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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 3425" data-attributes="member: 22">30/Dec/80: FLAMINGO ROAD: Pilot v. 01/Jan/81: KNOTS LANDING: Step One v. 02/Jan/81: DALLAS: The Prodigal MotherA new year and a momentous week in Soap Land - not only the debut of FLAMINGO ROAD but of David Paulsen and Rebecca Wentworth as, respectively, writer and titular character of "The Prodigal Mother".Unlike the rest of the 80s prime time soaps, FLAMINGO ROAD was a literary adaptation. As with PEYTON PLACE, the granddaddy of the genre, it was originally a novel (published in 1942), then a film (released in 1949). Despite the TV Guide ads screaming, "From the makers of DALLAS!" it's PEYTON PLACE that FLAMINGO ROAD most closely resembles in its premise. First off, its focus is on a town, Truro, as opposed to a single family, or even a cul-de-sac, and there is a clear social divide between the rich residents of Flamingo Road and the hoi polloi getting by on River Street.As in PEYTON PLACE, the town's main source of employment is a family owned mill run by an aloof but weak-willed patriarch (Claude Weldon), the town's conscience is provided by the local newspaper proprietor (Elmore Tyson), and the principle drinking establishment is owned and run by a been-there-done-that mother figure (Lute-Mae Sanders - played by an irritatingly dumb Stella Stevens, the weakest link in the cast). There are plenty of similarities with DALLAS too, especially in the casting. At times, FLAMINGO ROAD feels like "Dallas through the looking glass" - an upside down world where disgraced Senator "Wild Bill" Orloff now runs a diner, Jordan Lee officiates at Jenna Wade's wedding, and Mark Graison plays cards with Andy Bradley in the back room of the local whorehouse before venturing out front to boogie down with Dora Mae. The exterior of the Weldon house looks not unlike the mini-series version of the Ewing ranch, but this is Florida, not Texas: where Southfork is all patios and chirping crickets, FLAMINGO ROAD is verandahs and croaking frogs, and although they live in a mere house on a mere street, the Weldons feel somehow grander than the Ewings, more genteel and refined. At one point, they're described as "Southern aristocracy", a phrase I don't think I've ever heard on DALLAS. However, the Ewings of Dallas and the Weldons of Truro are both trumped in the interior design stakes by the Wentworths of Houston. The brief tour we're given of their house in "The Prodigal Mother" reveals an indoor pool, a grand staircase in the centre of the hallway and even the letter "W" engraved into the pattern of the glass of the front door. (And this was a real house - did the design team really have the budget to change the glass for such a tiny detail, or was the "W" a happy coincidence?) While the FLAMINGO ROAD pilot beats DALLAS to the first fancy wedding in primetime soap by four weeks, "The Prodigal Mother" trumps it with Soap Land's biggest party to date, (a kind of prototype Oil Baron's Ball) in honour of Dave Culver's senatorial campaign. Over on KNOTS, "Step One" has its own charity fundraiser, albeit on a more modest scale, (although try telling that to Michele Lee, va-va-vooming through her big number as if headlining in Vegas) in aid of the ERA. While Karen's support for such a liberal organisation needs no explaining, ("It's your cause too!" she yells at Diana) Sue Ellen is puzzled as to why the Ewings should be so keen to publicly endorse Culver, "as liberal a politician as the state of Texas allows." The thinking behind JR's response, “Ewing money always flows in the direction of power," helps also explain why Fielding Carlyle's political future is so important to the movers and shakers in FLAMINGO ROAD, and why his romantic relationship with an outsider poses such a threat.Field is possibly the most interesting character on FLAMINGO ROAD. The romantic male lead, he's Rodney Harrington in PEYTON PLACE, but with a childlike innocence, or Bobby Ewing in DALLAS, only more compromised. The Ewing he reminds me of most is Sue Ellen. Like her, he has been moulded almost from birth to fulfil a specific role, in this case, marry the daughter of the well-to-do Weldons and forge a political career. It takes the arrival of Lane Ballou, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, to make him question the path that has been laid out for him, just as Pam and Bobby's happiness as newlyweds awoke Sue Ellen to the sham her own marriage had become. Lane Ballou is a trashier, tougher version of Pam - the Pam she might have been had she not married Bobby. In contrast to Field's puppy dog innocence, she has an interestingly bruised quality (i.e. she scowls a lot and smokes like a chimney). Her nemesis is the show's JR, Sheriff Titus Semple, a surrogate father to Field who has his political future all mapped out for him. Unlike Pam and JR, Lane and Titus don't have a fifty-year family feud behind them, nor are they related and living in the same house - they have no shared history - so their animosity must be established quickly and explosively. In quick succession, Titus has Lane fired from her waitressing job and blackballed from working anywhere else in town, she spits in his face and calls him a bastard, he calls her scum and has her jailed for prostitution - and that's just in the first fifty minutes.When Field attempts to defy Titus and make a life with Lane, Titus slaps him down the same way JR did Cliff and Sue Ellen when they made a bid for freedom in "For Love or Money". Just as Sue Ellen was forced to return to Southfork so Field is obliged to go through with his wedding to Constance, played by Morgan Fairchild. There's also a parallel to be drawn between Lane Ballou and Mitch Cooper, each from a poor background and refusing to apologise for it. But while Mitch completely rejects the Ewing lifestyle at the same time as accepting Lucy's proposal of marriage, Lane is determined to make it to the top (i.e. Flamingo Road itself) at the same time as turning down a proposal of marriage from rich playboy Mark Graison - I mean Sam Curtis. Mark/Sam are truly indivisible - and not just because they're played by the same actor and share the same social status and cheerful disposition: each openly declares his love for a woman who is openly in love with someone else; each is sure that a combination of persistence, charm and facial hair will eventually win her round. (Speaking of actors in duel roles, Jordan Lee pulls off a soap first by playing two different characters in the same week - he's the Reverend Somebody who marries Constance and Field on Tuesday, then is back to his old cartel self on Friday. Add his blink-and-you-miss-it turn as the judge who arraigned Sid at the end of "Hitchhike, Part 1" and that's three soaps in five weeks.)Prior to popping the question, Lucy seeks counsel from the rest of the cast - Jock, Ray, Bobby, Muriel - about her relationship with Mitch. There's something very sweet about these scenes: Lucy's one-to-one conversation with Jock will be their last of the series, and I really like her pool-based chat with Bobby, who delivers his traditional no-advice-is-the-best-advice-of-all thing. On KNOTS, Diana is also in need of guidance about her love life, but Karen is too preoccupied to notice. Instead, she must rely on the wisdom of her girlfriends - Danielle, Ellie and Brenda. The interplay between the four of them, their spontaneous laughter and asides, feels fresh and believable and is probably the highlight of the ep. The story - Diana almost has sex with boyfriend Bobby and then doesn't - is small and sweet and touching. There are no huge lessons learned, no big message for the audience to take away, it's just a non-judgemental depiction of the unavoidable growing pains of being a teenager.By contrast, "The Prodigal Mother" feels like a turning point in the DALLAS saga. It's been a long time, maybe as much as a year, since VP had as much to do in an episode as she does here, and she's really good - sexily cynical with Bobby, then moving and vulnerable in her scenes with Rebecca, first when watching her from outside the Wentworth gates with the kindly detective, and then in the scenes where they come face to face. These scenes become even more poignant in light of the similar journey Christopher will make in search his mother at the end of New DALLAS Season 2, and with the knowledge that he'll never get to say the words to Pam that she says to Rebecca: "I found you, you’re alive."It's interesting to compare Rebecca and Pam in this episode with what took place between Jock and Ray just two weeks earlier. That was a quiet, restrained acknowledgement of something both men had somehow known all along. The dynamic here ("You're my mother!"/"No I'm not!"/"OK, I am, but I might as well not be!") is very different but no less effective. The critique on the Dallas Decoder site makes some great observations about how "The Prodigal Mother" resembles a Douglas Sirk movie from the 50s: <a href="http://dallasdecoder.com/2012/07/24/critique-dallas-episode-63-the-prodigal-mother/" target="_blank">http://dallasdecoder.com/2012/07/24/critique-dallas-episode-63-the-prodigal-mother/</a>As well as the first soap wedding, the FLAMINGO ROAD pilot also boasts the first soap fire (in which Annabelle the waitress dies gruesomely and noisily) and the first black person to appear in a soap's opening credits. As an ex-hooker behind bars, (what were you expecting - an international chanteuse and businesswoman?) she's played by Melba Moore (who had a big disco hit in the 70s called "This Is It") and disappears after a couple of scenes.FLAMINGO ROAD and KNOTS each end on a song this week. On FL'INGO RD, Lane Ballou quietly croons "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" at Lute Mae's piano, while in "Step One", the Fairgate gals launch into a full on, fourth-wall-be-damned song and dance rendition of "Sit On A Happy Face" (an old joke but mine own), complete with Kabuki make-up, high kicks and jazz hands. To quote Lane Ballou in another context, "It's 1980. I thought things like this didn't happen anymore!" The freeze frame of mother and daughter staring out at us, faces arsenic-white with Joker-red smiles, is terrifying - more terrifying than the blood-curdling screams of Annabelle as she burns to death in the FLAMINGO ROAD mill. It's also completely at odds with the sweet and sensitive hour of drama that precedes it. Thus, in the first of an occasional bout of inter-soap Song Wars, Lane Ballou emerges triumphant. As for the episodes themselves, the winner is … DALLAS, followed by FLAMINGO ROAD, then KNOTS.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?