New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 75020" data-attributes="member: 22">03 Dec 86: DYNASTY: The Secret v. 04 Dec 86: THE COLBYS: Bid for Freedom v. 04 Dec 86: KNOTS LANDING: The Inside Man v. 05 Dec 86: DALLAS: Something Old, Something New v. 05 Dec 86: FALCON CREST: Maggie Once again, Soap Land’s fathers are out in force, trying to prevent their impetuous offspring from making unwise romantic choices. While Buck Fallmont’s objections to Sammy Jo as a potential daughter-in-law appear to be solely based on her last name (“Her background is Carrington. That means she’s filth … a Carrington tramp!”), Jason Colby’s argument against his daughter Bliss’s “disastrous love affair” with a Russian ballet dancer is more considered. “You and Kolya, baby, it can never happen,” he tells her gently. “They won’t let him stay and they won’t let you follow. Now that is reality … You can’t change the Soviet system.” Chase Gioberti and Blake Carrington, meanwhile, have each based their opinions of their respective daughter’s new boyfriend on his past reputation. “I know who you are and how you operate. I am not going to let that happen to my daughter!” shouts Blake at Michael Culhane after finding that Amanda has moved in with him. ”He’s an ex-convict, he’s a murderer!” yells Chase after reading in the gossip columns that Vicky is now dating Dan Fixx.Predictably enough, Soap Land’s children remain defiant. “Her name is Sammy Jo and she’s a beautiful decent woman,” Clay Fallmont informs his father. “Kolya and I will be together!” Bliss Colby tells hers. “He is good enough,” insists Amanda on DYNASTY. “There’s a reason for what he did,” argues Vicky on FALCON CREST.Their fathers’ cases stated, the focus switches to Soap Land’s mothers — can they do a better job of getting through to their lovestruck kids? The results are mixed. FALCON CREST’s Maggie proves surprisingly ineffectual when Vicky turns to her for support in the face of Chase’s disapproval of Dan. “I feel the same way about it,” she admits. Back in the DYNASTY-verse, whereas Sable’s instinct is to defend Jason (“When it comes to your happiness, he’ll do anything,” she assures Bliss), Alexis wins Amanda round by pretending to side with her against her father (“Unlike Blake, I don’t put conditions on your happiness”) even though she and Blake are, for once, on the same side.Things are even more topsy turvy in the Ewing-verse where once unassailable matriarchs are under fire from their sons. On KNOTS, Karen Mackenzie is the focus of Michael’s anger when Paige’s feelings towards him begin to cool. “My mother interferes with my life and treats me like a baby,” he complains. On DALLAS, Miss Ellie’s refusal to denounce Wes Parmalee as a fraud provokes threats of desertion from her boys. “I’d hate to see you and I come to a parting of the ways,” JR tells her, “but I will never let another man sit in Jock Ewing’s chair.” “I won’t leave under the same roof as that man, Mama,” echoes Bobby.The missing pieces in two characters’ back stories are filled in this week when Michael Culhane makes a full confession to Amanda on DYNASTY and Dan Fixx does the same thing to Vicky on FALCON CREST. “I’ve cheated people,” admits Michael, “I’ve used them. I was even using you at first … to get back at your father.” Dan, meanwhile, tearfully explains the real reason he killed that cop — because he was supplying Dan’s drug-addicted wife with narcotics in return for sexual favours. (“I found them in my bed. He went for his gun, I dove on him, the gun went off.”)No sooner are these characters’ histories are explained than fresh cracks appear in another newcomer’s back story. Over on KNOTS, Karen suspects Paige of forging a letter supposedly written by her mother to Mack twenty years earlier. “If Paige is lying about the letter, then what the hell else is she lying about?” ponders Mack as the screen cuts to a graveyard and, specifically, a shot panning down the names on Matheson family headstone. Right at the bottom lies the inscription: “Paige, 1967 - 1985.” Cue the end titles.If Paige isn’t really Paige then she’s in good company. There are so many impostors, frauds and characters leading double lives in Soap Land, it’s hard to keep track of them all. Aside from Peter Hollister claiming to be Greg’s brother on KNOTS, Wes Parmalee insisting he’s Jock Ewing on DALLAS and Kit Marlowe pretending to be Skylar Kimble on FALCON CREST, this week sees the unmasking of humble chauffeur Michael as a multi-millionaire on DYNASTY (“I have had you investigated … Why the lies?” demands Alexis) and trophy wife Sue Ellen as the mastermind behind Valentine Lingerie on DALLAS (“I created you,” she informs a stunned Mandy Winger). Meanwhile in the Tuscany Valley, you can’t move for fakes. While Richard Channing is too busy blackmailing Kit Marlowe over her deception to notice that his baby son’s sexy new nanny is really Erin Jones’s vengeful sister in disguise, his sister Emma is being conned twice over: firstly, by the psychic Karlotti who is pretending to channel her dead fiancee Dwayne and secondly, by a flirtatious magazine writer who is really one of the gangsters gunning for the aforementioned Kit. Even Val Gibson’s preppy personal secretary on KNOTS is under suspicion — Ben is convinced he’s really a spy planted by Jean Hackney but scares him off before we can get to the truth of the matter.The letter Anne wrote but never sent in 1967 might well be a forgery (“Something about it just seems wrong to me,” maintains Karen), but the mixed emotions it describes at the prospect of facing motherhood alone (“Today I’m crying for happiness because today I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl — our baby, Mack. But I’m also crying because you’re not here with me now”) chime almost exactly with those expressed by Donna Krebbs regarding her unborn child on this week’s DALLAS. (“There’s this new little person in there and I get very excited, and then I get real sad because Ray and I aren’t sharing it together.”)On this week’s episode of THE COLBYS, Miles gatecrashes Fallon and Jeff’s ski-lodge vacation, ostensibly to prevent them killing his baby: “They were talking about an abortion … Now they’re going skiing? Wouldn’t it be convenient if Fallon should accidentally fall, losing the baby?” Other Soap Land fathers-to-be are somewhat less protective, however. “I want you to have an abortion,” Clay tells Sammy Jo on DYNASTY. Over on FALCON CREST, Chase is incensed when he learns that Maggie has cancelled the paternity test because she has decided to keep the baby irrespective of who the biological father really is.After some soul-searching, Sammy Jo informs Clay that, “I love you but with or without you, I’m gonna have the baby.” “You never said how you felt about abortion, but I think I know a little bit about you,” says Jenna to Ray who is visibly relieved upon hearing that she too plans to keep her baby on DALLAS. Back on FC, Richard Channing equips Maggie with an emotive poem “written by a lady down in Los Angeles” which she then reads aloud to her family to explain why she has also decided against an abortion. (“Come to me, all my children that will never be …”) So it is that Jenna, Maggie, Sammy Jo and Fallon have all considered the option of abortion before electing to keep their babies. While each character’s decision has been based on her own storyline, taken cumulatively, the overall message one is left with as a Soap Land viewer with is that choosing to have an abortion simply isn’t something that a morally good person does. The fact that someone as ethically dubious as Richard supports Maggie in her decision to keep her baby while her own husband doesn’t merely serves as an indication of how far towards the dark side Chase has travelled.Redemption, meanwhile, is a recurring theme in this week’s DYNASTY. After returning to Denver to get revenge on Blake, Michael Culhane has now seen the light. “I love you and I could never do anything to hurt your father now,” he tells Amanda. Blake then appeals to bad brother Ben to mend his ways as well. “You’ve got intelligence and drive and ambition. Why don’t you put those wonderful qualities into something positive, something good and decent?” he suggests. Ben seems momentarily tempted, but then quickly pulls down the shutters. “You live your way and I’ll live mine,” he snaps.Elsewhere in the episode, Emily Fallmont’s need to confess her affair with Ben Carrington to her husband is driven by her religious beliefs: “If only God would forgive me, but I guess he hasn’t.” Nor is that the only religious reference in the Fallmont household this week. “In church one Sunday,” recalls Buck during a bitter argument with son Clay, “the minister was quoting proverbs … ‘A wise son maketh a glad father.’” He goes on to describe Clay as “a worthless son”. Shortly after this confrontation, Clay has a change of heart about Sammy Jo’s pregnancy and asks her to marry him. And of course, Sammy Jo herself is a prime example of a DYNASTY character trying to make amends for past mistakes. As Krystle reminds her, “You’ve gone through the pain and you’ve grown from it.”(It’s interesting to compare these various attempts to Do the Right Thing with the gradual, low-key erosion of Ben Gibson’s integrity on KNOTS LANDING. The mysterious wedges of cash Val finds in his pockets, his bedtime drinking, the abandoning of his cherished journalistic career in order to work for Greg Sumner … it’s all quietly, desperately heartrending — all the more so because there’s nobody he can turn to for help.)After Emily tells Buck about her fling with Ben twenty years earlier, it doesn’t take him long, in spite of his permanently drunken state, to figure out that Clay might not be his worthless son after all. Distraught, Emily decides to flee Denver. Dainty as she is, one would be hard pressed to find anything in common between Emily and Phil Harbert, the slob who kidnapped Karen at the end of last season’s KNOTS, yet each character meets a similar destiny. Both attempt to outrun their past mistakes by leaving town —  only for fate, in the shape of an oncoming car, to intervene before they can make their escape.There are several departures from Soap Land this week. Like Emily Fallmont at the end of DYNASTY, Kolya Rostov appears to die in the final scene of THE COLBYS, having opted to throw himself off a hotel balcony rather than be forcibly returned to Russia. Sylvia Lean, meanwhile, abruptly disappears midway through this week’s KNOTS after Greg offers her the choice of “a condo in Hawaii, a penthouse in Singapore or a little grass shack in Tahiti.” At least DALLAS’s Mandy Winger and FALCON CREST’s Cole Gioberti each get to bid an on screen farewell before heading for a new life in Hollywood and Australia respectively.If one accepts that Soap Land is a place where women are defined by their relationships with men and that when it comes to the battle of the sexes, revenge rather than empowerment is as much victory as any female character can hope for, then Mandy’s goodbye scene, which takes place between her and Sue Ellen, is about as feminist as the genre gets. Albeit unintentionally, Mandy and Sue Ellen’s effect on each other’s lives has been almost wholly positive. Just as it was Mandy’s affair with JR that led to Sue Ellen’s transformation into a successful creative business woman so it is Sue Ellen who has turned Mandy into a star.Her plan to get Mandy out of Dallas having succeeded, Mandy acknowledges Sue Ellen as “the winner” — but is she? As Sue Ellen herself points out, “You would have been miserable with JR, in or out of marriage.” She also assures Mandy that “when you become a famous movie star, revenge will seem like such a little thing.” So, having been set free from the shackles of Soap Land and the treadmill of misery and revenge that a life with JR would surely entail, doesn’t that make Mandy the real winner? Fast forward twenty-seven years to JR’s memorial service and there’s a similar ambiguity. “You’re the lucky one, Sue Ellen,” concedes Mandy in 2013 while reminiscing fondly about the man they both loved. Meanwhile, her erstwhile rival is hungrily eyeing up the drinks tray.While Mandy’s departure is fascinating, Cole’s on FALCON CREST is more conventional as his immediate family line up to wish him bon voyage. However, the emphasis in the scene isn’t really on Cole, but on those he is leaving behind. The estrangement between Chase and Maggie is striking. Far from comforting each other as their only son sets sail to the other side of the world, they barely acknowledge each other’s existence. When Cole observes that “this family’s falling apart,” his mother does not contradict him. Instead, she sets him free from his soap opera existence (“Go, it’s OK”) just as Sue Ellen does Mandy from hers.The truth is that Cole’s been on the FC sidelines for some time. Much has been made on screen about Angela bringing Dan Fixx into the family fold as a replacement for Lance, but in terms of his role on the series, it’s really Cole’s position that Dan had usurped. Such is the haste with which Cole is written off the show that the fact that he is leaving without his son Joseph — the same son he has fought so hard to gain custody of in earlier seasons — is mentioned merely in passing. Meanwhile, Cole’s DYNASTY counterpart, Steven Carrington — another longstanding “good son” in danger of being overlooked by the series — gets his first independent storyline in ages when a pretty psychotherapist informs him his son Danny has become introverted and withdrawn, for much the same reasons that John Ross was on DALLAS a few years ago. Whether Christopher Atkins will once again show up in a pair of blue speedos to save the day remains to be seen.At the same time as depicting the Soviet government as tyrannical and corrupt, THE COLBYS is careful to portray its leading man, Jason Colby, as an example of the best the USA has to offer. He is described in this week’s ep as both “one of the most powerful men in the United States” and “a man of principle”. The suggestion is that in America at least, power and principles are not mutually exclusive. This week’s KNOTS offers a more jaundiced view of those in charge. “I know world leaders,” Greg tells Laura. “I do business with them, I’ve danced with their wives in DC. Believe me, they define the term mediocre.” We also glimpse, in a scene where Ben Gibson nostalgically surveys some of his past journalistic successes, an eyewitness report he filed from the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago during which thousands of Vietnam War protestors fought with police. It’s a fleeting reminder that the American way of life isn’t always as rose-coloured as the version served up by THE COLBYS.There’s more “bigger picture” stuff on DALLAS during a seemingly throwaway scene where Donna lobbies a couple of Washington bigwigs regarding a proposed tariff on imported oil. Their unsympathetic response puts the Texas oil industry, and the parochial world of DALLAS itself, into a wider national context that we have never seen before. “If the oil business is in trouble in this country, it’s getting its just desserts,” sniffs one politico. “While the oil people were riding high, you had nothing but thumbs down for anyone else in trouble,” adds another. However, it’s Donna, a mere woman in a man’s soap opera, who gets the final word: “I am talking about the life of the independent oil company. The majors will never die, but it’s people like you, with the shortsighted view that the Southwest is finally getting its comeuppance, that’s gonna cause us to lose it all — because I believe that without the independent oilman, America does not have an oil industry.” Personally, I’d far sooner listen to Susan Howard deliver this kind of fiery political speech than watch her fawn tearfully over a busload of Down’s Syndrome kids the way she did last season.Donna’s impressive performance in Washington and Sue Ellen and Mandy’s newfound mutual respect are not the only positive representations of women in this week’s DALLAS. Throughout the episode, female characters repeatedly challenge and/or exceed men’s expectations of them. Shortly after JR dismisses the notion of women in business as “a flock of hens who can barely carry a briefcase”, Sue Ellen reveals that she is the brains behind Valentine Lingerie. Cliff likewise mocks Pam’s complaint about her lack of involvement at Barnes-Wentworth (“Where do you get all that stuff — have you been reading those women’s lib mags?”) before being stunned into silence by a coolly delivered ultimatum: if he doesn’t turn 25% of the business over to Pam, then she’ll withdraw all her financing from the company. Cliff also sneers at estranged wife Jamie when she tries to hand him the solution to his offshore drilling problems: “I don’t want any advice from the oil business, especially from a female, more especially from you.” There’s more sexist behaviour at Southfork. “Have you discussed this with your wives — or don’t they have any say in this?” challenges Miss Ellie when JR and Bobby issue their threats to leave the ranch. While Pam insists that “Bobby respects a woman who does things on her own”, Donna refuses to live her life to suit Ray: “With a husband and wife, if you have to compromise who you are, you become a very empty person.” Even in the most adversarial of female rivalries, the DALLAS women refuse to lower themselves to the usual Soap Land level of tit-for-tat bitchiness. “I can’t hate Pam. She must love him very, very much,” concedes Jenna graciously, echoing Sue Ellen’s line to Mandy, “I never hated you and I never meant to hurt you.” Instead, Jenna’s focus is on becoming emotionally and financially independent of the man who betrayed her. “I’m angry all right,” she tells Bobby. “I’m also going to sell the boutique that you gave me and I’m also gonna hand you the cheque.”Those who assert that this season of DALLAS, as opposed to the one before it, is where the female characters got a raw deal could do worse than checking out this episode again.And this week’s Top 5 are ….1 (4) KNOTS LANDING2 (1) DALLAS3 (2) DYNASTY4 (3) THE COLBYS5 (5) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?