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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 175934" data-attributes="member: 22">29 Nov 90: KNOTS LANDING: Side by Side v. 30 Nov 90: DALLAS: Tunnel of Love Last week, DALLAS ended with Bobby kneeling over April’s prone body following a shootout in Paris. This week, KNOTS begins with Paige kneeling over an unconscious Greg in his office. While nothing can be done for April, Greg is rushed to Soap Land Memorial Hospital. “I hate you,” a clearly conflicted Paige whispers at his bedside. Bobby’s grief is also mixed with anger. “If you’d have listened to me, my wife wouldn’t be lying in a morgue right now!” he snarls at the French police when they offer their condolences. “You can go to hell, all of you!” While it wouldn’t be quite fair to say that Soap Land is playing terrorism for laughs this week, bomb threats and political assassinations are dealt with with a lightness of touch that would be almost inconceivable a decade or so later. When JR first hears that “some American tried to assassinate one of the major leaders of OPEC”, he sounds decidedly impressed: “That’s really something … I guarantee you, it wasn’t a Texan’s finger on that trigger. He wouldn’t have missed. Any way you look at it, they oughta hang a medal on that fella!” Then there’s the continuing story of the explosive-rigged attache case on KNOTS. As with the briefcase Tommy McKay booby-trapped on DALLAS a year ago, the bomb is set to go off as soon as the case is opened. Back then, DALLAS teased us for a whole episode by having Bobby, and then Christopher, almost-but-not-quite opening the case on several occasions before the explosive final scene. KNOTS pulls a similar trick, but on a bigger scale. Anne, initially believing that the case contains a million dollars, stashes it in her daughter’s office at the Sumner Group. Then Linda Fairgate comes across it when she’s snooping through Paige’s office looking for some classified research. Assuming the locked case contains what she’s looking for, she steals it. Meanwhile, Nick tells Anne what’s really in the case and they return to the office to retrieve it, only to find it missing. Panicked, they go in search of Paige. Unable to open the case, Linda returns it to Paige’s office. Soon afterwards, Anne gets an attack of conscience (“There are limits to what I’ll do,” she tells Nick. “I’m not gonna leave a bomb in a building with hundreds of people in it!”) and call in an anonymous bomb threat to the police. The Sumner Group is evacuated (by Tom Ryan, of all people), but not before Paige receives an earlier message about her mother looking for a briefcase. Seeing it in her office, she takes it with her and brings it back to the apartment. At the end of the episode, Nick and Anne agree to split the million dollars. They then realise Paige has placed the case with the bomb right next to the identical one with the cash. “Which one has the money?” Anne asks. “I don’t know,” replies Nick.Back on DALLAS, JR only learns what has happened to April when he receives a call from the Associated Press asking for a quote “about what happened in Paris … your sister-in-law’s death.” Meanwhile, for reasons best known to herself, Greg’s sister Claudia leaks the story of his collapse to the press by making it sound as if he and Paige were in a compromising position, Alexis and Cecil-style, when it happened. “A captain of American industry collapses in the arms of his beautiful assistant,” is how she describes it. While Claudia wastes no time in keeping Paige and others away from Greg’s hospital room, hiding behind a “family only” visitors policy, Bobby doesn’t want even family near him in the aftermath of his tragedy. “I don’t want you here … I don’t need help,” he tells JR coldly over the phone during their first conversation for seven whole episodes. He doesn’t want Mama to know what’s happened either. Instead, he buries April alone in Paris — the only other mourners, Mark Harris’s teen cycling team, watching from a respectful distance. The funeral ceremony appears to be Catholic and is conducted in French — a far cry from those Baptist spirituals in Springdale April’s mother described so fondly last season. It’s poignant and beautifully shot in a distinctly un-DALLAS way. Again, the Parisian locations do half the work. There’s a more cynical display of religiosity on KNOTS when Claudia follows Greg’s manservant Carlos into the hospital chapel. She pretends she’s there to pray, but really it’s to weasel information out of him about the contents of Greg’s will.Almost everyone in DALLAS is impacted by April’s death — from the stunned secretaries at Ewing Oil to a tearful Cliff to a frustrated James who is annoyed when Sly reneges on her promise to help him get back at JR. “What is the point of hanging on to all that anger?” she reasons. “When you compare it to April, it really doesn’t add up to very much … I think this might be the perfect time for you to make up with JR.” James gives it a go, but his timing is seriously off. When he walks into his father’s office, JR has just received an ear-bashing from Bobby about not being around when he needed him. “This whole mess is your fault,” JR snaps at his son. “If you hadn’t kept me in that sanatarium, I’d have been able to help Bobby … April’s dead, Bobby’s at my throat, and all because I got a vengeful so-called son!”On KNOTS, Mack compliments Frank on how well he’s dealing with the loss of his wife. “Half the time I’m staring at these law books, not reading a thing,” he admits. “I sleep maybe two hours. I keep wanting to reach over and … You know how many times I have to stop myself from picking up that phone and calling her?” What Frank describes, Bobby is living. We see him wander the streets of Paris, lost and weeping. As we’ve seen previously, raw grief is hard a thing for Soap Land to convey, but DALLAS doesn’t do too badly here. It helps to have “the most romantic city in the world” as a backdrop. I mean, if you’re gonna stumble around aimlessly, grief-stricken and bereft, there are uglier places to do it in.KNOTS LANDING’s Julie bunks off school to watch Return of the Living Dead, Part II this week. It’s an apt title as the living dead are all over the place. In his hospital bed, Greg Sumner “sees” his niece Kate, sweetly reciting e.e. cummings’ poem ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’ (“He sang his didn’t, he danced his did”) morph into his late daughter Mary Frances, angrily reading Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ (“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”). In Paris, Bobby “sees” April, first through a shop window and then again later, running towards him at the airport as he’s preparing to fly home. Most poignant of all is when he returns to Dallas and stops by April’s apartment. “Oh my God!” he gasps, momentarily mistaking Cally for his dead wife: “I just saw your hair and I …” Interestingly, Cally is the first person Bobby allows to console him. She explains that she’s been staying at April’s since JR kicked her off the ranch and she now plans to divorce him. “Good,” he replies. “Get away from my family — and don’t just walk, run. Marrying a Ewing is a curse and the only way you can beat it is to run.” Following this logic, he would also approve of Val’s decision to call off her wedding to his brother. Gary, however, is just confused. Rather than a curse, Val attributes her a decision to a prophecy. “The dress was an omen,” she insists, referring to the wedding gown Gary saw her in by accident. “It represents everything that ever went wrong between us.” Gary’s had enough. “I’m too old to enjoy marriage to the queen of her own drama,” he tells the Mackenzies wearily.Already this season, we’ve lost Danny Waleska (drowned), April Ewing (shot) and Jordan Lee (murdered in a telephone kiosk — a Soap Land first). Now it’s time for some new faces. On KNOTS, Julie brings home Jason, a pal from school. We eavesdrop on them sitting outside the Williams’ house, discussing contemporary music makers: George Michael (“OK if you don’t wanna think,” says Jason), Sinead O’Connor (“She’s got brains,” he says approvingly), Ziggy Marley (“let’s you dance and think at the same time,” enthuses Julie) and a Chilean sounding band called Voodoo Child who are favourites of Jason: “They talk about peace and stuff. It’s weird. I like ‘em.” This is an incidental exchange of no dramatic import, but it’s arguably the first time we’ve heard Soap Land teenagers discussing pop culture without sounding like they’re from the 1950s. Jason has long hair and cuts class, but he also offers to fix Meg’s toy so we know he’s not all bad. DALLAS’s latest arrival, New York gangster Johnny Dancer, also has long hair, but whereas Jason’s is proto-grunge, Johnny’s is a Nicholas Pearce-era mullet. And there’s nothing to suggest he is anything but totally rotten. This week, his ex-girlfriend Liz Adams learns that he murdered her brother in order to acquire his company and launder money through it. So Liz dumps Cliff (who’s just asked her to marry him) to get back together with Johnny so she can spy on him. Because as well as being a New York supermodel, Liz is also a gangster’s moll turned government agent.The threat of the week is from Liz’s handler, who approaches Cliff from behind with a gun: “I see you like Chinese food. That’s good. Because if I ever see you in the same room with Liz Adams again, I’m gonna turn your brains into moo goo gai pan.”Elsewhere on DALLAS, in a move that anticipates the next era of soap hero, i.e., MELROSE PLACE’s Jake Hanson, a down-on-his-luck James takes a job in a motorcycle repair shop. “I like it, it’s honest work,” he insists. Meanwhile, JR witnesses Rose McKay’s Sue Ellen tribute act at the Oil Baron’s Club, whereupon she gets drunk in public and loudly complains about her husband’s neglect. “Why don’t you make love to me anymore, Mack? … You don’t even touch me!” she yells. This, in turn, allows JR to revive a few of the impotency-related wisecracks he previously aimed at Dusty: “What’s the matter — can’t raise the flag?” he asks McKay. “You better get yourself home, take care of business, boy.” JR and Rose later “take care of business” on McKay’s desk.Bobby returns to Ewing Oil in the last scene and makes what could be interpreted as a declaration of intent for DALLAS’s final season: “You better take a real good look around, JR, because I’m changing all the rules and nothing’s gonna be the same from now on!”And this week’s Top 2 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (2) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

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