22 Oct 91: DYNASTY: The Reunion (2) v. 9 May 97: KNOTS LANDING: Back to the Cul-de-Sac (2) v. 24 Apr 98: DALLAS: War of the Ewings
If I remember correctly, the general rule of thumb for the two-part ‘80s mini-series was that while Part 1 was all about presenting the various characters and plot threads in the most enticing way possible, Part 2 was often a mad dash scramble to get all those plots resolved in time for the closing credits. Such is the case with the second instalments of both “The Reunion” and “Back to the Cul-de-Sac”, where the need to tie everything up in a nice neat package (the very opposite of what these soaps were originally designed to do) often comes at the expense of character and logic.
Krystle Not Krystle pointing a gun at her pyjama-clad husband is all kinds of fun, but this storyline is swiftly curtailed by Blake deprogramming her by the sheer power of his never-ending love (or something like that). Meanwhile, Kirby’s attitude towards Adam also undergoes a volte-face. Upon discovering that he “willingly betrayed” his father to the consortium, she is disgusted. “What a history you have!” she reminds him. “You assault me and God knows who else, you ruin Blake, you try and kill Jeff …” But just one scene later, all is forgotten and she’s inviting him to spend the night. And no sooner does Alexis arrange for Sammy Jo to be dumped, both personally and professionally, by Arlen Marshall, than Slutty Gold-Digging Sammy Jo is replaced once again by Sensible Mature Sammy Jo. Ultimately, however, it’s all good dumb mini-series fun.
The lapses in logic are harder to get around on KNOTS. Following the discovery of Clay McKinney’s body, Val’s behaviour is all over the place. She lies to the police about her whereabouts at the time of his death and when one of her earrings is found at the scene, she denies it is hers. She subsequently promises Gary that she will destroy the corresponding earring, but then … just doesn’t. Meanwhile, Mack is also behaving strangely. Meg is in crisis after discovering Greg is her real father, yet he continues to live in a motel. “Why did you lie?” Gary asks Val. “I don’t know,” she replies. “What’s the matter with you?” Karen asks Mack. “I don’t know,” he admits. Each of these storylines is caught between a rock and a hard place. If they were part of an ongoing season of KNOTS, there would be sufficient time to explore and explain Val’s and Mack’s irrational behaviour in an interesting and credible way. As it is, each only has about ninety screen minutes to come to their senses and so both continue to behave erratically until such time as they are given a good talking to by their respective spouse, whereupon everything’s pretty much fine and dandy again.
There’s still some fun soapy stuff going on on DYNASTY and KNOTS, however — thanks mostly to Alexis Colby and Abby Fairgate, whose knack for getting in too deep with the wrong kind of man and endangering both themselves and those around them has happily not diminished with time. The two men in question, Jeremy Van Dorn (Alexis) and Robert Simons (Abby), could not be more different: Van Dorn is the CEO of an international criminal consortium who has trouble recalling precisely how many women he is currently married to (“Two at the moment, I believe it is — one’s in India, the other one in Brazil”) whereas Robert is an unemployed factory worker whose days are spent watching black-and-white movies in his one-room apartment.
Jeremy Van Dorn is excellent value and elevates every scene he’s in. He and Alexis work off one another beautifully and the scene where they seduce each other aboard her private plane while nibbling on lychees and giggling about the Gulf War just sizzles.
Likewise, Abby and Robert are where the most of the juicy stuff is on KNOTS. She pressurises him into stealing a file Greg needs to win his lawsuit against Mack, this swiftly escalates into a case of arson and murder, Abby turns to Greg for help and Greg washes his hands of her. In other words, it’s just like old times — with some updated technological references thrown in for good measure. “Are you calling me on a cell phone?!” Greg yells at Abby in anger.
DALLAS’s equivalent loose cannon, Peter Ellington, is the one weak spot of “War of the Ewings”. Ellington is Carter McKay’s right hand man who, for unknown reasons, is psychotically devoted to his boss (much as McKay’s own son Tommy was, shortly before his death). He’s twitchy and bookish and not very convincing, a bit like a poor man’s Norman Bates — or in Soap Land terms, a poor man’s Joel Abrigore. Happily, he’s not on screen very much and does at least provide an excuse for a couple of really good stunts — a huge car bomb, intended for JR, exploding on the freeway and an assassination attempt, also aimed at JR, in a hotel lobby. The gorgeous Anita Smithfield is at JR’s side while the bullets fly, just as she was at Cash “mediocre lover” Cassidy’s when he was gunned down on THE COLBYS.
“When you’re Jason Colby’s son, you pick up some exotic skills, develop some interesting contacts,” brags Miles in that endearingly smug way of his. The same could be said of almost every Soap Land son and heir who has the ability, when push comes to shove, to transform himself into a small screen action hero. Accordingly, there are some impressive action scenes in both of these DYNASTY and DALLAS reunions.
In Geneva, Miles, Adam and Kirby form themselves into an ad-hoc version of THE A-TEAM in order to extricate Jeff from the consortium’s clutches. The rescue sequence that follows is so much fun. Highlights include: a wine barrel containing Miles being thrown down a flight of stairs, shattering as it goes, Adam blowing the door off Jeff’s jail cell, and Mrs Litton, aka a sexy version of Rosa Klebb (and the only significant black character in any of these reunions), first dragging Kirby along the floor by her hair and then attempting to crush her skull in a makeshift vice. It is everything those slightly underwhelming Dex Dexter/Lance Cumson rescue missions always wanted, but never had the budget, to be.
(The grounds of the consortium’s headquarters match those of Rashid Ahmed’s villa in Istanbul (or maybe it's the palace in Moldavia — one or the other), but there’s an even more exciting real estate discovery in "War of the Ewings": the exterior of Anita Smithfield’s house is the same as Holly Harwood’s, while the interior will later become Sue Ellen’s pad in New DALLAS!)
The action continues on “War of the Ewings” with Ray Krebbs returning for an enjoyable barroom brawl that recalls the one in “The Dove Hunt” nearly twenty years earlier. Now as then, JR proves himself a physical coward by hiding behind an upturned table while Sue Ellen makes an acceptable substitute for Jock, kneeing a stuntman in the groin and then socking him in the jaw. Later on, there’s a shoot out on Southfork between Bobby and Ray and a bunch of cattle rustlers. Here, there are echoes of the range war from Season 11, but as with the DYNASTY rescue mission, this is far more visually impressive than anything the original series offered. A barroom brawl, a gunfight on the ranch — two classic DALLAS scenarios given a slick ‘90s spin. But there’s a twist — JR has engineered both skirmishes as part of his big plan to push Bobby out of Ewing Oil and back to ranching. These DALLAS movies work as well as they do because they adhere to same format as those classic 1979/80 episodes that were driven by JR’s Scheme of the Week. Just like he was then, the old rascal is still calling the shots.
There are further echoes of the past on DYNASTY. The first time (nearly) all the major characters are reassembled in one place is at a court hearing where Alexis makes a late entrance in a monochrome suit and big hat (“Bad news just walked in,” observes Krystle) before proceeding to testify against Blake. And of course, no DYNASTY-verse court proceeding would be complete without someone breaking down and confessing all. In lieu of Claudia Blaisdel or Francesca Colby revealing an adulterous affair, we have Adam Carrington admitting he was a spy for the consortium. (Intriguingly, he was recruited in May 1988, during the hiatus between Seasons 8 and 9.)
Just as DYNASTY uses Adam’s “family outsider” status to explain his betrayal (“My life wasn’t always easy — getting cut off from the family for so long. You didn’t wanna believe I was your son so I let them buy me,” he tells Blake) so DALLAS does the same to explain Ray’s reluctance to ask for help with his current financial problems. “When are you gonna accept the fact you’re a Ewing?” Bobby asks him. “Not according to JR,” he replies. “You’ve gotta get past JR,” Bobby insists. “Have you gotten past JR?” he counters. Bobby doesn’t answer. I really like the way that none of these characters have fully outrun their pasts, even after all this time.
Having seen the Carringtons battle each other in court, it’s time for another DYNASTY staple: the Krystle/Alexis catfight. Even though the actors play it completely straight, there’s something almost joyous about it, as there was with Adam/Jeff/Alexis/Sable punch up at the end of Season 9. The warehouse of Alexis’s newly acquired fashion house makes for an ideal setting. There are bright colours everywhere you look, while sequins, feather boas and mannequin body parts are implemented as offensive weapons — it’s half 1960s AVENGERS, half 1970s glam rock. The fact that it’s set in downtown New York — you can hear the traffic outside at the start of the scene — rather than the airless world of the TV series only adds to the pop art vibe. Much like the punch-ups in “War of the Ewings”, the scene is a throwback to something quintessentially ‘80s without feeling stuck in the ‘80s at all. And, as ever, the whole thing is very funny. “You, you, you crazy cow!” splutters Alexis as Krystle sends her flying on a clothing rail. (Someone who worked with Joan Collins on THE ROYALS a few years ago told me that she watched this scene on YouTube with Collins and Liz Hurley and they all had a real laugh.)
While Krystle and Alexis deliver precisely what their audience want and then some, Val and Karen deliver what they think their audience want but get it badly wrong. With each of them facing her own individual crisis — Mack has left Karen, Val has lied to the police — the time has come for Soap Land’s closest gal pals to sit down at the Mackenzie kitchen table for one of their traditional heart to hearts. Karen pours tea and they each take a sip. “I’m going to prison,” murmurs Val, staring into space. “I don’t know where I’m going,” murmurs Karen, staring into space. Without looking at one another, they each put down their tea, stir it with a spoon and then tap the spoon on the side of the cup, all in perfect unison — because that’s how connected they are. Then they each start laughing hysterically for no reason — because that’s how crazy-close they are. None of this feels remotely real or instinctive. The actors aren’t doing this because it’s truthful, they’re doing it because they (or their director) think it’s cute, or because they think we’ll find it cute, so adorably “Karen ’n’ Val”. But it isn’t cute, it’s contrived, in the same way that Val’s Stefanie Powers/Michele Lee gag was. But worse, much worse is to follow. The idea of Val and Karen doing an “impromptu” song and dance routine in Karen’s living room is misguided enough, but to then choose an irritating little novelty song like ‘I’m Henry VIII, I Am’ and to perform it in crappy English accents is … well, it’s excruciating. As in please-make-it-stop-I-never-want-to-see-this-again excruciating. The most galling thing is that they’re doing this for us, “the fans”, because they think this is what we want to see! This is our reward! As ill-conceived Soap Land musical numbers go, it’s worse than Karen’s Christmas song in KNOTS Season 13, worse than Blake awkwardly serenading the brim of Krystle’s hat at their second wedding reception, worse than Lance singing Motown at Richard Channing’s stag party, worse than Melissa Agretti’s entire singing career. Because this is KNOTS LANDING and it’s these two actors and everyone involved should just know better.
In happier news, DYNASTY provides the double entendre of the week (“Arlen Marshall has to be kept in line — the balls are in your court,” Jeremy tells Alexis. “Don’t worry, darling, I know how to handle them,” she purrs in reply), while Greg Sumner delivers the most sweary line in all of twentieth-century Soap Land: “I was willing to settle until Mackenzie pissed me off.”
Even though it’s been a long time since I watched any of these reunions, there are a couple of jarring moments I remembered to brace myself for: the unveiling of Laura Avery’s new voice and Ray Krebbs’s new hair colour. While watching Meg watch the tape of her biological mother reciting ‘Goodnight Moon’, I mentally replayed the real Laura’s voice in my head and got close to imagining how moving the scene would have been with the genuine article. (I also choose to believe Bill Devane would have insisted on the original version being played in as Greg’s emotional reaction shot was filmed.)
Meanwhile, the sight of Ray Krebbs’ reddish brown hair, when he finally takes his hat off, takes a little getting used to. His “silver-haired cowboy” look is as intrinsic to his persona as Blake Carrington’s hair colour is to his. (Jeremy Van Dorn includes a reference to the latter during a terrifically mad rant about Blake: “This provocateur, this silver-haired popinjay has tried to embarrass me, to make me look foolish in front of my own board of directors and I am going to eat his liver!”) Ultimately, though, “War of the Ewings” gives Ray some juicy scenes to sink his teeth into in (certainly more than he got in “Conundrum” or will get in New DALLAS) and that’s more important than what colour his hair is.
Ray’s financial problems in Europe mean the bank is about to foreclose on his ranch in Texas. What JR and Carter Mackay know, but Ray doesn’t, is that there is oil under that there land. Juicy stuff — save for the fact that the last time we saw Ray, he didn’t own a ranch in Texas. So for this plot to work, DALLAS must conflate the piece of Southfork Jock gave Ray back in ’78 with the ranch he himself bought in ’86 and then sold to McKay in ’88 (and which McKay then sold to Michelle Stevens at the end of the series) and revert ownership of it back to Ray while combining it with the section of Southfork we already know has oil underneath it. I kind of like this “Greatest Hits” grab bag approach to the series’ history, cherry-picking the elements of the past that are most creatively useful to the present.
What remains consistent is the characters’ attitudes towards each other. There’s a great scene where Ray declines JR’s offer to buy his ranch. The meat of their discussion isn’t anything we haven’t heard before (Ray: “It still just kills you that Jock was my father too, doesn’t it?” JR: “My daddy was too kind. He’d never turn his back on a little bastard like you”), but the idea that these two men, now on the verge of retirement, are still arguing bitterly about events that took place decades earlier rings true. It’s convincing and satisfying in a way that Karen and Val’s big scene isn’t.
The great charm of the DALLAS movies is that they’ve given JR his mojo back. There’s no more moping or self-pity, no more wondering why the world’s past him by. But as twentieth-century Soap Land draws to a definitive close, other leading characters have replaced him in confronting their own obsolescence. “In my opinion, the American businessman should be placed on an endangered species list,” Blake declares in court. “You and your kind are already a dying breed,” agrees Jeremy Van Dorn in a later scene. “I used to find joy in the work I do, belief, passion,” complains Mack Mackenzie on KNOTS. “Now, nobody’s interested — lawyers are all thieves, political conviction is old-fashioned.” Whereas Blake remains defiant (“A dying breed — why? Because we put our country before profit? Because we don’t make deals with both sides?”), Mack sounds defeated: “Other guys have swayed with the times, other guys have changed, but I didn’t. I became Deletia.” Deletia, apparently, is “everything that’s been deleted when you hit the delete key. It all goes out into Deletia … It’s what I am!” (The word “Deletia” itself has seemingly been jettisoned into Deletia. I’ve never once heard or seen it used anywhere outside of Mack’s speech.)
“There is no morality, Mr Carrington, there are no sides,” Jeremy tells Blake, conjuring up the same faceless, soulless world Carter McKay described three years earlier: “There are no more borders, there are no more countries … there’s just one world, there’s just one country, there’s just one language. That language is power.” “Information and power are the currency of the third millennium,” concurs Greg on KNOTS. “You’re wrong, Mr Van Dorn,” Blake insists. “In the end, that’s all there is — morality, love, family.” Greg himself seems to come round to this idea. After bonding with Meg (and then re-re-watching his farewell video message from Laura), he hands over the reigns of his new surveillance operation in Thailand to Abby in favour of going fishing.
“In the end, that’s all there is — morality, love, family.” And the greatest of these, in Soap Land, is family. As with Val’s and Mack’s existential crises, the solution to Ray Krebbs’ financial problems turns out to be the F word: “Because of pride you’d lose your ranch? You still don’t get it, do you?” Bobby asks him. “What?” Ray replies. “Family, Ray.”
The climax of all three reunions involves a gathering of several principle characters which is then interrupted by a dangerously unstable man. The grandest of these gatherings is a big old family party at the Carrington mansion on DYNASTY. As on several such occasions in the past, Alexis is hurt at being excluded and Jeremy Van Dorn takes advantage of this to suggest they gatecrash the event together. Once there, he binds and gags her in a shed and tries to asphyxiate her (again, very ‘60s AVENGERS) before pulling a gun on Blake.
Towards the end of KNOTS, Mack is furious to learn that Meg has spent the night at Greg’s ranch and drives out there to take her back. Karen also shows up to play peacemaker. Much shouting ensues and Anne Matheson pokes her head round the door to see what all the fuss is about. Storylines then collide as Meg comes face to face with Robert Simons, who has snuck onto the ranch unnoticed to demand the money he believe Greg owes him. Meg screams in fright and Robert grabs her.
Towards the end of DALLAS, the three Ewing brothers and Carter McKay convene at JR’s West Star office where JR and McKay attempt to outbid one another for Ray’s ranch. On her way to join them, Sue Ellen is taken hostage by Peter Ellington. “I have a gun to Sue Ellen’s head,” he tells JR over the phone. “If McKay loses that ranch, your wife is gonna die.”
Once again, Family Solves All. In all three instances, feuding relatives put their differences aside to battle the greater foe. Steven, Jeff and Adam work together to rescue Blake from Jeremy; Greg pulls Meg away from Robert and then Mack pulls Robert away from Greg; JR, Bobby and Ray band together to rescue Sue Ellen from Peter.
I really like that Jeremy Van Dorn escapes in the end, and in a very TV AVENGERS/BATMAN sort of way — arrested on the Carrington estate by two cops who turn out to be bad guys, Mrs Litton and Mr Woo, in disguise. Meanwhile, Robert Simons and Peter Ellington are both dragged away by uniformed extras, yelling threats and insults as they go.
The assembled Carringtons take a trip down memory lane via their old home movies, which proves a very cumbersome way of shoehorning in some clips from the original series. KNOTS plays the same nostalgia card in a slicker way by incorporating series highlights into the opening credits. “War of the Ewings” starts off with a blatant nod to the past that should be the lamest in-joke of all time: JR has a dream about Bobby in the shower with Sue Ellen — but whereas, say, Val’s pointless “Stefanie Powers/Michele Lee” gag yanked us out of the fictional reality, JR’s dream instigates the drama, giving him inspiration for his latest scheme, which then propels the rest of the movie.
The Carrington reunion eventually devolves into a happy clappy slushy mushy love-in with everyone, including Alexis, saying how much they respect and need each other. “We’re all in each other’s lives whether we like it or not and somehow or other I think we do like it,” she declares somewhat clunkily. It’s as airbrushed and rose-coloured a conclusion as Angela’s final speech on FALCON CREST.
Three Soap Land super couples get the happily ever-after treatment. “Have I ever told you exactly what you mean to me?” Blake asks Krystle in the very, very final scene of twentieth century DYNASTY. “A few times, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again,” she coos in reply. Maybe she wouldn’t, but this is their second smoochy romantic scene inside half an hour and my reserves of undiluted joy are pretty much depleted. Whereas this kind of overblown romance has always been part of DYNASTY’s DNA, it sits less well on KNOTS where Karen is at her most stridently evangelical as she lectures Mack about how indivisible they are: “We are one thing … If we keep shutting each other out, we just end up tearing ourself apart, our one self, Karennmack.” “Macknkaren,” he counters, making a kind of meta-gag about who gets top billing. Gary and Val’s final reconciliation scene feels less self-regarding in comparison. I like the implication that Val still hasn’t quite come to terms with returning from the dead, which is one of those things that Soap Land characters tend to take in their stride. (“Maybe I should never have come back … I just don’t feel safe anymore … Nothing lasts.”) However, I’m not sure when or why Gary saying, “Piece o’ cake” to his wife acquired such a romantic significance. He said it in the series finale and repeats it here, and both times she swoons like a teenager.
DALLAS’s remaining super couple, JR and Sue Ellen, are treated far less reverentially in “War of the Ewings”. In fact, they aren’t even a couple anymore, despite their semi-reconciliation in “JR Returns”. Their relationship is now strictly platonic — playful, but with a spiky, sardonic edge that stops it becoming cutesy. There’s no real romance between them; they know each other too well for all that by now. JR does declare his undying love at one point, as he has so many times in the past, but does so knowing it’ll drive Sue Ellen further away from him and, he hopes, towards Bobby. (This is all part of his Scheme of the Movie, which is to get Ewing Oil back for himself. For reasons I don’t fully understand but it doesn’t really matter, this entails playing cupid to Sue Ellen and Bobby.)
There’s something both healthy and unhealthy about this new unattached, business-minded Sue Ellen who’s still living with her ex-husband and his brother after all these years. “Here we sit, three single multi-millionaires under the same roof. Well, I guess every family has their little quirks,” as JR puts it.
“I married the wrong brother,” says Sue Ellen to Bobby at one point. (She does this approximately once every ten years: “If I'd only met you first, Bobby, I would have married you instead of JR,” she told him shortly before John Ross’s birth in 1979. “I told you before I married the wrong brother,” she reminded him in 1988, around the time Lisa Alden made her bid for custody of Christopher.) This eventually leads to a near kiss that’s been some twenty years in the making. You get the sense Sue Ellen would be happy to take things further, but Bobby’s head is immediately turned by the arrival of delectable oil woman Jennifer Jantzen, who’s every bit as mysterious and exciting as his “JR Returns” love interest, Julia Cunningham, was wholesome and vanilla. (She’s also at least ten years younger.) Just as Jeremy Van Dorn is Alexis’s most enjoyable love interest since Cecil Colby, Jennifer is Bobby’s sexiest since Tracy Lawton.
As with DYNASTY, KNOTS ends with everyone knee-deep in happiness and Abby, like Alexis, right in the centre of things. Crucially, however, KL offsets the sentimentality with humour. The final moment has Abby sniggering at the news that Karen’s going to be a grandma just before learning that she is too. DALLAS also ends with its principle baddy getting taken down a peg or two as JR is punched in the face first by Bobby (“That’s for having people try and steal Southfork cattle!”) and then by Sue Ellen (just for the hell of it). He still manages to come up smiling.
And the Top 3 are …
1 (3) DALLAS
2 (1) DYNASTY
3 (2) KNOTS LANDING
It was typical Alexis for season 9 - a dangerous bitch who is able to go after the edge and risk everything. Maybe somebody likes this kind of Alexis but I prefere a different version of this character (mysterious one from season 2 or very rich, married, settled down, but still entertaining from time to time from season 5). Maybe it was a reason why I hated Alexis during this period of the show. She was really destroying lives of people around her. It was not a game anymore, Alexis was a real ticking bomb.
