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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 5944" data-attributes="member: 22">23/Mar/82: FLAMINGO ROAD: No Dice v. 24/Mar/82: DYNASTY: The Gun v. 25/Mar/82: KNOTS LANDING: Silver Shadows v. 26/Mar/82: DALLAS: The InvestigationA woman seducing a man at the behest of a third (invariably male) party, only to then find herself falling in love with him, has by now become a familiar soap trope. Let’s call it The Spy Who Loved Me Syndrome. Recent examples include Afton with Cliff Barnes on DALLAS and Claudia with Jeff Colby on DYNASTY (not to mention Julie Gonzalo with practically everyone on New DALLAS). Now it’s the turn of Sandie Swanson on FLAMINGO ROAD, whose affair with Field was orchestrated by her brother Michael Tyrone. Having now fallen for Field, she asks Michael why he will not abandon his campaign of vengeance against the residents of Truro. "I can’t forget the sight of our father swinging from the end of a hangman’s rope, that’s why!” he shouts in reply - belatedly revealing himself as the FLAMINGO ROAD equivalent of DYNASTY’s Nick Toscanni who has been plagued by similar images all season. "He hanged himself ... I saw him!” Nick said to his sister, referring to their half-brother, several episodes ago.After Sandie tearfully confesses to Field, he retaliates by dumping her and vowing to nix Michael's precious gambling bill in the senate. However, before he can carry out his promise, he discovers Sandie unconscious from an apparent overdose. While he is busy walking her round her bedroom in an attempt to revive her, (thereby following in the footsteps of Nick Toscanni and Richard Avery and their comatose dames, Claudia Blaisdel and Marni the hooker, respectively) he misses the all important senate hearing. And when Sandie makes an instantaneous “recovery" in the ambulance, we realise that her “suicide attempt” was a ruse to get Field out of way while the gambling bill was passed. This twist is immediately followed by another when the ambulance orderly stabs Sandie with a hypodermic needle. “Instructions from your brother,” he explains as she loses consciousness. Yes, it’s that most exciting of things - a triple cross!The scene on the courthouse steps where Field realises he has been hoodwinked, not only by Michael but by his own wife Constance, and then watches as they drive off laughing together in triumph, is a magnificently spiteful pay off to all the marital feuding he and Constance have done since the series began. In comparison, Jeff and Fallon’s bickering on DYNASTY over what to name their baby (“I don’t care - call him anything you want!”) feels a bit petulant. However, nothing on FLAMINGO ROAD, or anywhere else in this week’s Soap Land, is as hauntingly poignant as Claudia Blaisdel’s growing desperation as her sanity starts to fail her once more - certainly not Sue Ellen’s “disgusting self-pity about her finances” (to borrow an old phrase of Pam's) after Cliff asks her for a loan to bail himself out of trap set for him by JR - which, while very entertaining to watch, is not remotely sympathetic.It’s interesting to compare Claudia’s struggle to comprehend the loss of her husband and daughter, missing presumed dead in the jungles of South America, with Miss Ellie’s refusal to even acknowledge her near identical predicament in DALLAS. "I was waiting for some kind of feeling,” Claudia tells Jeff, "some moment deep inside me, that would tell me that my daughter is dead, It didn't come. Because she's alive, I know that. I feel it ... They never found the jeep. They didn't find any wreckage. They didn't find Matthew, not Lindsay. It's not impossible. You know that in Vietnam, men who were lost for years, they thought they were dead, they showed up alive.” Miss Ellie, meanwhile, avoids any mention of Jock’s crash and continues to speak of him smilingly in the present tense.A week after Cliff Barnes proposed marriage to his arch enemy’s ex-wife on DALLAS, Cecil Colby does the same thing on DYNASTY. That his offer catches Alexis unawares is understandable, given that she has only just made the following declaration to her former husband: “Blake, I want to tell you something, and you can believe this or not, I loved you then and I’ve never stopped loving you, in spite of what you did to me.” Meanwhile, Sue Ellen is stopped in her tracks by a similarly impassioned plea from her ex. "I love you,” JR tells her. "You know that. We're the same kind. We have our shortcomings, our faults, but we look at the world the same way. There are no two people that are meant for each other more than you and I ... It's time for you to come home to Southfork, to your husband.”Things are a little more straightforward for Skipper and Alicia over on FLAMINGO ROAD: he proposes, she accepts, and they get married - all in the same episode. Following Steven and Sammy Jo’s, theirs is the second Soap Land elopement of the season. Initially, Skipper’s mother Eudora is as aghast to learn of her son’s marriage as Alexis was - not only is Alicia a girl from the wrong side of the tracks (like Sammy Jo), but she is also of a different ethnicity, plus there’s the small matter of Skipper being blind.Soap Land does a nice line in loyal retainers this week. KNOTS LANDING gives us silent movie director Andrew Douglas’s long-suffering, silently resentful manservant Henry (previously Cliff Barnes’s defence attorney in Soap Land’s first ever murder trial). Andrew's mocking reference to Henry's gallstone operation in 1967 as "the highlight of his life” chimes with DYNASTY major domo Joseph's ironic description of changing Steven Carrington’s diapers as “a delightful chore”. Ordinarily a complete weirdo, Joseph’s decision in this week’s episode to give Steven Sammy Jo’s address in Hollywood on the grounds that Steven is "a grown man who's entitled to make his own mistakes and to deal with them” shows an unexpectedly human side to his character. Henry and Joseph’s DALLAS counterpart is Mr. Forrest, long-term employee at Wentworth Tool & Die who resigns in protest at Cliff’s actions as head of the company. “My loyalty was not only to him,” he explains to Rebecca, referring to her late husband Herbert, “it was to that first little company he started. In a sense, it’s been my home now for almost forty years. Through thick and thin, good times and bad, I’ve been with Wentworth Tool & Die.” All of this is to underline how grievous Cliff’s abuse of his position (and his mother’s trust) has been.This week’s KNOTS LANDING instalment, “Silver Shadows”, is notable for being the final “story of the week” of any of the '80s soaps (THE YELLOW ROSE notwithstanding). A somewhat fanciful episode, it gives us Soap Land’s first doppelgänger as Abby turns out to be a dead ringer for silent movie actress Teri Clarington. The painting of Teri that illustrates their resemblance is the last, and least, picture to be submitted for consideration in this season’s Soap Land Portrait Wars. The other contenders are, in ascending order of merit, the painting of Lute-Mae in FLAMINGO ROAD gifted to her by Michael Tyrone as part of his campaign to woo her; the portrait of Angela Channing rendered by would-be suitor Arthur Masefield which then hung in her study for several episodes; Alexis Carrington’s unfinished picture of ex-hubby Blake, eventually trashed by Krystle during their cat fight; the iconic oil painting of Jock Ewing which made its screen debut after his death; and in first place, the fetching portrait of Steven Carrington as a young boy, painted from memory by his mother during their long estrangement and presented to him upon their reunion.Between Steven and Sammy Jo’s meeting on Sunset Strip in DYNASTY and Andrew Douglas’s reminiscences of Jack Barrymore, Charlie Chaplin et al on KNOTS, Soap Land provides us with two contrasting, yet archetypal views of Hollywood this week. The DYNASTY version, all neon lights, sleazy strips and broken dreams, is more evocative than KNOTS’ attempt at conjuring a bygone era within a modern day context. “Silver Shadows” is how “The Three Sisters” might have turned out had that episode kept cutting between the haunted house scenes and a mundane subplot at Knots Landing Motors. Still, Donna Mills’ performance is lovely - devious and wistful by turns.Back in DYNASTY’s version of Hollywood, Steven's discovery of his oiled-up, half-naked wife in the arms of snapper Ace Hudson leads to the first of two altercations set in a photographer’s studio this week. The other takes place in DALLAS with Bobby Ewing, in true generic TV action show fashion, throwing Roger Larson against a wall and instantly rendering him unconscious. A single kick then proves enough to break down a locked door and reveal a bound and gagged Lucy. The scene between Steven, Sammy Jo and Ace is far more convincing - and interesting. Steven’s realisation that his mother paid his wife $20,000 to leave him mirrors Rebecca Wentworth’s in DALLAS that her son has embezzled $4,000,000 from her company.Funnily enough, FLAMINGO ROAD’s Field isn’t the only Soap Land character whose misguided attempt to prevent a suicide backfires this week. Worried about Claudia, Krystle pays a visit to her apartment at the end of this week’s DYNASTY and spots a gun on the counter. Assuming Claudia intends to use it on herself (when in fact she is planning to kill Cecil Colby), Krystle picks it up. Claudia then makes a grab for it and the two women struggle … Inevitably, a shot rings out - but who got hit?I was reminded of this cliff-hanger last year while watching a similar one between Tommy Sutter and Julie Gonzalo on New DALLAS - only instead of ending on a shot of two blood-splattered monkeys, (which itself foreshadowed the deaths of the Ewing twins the following season) DYNASTY freezes on Dr Nick’s grave pronouncement as he bursts through the door: "Oh dear God!” Re-watching this scene again, however, the DALLAS scenario it most strongly echoes - a woman in an apartment wielding a gun with which she plans to shoot a powerful businessman, only to have the weapon intercepted by a second woman - is the flashback scene from DALLAS Season 3 of Sue Ellen in Kristin’s condo prior to the shooting of JR.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (-) DYNASTY2 (3) FLAMINGO ROAD3 (1) DALLAS4 (-) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?