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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 236441" data-attributes="member: 22">18 Mar 13: DALLAS: Ewings Unite! v. 11 Nov 15: EMPIRE: True Love Never v. 20 Apr 18: DYNASTY: Use or Be UsedTwo weeks after Tom Carrington bequeathed the Carrington Manor to Alexis, a letter written by Miss Ellie shortly before her death, but “not to be opened until after JR’s passing”, leaves half of Southfork to John Ross. JR, meanwhile, leaves his share of the mineral rights to the oil under Southfork to his ex-wife and son. Bobby’s decision to allow drilling on the ranch to recommence means that the Ewings are all on the same side for once. Their main enemy is now Cliff. “We are up against a very dangerous man with a lot of money who will stop at nothing to destroy this family. The only hope we have of surviving is if we stick together,” Bobby declares.While trying to conduct business, Christopher Ewing and Andre Lyon each find themselves in a sexually compromising position. First Christopher is warned by Alison Jones, the not unattractive city transportation official he’s been dealing with, that Barnes Global has undercut his bid to fuel the city’s fleet with methane. She has, however, arranged for her colleagues to see a demonstration of Christopher’s rig in action later that week. “I’m gonna need more than a week,” he protests. “That’s a big ask,” she purrs, putting her hand on top of his. “What can you offer me in exchange?” When Christopher pulls his hand away, indicating that he isn’t prepared to prostitute himself the way EMPIRE’s Anika and DYNASTY’s Jeff did earlier in the season, she turns chilly. “You have one week,” she snaps.Over on EMPIRE, it’s Andre’s own father who tries to whore him out. “Freda Gatz has a small legal issue we need to take care of … a gang injunction,” he tells him. “Why don’t you go see your lady friend down in the mayor’s office?” “… That’s not a small issue, Pop,” Andre argues. “And you’re not a small man, son — I’m sure that’s why the deputy mayor likes doing business with you,” replies Lucious. Indeed, having sex on Deputy Mayor Alvarez's desk is nothing Andre hasn’t enjoyed in the past, but that was before he found the Lord.Bobby’s response upon hearing that Cliff is trying to steal Christopher’s deal is interesting. “Since JR is dead, we have to find our own inner junkyard dog,” he tells John Ross and Christopher. In other words, they each have to tap into their own inner JR. This is a far cry from the Bobby who was so “sick and tired of this family devouring itself over money” when New DALLAS began. The advice Andre receives from his pastor is no less murky. “Would fulfilling your father’s venal task advance your larger task within Empire?” he asks. “Andre, God has chosen you to be His warrior. Sometimes warriors have to do things on the battlefield that would be repugnant in any other context.”Both Christopher and Andre arrive at a compromise that allows them to keep their virtues intact while still channelling their inner junkyard dog. Well, strictly speaking, it’s John Ross who comes up with the plan whereby he sleeps with Alison instead of his cousin while Bum takes incriminating photographs of them wearing matching bathrobes. Christopher subsequently presents these pictures to Alison. “Once these hit the paper, you will get fired, certainly ruining any hopes of a political career,” he tells her. “This will destroy my husband!” she protests. Likewise, Andre, instead of doing the dirty with Deputy Mayor Alvarez, shows her recordings of their previous “closed-door bartering sessions.” She too has a marriage and a career to lose. “Kill the Barnes Global offer and stay out of my way,” Christopher tells Alison. ”Unless you want the mayor to get a full report on how you conduct your government business, have that gang injunction lifted by tomorrow,” Andre orders the Deputy Mayor.Committing blackmail puts Andre and Christopher in contrasting moods. While Andre is so relieved he’s able to make love to his wife for the first time this season (“Oh baby, this is what I’ve been praying for!” Rhonda gasps), Christopher is ridden with guilt and proceeds to drown his sorrows in a scene remarkably similar to one in 1983 where Bobby likewise hit the booze after blackmailing a government official who was in cahoots with JR. Whereas Pam was appalled by Bobby’s actions then (“You’re not the man I married!” she yelled), Elena is simply disappointed by Christopher’s now. “You’re the most decent man I know and now you’re blackmailing people,” she tells him sadly.As JR predicted before he died, Cliff Barnes moves to enlist Harris Ryland in his plan to bring down the Ewings. His reassuringly familiar rant about what was stolen from his family (“The Ewings drove my father to drink and left him penniless and broken … They stole his legacy and mine”) is echoed by Jeff Colby on DYNASTY (“Fallon Carrington didn’t just steal 25% of my company. She stole my family, my pride”). Cliff makes Harris an offer he can’t refuse: “Help me take down the Ewings and I will give you enough money to buy Ryland Transport right out from underneath your mother’s control.”However, Judith Ryland is already one step ahead of her son. Following the bitter row between them in last week’s ep, she tells him she’s leaving for London: “I don’t know what I’ve done to earn your hatred, Harris, but I’ve decided it’s too painful to try to figure it out … The moment I step off the plane, I’m going to freeze all your bank accounts … I’m also removing you as the head of Ryland Transport.” “You can’t do that!” he shouts. “This is a family business and I am head of the family and since you are dead to me, you are no longer family,” she replies coldly. They struggle and she falls down a flight of stairs. It’s pure FALCON CREST Season 3.This week’s episode of New DYNASTY is the best so far. It opens with Alexis exercising in the Carrington dining room while the rest of the family are attempting to eat breakfast. (“These floors are more shock-absorbent than the ones in the loft,” she explains.) From ‘Jump’ by the Pointer Sisters playing on a ghetto-blaster to Alexis’s pink and silver workout ensemble (leg-warmers included) to Fallon’s gag about her “retirement home revival of Flashdance”, the whole sequence is an enjoyable pastiche of the ‘80s fitness craze. But whereas no-one in the actual Soap Land ‘80s would have dreamt of saying anything negative about an older woman staying in shape, here it is depicted as both impressive (the admiring close-ups of Alexis’s toned body parts) and somewhat grotesque — Cristal recoiling from Alexis’s post-workout body odour; Steven declaring that he has "definitely lost my appetite.” Alexis herself, or Paige as she was back then, reacted to her own mother’s nude photoshoot with similar distaste in 1991. After listening to the family insults zinging back and forth, Liam tells Fallon that “breakfast in your house is a contact sport.”The sporting metaphors continue on DALLAS and EMPIRE. “Were you ever a runner, Mr Ewing?” Alison Jones asks John Ross before they end up in bed together. “I get the sense you’re quick out the blocks, wanna go as fast as possible.” “I like to come out hard and power my way to that finish line,” he replies with a straight face. “I was like that when I was young,” she tells him. “Now I’m more of a distance woman …” and so on. On EMPIRE, Lucious climbs into the ring, literally and figuratively, with Jago, the head of a streaming service that he and Mimi want to merge with. “They say sparring partners make the best business partners,” Lucious says. “Imagine what you could do with Empire in your corner. Talking about a true heavyweight.” After he inadvertently knocks Jago out, they are obliged to continue their meeting at Jago’s hospital bedside. As they talk, Mimi surreptitiously increases Jago’s morphine supply until he’s so blissed out he agrees to the merger on Lucious’s terms — a plot point as silly as the truth serum story on last week’s DYNASTY.While Emma teases Drew Ramos by pretending they’ve arranged a date that he has forgotten about on DALLAS (“You’re so cute when you’re freaked out”), Liam nervously asks Fallon for a date on DYNASTY: “Our fake marriage contract ends soon so before I turn back into a frog, I thought we could have a date.” “This is so last minute, I have nothing to wear,” mock-protests Drew. “I need a dress, I need shoes, I need a hero,” declares Fallon. Cut to one of those trying-on-outfits-in-front-of-the-mirror montages with Sam acting as her fashion adviser. “I look like Hilary Clinton dipped in Elton John,” she complains of a gold-sequinned pantsuit. In contrast to the dark gothic atmosphere of the Ryland house, Emma and Drew’s date is casual and fun. They ride his motorbike through the gates of Southfork (a unique shot which gave me a geeky thrill) and wind up in a park eating burgers and exchanging backstories. At the other end of the formality spectrum, Liam meticulously prepares a six-course dinner for him and Fallon. Of course, no Soap Land date would be complete without some parental interference. While Harris Ryland has henchman Roy Vickers spy on Emma and Drew, Alexis accidentally-on-purpose tells Fallon about Michael Culhane’s dying father — ignoring Michael’s specific request that Fallon not be informed. As a consequence, Fallon is too preoccupied to focus on her date with Liam and instead bails on him to go and visit Michael at Soap Land Memorial Hospital. As frustrating as this is for Liam, Harris Ryland has something much worse in mind for Drew. Cliff has already assigned Harris the task of finding someone to plant a bomb on Christopher's rig to coincide with the demonstration he has planned. Harris tells Roy Vickers to give the job to Drew: “I want him fully compromised.” Drew refuses to comply — until Roy threatens his sister (“Her death would be so tragic”).There are a couple of great scenes between Sue Ellen and Gary this week. In the first, he tries to broach the subject of her alcohol problem and she simply denies she has one: “I had a moment of weakness when JR died, but I would hardly consider that drinking.” It feels like 1980 all over again. When he persists, she turns mean. “Poor sweet Gary,” she says mockingly, “I was playing you to get Bobby to turn that oil back on … but Bobby’s already done that so I don’t need you anymore.” When he still refuses to be put off, she takes the unprecedented step of calling Val in Knots Landing: “Gary’s here and he really misses you … I think you should come to Dallas and get him.” Then, safely alone, she pulls down the blinds of her office window, pours herself a large drink, winks conspiratorially at a picture of JR and knocks it back.After Val realises she has been summoned to DALLAS under false pretences, she only sticks around for a scene and a half, but still finds time to barge into Sue Ellen’s office and unleash a barrage of insults that make Fallon’s abuse of Alexis on this week’s DYNASTY (“You’re about as transparent as a hooker’s negligee … I don’t need love advice from a woman who believes that ‘as long as we both shall live’ means until happy hour”) seem almost restrained by comparison: “Once a bitch always a bitch … You are just as sadistic as JR ever was … what a manipulative monster you are!” Had there been a pair of scissors on Sue Ellen’s desk, she probably would have threatened her with them the way she once did Jill Bennett.Nothing Val accuses her ex-sister-in-law of here is untrue, and yet in her second scene with Gary (also his very last appearance), Sue Ellen manages to flip the whole situation around. He is still convinced she needs his help (“and, unlike my wife, I help people in trouble”) while she is still trying to get rid of him, but this time she tries a gentler approach. “Valene left you because she knew it was the only way to get you sober again and she was right,” she tells him. “She left you because she loves you. I know I need help, but I need to do it myself.” Her next words clearly refer to JR’s passing, but they also serve to assuage Gary’s feelings of resentment towards Val: “One day she may be gone and you don’t want to regret the loss of every moment you could have spent with her.” Gary is moved. “If you ever need anything, I’m just a phone call away,” he tells her. “I know that,” Sue Ellen assures him gratefully. And so, with Gary and Val getting back together, the KNOTS saga has come full circle. Sue Ellen Ewing providing KNOTS LANDING with its final moment of closure — who’d have thunk it? (And it's all so she can carry on drinking.)Sue Ellen is not the only character to make an unlikely cupid for two estranged lovers this week. “Fallon loves you,” Alexis tells Michael outside the hospital where his father is dying. “Last time I checked, Fallon was married to Liam,” Michael points out. “She doesn’t love him. She loves you,” Alexis insists. Meanwhile, Fallon is talking to Michael’s mother upstairs. “I can see how hurt you were that you weren’t the first to know, but it isn’t about you right now,” Mrs Culhane tells her. It’s a strange thing: as soon as a character on screen articulates what the viewer is thinking at home — in this case, how relentlessly self-centred Fallon is — it takes the sting out of it and Fallon becomes an interesting, sympathetic character again.As well as laying KNOTS LANDING to rest, this week’s DALLAS also reveals the fate of one of its most infamous villains. “Katherine’s dead,” Bobby says casually. This must rank as the most offhand retroactive demise of a Soap Land character since the news that Dex Dexter “didn’t fare all that well” in the DYNASTY reunion. Bobby also gives us some background on Barnes Global that makes it sounds like an exciting mashup of the three Wentworth businesses from the original DALLAS. He describes it as “a multi-billion dollar company” (like Wentworth Industries) that was “started by Cliff’s mother” (sort of like Barnes Wentworth) and later divided “between the three children - Pamela, Cliff and Katherine” (as was Wentworth Tool & Die). “If Pamela’s still alive, she could be a silent partner in Barnes Global,” he continues. “Maybe that’s why JR was looking for her — to help us take Cliff down.” “If my mother’s still alive, I’ll find her,” Christopher declares. Fighting talk — but Steven Carrington is quicker off the mark when it comes to looking for long lost relatives. In the opening scene of this week’s DYNASTY, he departs for El Paso in search of his brother Adam and by the end of the ep has an address for the sister of one of Adam’s suspected kidnappers.At Fallon’s suggestion, she and Liam try another date — this time at La Perla, a glitzy fashion show/gala/launch thing. I’d never previously heard of La Perla but from the way the party is shot it's immediately apparent that, just like the Carousel Ball in DYNASTY ’83, this is a real event that the fictional characters have been inserted into. (Alexis, Sam and Jeff are also in attendance.) La Perla’s “creative director”, Julia Haart, gives off the same by now familiar “real-life person playing themselves” vibe as the sports luminaries who showed up to JR’s memorial service last week and the umpteen hip-hop artists who cameo on EMPIRE.Real-life and fiction overlap so frequently on EMPIRE that I had to google Huey Jarvis, a Quincy Jones-style music impresario whom Lucious visits this week, to find out if he really exists or not. (He doesn’t.) Huey hosts the prestigious Living Room Sessions — a regular gathering in his home where a few select musical artists are invited to perform their latest work. Lucious has never received such an invitation but longs to. “Everybody who’s played one of your sessions in the last five years has walked on stage and accepted their award,” he tells him admiringly. Hoping for Huey’s approval, Lucious plays him the new track he’s been working on, but Huey remains politely unimpressed. “I’m still wanting to hear more,” he says, “feel more of that part of yourself that you keep locked up so tight … You got to dig deeper.”Both Lucious and Alexis find themselves eclipsed by their children this week. After Jamal is invited to play at one of Huey’s Living Room Sessions, Lucious proudly embraces him, but when he’s left alone we see how gutted he is that it wasn’t him. Meanwhile, Julia Haart raves to Alexis about Fallon at La Perla: “Fallon is such a doll and literally the perfect face for my brand — a sexy, savvy, no-nonsense businesswoman.” “I thought that was me,” says Alexis. “She is you,” Julia assures her hastily.Meanwhile, Liam does his best to avoid the popping flashbulbs on the red carpet. When someone in Soap Land is this publicity-shy, it means they’re either in the Witness Protection Programme (Nicholas Pearce on DALLAS, the Williams family on KNOTS) or have an even more complicated reason for hiding their true identity (Kim Novak on FALCON CREST). Sure enough, Julia Haart recognises Liam as writer Jack Lowden who "just received a seven-figure advance for a tell-all book about a wealthy dysfunctional family.” Fallon is crushed. “I’m still me, we can still be us,” Liam/Jack pleads, but she's not buying it. Last we see of Jack/Liam, he’s sitting glumly at a bus stop when a chauffeur-driven limousine pulls up. “The jet’s fuelled and waiting as per your instructions,” the driver tells him.At JR’s funeral last week, Bobby said that it had always been easy to for him do good because he could always rely on his brother to do bad: “Now I have to figure out just what I’m supposed to do in this grand scheme of things.” This dilemma seems to apply to several DALLAS characters this week. Without JR to measure their morality against, no-one seems to know how far is too far anymore — Christopher blackmailing Alison, Sue Ellen manipulating Gary and Val, Drew planting a bomb … “I know I crossed a line here,” Christopher admits. “That’s what breaks my heart — you did it anyway,” Elena replies. Nor is he the only one. Roy Vickers is preparing to remotely detonate the bomb on Christopher’s rig when he sees something amiss on his computer screen. He calls Cliff to warn him: “We got a problem, sir. Your daughter’s on the rig.” Cliff hesitates. Then he asks if they can wait till she’s gone. Roy replies that everyone is about to leave together. “We need witnesses,” Cliff mutters. Another silence. We see his face twitching. “Just do it,” he says finally. “But, sir, she’s pregnant,” Roy protests. Cliff ignores him and hangs up, a haunted look in his eyes. Meanwhile, a tormented Drew waits back at the ranch, knowing what’s about to happen. Just before dialling the sequence of numbers that will set off the bomb, Roy takes the cross that’s on a chain around his neck and kisses it. The fact that all three men are aware of the gravity of what is about to happen and then allow it to happen anyway is what makes the sequence so powerful. As Elena says to Christopher, “That’s what breaks my heart — you did it anyway.”Bereavement, drug addiction, mental illness, religious faith — all subjects that New DYNASTY has rolled its eyes at, made a few wisecracks about and then dismissed. Blake is hoping that the leukaemia epidemic Carrington Atlantic is responsible for can be forgotten about just as easily. Cristal, however, has other ideas. “Culhane’s father is the sixteenth adult in Clarke County to be diagnosed with cancer,” she tells him. “The science linking our chemical waste to those patients is weak,” he argues. “Because CA made it look weak,” she insists.It’s striking that the most morally principled character in both DALLAS and DYNASTY is the female Mexican outsider — Elena and Cristal. While Elena chooses to remove herself from the corruption at the heart of her series (“Ewing Enterprises is a pit of snakes,” she tells Christopher. “You may be in so deep that you can’t see it, but … I will not be a part of this”), Cristal does not have that luxury. She’s enmeshed at CA and is part of the cover-up. “When I first started working at Carrington Atlantic in 2013, I killed a story about the Clarke County health crisis,” she admits to a company lawyer. “Even though you knew CA was responsible for making people sick?” the lawyer asks. “I was just trying to do my job,” she replies. At her urging, Blake agrees to accept “full responsibility for the environmental impact we’ve had on Clarke County”, but first the lawyer recommends “CA undertake a private environmental study … to determine exactly what chemicals are making people sick.” Cristal asks how long this will take. “A couple of years minimum,” comes the reply. Blake ‘reluctantly’ agrees. “The longer we wait, the more people die. We need to do the right thing!” Cristal insists. “And we will, just as soon as that study is concluded,” Blake replies smoothly. “You were never gonna go public, were you?” she realises. “You just wanted me to go on the record with you so you could blackmail me into silence.” Things turn even more sinister when she finds some shadowy X-FILES type figures in her office shredding her confidential files.If Clarke County (the town contaminated by chemical waste from Carrington Atlantic’s power plant) is DYNASTY’s equivalent of Wesphall (the town poisoned by Galveston Industries’ toxic waste on KNOTS), then Cristal is Lila Maxwell, the company employee who tries to expose the truth. Whereas Lila was murdered before she could blow the whistle (or appear on screen), Cristal learns her fate in the darkest and best scene of New DYNASTY to date. Blake enters his study and fixes himself a drink before realising his wife is “waiting in the dark, drinking my scotch” while seated behind his desk.  I realise this comparison is wildly overblown, but the way the scene is shot to emphasise the distance, both physical and emotional, between Blake and Cristal reminds me of an equivalent moment in Citizen Kane. “You think you’re so clever, so much smarter than everyone else, but tonight when you had those men destroy every shred of incriminating evidence, you made a big mistake,” she tells him. “Now there’s no record of you and I admitting personal culpability which means there’s nothing stopping me from going public with the epidemic.” “Then it’s a good thing I kept this,” he replies, producing a tape of her admitting to killing the story. “So if you ever do decide to make trouble for CA, you will be the first one they fit for an orange jumpsuit.” “… You’re not the man I married,” she says, quoting Pam Ewing in 1983. “Ever since Alexis invaded this house —“ “Don’t put this on Alexis,” he interrupts. “For all her faults, at least she understands the concept of family loyalty.” This leaves Cristal speechless. “The anger will pass,” he assures her condescendingly. “I’m not angry,” she replies, “I’m scared. Scared of you.” “Well, you should be,” he tells her.(Just as she was for Krystle in Season 9 of ‘80s DYNASTY, Alexis a comparatively minor thorn in Cristal’s side. “Get the hell out of my house,” she snarls at her as they pass in the Carrington hallway while Cristal is on her way to deal with a more pressing matter.)Blake Carrington and Cliff Barnes have us on the edge of our seats this week, waiting to see just how far they’ll go: Is Cliff really prepared to sacrifice his pregnant daughter to get revenge on the Ewings? Is Blake really prepared to frame his wife to cover up his crimes? The equivalent question on this week’s EMPIRE is: how far inside himself is Lucious prepared to dig in order to produce an emotionally authentic track? When Huey tells him to “dig deeper”, he’s repeating the same advice Lucious himself gave a singer in the very first scene of EMPIRE (“I need you to sing like you are going to die tomorrow, like this is the last song you will ever sing”), so the fact that he is now in the same position is obviously significant.Lucious and Mimi celebrate their streaming deal with Jago by getting wasted and picking up a girl, April, in a club. They agree to share her and all wind up at Lucious’s place. This is the first ménage à trois we’ve come across in this thread — although, chronologically, John Ross, Pamela and Emma’s disastrous night together occurred two years before this one. While no-one ends up in a coma on this occasion, things nonetheless get very messy. The sexy fun is interrupted when Mimi gets a phone call, presumably from her girlfriend, that causes her to sob till her make up runs. Then the tattoo of a gun on April’s inner thigh triggers (no pun intended) yet another grim childhood flashback for Lucious, this time of his mother putting a revolver to her head. “Y’all might wanna get started without me. I’m gonna be a while,” he tells the ladies before rushing to his ensuite recording studio and finally giving the song he’s been working on all the emotion and urgency it needs. It’s a very watchable sequence and I get why it’s so important to Lucious; I’m just quite not sure why it’s supposed to matter to us. I mean, writing a song, however good, isn’t exactly blackmailing your wife into keeping quiet about an epidemic or blowing up your pregnant daughter.It truly feels like both Blake and Cliff have crossed a line this week. In Soap Land, we’re used to characters getting in over their heads and making decisions that have disastrous consequences, but here, both men knew exactly what they were doing before they did it. Thrillingly, it’s hard to see how either of them can be redeemed now.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (2) DYNASTY3 (3) EMPIRE</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?