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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 15686" data-attributes="member: 22">27/Nov/84: PAPER DOLLS: Episode 8 v. 28/Nov/84: DYNASTY: Domestic Intrigue v. 29/Nov/84: KNOTS LANDING: Tomorrow Never Knows v. 30/Nov/84: DALLAS: Charlie v. 30/Nov/84: FALCON CREST: TarantellaAfter a slowish start, PAPER DOLLS gets spicier this week, shedding some of its more vanilla characters in the process. There are some wonderfully overripe one-liners, all of them delivered with relish by Morgan Fairchild’s Racine: “Darling, a little piece of advice for the future — when a lady has a hot tub in her bedroom, it is not Mother Teresa’s apartment,” she purrs at a lover who has mistaken their fling for something more serious. “The only time I’ve ever seen you well-dressed is when you’re naked,” she coos at a neophyte male model before giving him a Jamie Ewing-style makeover. “In this town, the only way you get fed is if you look like you’re not hungry,” she continues — her appearances-are-everything lecture resembling the one Fallon gave to Krystle back in DYNASTY Season 1 (“The poor cut back in hard times, that’s why they’re poor. The rich know that’s the time to spend.”).PAPER DOLLS is at its best when it portrays the fashion world as a cut-throat one in which only the tough and the beautiful survive. The closer it gets to depicting what models actually do, however, the duller it becomes. Each episode contains a sub-MTV montage or two where pretty young people pose for the cameras while poor imitations of contemporary pop hits play in the background. During these interludes, the show's dramatic momentum invariably grinds to a halt.Whereas the real life US Navy proved too lumbering and monolithic for EMERALD POINT NAS to squeeze much excitement out of, PAPER DOLLS suffers the same problem in reverse: the world of modelling and fashion is too ephemeral and transitory to be pinned down dramatically (as everyone from Aaron Spelling to Robert Altman also discovered). Popular music might be similarly intangible and fast-moving, but one of the many impressive things about twenty-first-century super-soap EMPIRE is how fearlessly it has folded the mythologies and cliches of the record industry — hip-hop especially — into its narrative.Other highlights from this week’s PAPER DOLLS: We learn that the most wholesome and innocent young model on the show has, somewhat inevitably, acquired an obsessed fan — one who has the most impressive photo-based shrine to his beloved since Roger Larsen’s to Lucy on DALLAS. And this ep of PD ends with the grandest Soap Land entrance since Dominique Devereaux's on DYNASTY. Lauren Hutton’s similarly French-sounding Colette Ferrier emerges from the shadows of Lloyd Bridges’ office in an Alexis Carrington-style veiled hat. It’s a quintessential soap moment and, as was the case with Dominique, the fact that we know neither who this woman is nor what she wants doesn’t detract from it at all.At first glance, DYNASTY's Dex and DALLAS’s Clayton don’t have much in common as characters, but they find themselves in similar situations this season. Each is an alpha male whose attempts to assert himself in his romantic relationship are continually thwarted. On DYNASTY, Alexis is too preoccupied with errant daughter Amanda to respond to Dex's amorous advances. On DALLAS, in spite of Miss Ellie's best efforts, Clayton still feels like an outsider at Southfork. This week, their frustrations result in both men making similarly inappropriate threats to a much younger woman. "You should have your bottom smacked,” Dex tells a smirky Amanda after an argument with her mother. “If you don’t think I won’t turn you over my knee and paddle you, you’re very wrong,” Clayton informs a truculent Lucy in an attempt to establish some authority over his wife’s family.The drastic measures taken by Blake Carrington towards Rashid Ahmed in this week’s DYNASTY strongly echo those of Bobby Ewing towards commissioner George Hicks in DALLAS Season 5. Whereas Bobby paid a hooker to plant cocaine in Hicks’s apartment so that he could then blackmail him into voting against JR’s oil variance, Blake has Dominique secrete heroin in Rashid’s villa in Istanbul in order to force a signature out of him that will clear Blake’s name. Pam and Krystle’s reactions are word-for-word identical when they find out what their men have been up to. “You’re not the man I married,” they tell their husbands. "How much money do we all need?" Pam asked Bobby back then; "How many millions do you need?" Krystle asks Blake now. Both men insist that they’re fighting not for money but something nobler (“There were reasons,” Bobby insists. "I never meant for it happen that way," Blake protests), but their wives aren't buying these moral rationalisations. "You would do anything to beat JR and get the company — anything!” Pam told Bobby. "All I know is that a man is dead ... because of you!” Krystle tells Blake.Just as Pam barely had time to absorb the discovery of Bobby’s blackmail before being hit by the news of her mother’s fatal plane crash so Krystle’s distress at Blake’s blackmail is followed immediately by her fall down the stairs of the Carrington mansion while heavily pregnant.Storylines colliding (Rashid dying in Istanbul, Krystle falling down the stairs in Denver), events spiralling out of control (Rashid’s unnecessary death in a police shoot-out echoing the circumstances leading to the supposed death of his FALCON CREST wife Julia last season) — this is the stuff that thrilling soap climaxes are made of. On this occasion, however, the execution lacks a little something. I’d have liked bigger close-ups and crazier camera angles. Had my favourite Soap Land director Larry Elikann been in charge, in other words, this week’s DYNASTY could have been an off-kilter classic.As it is, Krystle's tumble downstairs is shown in all its stuntwoman glory but lacks the shock and immediacy of Maggie Gioberti's comparatively modest fall down her sister Terry’s flight of stairs in last season's FALCON CREST. One of the best scenes of this week’s FC takes place on the same staircase where a frightened Terry pulls a gun on what she believes to be her unstable ex-husband Joel — but instead, she comes dangerously close to shooting Richard Channing. It’s a tense and atmospheric scene which also marks an unexpected shift in Terry and Richard’s relationship from adversarial towards something more intimate.Ironically, in the same week that Krystle’s disapproval of Blake’s dubious business methods leads to a crisis in their marriage on DYNASTY, Karen is reconciled with Mack on KNOTS LANDING, having finally come to terms with his dubious business methods. “I know how important your work is to you,” she tells him. "I know that if you’re going be true to yourself and true to that work then sometimes there’s going to be some danger and you’re not going to run from it. That’s what makes you so good at what you do. I don’t want to take that away from you." Not that everything in the Mackenzie garden is rosy, however. Karen neglects to mention that she is dying. As a result, the post-coital bed scene following their reunion takes on an aura of wistful romantic sadness similar to the one between Pam and a terminally ill Mark Graison at the end of last season’s DALLAS. "Let's make this a perfect night. In everyone's life, there should be one perfect night,” whispered Mark to Pam. “I just wish this moment could last forever,” whispers a weepy Karen to Mack.Like DYNASTY, this week’s KNOTS also features a heavily pregnant blonde woman in physical danger, but again the atmosphere is very different. With Val following her creepy doctor’s instructions to eat to the point of discomfort, unaware that she is thereby inducing a premature labour, it feels like we’re entering body-horror territory. By the time she gives birth on the operating table under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs and surrounded by sinister medical staff and wonky camera effects, we could be watching a TV remake of ROSEMARY’S BABY. At the end of the episode, when Abby receives an anonymous middle-of-the-night phone call implicating her in the unknown fate of Val’s babies, the tone has shifted again, this time to that of a conspiracy thriller.In an episode full of eerie moments, one of the oddest occurs when Val, upon the start of her contractions, tries to reach Lilimae and Joshua by calling the club where they are watching Cathy perform. However, the sound of her voice is drowned out by Cathy singing, of all things, “Hole in My Heart” — almost as if Ciji were reaching out from beyond the grave to take one last act of revenge against Val in her hour of need. With Dominique busy doing Blake’s bidding in Istanbul, Cathy has no competition in the Soap Land chanteuse stakes this week. Instead, FALCON CREST gives us a tarantella — a gloriously mad dance performed by Francesca Gioberti, as the rest of the show's characters look on in slack-jawed amazement. This isn’t Soap Land's first show-stopping dance routine — DYNASTY’s Sammy Jo, FLAMINGO ROAD’s Christie and EMERALD POINT's Hilary have all gyrated provocatively in the past — but Francesca’s tarantella ("an old festive dance, originally said to be the cure for the sting of a tarantula") is something else altogether. Instead of sexy mischievousness, Francesca’s performance is fuelled by righteous anger. "You are the tarantulas who made me sick and sad with your poison and your plots! I am ashamed!” she explains to her audience at the end of the dance. “I have now danced away the poison!"As longstanding Soap Land viewers, we now expect the inhabitants of FALCON CREST (as well as the other soaps) to backstab and scheme against each other, but Francesca - an unsuspecting newcomer - does not. As such, she provides an outsider's perspective that reminds us how outrageous we once found these characters. Interestingly, there’s an equivalent scene in this week’s KNOTS LANDING. Instead of the naive Francesca, however, it falls to streetwise Mack Mackenzie to offer the outsider’s viewpoint (even though he's now been a regular character for over two seasons) and in place of a publicly performed tarantella, his outburst takes the form of an exasperated rant in the privacy of his station wagon: “I should have taken French in school: cul-de-sac — dead end. I should have known. Everyone in there’s a basket case … I’ve had it! To hell with them! I’m getting the hell out of all their lives!"The depiction of Francesca as a literal "innocent abroad” is in contrast to Soap Land’s customary portrayal of characters with foreign accents as untrustworthy and opportunistic. For example, on this week’s DALLAS, Bobby refuses to believe that Naldo Marchetta’s newfound interest in his daughter Charlie could possibly be genuine. "He’s supported himself his entire life convincing people that he’s sincere,” he reminds Jenna. “You are a disgrace to your sex and your countrymen,” Alexis informs Rashid Ahmed, another dodgy foreigner, in this week’s DYNASTY shortly he double-crosses the Carringtons one last time — after signing the confession exonerating Blake, he pulls a gun on Adam and makes a dash for freedom. "Don't be a fool! You'll never get away, Ahmed!" Adam shouts, and so it proves when Rashid is shot and killed before he can reach his helicopter. And on the subject of racial stereotyping, it’s notable that the last thing KNOTS LANDING’s Val sees on the operating table before she succumbs to the anaesthetic and her nightmare begins is a pair of Asian eyes looking down at her from behind a surgical mask — silent, inscrutable, sinister, other.After learning that Naldo is her real father, DALLAS’s Charlie runs away from home. "I didn’t know what to think except that somebody I’d never heard of before was really my daddy,” she later explains. "It’s funny to have a father and not even know who he is.” Her experience echoes that of Amanda Carrington on DYNASTY. "I never really had a father,” she tells Blake this week. "It’s such a terrible feeling to think you know who you are and then to find out you’re not that person at all. It’s like looking in a mirror and all at once not seeing your face but somebody else’s."A missing child is every parent’s nightmare and so the distress of Jenna — a single parent with a full-time job — over Charlie's disappearance should feel very relatable. However, DALLAS’s shiny glamour — more extreme this season than ever before — works against the drama in this case. Jenna’s expertly coiffed hair, immaculate makeup and designer outfit all serve to distance us from whatever she is feeling.KNOTS has upped its glamour quotient this season too (as tacitly acknowledged by Mack when he told Karen a couple of weeks ago: “You look good in a hat”) yet somehow it manages to retain its believability during its own child-related drama this week. Val, alone in the house, goes into premature labour unexpectedly. Her hair and makeup are no less perfect than Jenna’s, but her pain and fear feel much more real. The way she braces herself against the pain of her contractions by putting her legs up on a table, knees apart, gives the scenario an earthiness you’d be hard-pressed to find in any of the other soaps. In fairness to DALLAS, other scenes in this week’s ep strike a more successful balance between the everyday and the outlandish (Donna complaining about Ray’s outdated views on the man/woman relationship while standing in front of her ten million dollar oil well; Lucy fighting with Eddie when she realises he knew that she was a Ewing before he took her to bed).While Bobby and Jenna’s fears that Charlie has been abducted ultimately prove unfounded on DALLAS and a huge question mark now looms over the whereabouts of Val’s babies on KNOTS, by far the most wonderfully bonkers kidnapping of the week takes place on FALCON CREST when Julia — an escaped killer whom everyone believes is dead — is snatched by Johann Reibman — the murderous son of a Nazi war criminal whom everyone believes is an antiques dealer.And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (4) FALCON CREST3 (3) PAPER DOLLS4 (2) DYNASTY5 (5) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?