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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 5885" data-attributes="member: 22">02/Mar/82: FLAMINGO ROAD: The Dedication v. 03/Mar/82: DYNASTY: The Baby v. 04/Mar/82: KNOTS LANDING: Cricket v. 05/Mar/82: DALLAS: The ProdigalJust as the Carrington party is winding down at the beginning of this week’s DYNASTY, the Weldons throw FLAMINGO ROAD’s biggest bash to date, complete with red carpets, roulette tables and valet parking. The glittering gold-coloured dress Constance wears even resembles Krystle’s.At the DYNASTY do last week, Jeff discovered the identity of his wife’s lover when he caught Fallon and Nick Toscanni in an embrace. At this week's Weldon party, Julio Sanchez makes a clean breast of his relationship with Constance to her husband. “Your wife and I are in love,” he informs him solemnly. “Julio,” Field shrugs, "my wife and I have an agreement. We are free to have our affairs.” Back on DYNASTY, Jeff acknowledges to Claudia the similarly open nature of his marriage ("I'm sure you've guessed what our situation is like at the house”) before ending up in bed with her. Later, after learning of the birth of his son, Jeff confesses his dalliance to Fallon who is as un-phased as Field was: "That's what you need, Jeff. Another woman, not me.” Likewise, when Julio insists that he wants to marry Constance, Field goes so far as to give him his blessing. “That’s fine with me,” he tells him.Meanwhile, Skipper’s blindness having brought out her possessive side, Eudora Weldon has done her best to drive a wedge between her son and his girlfriend Alicia. This week, Alicia resorts to gatecrashing the Weldon party to spend some time with him. Alexis Carrington, meanwhile, makes Eudora’s motherly interference look positively benign when, in one of DYNASTY's all-time funniest scenes, she offers her daughter-in-law Sammy Jo $20,000 to walk out on her marriage. "Look, I love Steven,” Sammy Jo protests. "From now on, every word you utter is going to cost you $1,000,” Alexis replies crisply. "You've just said four words. That's now $16,000.” Alexis’s negotiation tactics in this scene echo Donna Krebbs' in DALLAS three weeks ago when, having offered Ray’s girlfriend Bonnie $15,000 to leave the state, she attempted to haggle her down to $10,000.Prior to that scene between Donna and Bonnie, Soap Land’s girl-on-girl fight action had been pretty minimal. Pam slapped Sue Ellen in DALLAS Season 1 (“I’ve always thought you were just a gold digger anyway”), Laura slapped Abby in KNOTS LANDING Season 2 (“You are such a slut”), and that was about it. If Donna and Bonnie’s drink-in-the-face/sock-to-the-jaw encounter upped the ante, then this week's knock-down drag-out cat-fight between Alexis and Krystle, with hair pulling and feathers flying, takes the concept to a whole new level. It’s probably Soap Land’s first bona fide visual set piece as well. Sure, we’ve seen the guys duking it in barroom brawls before, (the Ewing boys in “Dove Hunt” and Gary going ballistic with a pool cue in “Bottom of the Bottle” spring most easily to mind, while Matthew Blaisdel’s riggers engaged in a fair few punch-ups throughout DYNASTY’s first season), but those were all smaller parts of larger stories. Alexis and Krystle’s fight, on the other hand, even though it does arise out of the action, (following Krystle's realisation that Alexis caused her miscarriage) ultimately feels like an event in and of itself. Even after repeated viewings, and with the stuntmen-in-wigs sections becoming ever more apparent on DVD, it still feels fun and exciting and different to anything that Soap Land has presented us with before.This week’s DALLAS also boasts its share of juicy confrontations - between Clayton and Afton, Afton and Sue Ellen, Cliff and Katherine, Katherine and JR - but the emphasis is more on talking heads than visual spectacle. Bobby responding to Jeff Farraday’s blackmail attempt by grabbing him by the collar and threatening his life is as close as the episode gets to physical violence.There’s an interesting parallel between Cliff’s showdown with Katherine in DALLAS and one between Field and Constance in FLAMINGO ROAD. Katherine is angry that Cliff has demanded complete autonomy to run Wentworth Tool and Die any way he sees fit. "Look, my father built this company, dammit!" she snaps at him. "I'm not gonna see it destroyed because Cliff Barnes happens to be obsessed ... with JR Ewing.” Meanwhile, Field is pissed at Constance for dealing with Michael Tyrone’s sinister syndicate buddies on his behalf. “Look, Field, you’re the one who wants to be governor,” she reminds him. "Now I just had to make a few little promises along the way to make sure you get there.” It’s then time for both Cliff and Field to assert themselves. "I'm the president of Wentworth Tool and Die now and nobody is gonna stop me from running this company exactly the way I please!” Cliff informs his half-sister. "It’s my career, Constance,” Field tells his wife, "and as far as that’s concerned, you are out of the picture … You don’t have anything to say about anything.”Cliff and Field incur the wrath of these big-haired women at their peril - for it doesn’t take long for Katherine and Constance to each join forces with an even more powerful and dangerous man, JR Ewing and Michael Tyrone respectively.KNOTS LANDING aside, each of this week's soaps end with the sense of a hunter advancing on their prey, armed with either new information or a new ally. JR and Alexis both make a discovery based on legal documentation, or the lack thereof. PI Morgan Hess informs Alexis that Krystle’s divorce papers from her first marriage to Mark Jennings were never filed, thereby invalidating her marriage to Blake, while a copy of Christopher Shepard’s birth certificate all but confirms to JR that he is the real father of Bobby and Pam’s adopted son. “I've got business with Mr. Jennings,” Alexis announces. “That baby’s here in Texas,” JR declares. Meanwhile, on FLAMINGO ROAD, Constance kisses Michael Tyrone passionately and demands “my husband’s head on a platter.”As one Soap Land relative, Krystle’s niece Sammy Jo, leaves DYNASTY, another, Karen Fairgate’s brother Joe, arrives in KNOTS LANDING. Joe is the third, and thankfully least needy, visitor from Karen’s New York past to show up this season. And following Sammy Jo and FALCON CREST’s Emma, the titular guest character in “Cricket" becomes Soap Land’s third jewel thief in two weeks, pilfering a few items from Abby’s dressing table.Cricket and Olivia go on to play a junior version of Soap Land’s favourite game - “Did they fall or were they pushed?” - which entails Olivia landing at the bottom of a flight of stairs after a tussle with Cricket. Compared to the miscarriages of Emma Channing and Pam Ewing, Constance Carlyle’s broken back and the deaths of Jason Gioberti, Julie Grey, Kristin Shepard and Ted Dinard, Olivia gets off pretty lightly with a fractured arm.After Olivia, Kristin, Annie Fairgate and those three ghostly sisters, Cricket is Val’s seventh Lucy substitute in less than three seasons (or eighth, if you count Lucy herself). On DALLAS, meanwhile, Pam once again becomes Lucy’s Val replacement when she stands up to creepy Roger on her behalf. It’s the most assertive scene Victoria Principal has had in over a year. Pam’s FLAMINGO ROAD counterpart, Lane Curtis née Ballou, also steps out of the shadows this week when she finally fulfils the vow she made at the beginning of the series and moves onto Flamingo Road itself.If the main plot of “Cricket” feels a little overfamiliar, it’s still worth it for the Van Ark/Shackelford/Harris dynamic. And the penultimate scene of the ep, where Val confronts Cricket’s step-father Rusty, and he is exposed as the season’s second heartbroken widower following Bill Medford, is more beautifully acted and touching than I ever realised before.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (3) DYNASTY3 (-) KNOTS LANDING4 (4) FLAMINGO ROAD</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?