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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 250201" data-attributes="member: 22">17 Mar 14: DALLAS: D.T.R. v. 18 May 16: EMPIRE: Past is Prologue v. 07 Dec 18: DYNASTY: A Real Instinct for the JugularThis week’s DALLAS and EMPIRE each begin by jumping forward in time as John Ross and Pamela, last seen exchanging wedding vows at Southfork, return from their honeymoon (“Hot, rainy, a ton of iguanas … You’d have hated it,” John Ross assures Emma) and Jamal, last seen bleeding from a gunshot wound on the ASAs red carpet, returns home from the hospital in a wheelchair.Just as Steven and Sam’s wedding coincided with New DYNASTY’s first season finale, so Hakeem and Laura’s coincides with EMPIRE’s second. Preparations are also afoot for Fallon and Culhane’s big day, which affords Fallon the opportunity of turning into Bridezilla with predictably “hilarious” results: first, she enlists the services of a wedding planner whose sole function is to make suggestions which Fallon then rejects with a succession of catty one-liners; then there’s a wedding dress montage where Fallon tries on a variety of gowns, which Alexis then rejects with a succession of catty one-liners. (Sitting through New DYNASTY has now become a genuinely depressing experience.) Whereas Fallon is adamant that she does not want her family involved with her wedding plans (at least until the very end of the episode, when she decides that’s exactly what she does want, thereby rendering the entire episode even more pointless than it already was), Hakeem and Laura’s nuptials are arranged to be very much a family affair. “Dre even got ordained so he can do the ceremony,” Hakeen tells Jamal before asking him to sing at the wedding. But Jamal has other ideas. “I ain’t singing no more, all right?” he tearfully informs his family. “I’m just tired. Ain’t y’all tired? The same damn cycle all the time, just death and incarceration.” It’s Soap Land fatigue, C21st style. “We could change that cycle — I ain’t singing again until we do,” he vows. It’s a powerful resolution, which Jamal manages to keep until halfway through the episode when the creative muse descends upon him once more.While DYNASTY’s Sam is all goo-goo-eyed about the baby that was left on Alexis’s doorstep a few weeks ago, DALLAS’s Christopher immediately bonds with Michael, the five(ish)-year-old son of his new girlfriend Heather and her ex-husband Bo (the Southfork ranch hand who sold drugs to Emma last season before being poached by John Ross to run his fracking crew). This storyline reminds me of ‘The Lost Child’, the 1979 episode where Bobby (grieving the loss of his own baby just like Christopher is) strikes up a friendship with Luke, the son of another ranch hand called Bo.Grannies got it going on this week. While Leah drops some tantalisingly cryptic hints about the Lyon family history in front of her grandsons on EMPIRE (“Dwight, you and them kids are paying for the crimes of your daddy”), much to Lucious’s displeasure (“This is my house — I’m the only one that talks to my children about my past — is that clear?”), Judith has some blistering advice for granddaughter Emma on DALLAS: “Never let a man screw you for nothing. My girls … allow a man to believe he’s in control, but my girls are always in control and because they are, they are richly rewarded. On the other hand, a whore who gives without receiving is not only a whore, but a fool. You think John Ross cares about you, loves you? You think he’ll leave his wife for you? Why would he buy the cow when he gets the milk for free?” “John Ross does care about me,” Emma insists. “John Ross degrades you!” replies Judith. “If you think that’s love, then you are a worthless creature.”When Sue Ellen approaches her old adversary Governor McConaughey, he explains that he can’t stop and chat because he has a speaking engagement with the Daughters of the Texas Revolution, “three hundred daughters with three hundred guns in their purses — that’s a group of ladies you don’t keep waiting.” The DTR would appear to be the C21st equivalent of the DOA, aka the Daughters of the Alamo, the charity organisation Miss Ellie, Sue Ellen, Donna, Cally and Mavis Anderson all belonged to at various points in ‘80s DALLAS, only far larger in number and (even) more right-wing in temperament. It sounds like Fallon could be describing the Atlantan equivalent when she recalls the “cabal of blonde, big-haired headcases [Alexis] used to slither with.” Before the Governor leaves, Sue Ellen gifts him a decanter of JR Ewing bourbon which he has placed in his office, not realising it is equipped with a listening device. “A bug in a bourbon cork — I think JR would see the humour in that,” Bobby tells Sue Ellen as they listen in on an incriminating conversation between McConaughey and the railroad commissioner with the dog fetish from last week’s ep.A decanter is also used as a plot point on this week’s DYNASTY. Sam is carrying one when he pays a late-night visit to the bedroom of Manny the live-in nanny whom he has hired to look after the abandoned baby. He and Manny have been flirting — so does this mean Sam is about to follow John Ross’s lead and cheat on his brand new spouse in the family home? And that DYNASTY is about to give us a frank, passionate sex scene between two men the way EMPIRE did with Jamal and Major D a couple of weeks ago? The answers are no and no: Sam is ultimately too childlike for either option. Instead, he and Manny get as far as almost kissing before he accidentally knocks the decanter to the floor, thereby breaking the moment. “I can’t do this,” he realises.While Manny mentions having a brother who died when he was a child, Culhane learns that Evil Ada Stone had a young daughter who was murdered. Presumably, these dead kids are an attempt to make Manny and Ada seem more "complex" than merely a doe-eyed sex doll and one-dimensional villain respectively. If so, it doesn’t work.Using the dirt she now has on him (evidence of “conspiracy and illegal campaign contributions”), Sue Ellen coerces McConaughey “to ask Stanley Babcock, the Texas Railroad Commissioner, to resign … Stanley gave my son a permit [to frack Southfork] and I want you to replace Stanley with someone who will revoke it.” When John Ross finds out from the TV news that Babcock’s replacement is none other than his very own Uncle Bobby, he goes brilliantly nuts, first declaring war on his mama (“I thought we were allies, but now I know I got another enemy I gotta look out for — I ain’t gonna forget this!”) and then shouting at Bobby. “You disrupt my drilling operation, which means we won’t have the capital to buy the Artic leases, which means we lose the race to the Arctic, which means we lose!” Bobby’s defence is unexpectedly stirring: “Southfork is my trust from Aaron Southworth, a man who understood the value of preserving this family’s heritage, of protecting it, that was passed down to me by Mama and, I’ll be honest, sometimes I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse, but … you listen well, boy, I am the steward of Southfork and I will not forsake it!”The words Bobby uses to describe himself in this speech are revealing. It would have been very easy for New DALLAS to make him merely a watered-down version of his father: the crusty but benign patriarch who rules his family with a firm but fair hand, yada, yada. But Bobby does not regard himself as a patriarch, or even as “the head of this family” as Jock used to. Instead, he refers to himself as “the steward of Southfork” — a far more humble title, and one that was thrust upon him. “Sometimes I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse”: the ambivalence expressed in that line ensures means the New DALLAS version of Bobby is more three-dimensional than “the good brother” or “the romantic hero” he mostly was in the original series.While Bobby evokes the memory of his grandfather, the rarely mentioned Aaron Southworth, on DALLAS, Leah brings up the subject of Lucious’s father, about whom we previously knew nothing other than that he died violently, on EMPIRE. “My daddy was a cop,” Lucious now adds. Meanwhile on DYNASTY, Alexis makes an even rarer reference to her mother, recalling that she was “the most militant bitch about my bridal gown.”Towards the end of last week’s action-packed EMPIRE, we caught a glimpse of Anika in a police interview room, about to be questioned by Tariq Cousins, the undercover FBI agent who has been dating Cookie’s sister. This week, Anika assures the Lyons that she didn’t tell the Feds anything. “They’re gonna try to subpoena her,” Thirsty predicts. “We can’t let that happen.” Ordinarily, the issuing of subpoenas in Soap Land, often accompanied by a sneaky “you have just been served," is a minor soap trope which serves as an indication that some dramatic courtroom scenes are on the way. Here, however, the subpoena itself — or more specifically, how Anika can avoid being served with one — is the drama. “We’re gonna get twenty-four-hour security around you,” Lucious promises her. But so terrified is Anika at the prospect of testifying that she winds up perched on a balcony threatening to jump: “They’re gonna make me testify, they’re gonna put me in the witness protection programme, I can’t do that!” Of all people, it falls to Cookie to talk her round: “Anika, look, I know we had bad blood between us but you are carrying a life, my grandson, so you’ll never be alone … You’re a Lyon now, okay? Isn’t that what you always wanted — to be one of us?”As if this were not enough drama for the pregnant Anika to contend with, Rhonda chooses this week to finally accuse her, in front of the family, of causing her miscarriage. “I know you pushed me, bitch!” she yells with her hands around Anika’s throat, “I saw your shoes, the bottoms of those red Louboutins you love so much!” Much to her — and our — astonishment, Rhonda realises that no-one believes her. “You really think pearl-clutching debutante Anika pushed you down the steps?” asks Cookie incredulously. So Rhonda now finds herself in the Val Ewing position of everyone thinking she’s crazy, including her bipolar husband. Furious, she leaves town, ostensibly to visit a girlfriend in Los Angeles.What’s a wedding without a few unwelcome guests? Just as Christopher was unhappy to see Nicolas at John Ross and Pamela’s nuptials last week, so Sam is shocked, when looking through his and Steven’s wedding album, to spot a picture of escaped mental patient Claudia Blaisdel in attendance. “Maybe it wasn’t Hank who killed my aunt, maybe it was crazy Claudia!” he exclaims. The equivalent person at Hakeem and Laura’s wedding is Shyne Johnson, “one of the most notorious thugs in hip-hop.” After Anika describes her questioning by the Feds, Lucious concludes that it's his connection to Shyne that they are most interested in. I’m a little unclear on the details, but it seems as if Shyne could tie him to the murder of a drug dealer back in the day. Shyne’s unpredictable, a loose cannon, and so to keep him sweet, Lucious and Cookie invite him to Hakeem’s wedding — even though it’s meant to be a high-class affair and Shyne is anything but high-class. “He shot up that club in Vegas, he did time for beating up that white rapper,” protests Arturo, the father of the bride. “He’s just someone I wouldn’t feel too comfortable having at my daughter’s wedding.” Hakeem politely explains to his in-laws-to-be that Shyne is “my parents’ people. I respect where they come from.” He then turns to Cookie and Lucious and tells them solemnly, “Mom, Dad, one of the main reasons I’m marrying Laura is to break away from that history.” Finally, he addresses his fiancee, the sweet but anonymous Laura. “You and me gonna break the cycle, baby,” he promises her.In the event, Shyne shows up to the wedding with a posse of hookers, acting all loud and vulgar. Then, just before the ceremony, someone dressed as a waitress hands Anika a piece of paper: “Anika Calhoun, you’ve been served. See you in court.” The waitress flees, knocking over a tray of drinks in the process, and Lucious’s security give chase. In the confusion, Shyne gets involved, smashing a champagne bottle over the security guard’s head, and then, just all hell is breaking loose, the bride and her father make their entrance. “I can’t … This isn’t gonna be my life. I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” Laura sobs before dashing out. Before we have time to process this, Lucious comes up with a brainwave: “If Anika and I get married … the Feds can’t force her to testify.” Thirsty agrees that it’s a good idea. “Man, are we sick or something?” Hakeem protests. “We supposed to end the cycle!” “Cycle ends when it’s ready to end, till then we do what we have to do,” replies Andre (or, as Sue Ellen puts it even more succinctly, “The family that blackmails together stays together”). This is a plot twist too far for Cookie, however. “I did not save this bitch’s life so she could ruin mine! … Y’all know I love you, right?” she says to her sons, “but … I can’t do this.” She leaves, and Lucious and Anika are married in place of Hakeem and Laura. As they walk back down the aisle together, Lucious whispers the five words every girl longs to hear on her wedding day: “I know you pushed her.” Then FBI agent Tariq shows up. “Why you keep chasing me, man, when you keep coming up empty? Why waste the tax-payers money like that?” taunts Lucious. “Believe me, we’re just getting started,” Tariq assures him. “What’s your half-brother doing here?” Leah asks Lucious, looking at Tariq. Lucious is confused, so Tariq explains: “Our father was a good cop, Dwight, but a bad man. I guess we each got half of him.”The final scene of this season’s EMPIRE finds new bride Anika taking a breather on the balcony when a hooded figure comes up behind her. It’s Rhonda. What ensues is less a girly catfight and more a struggle to the death. “You wanted that devil child to be the only heir to the throne, didn’t you?!” shouts Rhonda. “You’re damn right I did, you bitch!” yells Anika. As they fight, they move perilously close to the edge. Just then, Andre appears. The camera stays on him as we hear a bloodcurdling scream. “NO!!!” he shouts. Blackout, end titles, see you next season. If a cliffhanger can be predictable and exciting at the same time, then this one is.(Oh and there’s more bridal-themed violence on DYNASTY, where Fallon, Alexis and New New Cristal are all wearing wedding dresses for no real reason, and Fallon and New New Cristal both start trying to tear out Alexis’s hairpiece, again for no real reason.)And the Top 3 are …1 (2) DALLAS2 (1) EMPIRE3 (3) DYNASTY</blockquote>

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