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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 78982" data-attributes="member: 22">31 Dec 86: DYNASTY: Fear v. 01 Jan 87: THE COLBYS: Power Plays v. 01 Jan 87: KNOTS LANDING: The Unraveling v. 02 Jan 87: DALLAS: So Shall Ye Reap v. 02 Jan 87: FALCON CREST: Missed Connections“Alexis, I have never seen you this frightened before,” observes Dex on DYNASTY. “Your lies frighten me. You frighten me,” admits Abby to her daughter on KNOTS LANDING. “Don’t sound so nervous, JR,” chides BD Calhoun on DALLAS. “I think she’s lonely,” says Dan Fixx of Angela on FALCON CREST.Alexis, Abby, JR and Angela — each of these tough guys is unusually vulnerable this week and each, in a different way, is dealing with an enemy within. For Alexis, it’s Ben Carrington. When she tries to sever their business partnership, he threatens, in a juicily noir-ish scene, to send both of them to jail. “No more talk about getting rid of me ever,” he tells her. For Angela, it’s her grandson Lance whom she believes (wrongly) to be the person who framed her for the toxic waste dumping. This is one of those FALCON CREST plot points that might just as easily be glossed over, or even played for laughs. Instead, the episode chooses to explore Angela’s more emotional side as she weeps in Dan’s arms. Abby’s enemy within is her daughter Olivia who continues to beg, borrow and steal to feed her coke habit. While Olivia herself is presented less as a character than a case study, acting out a checklist of various behaviours associated with the stereotypical addict, Abby becomes the figure we identify with — out of her depth and grappling for a way to cope. By the end of the episode, she’s adopted the old adage, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. “I’m gonna lock you in — with me,” she informs her daughter. By contrast, JR Ewing and his opponent, BD Calhoun, don’t even meet this week. Instead, BD demonstrates how easily that he can infiltrate JR’s ivory tower, first by leaving a dead body in his office, then by bugging the place and finally introducing himself to Sue Ellen at the Oil Baron’s Club as an old friend of her husband’s.As DYNASTY brings to a close Alexis’s reign at the mansion and DALLAS mops up the remains of the Wes Parmalee mystery, each of this week’s instalments could be described as a transition episode. Just as JR drew a line under the past last week by informing his long-term banker Franklin Horner, who had sought to take advantage of the Ewing boys’ recent problems, that his services would no longer be required, Alexis does the same this week to prize reporter Gordon Wales after he asks one too many questions about her decision to return Denver Carrington to Blake. JR’s relationship with another long-term recurring character also comes under pressure when he instructs his trusted dogsbody Harry McSween to dispose of the corpse sitting in his office. For the first time ever, Harry questions JR’s orders: “I don’t see how I can cover this one up. The man was murdered.” “Harry, I made you a rich man,” JR reminds him, “but I also have enough information on you to ruin your career …” Harry has no choice but to submit, but it’s a nice reminder that no Soap Land relationship can ever be taken for granted.Amidst all the comings and comings in these transition eps, we are given our first look at two sets that will become long-term fixtures of their respective shows: Alexis’s suite at the Carlton Hotel and April Stevens’ condominium in downtown Dallas. Meanwhile, as Blake and Krystle move back to the Carrington mansion, Donna Krebbs leaves Southfork. Donna’s departure makes for a touching scene, especially when one realises with hindsight that this is the beginning of her permanent exit from the show. “I have to do it for Ray,” she explains to Miss Ellie. “My being here makes it impossible for him to even visit. You’re his family, not mine.” Her reasoning combines logic and poignancy in a way that is rare on Soap Land. After all, this is a genre where husbands often continue to live under the same roof as their ex-wives even after they’ve married other women. In spite of Miss Ellie insisting “this isn’t goodbye” and “please don’t think you’re not a part of this family”, and Donna replying that “I really care about all of you very much”, the sad truth is (if I remember correctly) that Donna won’t set foot on the ranch again. In fact, I don’t think Susan Howard and Barbara Bel Geddes ever appear on screen together after this scene. The mawkish dream season aside, these two always made a great combination.As DYNASTY regroups, it takes the opportunity to relive some of its past glories: there’s a silly but fun catfight between Alexis and Dominique (which serves as a housewarming of sorts for the former’s new abode), Blake and Krystle celebrating their return to the mansion by reprising one of their patented fireplace love scenes, and even a flashback to Alexis getting slung into jail at the end of Season 4. However, the episode ends on an exciting new alliance as Alexis and Adam team up against Ben. Alexis orders her son to Australia to find out what secrets Ben might be hiding. “It’s a matter of life and death,” she tells him.This phrase is repeated by Jeff Colby the following night. “We’re trying to respect your traditions here, but please, this is a matter of life and death,” he says to a monk in a Nepalese monastery where he and Miles are trying to unravel the mystery of Connie’s disappearance. Not since Chase Gioberti went hunting in Chinatown for the eyewitness to Carlo Agretti’s murder has Soap Land strayed so far into another culture.In a DYNASTY-verse week packed with enjoyable girl-on-girl confrontation scenes — Alexis v Krystle, Alexis v Dominique, Sable v Frankie, Sable v Monica, Adrienne v Monica, Fallon v Channing — the pick of the bunch is a restaurant encounter between Sable and Adrienne where the former calmly asks the latter to hand her over son. “We want him back, to raise as a Colby with all the advantages that that implies … Just think what we could do for him.” Up until this point, Adrienne has consistently been depicted as the neurotic, clinging obstacle to Monica and Cash’s happiness. Now in front of our eyes, mid-scene, there is a shift. She is now the sympathetic, relatable one. When she tells Sable, “You’re amazing … and more than a little crazy,” it’s hard to disagree.Two tabloid articles provoke threats of libel action in this week’s DYNASTY-verse. While the Denver Mirror prints an amusing item about “the vastly overrated Dominique Devereaux, who was never more than a glorified saloon singer,” the American Informer publishes an article implying that Jason Colby is “not above selling out his country if the price is right.” While everyone already knows that the Mirror is a mouthpiece for Alexis, it takes a little digging before Jason discovers that the Informer is secretly owned by Channing’s uncle Lucas Carter. While Dominique confronts Alexis (“The truth? I hope you say that when I sue you in court for libel”), Jason faces down Lucas’s lawyer, the delightfully unsavoury Sam Erskin. “I’m filing a twenty million dollar libel suit against Lucas and his sleazy scandal sheet,” he informs him.Soap Land’s latest batch of blondes, meanwhile, are serving themselves up on a platter. Babysitter Claire Prescott’s response to Steven Carrington arriving home drunk on DYNASTY is to put him to bed and then slip under the covers alongside him. KNOTS LANDING’s Paige gains access to Peter Hollister’s apartment while he’s at work (“Your building supervisor likes blondes”) in order to surprise him with a home-cooked seven-course Italian meal. “This could take all night,” he says. “So could dinner,” she coos, plonking herself down on his lap. And while DALLAS’s April Stevens doesn’t bat an eyelid when Jeremy Wendell suggests she sleep with JR in order to get information on him, FALCON CREST’s fitness instructor Dina takes advantage of Melissa’s infidelity to get Lance into bed.It’s also a big week for some of Soap Land’s prepubescent males. Five-year-old Christopher Ewing has his first on-screen argument with his mom when Pam refuses to let him go on a field trip to Fort Worth. “Do you know how many bus accidents there have been lately?” she says to Bobby by way of explanation. As perils go, this isn’t exactly up there with the dangers faced by Olivia on KNOTS — teen prostitution, jail, even death — but Pam’s overprotective streak stems from the perceived threat Jenna’s unborn baby poses to Lucas.Bobby’s line to Christopher,  “I love you too, partner. You know, it’s real important we never feel embarrassed to say that to one another”, made me fast forward mentally to their relationship on New DALLAS which, as Bobby hopes, will turn out to be far more emotionally open than any of the father/son relationships in the original series. In fact, one could argue that almost all of the drama on Old DALLAS springs from the lack of communication between Jock and his sons. If he had been able to express his love for his boys directly then they wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to gain his approval, even after his death.Over on KNOTS, twelve-year-old Brian Cunningham gets more scenes than he has in years by playing unwitting patsy to his scheming sister — lending her his pocket TV which she then sells for drugs and fetching the bleach she needs to contaminate her urine sample. I’m not sure what age Jason Avery is supposed to be at this point, but he too gets an interesting scene in which he confides to his recently acquired stepfather Greg that he’s “not doing so hot” with his multiplication tables. “Mom’ll have a cow.” To make the boy feel better, Greg makes a confession: “I flunked math two straight years. Then I stopped and I started looking around at all those kids who were getting straights As and they all had one thing in common. They all had their underwear on backwards.” When speaking to Laura, who has overheard the conversation, Greg admits that his confession was a lie: “I told ya I wasn’t a very good role model.”“I think Greg’s a fool for not wanting to have a baby with you,” Karen tells Laura. “You’re right, but I still love him,” she replies. Maggie pulls no such punches towards Chase on FALCON CREST when he tries to console her over the jeopardy her unborn child now faces. “You didn’t even want me to have this baby. How sorry could you be?” she snaps. Meanwhile, Sammy Jo’s pregnancy might be imaginary on DYNASTY but Emma’s plan to conceive a child with her dead fiancee by using her a psychic as a middle man on FALCON CREST is something else. (Obviously, it’s not believable, I just wish it was funny.)While Monica Colby and Mack Mackenzie face-off with those who raised their children instead of them (“I’ll die before I lose my son and by God, so will you,” Adrienne Cassidy tells Monica; “You’re the one who kept me from even knowing I had a daughter … You had no reason for it,” Mack tells Russell Winston), DALLAS’s expectant fathers, Bobby and Ray, are both determined not to end up in the same position. “When that child is born, I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure it knows its father,” Bobby promises Jenna. “Get me some control,” Ray instructs his lawyer after learning of Donna’s intention to raise their baby in Washington.FALCON CREST and THE COLBYS both contain examples of a wife, Melissa Cumson and Sable Colby, taking revenge on her husband. After learning that Lance sabotaged her business partnership with Eric Stavros, Melissa strikes back by taking Eric to bed. As Zach Powers points out, sex is no longer an option for Sable: “You can’t hurt [Jason] in the bedroom anymore, but you can in the boardroom.” And so Sable uses her first board meeting as a Colby shareholder to cast the deciding vote against Jason’s attempt to acquire an electronics company. (There’s slightly more to it than that, but my minuscule business brain couldn’t quite grasp it.) Jason calls her “petty, spiteful … a willful, dangerous child.” Eric is no more impressed when he realises Melissa has used him to get back at Lance. “The two of you are just a perfect match. You both use people without a thought for their feelings.” Eric’s words send Melissa into a tailspin. “There’s something wrong with me,” she tells Father Bob. “I have something evil in me and I can’t make it go away.” Sable’s gloating is also interrupted when Jason gets a call from Jeff at the end of the episode with the shock news of Connie's death.Back on KNOTS, while Russell Winston confirms that Paige is really Paige, Jill Bennett admits to Gary that she’s really Peter’s sister — which leads Gary to assume she’s also a Galveston. The plot thickens on FALCON CREST where Guy Stafford, the bad guy who pretended to be a reporter but then turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, turns out to be a bad guy after all — and that’s after he’s also pretended to be Kim Novak’s secret lover.Stafford, or whoever he is, has an interesting take on one of FC’s other impostors. “Kit Marlowe has not only taken on the identity, she believes she is Skylar Kimble … She’s run so far from her past, she’s forgotten she had one.” This chimes with a theory put forward on this week’s DALLAS as to how Wes Parmalee was able to “cheat” the polygraph test when he claimed he was Jock: “It might be possible with a little self-hypnosis … he went back in his mind to a time when he really did believe that he was Jock.” For what it’s worth, I’m now leaning towards the idea that Wes actually was Jock, but realising his sons would never accept the fact, chose to walk away from his family rather than destroy it — and that this is what he explained to Miss Ellie (who had already chosen Clayton over him) during their final, pivotal conversation that took place off screen. It would help explain why Ellie has no anger towards Parmalee and now just wants the whole matter dropped.                                                      And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (3) THE COLBYS2 (2) DALLAS3 (4) DYNASTY4 (1) KNOTS LANDING5 (5) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?