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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 18890" data-attributes="member: 22">27/Nov/85: THE COLBYS: Conspiracy of Silence v. 27/Nov/85: DYNASTY: The Proposal v. 28/Nov/85: THE COLBYS: Moment of Truth v. 29/Nov/85: DALLAS: The Prize v. 29/Nov/85: FALCON CREST: The Naked TruthTHE COLBYS might be a spinoff from DYNASTY, but in many ways, it feels more like a wackier version of early DALLAS. The first of this week’s two episodes begins with the family reacting to the news of Miles and Fallon’s elopement with the same kind of stunned politeness as the Ewings did to Bobby and Pam’s in “Digger’s Daughter". “I said, ‘I love you,’” explained Bobby back then, “and then she said, ‘I love you,’ and so I said, ‘well, let’s get married, right here in this old city of New Orleans.’” “We said, 'I do’ this morning, Lake Tahoe,” Miles explains now, a tad more succinctly. As Fallon’s ex, Jeff is in a similar position to the one Ray Krebbs was in when he was obliged to congratulate his old flame on her marriage, but at least Pam remembered who Ray was. Whereas the Ewings merely had to contend with the fact that their son had married the daughter of their enemy, the Colbys must digest the news that Miles has wed the presumed dead ex and future wife of his own cousin and that she has no memory of who she is.Sable’s exclamation about Fallon, “She has absolutely no idea she’s Blake Carrington’s daughter!" is a hall of mirrors version of Miss Ellie’s about Pam, “She’s also Cliff Barnes’s sister and Digger Barnes’s daughter!” And where Jock once urged JR to practice “the art of subtlety” in his dealings with Pam, Jason tells Miles and Jeff they had "both better walk softly” with regard to Fallon. “She doesn’t know who she is … When she does, she’ll make a choice.”Worried that Fallon will choose Jeff over Miles if and when her memory returns, Sable turns into Sue Ellen-by-proxy, urging her to have Miles’s baby as soon as possible. Elsewhere, she plays JR to Jeff's Pam, adopting the role of sympathetic aunt even as she tries to usher him out of the family home: “If you stay here under the same roof, you’ll end up destroying three lives." Where Bobby interrupted JR’s attempt to buy off Pam in the first episode of DALLAS, here it’s Constance who interferes. “Jeff, under no condition are you to leave this house,” she tells him.The first of this week’s COLBYS episodes ends with Miles pinning Jeff against a wall — “an indication of what to expect if you ever, ever lay your hands on my wife again,” he snarls. Again, this recalls an incident from “Digger’s Daughter”, the moment where Bobby comes to Pam’s defence, grabbing JR by the scruff of the neck and yelling, “It was a dumb stupid trick, JR. If you ever ..."Miles’s wedding gift from his parents of 10% of Colby Enterprises and a position with the company ensures that he and Jeff are to be business as well as romantic rivals. However, Miles doesn’t seem cut out for the corporate world in the way that other executive-come-latelys, Bobby Ewing and Adam Carrington, were. It’s not that he’s ethically opposed to his father’s business (no FLAMINGO ROAD’s Skipper Weldon nor early Steven Carrington he), more that his heart and temperament simply aren’t in it. Perhaps he’s got a bit of Gary Ewing in him or perhaps Miles is the real CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF-style playboy rebel Bobby Ewing was originally intended to be. Petulant and hotheaded as he is — he flounces out of his father’s office in a temper twice this week — there is also something sympathetic about him. He projects a kind of innocent narcissism.It’s very interesting to observe how the impact of Fallon’s return is felt across the DYNASTY-verse. This week’s DYNASTY is sandwiched between two episodes of THE COLBYS, allowing Blake enough time to nip over to California to greet his back-from-the-dead daughter (even though, sadly, she doesn’t recognise him) before returning to his own show in time to see Alexis touch down in Denver with an equally back-from-the-dead Moldavian monarch in tow. Amidst all the excitement, Blake finds time to tell Alexis that their daughter is alive if not exactly well and to caution her against to visiting Fallon herself as her mental state is too fragile. (Essentially, Alexis is prohibited from crossing over to THE COLBYS on medical grounds.) The matter addressed, Blake and Alexis return to their more immediate storylines and Fallon is not mentioned for the rest of the episode. The whole thing is fascinating and fun, but one can understand why DALLAS and KNOTS LANDING have chosen their crossover moments so sparingly.Crossovers aside, there are plenty of parallels between the two DYNASTY-verse shows. While everyone in the Colby mansion pretends to Fallon that she is really Randall, Rita pretends to everyone in the Carrington mansion that she is really Krystle. Into each household comes a doctor. On THE COLBYS, Fallon consults with Dr. Paris, “one of the best psychiatrists in the country,” while on DYNASTY, Rita is administered to by Sammy Jo’s physician Dr. Travers, who is really Rita’s lover Joel in disguise, as part of a scheme to explain why Rita is so reluctant to perform “her" conjugal duties with Blake.Each show features an equivalent argument between a grownup child and the mother who abandoned them years before. “You ran out on me when I was three years old,” Jeff tells his mother Francesca (also known as Frankie) on THE COLBYS. "You wouldn’t even claim me as your daughter all those years I was growing up and really needed you,” Amanda reminds Alexis on DYNASTY. While Frankie makes a weak attempt to explain herself (“There were reasons … life gets complicated”), Alexis is downright unrepentant. “I’m sick and tired of your pathetic little Oliver Twist routine,” she snaps at Amanda. "How dare you give me that I wasn’t there as a mother when I was, every step of the way and I reared you fit for a prince. Dancing lessons, singing lessons, tennis lessons, French lessons — I paid for them all and I couldn’t afford it because I wasn’t Mrs. Colby or Mrs. Dexter then, but I was the exiled Mrs. Blake Carrington. Well, that was my kind of mother love!” While Amanda retreats into pouty silence, Jeff isn’t impressed when Francesca tries to make a similar point to him. "I’ll admit you sent the proper gift at the proper time,” he concedes, "but gifts are a poor substitute for a mother. You know what I used to tell my friends when I was in school growing up? I used to tell them you were dead.”At least Jason is happy to see Francesca. When Sable walks into a room in the Colby mansion to find them playing the piano together, she is all smiles — but what lies beneath that brittle exterior? (“I am Mrs. Jason Colby. I can’t afford to let my guard drop for one single minute,” she admits elsewhere.) By contrast, when Sammy Jo walks into a room in the Carrington mansion to find her son Danny and his former step-mother Claudia also playing the piano together, she makes no attempt to mask her hostility. “You’re not Mrs. Steven Carrington anymore,” she reminds Claudia, "and you no longer have the right to drop by.” “I happen to be Mrs. Adam Carrington and I will come and go as I please,” Claudia retorts.Interesting how these women of the ‘80s repeatedly use their husbands' names to define themselves: “I was the exiled Mrs. Blake Carrington …” “I am Mrs. Jason Colby …” “I happen to be Mrs. Adam Carrington …” The only wife in this week’s Soap Land to actively resist this trend is Jamie Ewing Barnes, freshly reconciled with hubby Cliff on DALLAS: “I’m not the kind of girl that can be happy living in a big fancy home and having her nails done all day long. That might be fine for some people, but it’s just not my way."Suddenly, international shipping magnates with salacious pasts are all the rage in Soap Land. We already know about FALCON CREST’s Peter Stavros ("I’ve had three wives and more lovers than I can count” — not forgetting the affair with the princess that Anna Rossini read about in the tabloids). This week, it’s the turn of another nautical tycoon. "I subscribe to all the worst scandal sheets. How could I not recognise Zachary Powers, the notorious womaniser?" coos Sable on THE COLBYS. DALLAS’s shipping equivalent, Dimitri Marinos, is more reclusive than either Peter or Zach, to the point of existing entirely offscreen. He too has had his share of indiscretions, however, as Angelica Nero informs JR: “When he was twenty-one years old, Dimitri inherited his fortune. He ran wild all over the world, jet-setting from here to there, from there to Texas,” which is where he met and fell in love with Jason Ewing’s wife. “Jack is Dimitri’s son,” she reveals.This leads to Angelica explaining to JR that their deal will make Jack "one of the richest men in the world.” King Galen goes one better at the end this week’s DYNASTY by promising to make Alexis "the most powerful woman in the world." (“The most powerful woman in the world,” she repeats in a tantalised whisper).Dimitri Marinos may have inherited his wealth, but Zach Powers’ and Peter Stavros’s beginnings were both more humble. "My father was a fisherman,” says Zach. "I was able to take my little fishing boat and turn it into an empire,” recalls Peter. Meanwhile, Zach’s death-related flashback (a boy crying over his father’s body, washed up on the beach) and the vengeful look he throws in Jason Colby’s direction recalls Nick Toscanni’s long-simmering vendetta against Blake on DYNASTY.Zach’s first encounter with Sable takes place in the art gallery she runs. Sable’s evident passion for fine art adds another facet to her character, making her somewhat unique amongst Soap Land wives. (For all of Alexis’s and Amanda’s dabblings at their easels and on sketchpads, one has never heard either of them speak about Picasso and Modigliani with the understanding and authority that Sable does.) Soap Land being what it is, art and commerce inevitably collide. Sable asks Jason for permission to bid $2,000,000 for a Matisse at auction as if she were requesting an advance on her weekly housekeeping allowance. (“This one piece would make the Colby Collection one of the most important and prestigious collections in the country,“ she adds persuasively.) Meanwhile on DYNASTY, no sooner has Joel Abrigore infiltrated the Carrington mansion in his guise of Dr. Travers than he immediately begins coveting the art on display. (“The paintings in the west gallery alone are worth millions — Modigliani, Rivera, Monets, Manets … we’re sitting on a goldmine!” he tells Rita.)There is much talk of inherited wealth in this week’s Soap Land. Sable and Frankie (who somehow manage to be sisters as well as sisters-in-law, thereby making Miles and Jeff cousins twice over) exchange barbs about each other’s son's respective start in life. "He was handed power and fortune on a platinum platter. He’s hardly worked for it,” says Sable of Jeff. “Unlike Miles, who had to work very hard, of course, over a hot polo mallet,” counters Francesca. Meanwhile on DYNASTY, Sammy Jo taunts Claudia, calling her “a nobody," while she herself, by virtue of the fortune she inherited from her father, is "the winner here … I’m a rich woman with my own power and I don’t have to live off other people’s handouts.” Later in the same episode, Claudia receives a windfall of her own when Season 1’s Walter Lankershim bequeaths her his and Matthew’s oilfield. Then and only then does she consider herself worthy of moving back into the Carrington mansion. (“Now I’m an equal to the Carringtons, to any one of them,” she tells Adam.) Without the wholesome presence of the real Krystle (who is still languishing, all but forgotten, in that attic), it feels as if the Carrington mansion has lost its moral compass. Consequently, the price of admission into the family home is no longer love or even marriage (“A wedding band on your finger doesn’t mean anything around here,” Sammy Jo insists), but how much wealth one has managed to accrue.Claudia’s return to the mansion means that DYNASTY and THE COLBYS each now boasts a newly married couple living under the same roof as the bride’s ex-husband who is also a blood relative of the groom. Fallon, Miles and his cousin Jeff are in the COLBY mansion; Claudia, Adam and his brother Steven are in the DYNASTY one (where, just for good measure, Steven’s other ex-wife, Sammy Jo, is also in residence). Miles speaks of Fallon possessively as “Mrs. Miles Colby," while Adam gloats to his brother about his new wife thus: ”It’s not just ‘Claudia,' Steven. She’s ‘Mrs. Carrington' again, ‘Mrs. Adam Carrington.'"Following KNOTS a year ago, THE COLBYS becomes the second Soap Land show to celebrate Thanksgiving. Then as now, the shadow of death looms over the festive dinner table. Last year, it was the recent loss of Val’s twins, now it's Jason’s impending death. At the end of the week’s second episode, THE COLBYS pulls the ultimate cop out when it transpires that Jason isn’t dying as we’d been led to believe on DYNASTY — it was simply a clerical error. However, by this point, we’re in far too deep to really object.Two of DALLAS and DYNASTY’s youngest cast members, John Ross Ewing and Little Blake Colby (aka “LB”) each plays a significant role in the action of his respective show this week. On DYNASTY, LB is the one character who is openly suspicious of Krystle (aka Rita)’s recent change in behaviour. This is compounded when he finds her and her doctor (aka Joel) in mid-embrace. Meanwhile, John Ross is the focus of a nightmare (DALLAS’s first dream sequence, in which Sue Ellen and her son are pursued by an omnipresent JR), a search party and a custody hearing.John Ross isn’t the first Soap Land kid to run off midway through an episode only to be found safe and sound in time for the end credits — we’ve been there before with Olivia Cunningham and Charlie Wade — but the scenes where the family and ranch hands search for him on Southfork, mostly on horseback, are shot through with drama and urgency. Once again, credit goes to director Corey Allen who recalls in these sequences his exciting work at the beginning of “Bypass” (Season 1) when a herd of cattle charged past the camera, sending mud and dirt flying into the lens.This second battle between JR and Sue Ellen for custody of their son is very much the no-frills version. Unlike in the equivalent storyline four years earlier, there is no double-dealing from JR and no last-minute plot twists. The press, instead of swarming outside the courtroom, are conspicuous by their absence. There aren’t even any attorneys visible on-screen. (This is in contrast to the court hearing on this week’s FALCON CREST regarding Angela’s suit against Lance and Richard over the New Globe, which focuses on a game of legal oneupmanship between lawyers Greg Reardon and Jordan Roberts.) Instead, the emphasis is on the three principle characters — JR, Sue Ellen and especially John Ross — who are questioned individually by an off-camera judge. While DYNASTY’s LB, bless him, is largely incomprehensible when delivering his dialogue, DALLAS’s John Ross gives a consistently cute, funny, touching, and believable performance, despite the camera being trained on him for long periods. There’s a fascinating moment where the judge asks him if he’s a good swimmer. Instead of replying immediately, John Ross hesitates, which develops into an unusually long pause. The camera seems to wobble slightly, as if the take is about to be abandoned, but then John Ross suddenly says something about his mother, which may or may not have been his next scripted line, and the scene continues. It’s so interesting that an episode as full of camera trickery as this one — Corey Allen employs cross-cutting, dissolves and even time-lapses with the kind of abandon that would have been unthinkable in DALLAS’s more traditional era — should also have room to accommodate a little boy gathering his thoughts mid-scene.Random trend of the week: matriarchs in transition. Since turning back into Barbara Bel Geddes at the beginning of this season’s DALLAS, Miss Ellie has appeared tough and stoical in almost every scene. This week, however, she crumples. First, in a scene where she tries (somewhat ineffectively) to console Donna over her miscarriage and then later when she finds John Ross hiding in Bobby's treehouse, she is uncharacteristically emotional, her tears flowing more freely than they ever have before. It's as if, now that the mourning period for Bobby’s death has officially passed, she no longer feels compelled to remain “strong" for her family and so, ironically, is finally able to let go emotionally. Meanwhile on FALCON CREST, the once humourless Angela Channing seems to be turning into a sitcom version of herself. Not only has she taken to making self-referential quips about her own fearsome reputation, but this week, her grudging reluctance as she admits to actually loving the man she is about to marry recalls an eccentric heroine from a screwball comedy. Such a transition could easily fall flat, and if it wasn't for the delight with which her fiancee Peter (who combines the stature and authority of Clayton Farlow with the warmth and humour of Mack Mackenzie) receives her declaration, it probably would. Likewise, the scene where Angela’s car is obliged to blow a tyre just so that Emma and her he-man boyfriend Dwayne can come to her rescue (Dwayne holds the car up with his bare hands while Emma changes the tyre) is so clearly contrived that it shouldn’t work, but is just so charming and funny that it does.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (1) THE COLBYS2 (4) DYNASTY3 (3) DALLAS4 (5) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?