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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 268110" data-attributes="member: 22">15 Sep 14: DALLAS: Boxed In v. 07 Dec 16: EMPIRE: The Unkindest Cut v. 29 Mar 19: DYNASTY: Miserably Ungrateful MenIn some ways, Ann and Emma’s ordeal at the hands of the Mendez-Ochoa cartel on this week’s DALLAS resembles a good old-fashioned kidnapping storyline from the Soap Land ‘80s. In others, it could only exist in a more brutal, post-24 and BREAKING BAD televisual landscape — the scene where Ann, searching desperately for a means of escape, peers through a bathroom window and sees corpses piled on top of one another in the back of a truck, is one example. Another is the sequence where Luis, after receiving a phone call, explodes in anger before pulling a terrified Emma away from her mother and dragging her down to the basement where he dials Judith’s number with one hand and holds a gun to Emma’s head with the other. “I just got a call from one of my men,” he informs Judith. “It seems your trucks have been stopped at the border. Did you not think I was serious about my threat? … I warned you what would happen if you didn’t do exactly as I asked.” Over the phone, Judith and Harris listen in horror as Emma pleads for her life. Ann does the same upstairs in the kill house. The camera is on Ann when we hear the gun go off. We go from her screaming to Judith collapsing in Harris’s arms (“Damn you, damn you!” he cries) before cutting back to the basement where we realise Emma is still alive and Luis has put a bullet in the wall instead. The tension, the anguish, of this scene, is more powerful than any equivalent abduction scenario in the Soap Land ‘80s — which is precisely the point Luis was trying to make. “I want you to think about the emotion you just felt,” he tells Judith. “And then imagine feeling it every day, for the rest of your life. You have one day to get the trucks moving.”Even after this scene, Luis continues to turn on the charm. He invites Ann to join him for a makeshift candlelit dinner which recalls previous creepy “pampering the hostage” moments: Joel Abrigore preparing a bubble bath for Krystle, Phil Harbert showing Karen a closet full of dresses he has bought her, Roger Larsen planning an overseas vacation with Lucy Ewing while she’s tied to a chair, even Jerome Van Krabbe hosting a formal dinner for a bruised and battered Jeff in DYNASTY: ‘The Reunion’. The menu might not be quite as grand in the kill house, but Ann cannot hide her surprise at how good Luis’ cooking is. “I’m glad you like it,” he says. “The secret is using only the freshest ingredients … Of course, I’m not the cook El Pozolero is.” This reference to his boss immediately causes Ann to lose her appetite. “You must have heard about how he got his nickname — dissolving the remains of his victims in a stew of acid,” Luis realises. “An exaggeration I can assure you.” Ann’s reaction echoes Alex Barth’s when Claudia Whittaker casually implied that she’d poisoned his salad dressing on KNOTS.Just before Bobby flies off to Mexico to offer himself in trade for Ann and Emma, Judith, who has treated him with nothing but withering contempt since the series began, takes his hand and thanks him. “Emma is all I have,” she whispers. It’s reminiscent of a moment back in ’79 after Bobby himself was taken hostage and Cliff Barnes was tasked with the role of middle man between the Ewings and the kidnappers. “You bring my son home, I’ll be grateful to you for the rest of my life,” Miss Ellie told him then. But whereas Ellie was stoically dignified in a way only a TV matriarch can be, Judith’s anguished desperation feels far more psychologically real. And so we realise that Judith is just as human as Mama ever was, if not more so.Traditionally, when a Soap Land character is kidnapped, the question of whether or not to involve the authorities arises. Because of its preexisting arrangement with Harris Ryland, the CIA is involved from the get-go, but thanks to the kind of bureaucratic red tape the KNOTS LANDING characters regularly found themselves confronted with, there’s nothing they can (or are willing) to do to help. “At least look like you give a damn!” barks Sue Ellen at Agent Tatangelo. “Locating and rescuing kidnapped American citizens is not just an operational decision, it’s a diplomatic one, above my pay grade,” he explains. Just as the KNOTS gang did when they found themselves tangled up with Manny Vasquez, the Ewings come to realise that they are but small pieces in a much bigger game. Tatangelo tells them that all the CIA care about is bringing down El Pozolero: “Both the Mexican government and the CIA believe catching him is the only way to stop the complete destabilisation of the country … I won’t be able to get your trucks any CIA protection at the border.”While New DALLAS gives us a fresh spin on the traditional Soap Land kidnapping, the burning of Alexis’s face affords New DYNASTY the chance to present its own interpretation of an ‘80s soap trope. We’ve seen about-to-be-recast characters covered in bandages before — Steven Carrington, Pam Ewing — and however a laughable a sight they may have made, their respective series treated their plight with the utmost gravity. New DYNASTY does not. If there’s a joke going on, the show is determined to be in on it. The result is not so much postmodern as post-drama. Put simply, no one on-screen cares that Alexis has been disfigured. And if no one cares about that, then no one’s going to care that Adam was responsible. And no caring means no intrigue, no tension, no drama. All that leaves us with is comedy — the very specific kind of comedy that only works if you find New Fallon’s relentless self-absorption completely adorable and/or completely outrageous and/or completely hilarious. I don’t, which is why it took me four days to slog my way through this episode. That said, the shot taken from Alexis’s point of view through her bandages is very cool.There are some interesting developments in two of Soap Land’s coldest marriages this week: John Ross and Pamela’s on DALLAS and Lucious and Anika’s on EMPIRE. “I never thought I’d see you anywhere near Southfork again,” John Ross admits when he finds Pamela moving back onto the ranch. She tells him not to expect a reconciliation. “My father’s feud with the Ewings is over, but mine is just beginning,” she explains. “I’m staying here … until my idiot husband can figure a way to get the company back, and once he does, I’m gonna take him for everything he’s worth.” Meanwhile, the standout scene on this week’s EMPIRE takes another familiar soap trope, the deliberate smashing of a priceless ornament, to new extremes. Lucious comes home to be greeted by Anika casually dropping a vase to the floor with a cheery wave. She explains that’s she redecorating: “Isn’t that what the good housewives do? I mean, the ones who don’t have jobs?” It’s her way of saying she’s angry with Lucious for not giving her the A&R job at Empire she wanted. Then she smashes a second ornament. “I’m not in the mood for this right now,” Lucious warns her. “You keep breaking stuff and I’m-a whup —“ He breaks off his threat as she picks up a third. “That cost me $200,000 at auction. Put it back!” he insists. Smash! “Next thing you break, I’m a-clean up that floor with your ass.” She picks up yet another objet d’art. “You know I wanted that job, Lucious.” Smash! She then removes her robe to reveal the sexiest, skimpiest, kinkiest lingerie you ever did see. “I am so tired of saving your ass. When are you going to save mine?” she asks, before turning round to shows him said ass. He smiles despite himself — until she picks up one more breakable item. “Look, that is a Jack Kennedy decanter … Please don’t break it.” Smash! “NOO!!!” he shouts. She’s about to smash something else, which Lucious claims was a gift from either a diva or Adeva, but which she leaves intact after he promises to give her what she wants. As a reward, she pushes him down on a table and straddles him. “I like you like this,” he admits. He rolls over so he’s on top. She screams snd laughs. They start going at it. Then Lucious’s mother walks in “Stop it!” she protests. “Y’all humping on the table like yard dogs — that’s where I eat!” They laugh.Despite the insistence of her sexually conflicted gangster brother, New New Cristal refuses point blank to return to Mexico with him. And really who can blame her? If DYNASTY Mexico is anything like DALLAS Mexico, then it’s going to hell in a hand cart. Bobby and Sue Ellen watch a TV news report declaring that “riots broke out again today in the streets of Mexico City in response to the murder of yet another federal magistrate.” “A bomb went off on the city bus today. Eight people were killed,” Lucia Treviño tells Nicolas over the phone before instructing her servants to shut up the house and flee for their lives: “May God protect you on your journey.” Lucia herself also gets the hell out of Dodge. The Mendez-Ochoa cartel is behind all of this. Previous Soap Land revolutions, be they in unspecified parts of South East Asia or the fairytale kingdom of Moldavia, have taken place almost entirely off-screen. This one’s happening before our eyes.While the bulk of this week’s DYNASTY focuses on Fallon’s decision to write a book about herself, EMPIRE's Jamal reveals his intention to release an album of songs about his family: “It’s gonna be called When Cookie Met Lucious. Everything about the family — the good, the bad and all the damage done in between.” As a taster, he performs a number directed at his father: “You lied on your mother about being alive, just so your fame and street cred won’t die … You made the good turn into bad, you failed us so much that it’s hard to call you Dad, you’re something like the worst nightmare I’ve ever had … You’re a cold, cold man.” Essentially, it’s Capricorn Crude: the Musical. Meanwhile, Fallon’s book plot is essentially an extended comedy sketch where everything is exaggerated to the extreme: she employs a squad of ghostwriters to each churn out a chapter of her autobiography so the entire tome can be written in an hour. I guess it’s meant to be some sort of parody, but a parody of what exactly? Self-obsessed rich girls? The vapidity of celebrity culture? Didn’t TV shows like ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS and THE SIMPLE LIFE (the reality series with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie) cover that ground, like, decades ago?The spoilt princess has been a Soap Land staple ever since we found Lucy Ewing hiding in the barn with Ray Krebbs back in ’78. Ordinarily, the actions of such a character are used to further the show’s overall narrative. It was standing up to Lucy that helped Pam ingratiate herself with the rest of the Ewings, for example. More recently, it's the behaviour of Lucy’s C21st equivalent, Emma Ryland, which has resulted in the crisis she and the rest of her family are now facing. (“This — it’s all my fault,” she admits as Luis points a gun to her head.) On New DYNASTY, however, Fallon’s narcissistic behaviour doesn’t further the narrative; it IS the narrative. Not only that, but it’s the SAME narrative, the SAME punchline, week after week after bloody week.EMPIRE and DYNASTY’s eldest sons, Andre and Adam, scheme similar schemes this week. After Blake gets him his medical license reinstated, Adam plots to discredit the Carrington football team’s doctor so he can have his job. He achieves this by leaking misleadingly comprising pictures that make it appear that the doctor is a pervert. Andre’s scheme is slightly more complicated (and interesting). As part of her efforts to take Empire into the mainstream, Cookie has booked Tiana to perform at a big fashion show run by the somewhat racist Helen Von Wyeth. With Nessa’s help, Andre secretly films and then leaks Tiana having a fantastically angry rant about Helene: “That bitch didn’t even want me in her stupid whitewashed show to begin with. The only reason she teamed up with Empire is because she got dragged out for doing some whacked out 'Out of Africa' collection with no black people in it. Then homegirl tries to drag me into this damn dress meant for some anorexic white chick. That skinny racist bitch can’t handle my realness!” When Helene subsequently drops Tiana from the show, Andre suggests another Empire artist as a replacement — Nessa — but Helene explains she has decided to go in a different direction: “I think I’m gonna see if Ellie Goulding is available. Now she has the right look.” “You mean the white look,” Andre counters. “A preference is not a prejudice,” Helene replies haughtily. Throughout their conversation, she has been combing her eight-year-old daughter’s hair. “You know, your daughter has such beautiful hair,” Andre tells her on his way out. “I can see why you love it.”The tone of the subsequent scene, where the kid wakes up to find her cherished locks have been cut off while she was sleeping falls somewhere between the intensity of Luis making Emma’s family believe he has just blown her brains out — an incident so harrowing it’s suggested it could haunt those involved for the rest of their lives — and Adam burning his mother’s face off — which is presented as little more than a mischievous prank. On one hand, the scene knowingly (campily?) invokes the classic “horse head in the bed” sequence from THE GODFATHER. On the other, it demonstrates how far Andre is now willing to go to achieve his ends and ties into the underlying theme in this ep of how long straight hair on a female is viewed as more culturally acceptable and desirable than untamed Black hair.And this week’s Top 3 are …1  (1) DALLAS2 (2) EMPIRE3 (3) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?