New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 147457" data-attributes="member: 22">15 Mar 89: DYNASTY: The Son Also Rises v. 16 Mar 89: KNOTS LANDING: Guilty Until Proven Innocent v. 17 Mar 89: DALLAS: Three Hundred v. 17 Mar 88: FALCON CREST: Missing Links    There are two returnees to Soap Land this week. Sable’s daughter Monica shows up on DYNASTY but isn’t quite the same girl she used to be. On THE COLBYS, she was sensible to the point of conservative and by Season 2, almost permanently on the brink of tears. Here, she’s giggling up a storm, flicking rubber bands at the back of Jeff’s head while making meta wisecracks at his expense (“I heard Fallon left you for an alien”), teasing her mom’s new beau (“Would it be all right if I called you Uncle Dex?”) and delivering Soap Land’s very first gag about female contraception (“Mother is so straight she once thought the IUD was a federal agency.”) However, it doesn’t feel as if she’s behaving out of character; more that her character has been expanded to fit into DYNASTY’s newly playful atmosphere. Meanwhile, Frank Agretti returns to FALCON CREST from his emerald mining expedition with hugs and smiles for everyone — and an emerald ring for Angela (not unlike the one Matt Cantrell once gave to Pam Ewing). Asked how long he intends to stick around, he promises to stay “just as long as Nick and Ben need me to.” Monica, meanwhile, insists her visit to DYNASTY will be brief, but her immediate inclusion in the opening credits suggests otherwise. Sure enough, during a girly mother/daughter bathroom chat (which echoes an equivalent scene in the first episode of THE COLBYS), Sable invites her to come and work for her in Denver, pointing out how little she has left to keep her in Los Angeles: “I’m not there, Miles is not there, Bliss is not there … How many times in the last year have you seen Jason?” “I haven’t,” Monica concedes. Alexis’s absences from DYNASTY have become so frequent that, as Jeff tells Blake, he is hopeful her travels have “gotten her mind off you and that murder.” Fat chance. This week’s episode ends with her newspaper offering a reward for information concerning Roger Grimes. “The woman’s insane,” exclaims Blake (an assessment that chimes with Gary’s opinion of Jill Bennett on this week’s KNOTS: “The woman was absolutely nuts!”) “She was married to a Carrington, a Colby and a Dexter —  and she’s going to destroy all three families.” Similarly, one might be excused for thinking Abby had forgotten all about the oil under Lotus Point she secretly acquired a couple of months ago but hasn’t referred to since. This week, however, she learns that in order to access that oil, she — or rather, her dummy corporation Murakame — must file an environmental impact report. “That means the environmentalists are gonna scream bloody murder,” she frets. So on Murakame’s behalf, she hires Ted Melcher to handle the PR, without letting him know that she is Murakame.In fact, Abby is determined to keep her newfound interest in oil a secret from everyone, including her husband. “I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anyone to know,” she tells Rick Hawkins. Likewise, JR on DALLAS. “I don’t want anybody to know about this,” he tells Sly after asking her to bring him “up-to-the-minute figures on [Ewing Oil’s] oil production and known reserves.” Bobby finds out anyway and hits the roof: “You’re through, JR. I want you to take your assets and your lies and get the hell out of my company.” Back on DYNASTY, Blake is also in a firing mood. “You’re throwing me out of the company?!” asks Adam in disbelief. “You’ve thrown yourself out of this company by your actions,” Blake insists. “You’re not going to like having me as an enemy,” Adam warns him. “Couldn’t be any worse than having you as a son,” he shoots back. Parent/child conflicts loom large this week, each set against in a business backdrop. As well as Blake and Adam, there’s Carter and Tommy McKay and Angela and Richard Channing. Tommy is angry when his father refuses to advance him any more start-up money for his import venture: “After everything you’ve done to this family, don’t you think you owe me? … You don’t give a damn about anybody but yourself!” Meanwhile, Richard takes drastic measures to prevent his mother from voting against him at a crucial board meeting in Chicago — he kidnaps her. “Feel free to scream all you like. The walls are soundproof so you won’t bother the neighbours,” he smiles. All three situations are dramatically juicy, but the confrontation between the McKay men is unexpectedly touching. “I love you with all my heart,” Mack tells Tommy, “but I don’t trust you … All you have to do is show me that I’m wrong.” For the first time since arriving in DALLAS, instead of sneering or bullshitting or losing his temper, Tommy seems genuinely moved. Over on FALCON CREST, Maggie Channing offers Soap Land’s other Tommy (Ortega) a similar challenge when she learns he’s planning to kill the gang member who put his brother in the hospital. “You’d risk everything just to settle a score?” she asks him. “It’s just the way it’s always been!” he insists. “Then try something different — like you did when you came to work here!” she pleads. Her words hit home and Tommy O has a change of heart. For Tommy McKay, however, it may already be too late.In his other guise of Roger Grimes, Tommy is still causing problems for Fallon on DYNASTY. “I dream about him all the time,” she admits. “I thought he’d disappeared, but he’s back.” But while Fallon only has to cope with Roger/Tommy in her nightmares, DALLAS’s April has to deal with the real thing kicking her door in after she spurns his advances. “You frozen rich bitches are all alike!” he snarls.Back in ’85, DALLAS celebrated its two-hundredth episode with a big rodeo at Southfork featuring a large cast and some impressively sweeping cinematography. This week, the show marks its three-hundredth edition in a contrasting way, by confining its two lead characters, JR and Bobby, to the smallest place possible — an elevator — for the majority of the instalment. FALCON CREST does something similar by trapping Richard Channing and his toddler son Michael at the bottom a disused well. While the latter situation is enjoyably cheesy — I kept imagining the rest of the cast bursting into a chorus of ‘We’re Sending Our Love Down the Well’ from THE SIMPSONS — the former offers up some intriguing moments of introspection as the Ewing boys discuss their differences. “I didn’t start off wanting to hurt anybody,” JR explains, “but I had these goals — goals that were drummed into me when I started to work for Daddy at Ewing Oil. Ewing Oil had to be the biggest, it had to be the best … I wouldn’t have broken any of the rules if people hadn’t have gotten in my way. If they’d just let me alone, nobody would have gotten hurt.” “That’s a lot of self-justifying crap and you know it,” Bobby replies. Discussions about why people are the way they are recur throughout this week’s eps. “My own son, my own flesh and blood,” broods Blake on DYNASTY, “who would have thought that he’d turn out —“ “Blake, Adam’s had a rough life, kidnapped as a child,” interrupts Jeff. “You think that it didn’t tear me apart?” Blake argues. “There’s not much love lost between Adam and me,” Jeff continues, “but in a way, I feel sorry for him … In a strange way, we’re almost brothers.” “I know this sounds strange, but I feel sorry for Jill,” echoes Karen on KNOTS. “It’s sad that she didn’t get any help before all this started.” “I’m not convinced that she was sick,” Pat Williams counters. “I believe that there are genuinely evil people out there and that Jill was one of them.” Like Blake, Carter McKay believes his son is ultimately responsible for his own actions no matter what happened in the past. “Whatever I did or didn’t do, you’re the one that got yourself into trouble, not me,” he tells him. Just as the reasons behind Jill’s behaviour in life remain unclear — was she sick or was she evil? — we are also left with a tantalising ambiguity about her death after it emerges that she died trying to frame Gary. “Do you think Jill really meant to kill herself?” Karen asks. “I think she was counting on being saved so she could testify against Gary.” Mack doesn’t agree: “She put a gag on her own mouth. I think she knew what would happen.” Jill fully intending to die or Jill hoping to be rescued but dying anyway — I’m not sure which scenario is worse, but either way, the extended flashback sequence where we watch her carry out the plan she has meticulously orchestrated, and which brings about her own death almost immediately, is grimly compelling. Minor trend of the week: twice-married exes gravitating towards each other once again. “I see Sammy Jo and him together and I care, I really do,” Jeff says to Fallon after being introduced to Tanner McBride, “but when I see you and Zorelli together, that hurts.” “Can you stay for lunch?” Val asks Gary at the end of KNOTS, last season’s cliffhanging ordeal finally behind them after nineteen episodes. “I was hoping you’d ask,” he admits. As they stroll into her house hand-in-hand accompanied by the twins, Karen and Mack looking on approvingly, the camera pulls up and away from them till they’re just distant figures and it really feels like KNOTS is moving into “happily ever after” territory — or it would be if weren't for all that Paige/Greg/Abby/Ted/Murakame stuff lurking in the shadows.The “trapped in an elevator overnight” scenario at the centre of DALLAS’s tricentennial episode is a curious one. On one hand, it’s a light-hearted, gimmicky contrivance to force the two feuding brothers into close proximity. There’s also the crate of Bordeaux (sent courtesy of Ray Krebbs) that they then work their way through, requiring the actors to play drunk. On the other hand, there's their actual conversation which strikes right at the heart of the Ewing saga. These different story elements don’t always gel. “You were [Daddy’s] favourite from the day you were born,” JR tells Bobby at one point. While Jock’s preference for his youngest son has been part of DALLAS lore from the beginning of the series, this is the first time JR has ever acknowledged it, yet the moment is kind of thrown away. But then later comes one of those original series moments that grows more meaningful and resonant when viewed through the prism of New DALLAS. On the new series, where the brothers had grown older and more vulnerable, the real-life affection between Duffy and Hagman seemed to spill over into their onscreen relationship until the two had become almost indistinguishable. Some of that affection now filters back in time to the pivotal point in this ep where Bobby changes his mind about kicking his brother out of Ewing Oil. He watches JR asleep in the elevator, a melancholy expression on his face, before waking him up with the news. “You’re back in, a full partner in Ewing Oil,” he whispers. JR’s so excited, he’s almost like a child on Christmas morning: “Oh Bobby, you just made me the happiest man in the world … I love it, I absolutely love it!” Suddenly, rather than a long-in-the-tooth soap spinning its wheels as it tries to think of different variations on the same old themes, it feels like we’re watching a very personal story about the relationship between these two brothers.Pilar Ortega-Cumson also gets what she’s always wanted after Angela (for devious reasons of her own) invites her and Lance to move into Falcon Crest. Just as JR is too thrilled to go straight home when the elevator finally starts working (“Now that I’m in with you again, I wanna take a look at our offices,” he tells Bobby, pressing the “up” button), Lance finds his bride standing in the shadows of the family living room in the middle of the night. “I couldn’t sleep,” she tells him. “It’s the excitement of spending my first night at Falcon Crest … Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed about this and here I am.” And this week’s Top 4 are … 1 (3) DALLAS 2 (2) KNOTS LANDING3 (1) FALCON CREST 4 (-) DYNASTYOf course - how could I have forgotten that?! That makes me feel so much better about the whole thing!</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?