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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 4409" data-attributes="member: 22">10/Nov/81: FLAMINGO ROAD: The Victim v. 11/Nov/81: DYNASTY: The Verdict v. 12/Nov/81: KNOTS LANDING: The Vigil v. 13/Nov/81: DALLAS: The Big Shut Down"The Victim" refers to Lute-Mae, who is attacked by Lucy Ewing's former drug dealer (Peter Horton) in this week's instalment of FLAMINGO ROAD. Unlike Laura's ordeal in KNOTS LANDING or Krystle's in DYNASTY, what occurs is unambiguously depicted and spoken of as rape. In this week's DYNASTY, Blake refers back to his rape of Krystle, delicately describing it as "the night that I wanted you to have my child." (He brings the subject up in order to tell her he's changed his mind about having children. Too late - she's already pregnant.)The use of the word aside, "The Victim" is a crassly inept, cliché-ridden portrayal of the issue. Peter Horton's character is your generic TV movie obsessive, sending anonymous gifts and snapping photos of his beloved from afar before turning nasty. (Like any self-respecting psycho, he has his own dark room where he can develop and display his stylishly stalker-ish black and white 10x8s.) A much bigger problem, however, is Stella Stevens' performance. As Lute-Mae, she is incapable of saying even the most trivial dialogue convincingly and so nothing about her trauma here rings true. Her delivery of the line, "It must have been a man who called rape a sex crime!" as a sub-Mae West wisecrack is a particular low point.Sexual exploitation works better on DALLAS where JR introduces a reluctant Afton to Vaughn Leland as "a delightful perk" and orders her to sleep with him. It's all part of JR's plan to buy up the Farlows' oil. Following Kristin and Dusty, Vaughn is the third returnee from DALLAS's Season 2 heyday and his scenes are the smarmy highlight of the episode.Lute-Mae reports her attacker to the police, but Sheriff Titus is reluctant to make an arrest because of the the accused's background: "The boy's family helped found this town - they grow more oranges than Florida can eat in a year." This taps into the same "one law for the rich" theme as the sentence Blake Carrington receives for voluntary manslaughter in this week's DYNASTY - two years' probation. When Brian Dennehy, in his role of prosecuting attorney Jake Dunham, denounces the sentencing as "a travesty", I'm reminded of a line he delivered as Luther Frick on DALLAS: "The only kind of justice poor working men like us can get [is] the kind we go out and get on our own!"This topic is developed further when Blake, now a free man, runs into Jake at the St Denis Club, DYNASTY's newly established equivalent of DALLAS's Cattleman's Club, only with a fancy maître d' instead of a bevy of buxom cocktail waitresses. He accuses Jake of exploiting "the death of some homosexual" to further his political career. Jake's impassioned response ("I don't care if Ted Dinard was a homosexual or a heterosexual or an asexual, my job is to defend the rights of people, all different kinds of people, by prosecuting violations of the law") elicits nothing but a sneer from Blake. "Now I know what they mean by that expression 'Justice is blind'," he scoffs. "It is blind because of people like you, pal!" Blake's contempt is matched by Constance's in FLAMINGO ROAD: "Rape and Lute-Mae Sanders is a contradiction in terms," she declares, blissfully unaware that she's talking about her own mother.Whatever point about social injustice FLAMINGO ROAD might be trying to make is seriously undermined by the description of Lute-Mae throughout the episode as "a former madam". This is news to the viewer: the last we knew, the character was still presiding over a fully operational whorehouse. It would appear that Constance's aborted "Clean Up Truro" campaign has been implemented by the network between seasons. The resultant subtext of this whitewash is that, contrary to Constance's opinion, rape and Lute-Mae are not a contradiction in terms - but only because she no longer earns a living from prostitution.Truro's happy hookers aren't Soap Land's only conspicuous absentees this week: Carrington chauffeur Michael is fired offscreen by Joseph at Blake's behest, and Jock Ewing takes his final steps on Texas tarmac during a layover between flights so brief it is missed by JR, Bobby and viewers alike. In hindsight, there is a poignant parallel between the Ewing boys being deprived of a final glimpse of their daddy, and Eric and Michael Fairgate not being allowed to visit their father in the hospital. (Yes, KNOTS is back - behold the scrolling panels! I was genuinely excited to see them.)It's interesting that Blake should wait until now to get rid of Michael. Could it be that since his ex-wife's testimony at the trial, Fallon's relationship with her "in-house stud" has served as an uncomfortable reminder of Alexis's with hers, i.e. Roger Grimes? While arguing with Fallon over his decision, Blake even calls her "a carbon copy of your mother". At any rate, it's notable that the four faces now absent from DYNASTY's opening titles - Michael, Walter, Matthew and Lindsay - are all characters who helped ground the show in a wider, more "real world" context.Speaking of the real world, the Middle East gets a bad press from Soap Land this week. Dave Culver describes it as "volatile" on DALLAS, while Mother Blaisdel calls it a "hellhole" on DYNASTY. When Matthew returned from there at the start of Season 1, we watched him remove the dust sheets from the furniture in his family's house in what felt like a symbolic gesture of renewal. Now similar sheets, along with cobwebs and shadows, shroud Alexis's old paintings in her long abandoned studio on the Carrington grounds. The sinisterly lit, gothically flavoured scene she shares there with Joseph, "still the impotent voyeur", remains a series highlight, as well as our first real glimpse of what lies beneath her veiled facade.One of the soap tropes pioneered by DALLAS back in the day was the idea of several unhappy rich people all living under the same roof while locked in perpetual disharmony. So it's ironic that just as the original Ewing family disperse - Jock to South America, Sue Ellen and Baby Josh to San Angelo, Pam to the funny farm - the other soaps are taking a leaf out of the book that DALLAS wrote. On FLAMINGO ROAD, Field reluctantly moves back into the Weldon house for the sake of his appearances only marriage to Constance, while DYNASTY has contrived an ingeniously ironic way to bring Alexis into close proximity to her ex-husband and his new wife: by moving her into her old studio - the very same studio deeded to her "lock, stock and barrel" by Blake as a gift for giving him the son from whom he is now bitterly estranged, and designed by the architect whom Blake would later cripple when he found him in bed with his wife."The Victim" is probably Soap Land's worst episode to date, "The Vigil" possibly the best. While the week's other shows deal mainly in broad strokes, creating big swooshes of narrative momentum, KNOTS goes the opposite route, piling small detail upon small detail to create something quite exceptional. Just a few examples: Gary lying to Karen about the severity of Sid's condition when he first tells her about the crash, Karen, in turn, lying to her children and to Sid himself, Karen and Abby doing their best to kid around with a completely paralysed Sid, the repeated assurances that the metal tongs attached to his head aren't hurting him, the terrifying reality of the situation coming only intermittently into focus ... The action of the episode unfolds over a couple of days but is so concentrated it feels almost like one long unbroken scene.As Karen keeps a jealous, round-the-clock watch over Sid at the hospital, the unspoken sibling rivalry between Gary and Richard resurfaces. After Richard scores a hit with a surprise breakfast, (reducing an exhausted Karen to hysterical laughter in a lovely scene that provides the episode's sole moment of light relief) a guilt-ridden Gary tries to compete by bringing her a change of clothes. Karen, however, sees straight through him: "You wanna be blamed or forgiven and I don't have the energy for either." But it's the Fairgate kids who provide the most quietly heartbreaking moments: Michael falling asleep on his parents' empty bed, Diana singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" to her comatose father, Eric asking Gary, "Is my dad gonna die?" Even in a family as functional as the Fairgates, everyone's alone, isolated from each other.And the winner is … KNOTS LANDING2nd: DYNASTY3rd: DALLAS4th: FLAMINGO ROAD</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?