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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 172373" data-attributes="member: 22">10 May 90: FALCON CREST: Danny's Song v. 10 May 90: KNOTS LANDING: The Fan Club v. 11 May 90: DALLAS: Three, Three, Three (2)It’s kind of fitting that the second-to-last episode of FALCON CREST should open with a newly invigorated Michael Sharpe looking towards the future (“Forget about Germany. Reunification, diversification — who cares? I tell you where the money is, in all those Eastern bloc countries whose names you can’t pronounce — Latvia, Albania, Lithuania, Transylvania”) while also hearkening back to the past (“These people are hungry for everything and talk about cheap labour!”) — a reminder that Falcon Crest itself was built on the backs of poor immigrant workers.The penultimate episode of DYNASTY a year ago contained a major paternity revelation. So does FALCON CREST’s this week. Whereas Alexis’s announcement that Jason Colby was not Miles and Monica’s father resulted in a glorious punch up, the consequences of Lauren telling Richard and Danny that they are father and son are far more emotionally driven.In the same way that Richard Channing was first introduced as the ultimate unloved bastard son, now he rejects his own illegitimate child. “You don’t belong to me,” he tells Danny. “I have never been responsible for you in any way — legally, financially, ethically. You are Danny Sharpe. You are Michael Sharpe’s son.” Tell that to Michael Sharpe. “Danny, we can drop this thing because there was nothing there to begin with,” Michael says, referring to the fact that he abandoned Danny as a baby. “That’s not true,” Danny replies. “You were in my head. I used to ache for you.”Richard’s coldness towards Danny causes Lauren to have second thoughts about their upcoming wedding. “I don’t feel good about this marriage,” she tells him. “Our marriage has nothing to do with Danny,” he argues. “Yes, it does,” she insists. “You are always talking about family. Well, Danny is the only family I have.” Tom Ryan is in a similar position on KNOTS. “This wedding is beginning to sound a little silly to me … It’s not every day you have a groom walking down the aisle in handcuffs,” he tells Paige. “So what are we supposed to do — call off the wedding because you’re under investigation?” she asks. “Maybe that’s a good idea,” he replies.“Forget about the Sharpes, all of them … it’ll be for the best,” advises Angela, mother of the groom, on FALCON CREST. Of course, she doesn’t want the wedding to take place anyway — unlike Anne Matheson, mother of the bride on KNOTS. “Darling, everyone gets the jitters before a wedding,” she assures Paige, before adding for good measure: “I’m not taking the dress back.”Several Soap Land characters have been in comas over the years, but Angela is the first one to come back and tell us what it was like — a million laughs apparently. “It was like a dream,” she tells Chao Li. “Everybody was there. There was Maggie and Chase and Stavros and all the fighting and the bickering was gone. There was just laughter. Everything was filled with laughter.” Let’s hope Krystle Carrington is having as much of a giggle during her Swiss slumber. Once again, KNOTS provides us with a somewhat less romantic perspective on the subject. “Her body won’t continue to function indefinitely, even on life support,” Pat’s doctor tells Frank. “Her heart will fail within two weeks.” “Miracles happen,” Frank argues. “I wish I could tell you that were true. There has never been a single case of a brain-dead patient reviving,” replies the doc. Frank is convinced — but before he agrees to have Pat’s respirator turned off, he must find a way to break the news to Julie. In the event, Danny Waleska saves him the trouble, shouting at him in front of his daughter, “If you pull the plug, you’re the one who’s gonna be killing her, man, not me!” Terrified that Pat’s death could result in him facing a homicide charge, Danny starts packing his bags to leave town — until the sound of a rifle being cocked stops him in his tracks.In each of this week’s shows, the youngest character (toddlers excepted) takes matters into their own hands with dramatic results. While twenty-two-year-old James Beaumont pulls off an outrageous stunt that earns him DALLAS’s season finale freeze-frame, KNOTS concludes with schoolgirl Julie Williams aiming Danny Waleska’s own shotgun at him: “They’re taking my mother off life support tomorrow, but you are gonna quit breathing before my mother does!” Meanwhile, the centrepiece of this week’s FALCON CREST is nineteen-year-old Danny Sharpe threatening to jump off the roof of a building.Danny’s ultimatum — “I want Michael Sharpe and Richard Channing in front of me … or else I fly” — obliges Richard and Michael to set their differences aside and work together to save “their” son. If the resolution is somewhat inevitable, the three characters involved are each so well-developed and idiosyncratic that the journey towards that resolution is still a dramatically and emotionally satisfying one.This week’s KNOTS and DALLAS both pick up where they left off, with Karen and JR at the mercy of Wayne the weirdo and Anita the nymphomaniac mental patient respectively. While Karen naps in her bedroom, Wayne overhears an answering machine message from Mack and realises that his guilty secret has been discovered: “He’s got, I don’t know, a shrine to you in his bedroom.” Panicked, Wayne steals into Karen’s room and sits on the edge of her bed. Karen is startled when she wakes up to find him looking down at her. He grabs her by the shoulders to prevent her from escaping. Anita puts JR in a similar position when she pins him down on her bed and climbs on top of him. But whereas Anita proceeds to then ravish her prey, Wayne tries desperately to convince Karen that all he wants to do is protect her.Like Michael and Richard on FALCON CREST, Dianne Kirkwood manages to overcome her feelings of animosity towards her nemesis, Karen, long enough to try and save her from Wayne.When JR first entered Anita’s room, he made a discreet search of her dressing table, looking for any sharp or potentially dangerous objects. On KNOTS, Dianne enters the Mackenzie house and searches through their kitchen drawers for something similar with which to arm herself. The large knife she settles on, combined with Wayne’s landlady’s assertion that “I can’t imagine Wayne hurting a fly”, serve to put one in mind of Norman Bates in PSYCHO. Dianne then heads upstairs to investigate.Passageways play a significant role in each Ewingverse scenario. Wayne and Dianne are both shown creeping down the Mackenzies’ upstairs hallway towards the main bedroom. This is a familiar setting but shot in an unusual, sinister way to feel creepy and disorientating. The corridor that separates the male and female wings of the sanatarium, meanwhile, is shot more prosaically, but JR is shown sneaking down it several times in his efforts to complete his mission.Dianne succeeds in “rescuing” Karen. The only snag is, Wayne turns out not to be the stalker. (I always thought his shrine wasn’t big enough.) While Dianne overpowers Wayne with Soap Land’s first knee in the nuts since Sue Ellen showed JR what for during Season 7 of DALLAS, JR himself eventually manages to subdue Anita by chloroforming her. He then creeps into Jessica’s room and sits on her bed before waking her up, just as Wayne did to Karen. JR then smooth talks Jessica to signing her West Star voting rights over to him.While JR manages gets in and out of the women’s wing without anybody noticing, Sumner Group Bob goes one better by escaping from the mental hospital on DALLAS altogether, making a brief appearance on KNOTS, and then returning to DALLAS in time to overshare in the day room. (“I have a streak of sadomasochism," he informs JR. "That’s what the doctor says. He says that I enjoy pain.”)Bob is back on KNOTS long enough to join Paige and Mort in regretfully declining Greg’s request for “a volunteer from the Sumner Group to work as a liaison with the West Coast Conservationists.” This leads to the task being assigned to a “defenceless underling”, aka Linda Fairgate, who then comes face to face with Karen for the first time since splitting up from Eric. I really like how Karen, in the mistaken belief that her stalker problem has now been resolved, immediately throws herself back into the middle of the Linda/Michael storyline — now that’s soap opera! “My sons never fought until you came along,” she tells Linda. “Stay away from my family.” But Karen’s interference only makes Linda more determined to land Michael, and she starts reeling him in with tales of how his brother used to beat her up. “I’ve held this in for so long,” she tells Michael passive-aggressively. “I didn’t want your sympathy. I wanted you to like me for who I am, not for what I’ve been through.”There’s further female manipulation on DALLAS where Cally puts on a tight, low-cut dress and poses as a ditzy divorcee-to-be in order to charm Mr Berman, the lawyer whom JR has entrusted with the task of getting him out of the sanatarium. These scenes are very light and frothy, especially for a season finale, but at least they’re not as over-the-top awful as when Melissa put a Dolly Parton wig and a thick Southern accent during a similar scenario on FALCON CREST a couple of seasons ago. In fact, Cally’s little wiggly walk is actually quite funny.Cally lures Mr Berman back to April’s apartment where James proves to be a chip off the old block by leaping out of the shadows to photograph them in a misleadingly compromising position — the very scam JR pulled on Pam and politician Ben Maxwell back in ’79. James then blackmails Berman into handing over JR’s release papers.Like last season’s KNOTS finale, the last episode of this season's DALLAS features only a handful of regular cast members (for the first time since he returned in the shower, there’s no sign of Bobby) and only two storylines. In place of Greg, Paige and Ted Melcher fighting over a key, we have JR in the sanatarium with Cally and James plotting against him. In lieu of the Mack/Paula/smelly skunk subplot, a murky connection emerges between Liz Adams, Cliff’s new girlfriend, and Carter McKay, which is certainly more intriguing than watching a bunch of comedy mental patients playing cards.DALLAS only really catches fire in its final scene, when JR is surprised but relieved when James shows up at the sanatarium with his release papers. Then comes the double-cross: James will use the papers to get him released only if JR signs Cally’s divorce settlement first. (“Why, you little turncoat. You’re no son of mine,” JR tells him.) Then comes the triple-cross: After JR signs the property settlement, James rips up the release papers. “You get me the hell outta here, you little bastard!” JR shouts. “No way, Daddy, It’s payback time and you’re in here for good,” James informs him. JR’s response — a mixture of disbelief, rage and fear — is great. James watches as he is dragged away by in the men in white coats, just as JR watched the same thing happen to Sue Ellen eleven years earlier. Cool.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (3) KNOTS LANDING2 (1) FALCON CREST3 (2) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?