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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 2866" data-attributes="member: 22">17/Jan/80: KNOTS LANDING: The Lie v. 18/Jan/80: DALLAS: Jenna's ReturnSo far this season, each episode of DALLAS has foregrounded one particular story-line, bringing it to boiling point while the other stories bubble away in the background. It's a neat way of keeping the drama peaking. KNOTS' instalments have been comparatively low key thus far. This week, there's a switch around. "Jenna's Return" bucks the DALLAS Season 2 convention by focusing not on one story, but on three, each involving a romantically linked couple: Bobby and Jenna, Donna and Ray, and Dusty and Sue Ellen. (Also unusually, DALLAS's chief antagonist, JR, keeps a relatively low profile for much of this ep.) Meanwhile in "The Lie", front page headlines about a serial rapist in the neighbourhood mean that tensions are running high on the cul-de-sac from the opening scene. In contrast to the KNOTS' couples, quaking in their jim-jams, Ray and Donna and Dusty and Sue Ellen start off their episode happily cocooned in their respective love nests. (Yes, Sue Ellen is actually happy.) All you need is love, they assure each other. It's only gradually that certain realities start to encroach on their bliss - the cultural distance between Ray and Donna, the geographical distance between Sue Ellen and Dusty. (Foreshadow alert! We learn that Dusty has been flying his own plane back and forth from San Angelo to Fort Worth for his hotel trysts with Sue Ellen.)Both episodes boast some stand-out acting. Susan Howard and Steve Kanaly are really great in "Jenna's Return", imbuing their scenes in Donna's apartment with the sort of maturity and believability one doesn't ordinarily expect on DALLAS. (Cool apartment, by the way - but then all of the apartments in this season - Donna's, Dusty's, Kristin's, Alan Beam's - are. Must be a turn of the decade thing.) Ray and Donna's behaviour feels so recognisably "real" they might almost be in a different show. Even better are Pleshette and McCashin as the Averys on KNOTS. Their two bedroom scenes in "The Lie" - the first when Richard finds Laura with her dress ripped and assumes she's been raped, the second when he tells her he loves her and she's virtually paralysed with guilt - are so raw and intimate, they really feel like, well, scenes from a marriage. Oh and it's worth mentioning the debut appearance of Lou Ann Culver, Donna's step-daughter-in-law, in DALLAS. I think she only appears a couple of times, but she makes such an impression it like feels more. That's a sign of a drama series in good health I think, when even the minor characters feel potentially major."The Lie" does a really good job of juxtaposing its melodrama with small details of everyday suburbia: the fact that Val and Laura are the only characters home alone during in the day, the really nice scene where Gary, Val and Karen are sitting on the kerb eating ice cream in the early evening, even the breakfast scene at the beginning where Laura laughs off the goofs she's made with Richard's eggs and laundry. I find myself believing in this world; I could watch these people doing anything … or nothing.Faced with a sense of powerlessness after Laura's attack, Sid momentarily considers taking the law into his own hands - introducing the theme of vigilantism, which KNOTS will return to time and again over the years.It's only a week since Karen was alone in a young man's apartment. Like Laura's rapist (nameless in the episode, but credited as Martin in the closing titles), David Crane was an artistic soul. He charmed Karen by making up a poem about her; Martin lures Laura back to his place with a sketch he's made of her. David makes a thing of not knowing whether to make the bed or not (he does); Martin's bed is pointedly unmade when he shows it to Laura. Neither woman ever speaks (least of all to their husband) what went on in that room. In both cases, an in-the-way Val comes closest to finding out. The unique thing about "The Lie" is that it's the story of a woman who pretends she was raped without ever realising that she was raped. It's not even clear if the programme itself understands that she was raped. The lovely, lonely, mournful score that plays throughout the episode starts when Laura appears in her red dress and embarks upon her double life. It would seem to suggest that that is her tragedy and whatever happens afterwards is merely an extension of that. The show doesn't judge Laura, a young wife and mother, for spending her afternoons in a pick up joint. It isn't really concerned with whether or not she was raped. What it does care about is how Laura feels about herself. Laura's lie means that Scarface (the "real" rapist) is set free. However, he is then caught red-handed so Laura is off the hook, lie-wise. Nevertheless, she still calls the police to admit she lied to them about her attack and to tell them not to bother looking for Martin (the "non-existent" rapist). So in the eyes of the law, she's Done The Right Thing. So that's good. But by the end of the episode, she's back at the bar, doing the cigarette thing. So that's bad. It's not an episode about rape, it's a show about woman's silent struggle with her own self-worth. It's slippery, elusive. It's hard to even talk about without getting tangled up in KNOTS. JR snaps back into life towards the end of "Jenna's Return" during an argument with Kristin (their first) where she jealously accuses him of being jealous of Sue Ellen's mystery man. There follows a great nighttime nursery scene between JR and Sue Ellen where she delights in telling him he no longer has any control over her comings and goings. This spurs him into action, and the next morning he insists on accompanying her to a DOA meeting, which was only ever her cover for an assignation with Dusty. (This is all played out for Mama and Daddy's benefit. The importance of humouring Jock and Ellie adds a whole extra layer of tension to DALLAS in its early years.) At the meeting, JR runs into Ray, escorting Donna, and drips a few expertly judged words of poison into his ear, thus destroying any confidence Ray had that he could ever be worthy of Donna or make her happy. Ray never really recovers from this. JR's words play right into his lack of self-worth (that word again!) and become a self fulfilling prophesy. And JR does this with nothing to gain - purely out of spite, simply to pass the time.Of the three couples featured in this week's DALLAS, the least interesting is Bobby and Jenna. Jenna 2 lacks Jenna 1's edge and Jenna 3's beauty and is probably the dullest guest actor of the series so far. (Evidently the programme makers agreed and so eradicated all trace of Jenna 2's narrative - her career in fashion journalism, her ongoing working relationship with Pam, Charlie's relationship with Naldo - when she returned as Jenna 3.) Nevertheless, the episode ends with one of DALLAS's first bona fide cliffhanging questions: will Bobby sleep with Jenna? Back in the day, it seemed like a distinct possibility."The Lie" is also open ended. Its final shot, of the anonymous man lighting Laura's cigarette, looks like something out of a French movie, like a fantasy. I guess that's what Laura is chasing here - a fantasy, an escape, a chance to be something other than who she is.And the winner is … no contest, really … KNOTS LANDING.</blockquote>

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