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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 3348" data-attributes="member: 22">20/Mar/80: KNOTS LANDING: Bottom of the Bottle (1) v. 21/Mar/80: DALLAS: A House DividedThese episodes share a similar out-of-control, coming-apart-at-the-seams vibe. If they were spaceships, they'd be on Red Alert. Look beyond the retro boogie-ing at the beginning of "Bottom of the Bottle" and there's something unsettling about all the characters, save Val, getting so drunk and manic at the Fairgates' house party. Suddenly there's no one at the helm of the good ship KNOTS, no one to steer us through uncharted waters.When Gary takes that first drink, it's not staged as A Big Moment the way it was for Sue Ellen two weeks earlier. He isn't trying to blot out the news of his lover's death in a plane crash, he's just celebrating his new promotion. As he tells Val excitedly, their lives are finally coming together. The irony is, of course, that in celebrating this fact, their lives are about to fall apart. And quickly."A House Divided" moves fast too. This is perfect comic book DALLAS - full of big close ups and big emotions, threats and ultimatums. The action is non-stop, (in pace if not in structure, it's this season of the old series that New DALLAS resembles most) and as the episode builds, there's an increasing sense of a world coming off its axis, a centre unable to hold. This feeling is complimented by the episode's colour scheme. There are lots of shadows and half lit faces in this episode of DALLAS, while the women are dressed in deep reds, purples and pinks. The effect is both dark and sinister, and lurid and vivid. I love the purplish light on Bobby's face as he turns towards the camera to deliver his "I've put up with all the wheeling and dealing and backstabbing that I'm going to …" speech. I can so imagine that shot in a cartoon strip.The look of "Bottom of the Bottle" couldn't be more different, but as with "A House Divided", there's something distinctive about it. After picking a fight with Val after the party, Gary takes off into the night like a wounded animal and spends the rest of the episode away from the cul-de-sac. There is a strikingly visceral quality to some of the scenes that follow - when he goes ballistic in a bar and starts smashing the place up with a pool cue, or when he reaches across the counter of a liquor store for a bottle of whiskey only for the owner to whip out a gun and press it to his neck, or the final scene where he wakes up under the boardwalk and staggers down the beach - his physical and mental state underlined by the unsteady camera work... None of these scenes look like anything we've seen on KNOTS before.The worlds of DALLAS and KNOTS feel very far apart here, but there are some interesting cross references. "You drove Gary away, you tried to bribe Valene," Sue Ellen reminds JR in front of his parents. Yeah, JR drove Gary and Val all the way to California ... where we find Val in her kitchen talking about the same thing to Sid and Karen: "I used to think that he [Gary] drank because he didn't fit in, because his daddy and his brothers said he was weak and he had no character because he wasn't a tough and ruthless Ewing like them." Then comes the terrible realisation: "Gary doesn't need a special reason to drink. He'll drink for any reason."There's a parallel between this speech of Val's and what happens to Bobby in "A House Divided". When Jock sides with JR over his decision to close down Ewing 23 rather than let Cliff reap his rightful share of the profits, it's the final straw for Bobby. JR is delighted, whispering in Jock's ear that Bobby is "just plain weak." Jock does not disagree, just as he wouldn't have done when JR said the same thing about Gary all those years before. Jock insists that as Ewings, they must stick together no matter what (sounding very New DALLAS). "At the expense of everyone else? I can't live that way," replies Bobby (sounding very Gary). The following morning, Bobby leaves Southfork, "driven way" just as Gary was, apparently for good. The momentousness of his decision, and the emotional scene where he bids good-bye to his parents, while it makes little sense in any real world way, (so a rich married man in his late twenties decides to move out of his parents' house? Cry me a river) it strikes right at the heart of the Ewingverse. For me the most poignant moment of the episode is the final, wordless look between Bobby and his father before he leaves. Similarly, some of the most touching scenes in "Bottom of the Bottle" are between Gary and his surrogate father, Sid. One of the weird things about KNOTS is how relationships between the characters seem to develop organically even when they're not on screen. We've only seen Sid and Gary alone together a couple of times since the series began, their working life at Knots Landing Motors largely spoken about rather than shown. Yet when we see them together in this episode - Sid naively trying to reach out to Gary; Gary raging at Sid before his eyes fill instantly with shame and remorse - the father/son dynamic between them is in full force.Gary's demons drive him away from the cul-de-sac almost as soon as he starts drinking again. While he must navigate a Knots Landing underbelly of arid sidewalks, seedy bars, jive talking muggers and ageing hookers, fellow drunk Sue Ellen remains safely cocooned at Southfork. Her first scene in "A House Divided" finds her nursing a hangover while propped up in bed with a breakfast tray, watching the news of JR's latest atrocity (Seth Stone's suicide) reported on television. But as the episode continues, the noose around her - around the show itself - gets steadily tighter and tighter, until something finally has to give. And we all know what that is. The bang of that first shot still makes me jump.Oh and in the last scene of "Bottom of the Bottle Part 1", there's a line of dialogue I never noticed before, and it really touched me. It's after Gary wakes up on the beach and swipes a bottle of booze from the arms of a sleeping derelict. The man wakes up, briefly protests, then goes back to sleep. Before he does, he mumbles, "Mama, I'm gonna quit drinking." When Gary hears this, it seems to hit home. He makes a gesture to hand back the bottle even though he's already drunk its contents. In the background of the final shot, as a dishevelled Gary quietly breaks down and starts to cry, an oblivious jogger runs past him. This echoes the beginning of the episode where Richard is trying to persuade Gary to loosen up and have a drink at the Fairgates' party, and Gary excuses himself by saying that he plans to go jogging in the morning. What a difference three days makes. By the end, it's the sheer loneliness of Gary that gets me. (I also have to say I bloody love Ted Shackelford. In an episode that's all about Gary, he doesn't make it All About Ted. His acting is so understated and real, we barely notice it. Our focus is on the character rather than the actor, which is how it should be.) And yet, as great as "Bottom of the Bottle" is, "A House Divided" is just such a breathtakingly wild ride. The highlights are endless: Vaughn Leland's snarl, Sue Ellen's rage, her spooky prediction to Dr Elby ("He's gonna teach my son to be just like him and it's gonna go on and on and on"), the casualness with which JR and Harry threaten Alan Beam with a rape charge, Kristin playing the cornered rat to the perfection .. Sometimes you just have to press pause and laugh because it's so much fun. And so the winner is … DALLAS.</blockquote>

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