liz Lemon tearing her hair out on the studio floor as one of her star turns runs amok on live TV, there is a floor manager who is mesmerised by the beauty of Joshua’s words while also signalling him frantically as he heedlessly exceeds his allotted time limit, leaving no room for Reverend Catherine to appear on his own show.Joshua doesn’t stop there. He insists his lover Cathy be given a regular singing spot on the show. Over on DALLAS, Cliff Barnes likewise appoints his new girlfriend Jamie as his company's cold weather drilling expert. Neither Cathy nor Jamie is too enthusiastic about these arrangements — Cathy is particularly reluctant — but both men are determined to get their own way. While Cliff’s motives are easy to follow (he wants to keep Jamie close so that he can eventually get his hands on her third of Ewing Oil), Joshua’s are harder to pin down, but it's something to do with asserting control over Cathy — and in the process, he’s finally becoming Chip to her Ciji.Pam Ewing’s quest for Mark in Hong Kong and Karen Mackenzie’s search for answers about Val’s twins both receive setbacks this week — Mitchell Swanson, the hospital patient Pam believes to be Mark, refuses to see her while Karen is stonewalled by various people she talks to who were involved in Val’s delivery. Those close to Pam and Karen also suggest it might be best to let sleeping dogs lie. “What if Mark is bad?” asks Sue Ellen hesitantly. "Maybe he wants you to remember him the way he was rather than the way he is.” Gary, meanwhile, is more forthright in his opposition to Karen’s investigation: “Just stop it!” he snaps. (For some reason, it’s always satisfying to see Gary and Karen at loggerheads — maybe because he’s one of the few characters who's never afraid to directly challenge her.) Pam and Karen each responds by digging her heels in. While stubborn determination is typical of Karen (“I’m going to put Val’s mind to rest if it’s the last thing I do,” she vows), it’s far less common to see Pam on the offensive. "I'm very rich and very determined, and if I have to, I'll buy that damn clinic and walk in as the owner!” she declares, sounding more like Dominique Devereaux than her usual self. "Well, what good is the Ewing name and all that power if I don't occasionally use it?” she later reasons. Abby would surely concur.DYNASTY and KNOTS LANDING each currently boasts a big name movie actress (Ali McGraw and Ava Gardner respectively) in the guest role of a photographer. "I love what I do — I have a career, independence, adventure. What more could a woman want?” Ashley Mitchell tells Jeff Colby enthusiastically. "It’s a funny occupation, photography — eternities of planning for one five-hundredth of a second,” purrs a more reflective Ruth Galveston during a conversation with Gary Ewing. While Ashley's pictorial studies are mostly of successful businessmen in their natural habitat ("The last time I did a photo essay on someone for Life, his company’s stock jumped three points and Wall Street adored him!”), Ruth’s speciality is wild animals in theirs (“I wait, I watch, I spend day after day waiting for the perfect opportunity and then when it comes and if the light’s right, I get a fine picture of a rare beast”). Whereas Ashley is perky and positive, Ruth is exotic and predatory — the similarity between the hunter and her prey underlined by a striking shot of Ruth’s profile next to that of a lion she has photographed.Where Ashley notes Jeff’s potential with characteristic enthusiasm ("You always were a downhill racer — ‘watch out for Jeff Colby, coming through!’”), it quickly emerges that Ruth’s primary purpose on KNOTS is to convince her son Greg that he is the right — the only — man fit to continue his father’s work. “You were brought up to be powerful and you love it and you want it,” she insists. “And now, baby, it can all be yours.” “Nuts to you, Mother,” replies Greg succinctly. "Nuts and bolts."A son unwilling to embrace the legacy he was born into — it's a fascinatingly atypical variation on a traditional Soap Land theme. More familiar father/son scenarios can be found in this week’s DYNASTY and DALLAS. Like Greg, Adam Carrington is filled with resentment towards his father, but that’s because he would dearly love to be his chosen successor, the very role Greg is so dismissive of. Instead, as he bitterly complains to Claudia, he is merely one of Blake’s tin soldiers: “Wind us up, we march to his command.” Over on DALLAS, Ray Krebbs recalls how he, like Greg, grew up believing the wrong man to be his father — but where Greg was proud of his fake daddy ("My father served his country”), Ray was ashamed of his ("I was Amos Krebbs’ kid, the town drunk’s son”). The two men have similarly opposing attitudes towards their real fathers as well. Whereas Greg continues to deny his true paternity ("Paul Galveston was your father,” Ruth reminds him. "Not to me he wasn’t,” he replies), Ray cherishes his ("Being Jock's son gave me … the only identity I could ever really be proud of”).While Ruth attempts to explain to Greg the arrangement she had with his "two fathers” on KNOTS, a private investigator hired by JR delivers a potted account of Jason Ewing’s life story on DALLAS. Where Jason’s biography is strictly factual and plot-centric, Ruth’s story is poetic and characterful — but to a Soap Land geek like me, both accounts are equally intriguing. It’s always fascinating to slot the Ewings’ backstory into a real world historical context and here we learn, among other things, that Jason served in the navy during World War II until "he was thrown in the brig for alleged black market activities". Ruth, meanwhile, makes it sound as though Greg were the secret love child of Frank Lloyd Wright and Howard Hughes: "We were all in love, the three of us. I married the romantic one, Sumner, who flew planes, Galveston built them, but they were both your father, Gregory. It worked. Your genes and your upbringing — you were brought up to be powerful.” It seems as if Greg, much like Sue Ellen and Kristin on DALLAS and Richard Channing on FALCON CREST, was not so much raised as programmed to fulfill a specific destiny. "We were like little dolls created to fulfill all the things she wanted,” Sue Ellen once said of her mother. “You were nothing but a blank slate when I adopted you — I created you,” Henri Denault once told Richard.Two of this week’s three soaps conclude on an international note. DYNASTY has Alexis on the phone to the unseen King of Moldavia in an attempt to pair up their children ("I'll wager a kingdom, Galen, if we got them together it could be mutually beneficial to all parties!”) while DALLAS concludes in Hong Kong with a close up of the enigmatic Mr. Wong who appears to be in league with the Mark Graison non-lookalike against Pam. (Spooky coincidence of the week: The last minor character — i.e., one with neither opening title nor "Also Starring” credit status — to whom DALLAS awarded an end-of-episode freeze frame was Alex Ward — played the very actor who will soon appear as King Galen of Moldavia on DYNASTY.)However, both fictional Moldavia and real life Hong Kong pale into insignificance next to the out-of-this-world revelation at the end of this week's KNOTS LANDING when Greg finally learns what’s cooking at Empire Valley. “There are hundreds of satellites orbiting in space carrying messages,” Galveston emissary John Coblentz informs him, "some essential to the security of the world. With our installations at Empire Valley, we will be able to send such messages and receive them and to monitor messages between parties, between countries … Imagine knowing virtually everything that’s being said everywhere at any time.” “And if you don’t like it, you can change it,” Greg adds. "Think of it, think of what it means,” Coblentz urges him. If I understand correctly, what it means is that whoever controls Empire Valley could potentially control the entire world — not just Moldavia, not just Hong Kong, but the whole shebang. But this is KNOTS we’re talking about here — the supersoap supposedly rooted in everyday suburbia! Cleverly, this precise juxtaposition, between the normal and the bonkers, is part of the story as Karen theorises that “Gary’s Shangri-la” would make the perfect cover for “whatever they’re doing out there … Kids on bikes, tennis tournaments, garage sales — who would suspect?” “You are one of the few men who could genuinely make it work,” Coblentz tells Greg. "Everybody is counting on you to help us out — everybody.” Greg says nothing but his face twitches slightly, not unlike the way Mr. Parrish’s did on this week’s DALLAS when he recalled the well-dressed man on the plane.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (3) DALLAS3 (4) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =