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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 17559" data-attributes="member: 22">19 Apr 85: DALLAS: The Ewing Connection v. 19 Apr 85: FALCON CREST: The DeclineThere are two police man-hunts in this week’s Soap Land, each shown from a different perspective. On DALLAS, the search for hitman Andre Schumann takes place entirely off screen with Bobby’s police lieutenant pal keeping him abreast of the situation via intermittent bulletins. Meanwhile Bobby and Pam seem to be drifting towards a reconciliation (they even kiss!), creating an exciting tension between the two story-lines — for the nearer the police get to arresting Schumann, the closer Jenna is to being released from prison.While Schumann travels halfway across the world (he is spotted first in Brussels, then at Kennedy airport in New York), his fellow fugitive, FALCON CREST’s Lance, is reluctantly sequestered in a small room in San Francisco’s Chinatown. (A section of Chinatown has been recreated on the studio backlot for this story-line. With its assortment of Asian bit players and extras, it feels a little like a low-budget version of the real Hong Kong recently visited by Pam and Sue Ellen on DALLAS.) If Pam and Bobby are Soap Land’s original star-crossed lovers, then Lance and Lorraine are its latest version, and it is their enforced separation that this week’s FC chooses to focus on. Indeed, the episode ends with Lorraine, rather than the police, tracking down Lance to his hiding place.In Lance’s absence, Angela offers Maggie the job of acting publisher of the New Globe. This is pretty much the same situation that Maggie’s DALLAS counterpart, Donna Krebbs, found herself in at the beginning of the season when she was asked to substitute for Bobby at Ewing Oil. The scene where Donna strode into the Ewing offices and took her position behind Bobby’s desk was pretty much the pinnacle of that story-line. Similarly, much is made of the moment where Angela persuades Maggie to sit behind Lance's desk: “The world looks a little different from this angle, doesn’t it?”As if to underline the similarities between Donna and Maggie, their respective show’s matriarch uses the same ‘c' word to describe them this week. “Part of the reason Ray loves is that you are so capable,” Miss Ellie tells Donna, while Angela is confident that she is "placing the New Globe in capable hands”. "Everything was fine until I started being successful in my work,” Donna reflects as she contemplates a divorce from Ray. Meanwhile, Chase is no happier about Maggie’s new job than Ray was about his wife’s recent oil strike. “I think it’s a terrible idea,” he tells her. “It’s crazy!”Chase’s main objection is that Maggie will be working for Angela. “You had an opportunity to sell out of Falcon Crest, never to work with Angela again,” counters Maggie in reply. "Not only did you not turn that down, you got in deeper.” In a roundabout way, this line echoes something Pam says to Bobby regarding their former marriage on this week’s DALLAS: "We could have gotten a house of our own. I think it would have been better for us.” Soap Land characters questioning why mortal enemies would choose to work together or why married billionaires continue to live with their parents is a little like a crew member of the Starship Enterprise asking why they don’t need to wear a space helmet — these are the unspoken rules of the genre. By making these points, it’s as if Pam and Maggie are gently prodding at the edge of the Soap Land bubble in which they exist. It’s refreshing, and makes all the characters in these scenes seem suddenly more aware, more three-dimensionally “real" than usual.It’s telling that Chase and Maggie's quarrel takes place while they are preparing dinner in the Gioberti kitchen. As Maggie is arguing her point of view, she simultaneously struggles to prise the lid off a jar before passing it to Chase who opens it with ease. It’s a minor, but quintessentially KNOTSian — specifically Mackenzian — bit of business.This is followed by an even more interesting scene where Maggie tells Richard she is resigning from the radio station. He is angry, partly because she is leaving to take control of the newspaper he used to own, but mostly, like Chase, because she will involved with Angela. (“Do not go to work for that woman,” he snaps. "She’ll corrupt you like she corrupts everyone else.” “What — you offer a better brand of corruption?” Maggie retorts.) As they argue, one becomes aware of an oddly indefinable something taking place between these two very different characters, a depth of emotion that even they aren’t yet fully aware of. (In fact, current story-line requirements oblige Richard to be besotted by Cassandra Wilder.) While Richard and Maggie have interacted for three seasons, there has never been any heavy-handed foreshadowing or scripted flirting between them. Instead, their undefined connection has grown, slowly and naturally, over a long period. I can think of no previous example of this in Soap Land. (Gary and Abby, Steven and Claudia, Cliff and Sue Ellen — all were slow-burn relationships with strong chemistry, but in each case one can point to an early scene which at least hinted at a future relationship between them.) Perhaps such a truly organic development could only happen on FALCON CREST — its somewhat sketchy, scattershot approach to story-telling having enabled this relationship to evolve untended, like a weed growing up through the cracks in the plot. DALLAS and KNOTS are too well-structured, too well-organised for such an “accident” to occur under the watchful eyes of their respective script editors.On her very first day at the Globe, Maggie finds herself on the receiving end of an equivalent confession to the one Abby made to Greg Sumner on last week’s KNOTS. Where Abby stood in Greg's study and explained her involvement in the chain of events that led to the disappearance of Val’s twins, Terry now stands in Maggie’s office and admits her involvement in the chain of events leading to Lance’s arrest for attempted murder. Abby had to go back almost to the start of the season to explain how she became aware that Gary was the father of the babies, while Terry reaches back even further, admitting to Maggie how she and Joel McCarthy were once married, "a long time ago in Florida”. There are other differences between the two confessions. Whereas Abby told Greg everything she knew, Terry neglects to mention that she and Joel were never divorced, or the fact that she is now being blackmailed by Richard because of it. And while Abby’s revelation felt like a long-awaited dramatic payoff — we always knew she couldn’t outrun the truth forever — Terry’s admission comes out of nowhere. (If anyone involved was going to come clean, one would have assumed it would be Melissa.) Again, this is characteristic of the seeming randomness of FALCON CREST’s plotting. However, Terry’s confession is no less interesting for being unanticipated. Her motives are a surprise too. While Abby simply wanted Greg to provide her with the documents pertinent to the babies’ location, Terry begs Maggie to intercede with Greg Reardon, Lance’s lawyer with whom she has fallen unexpectedly in love, on her behalf. The scene where Terry eventually faces Greg and asks his forgiveness for keeping Joel’s involvement in Lance’s case a secret is surprisingly touching.Elsewhere on FALCON CREST, the scene where Melissa hands over $100,000 in hush money to Pamela Lynch is given the same noir-ish setting as Dex and Amanda’s secret encounter on DYNASTY a few weeks ago, i.e., a parked car on a dark and rainy street, thunder rumbling overhead. An old cliché it may be, but it’s an undeniably effective one."Ewing Oil was given to us by our daddy — it's a family business,” explains Bobby on DALLAS as he and JR prepare to sign over ten percent of the company to their cousin Jack as a way of preventing Cliff Barnes from getting his hands on it. “After all, this is a family business,” echoes Angela on FALCON CREST, trying to talk Chase and Richard into to a lucrative but risky deal she secretly hopes will bankrupt them, thereby forcing them out of said business.Also on DALLAS, John Ross undergoes surgery for appendicitis — another of those random, could-have-happened-to-anyone ailments like Dominique's recent heart valve problem on DYNASTY. But whereas Dominique’s medical crisis was a dramatic end in itself, John Ross’s functions primarily as a springboard for JR to lash out at Sue Ellen, accusing her of neglect and condemning her as “a totally unfit mother,” thereby pushing her over the edge and back to the booze.And this week’s Top 2 are …1 (1) DALLAS2 (4) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?