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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 16980" data-attributes="member: 22">13 Feb 85: DYNASTY: Circumstantial Evidence v. 14 Feb 85: KNOTS LANDING: Rough Edges v. 15 Feb 85: DALLAS: The Brothers Ewing v. 15 Feb 85: FALCON CREST: Forsaking All OthersKNOTS LANDING's Val and FALCON CREST’s Julia find themselves in parallel situations this week. Previously, both ran away, from Seaview Circle and the State Institute for the Criminally Insane respectively, reinvented themselves as Verna Ellers and Kay Adams, and even found love, each with an “ordinary”, i.e., non-leading-man kind of guy. (Along the way, of course, Julia also managed to fake her own death and get kidnapped by the cartel.) Now both are now back in the bosom of their families, but the problems they ran away from in the first place still exist. Val is still mentally unstable following the loss of her babies, while Julia is still a convicted killer with a sentence to serve — even if her mental problems seem to have largely evaporated.Where Val’s first instinct upon her return home was to lean on Gary, Julia’s is to turn to Lance. Indeed, the most touching scenes in this week’s FALCON CREST involve Lance’s reaction to his mother’s resurrection. Ultimately, however, he comes to the same conclusion as Gary did on last week’s KNOTS. “I’ve gotta get out of your way,” Gary told Val. “Mom, I can’t try to pull you out of any more fires,” Lance tells Julia.Like nature, Soap Land abhors a vacuum and so a week after Julia’s shrink was buried alive in a disused gold mine, another psychiatrist emerges on KNOTS LANDING, this time to support Val as she gradually tries to face up to the harsh realities she ran away from before. Where Dr De Bercy, aka Gustav Reibmann, was sinister and homicidal, Dr Michaels is reassuring and avuncular, and the scenes between he and Val are really lovely. Meanwhile, as DYNASTY’s Luke Fuller resigns from his public relations post at Colby Co following his split from Steven, another publicist, Cassandra Wilder, materialises on FALCON CREST touting for Richard’s business. And oh look — Cassandra’s male assistant is an exact replica of Racine’s Man Friday on PAPER DOLLS, only now he’s called Damon instead of Sandy.Watching this week’s Soap Land, two scenes, in particular, leapt out at me. One, on DYNASTY, never made much impression on me before. The other, on KNOTS LANDING, I have never forgotten, even though it must be roughly ten years since I last saw it. If there’s a theme linking the two scenes then it’s sibling, or at least quasi-sibling, rivalry.The DYNASTY scene is the kind of "Cain vs. Abel in the executive suite" scenario that has been a staple of Soap Land ever since JR politely but firmly refused Bobby access the Red Files in the DALLAS mini-series, but here stripped to its fundamental basics — Adam storms into Blake’s office and is outraged to see Jeff sitting in his father’s chair reading a confidential file. Adam rails and taunts, Jeff coldly asserts his authority, Adam storms out to wreak havoc elsewhere.The KNOTS LANDING scene takes place in the Ewing kitchen late at night — Val can’t sleep and comes downstairs to make tea, only to find Joshua sitting at the table in the dark. Unlike the Adam/Jeff scene, there’s nothing familiar about this scenario — it’s a chance meeting between two mentally fragile characters in the middle of the night. Val has tentatively begun piecing her life back together while Joshua is just starting to take off on his own megalomaniacal power trip. Whereas Adam and Jeff aren’t actual sibling rivals but for dramatic purposes might as well be, Joshua and Val are genuinely brother and sister but don’t actually know each other very well. Joshua's behaviour towards Val as he enquires about her therapy is as riveting as it is paradoxical. He seems kind yet threatening, supportive yet undermining, sometimes all at once.Each of these scenes is at the heart of what I love about Soap Land, yet they work in polar opposite ways. The Adam/Jeff confrontation is great because it is the soap equivalent of the stranger in a western walking into a saloon and the whole place going quiet. In other words, it is a quintessential genre scene played with absolute conviction that could occur in almost any soap at any time — from the earliest days of DALLAS to the most recent season of EMPIRE. While the pleasure of this scene comes from the familiar beats it hits, the fascination of the KNOTS scene is derived from its lightning-in-a-bottle uniqueness. The Valene/Joshua exchange could only take place between these two specific characters played by these two actors on this particular night at this precise point in their individual journeys. It couldn’t exist at any other time or in any other soap — or indeed any other piece of fiction. Yet if watched in isolation, most of its nuances probably wouldn’t register. It only works as part of an ongoing genre piece."Father was against psychiatry,” Joshua tells Val during the scene. "He believed in prayer.” The same might be said for the authorities dealing with Julia’s case on FALCON CREST. Hence it’s "good-bye, Institute for the Criminally Insane, hello, Magdalena Convent.” Yes, Julia is to be allowed to serve out the rest of her life sentence for murder on a religious retreat with some nuns. It’s bonkers of course, but you could say that about this whole storyline, and what a fun ride it’s been.Val, meanwhile, bounces around her timeline on this week’s KNOTS, flashing back to her life in Shula, recounting an anecdote about a Cajun cooking disaster involving Sid, Karen and Gary that we never saw on screen, shouting at Lilimae as if she were still a teenager ("How do you think I feel having a mother who’s a tramp? When I get married I will never ever do the things you’ve done, never ever!”), as well as recounting other, more bittersweet childhood reminiscences about her mama. Over on DALLAS, Sue Ellen makes a rare reference to her childhood this week. "When I was a little girl, I used to dream about going to the Far East,” she tells Pam who takes the hint and invites her along on her trip to Hong Kong to look for Mark Graison.Both Julia's and Valene’s stories are concluded this week with an emotionally loaded question about the past. “How are your orchids doing … is it still the red food and the green food?” Val shyly asks Ben at the end of KNOTS, as a way of indicating that she now fully remembers who he is and the precise nature of their relationship. "Do you remember my First Communion?” Lance asks Julia during her farewell scene before handing her his childhood missal to take with her to the convent.Emotional mother/daughter scenes of the week: After Val has lashed out at Lilimae on KNOTS, she then hears her sobbing in her room, but cannot bring herself to go to her and comfort her. On FALCON CREST, after saying good-bye to Julia, a heartbroken Angela declines to be consoled by Emma and Lance, instead climbing slowly up the staircase to her room alone. For the first time, she looks genuinely frail.Last week’s FC ended with the unfamiliar sight of Angela embracing both of her daughters — the one who kept trying to kill her and the one she used to keep locked in the attic — while declaring, “We’re a family.” This week’s DALLAS ends with Angela’s matriarchal contemporary, Miss Ellie, doing pretty much the opposite. "I don’t want to turn my back on my family or Ewing Oil but if a choice is to be made, I choose my husband,” she informs her sons, who have been trying to persuade a reluctant Clayton to help hide Ewing Oil assets from Cliff Barnes. One is tempted to say that Miss Ellie’s declaration here is as uncharacteristic as Angela’s was, until one remembers that it was only two years earlier that she took her sons to court in order to break Jock’s will and sell the company and two years before that when her decision to start divorce proceedings against Jock also placed Ewing Oil in jeopardy. In fact, Miss Ellie’s defiance in this scene is the most "Barbara Bel Geddes” the character has felt since Donna Reed took over the role.If Miss Ellie’s behaviour isn’t atypical then Alexis Dexter’s in this week’s DYNASTY certainly is. After Dex pulls off some sort of manoeuvre I don’t begin to understand that persuades the Chinese government to offer all of its offshore oil leases to her, Alexis turns the deal down in favour of a partnership with Blake. "You could have had it all — why are you settling for less?” Blake asks her. "Maybe because I'm tired of being constantly at war with you," she replies. "I think it would be nice if we could finally be friends.” She then goes on to finally acknowledge him as Amanda’s father. There’s further uncharacteristic magnanimity on FALCON CREST where Lance pays a visit to ex-wife Melissa on the morning of her wedding to his old rival Cole and tenderly wishes her the best. Elsewhere in the same episode, despite her best efforts, Angela reveals a few more chinks in her armour, as recent events take their emotional toll. There’s a particularly nice moment where Greg Reardon discreetly offers her a handkerchief and she lets her guard down long enough to accept it — only to hand it back seconds later. “It’s silk - I pay you too much!” she snaps. Back on DALLAS, Miss Ellie is optimistic that the fight for Ewing Oil will likewise bring out her eldest son’s softer side. "I know JR very well,” she tells Donna. "I know that he’s capable of all sorts of things, but somehow I’m hoping that, because of what’s at stake, he’ll act differently.” Fat chance: "This is no gentleman’s game,” JR informs his brothers when first broaching the subject of hiding assets. “I’m talking about getting down in the mud and slugging it out."Back on DYNASTY, while Blake is in Acapulco and Krystle is in Denver, each is sent photographs of the other in a compromising position with a third party. Krystle receives a picture of Blake dancing with Lady Ashley; Blake opens an envelope to find a snap of Daniel Reece kissing his wife. Ordinarily in Soap Land, the unsolicited taking of photographs is the prerogative of the obsessed stalker — Roger Larsen on DALLAS, Peter Horton on FLAMINGO ROAD, Michael Brandon on EMERALD POINT. This time, however, DYNASTY has turned the photographer’s identity into a whodunnit. Deepening the mystery, how can the anonymous snapper be in two countries at the same time? And as well as the suspense aspect of this storyline, the photographs themselves become a paranoid symbol of the growing distrust in Blake and Krystle’s marriage. I’ve said it before, but the dynamic between these two is never more interesting than when they’re estranged. Even an awkward overseas phone call between them is coldly compelling. In the ep’s final scene, Krystle greets Blake politely upon his return home and he shows her the picture of her and Daniel. "Do you want him or me?” he asks. The frame freezes before she can answer, and even though she already made her feelings quite clear in an earlier scene, ("You'll always be special to me,” she tells Daniel, "but I love [Blake]”), it still feels like a suspenseful moment. Perhaps it’s because Blake and Krystle’s mutual devotion is so hardwired into their show’s DNA, more so even than Bobby and Pam’s or Gary and Val’s are into theirs, that when that relationship — the bedrock upon which the DYNASTY saga is built — starts to crumble, it feels almost as if the series’ whole world could come crashing down.There are other juicy marital spats in Soap Land this week — a very funny one between Alexis and Dex where she finally broaches the subject of his attraction towards her daughter. Unlike, say, Lute-Mae on FLAMINGO ROAD who promptly lost her mind when she found her fiancee and her daughter together, Alexis remains intriguingly cool and collected about this equivalent scenario. “No one understands the working of the male psyche better than I do,” she drawls airily, "and nobody's more tolerant or even amused at a little casual harmless flirtation, but this time I think you might be going a little too far, husband dear." "There's an implication, an unsavoury one, hiding somewhere in that haystack of words,” replies Dex. "How clever of the Wyoming farm boy — can you find it?” she sneers before accusing him of "playing psychological mother/daughter games.” Meanwhile, on DALLAS, the escalating battle with Cliff over Ewing Oil provides a backdrop for further marital conflict. While Sue Ellen continues to withhold her wifely support from JR in his hour of need ("From now on, you’re gonna have to turn to all your other girls for comfort — let them hold you, listen to you, try to understand you like I did all those years”), Ray and Donna (DALLAS's most supposedly “solid” couple in the same way as Blake and Krystle are DYNASTY's) argue over his decision to side with JR against Clayton during a family squabble — only they’re not really arguing about that at all. There’s something else, more significant but as yet unarticulated, going on beneath the surface.Watching these conjugal disputes side by side, it occurs to me that there is a basic difference in tone between the ones on DALLAS and those on DYNASTY. The DALLAS scenes have a kind of melancholic wistfulness about them — the women especially seem weary, almost resigned — while the equivalent ones on DYNASTY have a colder, more brittle quality. Between Blake and Krystle, in particular, exists a kind of icy formality. I wonder if, at least in part, this difference is informed by the shows’ respective environments. DALLAS has the backdrop of all that never-ending Texas land — useful for staring out onto in misty-eyed regret. On DYNASTY, the characters feel somehow more closed in, trapped inside their golden palace of Ming vases and priceless paintings. Whereas Krystle and Blake’s dignified coldness is partially informed by the possibility of one of the servants walking in on them at any moment, the only company Ray and Donna have to worry about during their argument is a barn full of smelly horses.While Daniel and Krystle’s kiss at the end of last week’s DYNASTY is exposed by the mystery photographer, the cerebral haemorrhage suffered by Paul Galveston at the end of last week’s KNOTS is successfully kept under wraps by some anonymous businessmen. Although Abby has a tenuous grasp of what’s going on, only Greg Sumner knows for sure. This puts him in the same position that Blake Carrington was in four weeks ago — bitterly estranged from a powerful but dying father. Whether there’ll be an eleventh-hour reconciliation this time remains to be seen. “No matter how much you hate him, he is your father and he is dying,” says Laura. “And not a moment too soon,” Greg replies.The FALCON CREST plot in which a shouty Lance tries to prevent girlfriend Lorraine from getting an abortion starts out like the similar Jeff/Fallon scenario from DYNASTY Season 2, but then takes an unexpected detour when he acquires a temporary restraining order preventing her from going through with the op. As a result, the assets of Lorraine’s womb are currently as frozen as those of Ewing Oil were in last week’s DALLAS.Just as Naldo Marchetta stopped Bobby and Jenna’s wedding on DALLAS and Gary disrupted Val and Parker Winslow’s big day on KNOTS, it’s now Greg Reardon’s turn to sabotage Cole and Melissa’s nuptials on FALCON CREST. However, although he abducts Melissa from her bridal shower to whisk her off in a chauffeur-driven, champagne-filled Rolls Royce (“Consider yourself kidnapped!” he laughs, coming on like a light-hearted Naldo), Greg stops short of actually interrupting the ceremony, even if he does get the “If anyone has any objection to this wedding …” reaction shot. In the event, just like Bobby and Parker before her, Melissa ends up getting left at the altar anyway, after Angela reveals to Cole on the morning of the wedding that she (Melissa) is now barren — a titbit the bride herself had neglected to mention. This is the first time the "will they, won’t they” device, whereby some controversial secret is revealed to either the bride or groom shortly before the exchange of vows, has been deployed at an 80s Soap Land wedding. These days, it’s an essential component of almost every wedding and/or engagement party on soap operas in the UK, having first been popularised on EASTENDERS (the very first episode of which, incidentally, aired four days after this instalment of FALCON CREST was originally shown in the US).Legal trend of the week: DALLAS’s Scotty and FALCON CREST’s Greg each moves for a change of venue regarding the impending murder/attempted murder trial of his client, Jenna Wade and Lance Cumson respectively.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (2) KNOTS LANDING2 (3) DYNASTY3 (1) DALLAS4 (4) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?