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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 231882" data-attributes="member: 22">04 Mar 13: DALLAS: The Furious and the Fast v. 21 Oct 15: EMPIRE: Be True v. 30 Mar 18: DYNASTY: Enter Alexis  A few weeks after EMPIRE paid homage to ‘80s Soap Land by naming Cookie’s new record label in honour of DYNASTY, New DYNASTY tips its hat to KNOTS LANDING when Paige — whoops, Alexis — suggests to Blake that Fallon might have been conceived “after that strip croquet game — you sure knew how to swing your mallet.” There’s an even more direct reference to KNOTS on DALLAS: “Uncle Gary, who the hell let you off the cul-de-sac?” John Ross asks by way of greeting when the family black sheep shows up at Ewing Enterprises. As if this were not nostalgia enough, Alexis and Krystle’s lily pond catfight from DYNASTY ’83 receives an almost shot for shot reconstruction on DYNASTY ’18, only this time it’s between Alexis and Fallon and there is some impressive underwater hair-pulling thrown in for good measure. Also, some infamous lines of Soap Land dialogue are repeated verbatim. “It’s good to see your father had your teeth fixed, if not your tongue,” New Alexis tells New Fallon at the start of New DYNASTY. “You’re my son, from tip to tail,” JR tells John Ross at the end of DALLAS.In fact, this episode of DALLAS opens with John Ross standing in the exact position — in his office, looking out over the city — that he was in during the final shot of Season 1. Then, of course, the office was just an empty space and JR was standing beside him. As compensating for his absence, JR picks this very moment to call. “We finally did it — we won,” John Ross tells him. “I’m about to walk into my first board meeting as Head of Ewing Energies … I’m gonna hold off on telling them I’m giving you the corner office. I want you to be here to see the look on their faces when I do!” JR indicates his approval in some skilfully recycled footage from Season 1.As John Ross and Sue Ellen, Bobby and Christopher, and Pamela all converge on the Ewing boardroom from different directions, the camera slows down as if to savour the moment, just as it did when Cookie, Andre, Hakeem and Anika made their way down the hallway towards the EMPIRE boardroom at the beginning of the season, certain they were mere seconds away from taking over the company. A supremely confident John Ross kicks off the meeting by addressing his cousin: “I know you and Bobby got your panties in a bunch over me and Mama taking control, but let’s try and keep it civil so we can try and get some business done.” But then, just as Cookie and co had the rug pulled out from under them, so John Ross and Sue Ellen have the smiles wiped off their faces when Christopher produces a document “enforcing my father and Uncle Gary’s mineral rights … There’ll be no more drilling on Southfork.” “… Until we get back controlling interest, you will not pump a drop of oil,” translates Bobby. Pamela points out that this could bankrupt the company. John Ross threatens to sell off Christopher’s methane patent in retaliation. “You can’t,” Christopher replies. “You don’t have majority unless Pamela votes with you. Otherwise, we’re deadlocked.”Andre experiences a very similar trajectory to John Ross in the opening minutes of EMPIRE — the warm thrill of being welcomed back to the family company by his father followed by a rude awakening when Lucious, having appointed him President of Empire’s raw and raunchy subsidiary label Gutter Life, throws an equally raw and raunchy party to celebrate. This results in the newly devout Andre squirming uncomfortably as lap dancers bump and grind on top of him. “You’re testing me, that’s obvious,” Andre later tells his father. “I’m not testing you,” Lucious replies. “I’m just telling you the only commandments I want followed here are mine. Check your faith at the door, son.”A speedway race where Christopher’s methane-fuelled car is set to compete against more conventionally powered vehicles becomes pivotal to the action on DALLAS. If Christopher’s car can beat the competition, he stands a better than good chance of winning both the city’s transportation contract and Pamela’s vote against John Ross. “Which is why I‘m gonna make sure that he loses,” John Ross explains to his mother.There are appearances by two real-life celebrities this week, both of whom play a bigger role in the action than one usually expects from a cameoing guest star. On DALLAS, Ricky Rudd returns to drive Christopher’s car in the race. With so much at stake, John Ross bribes a mechanic with gambling debts to sabotage the engine. “Someone could get hurt,” Sue Ellen warns. Indeed, previous Soap Land examples of engine tinkering have resulted in Lance Cumson standing trial for attempted murder, Danny Sharpe ending up in a coma, Jamie Ewing exploding and, of course, Sid Fairgate dying on the operating table. But here, New DALLAS becomes the first soap to jeopardise the life of a real-life person.The stakes aren’t quite as high on EMPIRE where Jamal is trying to decide whether or not to take Michael on the road with him. His father says no, but Actual Ne-Yo, with whom he is collaborating on a song, thinks otherwise: “If that dude is your serenity, if he’s the one, then he’s supposed to be there cos the road is hectic.”Chase One, meanwhile, the pretentious Rolling Stone photographer from last week’s episode, agrees with Lucious. “Relationships are the death of creativity,” he declares before going on a rant against same-sex marriage: “The biggest advancement of gay rights in American history and it gets handed down from some archaic institution that doesn’t even believe in natural human desire … Why are we so keen on being locked down in these heteronormative shackles?” Over on DYNASTY, Steven tells Sam (Michael’s other self) that they should keep Soap Land’s first same-sex engagement quiet for the time being. “I want my family to celebrate our engagement, not forever associate it with my mother … Let’s hold off on telling people until she’s gone.” Back on EMPIRE, Jamal is offended at Chase’s drunken attempt to blow him in a club: “Even if I was attracted to you, which I’m not at all, I would never do that to Michael.” Michael has been rolling his eyes at Chase since he first appeared so it’s almost as much of a shock to us as it is to Jamal when he later walks in on Chase going down on Michael. (We are certainly a long way from Jack Coleman and Luke Fuller expressing their sexuality through the medium of brotherly hugs.) Conversely, the closest Sam comes to cheating on Steven this week is attempting to sneak a peek at Liam while he’s changing his shirt.Last week’s big church service was Tom Carrington’s funeral on DYNASTY. This week’s is Andre’s baptism on EMPIRE. No-one anticipated Alexis’s arrival then and no-one expects Lucious to show up now, especially not after his response to Andre’s invitation: “You’re asking me to come and watch somebody dunk you in tap water and pretend that that’s gonna make all your sins go away? There is no God … You just need to man the hell up.” Inevitably, he changes his mind at the last minute. Just as DYNASTY had fun heralding Alexis’s arrival at the church with demonic symbolism (bells tolling, crucifixes rattling) so EMPIRE does with Lucious’s. “That devil walk in here, this whole place might catch fire,” says Cookie, commenting on the unlikeliness of Lucious setting foot in a church. Right on cue, the doors open and he appears. “Mention the Devil’s name and he will walk right in,” she mutters. “God help us all,” adds Jamal. “I think I seen some angels running for cover,” chips in Hakeem as Lucious takes a seat in their pew. “Oh, let me make space in case lightning strikes,” adds Cookie with faux politeness. DYNASTY keeps up the Alexis-as-Satan stuff at the start of this week’s episode. “They think she’s the Devil,” says Steven of the rest of his family. “I think anyone who put up with my father for that long deserves the benefit of the doubt.”New Alexis proves a fascinating departure from what one might have expected of such an iconic character. Sure, Nicollette Sheridan effortlessly fulfils the requirements of the script, delivering a cartoonish Cruella de Vil-style caricature who delivers put-downs so witheringly they can make a crucifix spontaneously fall off a church wall, but she also brings an unexpected layer of vulnerability to the character. As with JR, Bobby, Sue Ellen and Cliff on New DALLAS, there is an inbuilt poignancy in seeing the perpetually twenty-something Paige Matheson suddenly a generation older than we remember her. Then there is her garishly tasteless wardrobe — loudly clashing patterns, an excess of leopard print, a leather dominatrix outfit doubling as casual daywear — which is far closer to Cookie Lyon than it is ‘80s Alexis. But whereas Cookie’s look is an extension of her defiantly unapologetic personality, Sheridan plays against her character’s wardrobe (much as Edie Falco did on THE SOPRANOS). One gets the feeling that Alexis believes herself to look as sexily elegant as she did when she was younger (when Sheridan was Paige) when really she looks like mutton dressed as lamb. This touching air of self-delusion recalls Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, or even Miss Havisham in Great Expectations — roles that have both been played in recent years by Gillian Anderson, who also shares with Alexis a kind of husky-voiced froideur that gives an impression of someone who has just been crying but is determined not to show it.“What’s the quote — ‘Beware of ex-husbands bearing gifts’?” quipped Sue Ellen back in ’82. This week, she is taken aback when JR sends her “a handful of letters that I had sent him when we were courting. And a new one that I’m not opening.” She seems touched (“I can’t believe that he actually saved them all!”), but then decides that “he’s trying to manipulate me and I won’t let him do that.” Meanwhile, Cookie receives a somewhat less romantic gift from her ex: a box containing Vernon’s ashes. “You take him — I don’t want him!” she protests. “Oh hell no, I don’t want no snitch,” Lucious replies. “Why don’t you give him to your sister Carol? She used to like him.” “Everybody we know, people that helped build us up, ended up in boxes that you don’t even wanna claim,” sighs Cookie. But love letters and ashes are small potatoes compared to what Alexis receives in her ex-father-in-law’s will: the entire Carrington Estate, all three hundred and forty-one acres of it.Both Emma Ryland and Fallon Carrington were raised by their fathers to believe that their mothers abandoned them. Following Emma’s recent discovery that Harris, in fact, stole her away from Ann, Alexis informs Fallon that Blake “practically banished me. He bribed a judge to take you out of my custody and then paid me off to stay away … Do you really think I left you behind willingly?” But how much of what Alexis says can be believed? She claims to be living the same kind of jet-set lifestyle that ‘80s Alexis and Anne Matheson did (“travelling Europe, Christmases in Acapulco”), but then Fallon discovers that she’s actually living in a squalid trailer. Again, the gap between the glamorous picture Alexis paints of her life and the actual reality makes her appear more pitiful than evil.“My finances aren’t ideal,” Alexis concedes when she is cornered. Over on DALLAS, her former boss at Tidal Energy is in a similar predicament. “I’m strapped for cash,” Gary admits to Bobby during their first on-screen conversation for thirty-one years. When we last revisited any of the KNOTS gang, in Back to the Cul-de-sac, it rather felt as if they had been preserved in aspic since the end of the original series. That’s no longer the case, for the vicious circle of soap has continued to turn even when we weren’t watching: “Valene and I had a rough patch a year ago and I fell off the wagon,” Gary continues. “She couldn’t take it. She left me.” He has, however, retained his capacity for plain speaking. He’s as openly suspicious of Sue Ellen’s sudden interest in him (“Not that I don’t appreciate the attention, but you’ve never been this nice to me before”) as he was of Abby’s when they first started working together. That didn’t prevent him from falling under her spell, of course. For her part, it emerges in a deleted scene that Sue Ellen hasn’t lost her duplicitous streak either. “He was always the weakest link in the Ewing family,” she says of Gary to John Ross. “I watched JR manipulate him for years. I don’t see why I can’t do the same.”Our final glimpse of Paige in Back to the Cul-de-sac was in a photo on Greg’s desk on which he had drawn a moustache and beard. Twenty-one years later, it’s her turn to get busy with the sharpie. When Fallon and Michael look around her trailer, they find a wedding picture of Cristal with added beard, moustache and a pair of horns (or they may be rabbit ears — it’s hard to say). “I may or may not have done the same thing,” Fallon admits.Meanwhile, things come to a head in the Ryland household when Harris and Judith decide to whisk Emma back to London. “We need to get your life back on course,” Judith declares, meaning they want to keep her away from her mother. When Emma defies them and skips a riding lesson to visit Ann at Southfork, a frustrated Harris kicks over a chair in his daughter’s creepily doll-like bedroom. “Even as a boy, your temper got the best of you. NOW PICK THAT UP,” Judith commands and sulkily, he obeys. Adding to the weirdly upside down, David Lynch-meets-Alice in Wonderland vibe, Judith then gently reminds him that “you mustn’t lose control, Harris. I won’t let you lose our daughter.” Things get weirder still when Judith, acting like a jealous lover, demands to know what attracted Harris to Ann in the first place. “What was so bewitching about her? What was it about her that you couldn’t put out of your mind for all these years?” Finally, he lets his mother have it: “I loved her because she wasn’t you!” he snarls, pushing her against a wall.Minor trend of the week: characters being immersed in water. There are three instances of this, all in very different circumstances. Whereas the tone of Fallon and Alexis’s pool fight is decidedly campy — the rest of the Carringtons watch from the balcony, champagne flutes in hand — Andre’s baptism is treated with due reverence on EMPIRE. Soap Land has never explored a character’s spirituality as fully as this before. (As mesmerising as Joshua’s sermons on KNOTS were, his faith existed primarily as something to be corrupted.) However, seeing his son placed under the water by the pastor triggers a traumatic childhood flashback for Lucious: his bipolar mother (Actual Kelly Rowland again) trying to drown him in a bathtub. It proves too much for him and he walks out of the church mid-ceremony, thereby tainting Andre’s sacred moment.This week sees the first-ever round of Soap Land Dog Wars. Having been fired by Cookie last week, erstwhile assistant Porsha attempts to get back in her good books by turning up with Whoopty Woo, one of those little handbag pooches whom she insists will make an excellent guard dog (“She’s the baddest bitch in town!”). Cookie rolls her eyes before taking a liking to the little mutt. Alexis has a tiny dog of her own whom she has named Krystle despite it being a male. “Sometimes the name screams out at you,” she explains to a nonplussed Cristal. “He was a rescue, trashy little thing … a stinky little freeloader.” Alas, Krystle doesn’t survive to the end credits, thanks to Blake. “I’m sorry about your dog,” he tells Alexis coldly when she finds him in her trailer. “He ran right out when I opened the door. I hope the coyotes don’t get him.”“Don’t mind me I’m just reminiscing. I have more memories here than anywhere else in the world,” Alexis tells Anders when he finds her in her former art studio on the Carrington grounds. This is a very different take on the equivalent encounter between ‘80s Alexis and Joseph. Where that scene was icily gothic, this one is surprisingly warm, even tender. “I always kicked myself after I left here for not fighting for this place … As a girl, nobody taught me to look out for me,” she admits, again sounding not unlike Anne Matheson when she first arrived in KNOTS — wistful, regretful and somewhat passive-aggressive. Curiously, she seems almost resigned to the idea of losing her newfound inheritance to her ex-husband: “You really think Blake’s gonna let any of this go? If he can take two children from a mother, how hard can a house be?” “We both know where my allegiance lies,” Anders reminds her politely when she asks for his assistance in fighting Blake — but that doesn’t stop him from helping her claim the art studio as her own.Blake has Anders, JR has Bum and Lucious now has Thirsty (Vernon’s shabbier, shiftier replacement). They might have different job titles — private eye, majordomo, attorney — but each serves as a loyal sidekick who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty on his employer’s behalf. “JR may be 7,000 miles away but when he says ‘jump,’ I say, ‘how high?’” Bum tells John Ross before supplying him with the dirt he needs to bribe Christopher’s mechanic. “Just trying to make the boss happy,” Thirsty explains as he requests Andre’s help in stealing music tracks from Cookie’s company. “I’d never do anything to hurt my mother and in the future, you can tell [Lucious] to tell me directly about our family affairs,” Andre replies coldly.As she predicted, Alexis is cheated out of her inheritance — but not by Blake. Instead, Fallon boasts about paying off an anaesthesiologist to make it look as if Alexis had coerced Tom into signing the relevant codicil to his will while he was heavily sedated. “You’re too poor to prove it,” she gloats at her mother. So, after losing her inheritance and her dog, is New Alexis more sinned against than sinning? It’s hard to be certain at this point, but it’s an intriguing possibility that never really existed with her ‘80s equivalent. Rather than swear revenge the way Joan Collins’s Alexis would have, she adopts the Judith Ryland approach to parenting: “I am going to prove to you how much you are really loved, even if it kills you, Fallon, because I am your damn mother!”While DYNASTY concludes on this unexpected declaration of parental love and EMPIRE with some out-of-nowhere violence (Hakeem is snatched off the street and forced into a van), DALLAS ends with a combination of both. Having failed to prevent Christopher from winning the race, John Ross sits alone in his office, brooding. When JR calls, he delivers the bad news, then braces himself for a telling off. To his surprise, it doesn’t come. “Don’t you worry, son,” JR assures him. “I’ve got a plan. It’s gonna be my masterpiece because you shouldn’t have to pay for my sins … Just remember, I’m proud of you. You’re my son, from tip to tail.” Touched, John Ross starts to thank him (“It means a whole lot for me to hear you say that”), but JR, hearing footsteps, has already removed the phone from his ear, a grave expression on his face. We cut back to John Ross as two gunshots ring out over the line. “JR?” he yells. “Hello? Dad! Dad!” The camera jumps back on every exclamation until we’re finally left with a wide shot of John Ross alone in the dark. The screen goes to black. He calls “Dad?” once more, softer this time, his voice echoing in the void.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (3) EMPIRE3 (2) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?