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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 5434" data-attributes="member: 22">01/Jan/82: DALLAS: Barbecue Two v. 01/Jan/82: FALCON CREST: Tony Comes Home... or "When Family Reunions Go Bad."After a sprawling start to the season, it's almost as if DALLAS has hit the reset button: Pam is back at Southfork, Bobby is back at Ewing Oil looking over JR's shoulder, Sue Ellen and John Ross have returned to Dallas and Jock is on his way home - there's even a Ewing barbecue to celebrate. Alongside the familiarity is a new sense of homeliness, with Miss Ellie slaving over a pan of chilli the way she never did when Jock was around, Sue Ellen exchanging her haughty "lady of the manor" demeanour for jeans and furniture arranging, Pam cooing over a baby and Katherine putting her career on hold to set up home with her newfound family in Dallas (and becoming Soap Land's latest New York refugee in the process).Look more closely, however, and things are not as cosy as they first appear: Pam and Bobby's new baby isn't legally theirs, Katherine is perhaps a little too eager to dance with her sister's husband at the barbecue, Ray's tribute to Donna ("Everything my wife does is wonderful") is laced with bitter sarcasm, and his and JR's anticipation of their father's homecoming is tempered by the knowledge that each has failed him in his absence.Where DALLAS ends with Jock's homecoming party spoilt by the guest of honour failing to appear (on account of being missing presumed dead), FALCON CREST begins with Julia's birthday party disrupted by the arrival of a gate crasher - her estranged husband Tony (played by John Saxon one week before his debut as Rashid Ahmed on DYNASTY) whom she hasn't seen for twelve years.The DALLAS episode "Tony Comes Home" most closely resembles, though, is the "Reunion" two-parter from Season 1 where Gary and Val are briefly reunited with Lucy at Southfork. Similarly, Tony's hope is to make a fresh start with Julia and their son Lance. Where Gary's main obstacle was his brother JR, Tony's is his mother-in-law Angela. In this variation of the story, however, it's the one who got left behind, Julia, who has the alcohol problem and inferiority complex. ("You made me feel like a failure," she tells Angela.) As a character, Tony is perhaps a touch vanilla - he certainly doesn't have the same internal conflicts as Gary Ewing - but his normality at least creates a contrast with the twisted, dysfunctional family he left behind.Angela deals with this unwelcome face from the past in the same way that JR did - by inviting him into her home and her business in the hopes that, with a little push, history will repeat itself and he'll leave again. It does. This time around, though, Julia decides to go with him. However, once she reaches the front door, she literally can't leave the house - she is as psychologically trapped as one of the characters in Luis Buñuel's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL - and so Tony leaves without her.A couple making a doomed bid for freedom is a common theme in Soap Land, especially during a show's first season. Julia and Tony this week, Gary and Val in "Reunion", Cliff and Sue Ellen in "For Love or Money", Field and Lane at various points during Season 1 of FLAMINGO ROAD, even Claudia in DYNASTY when she briefly appeals to Matthew for them to make a fresh start "somewhere far away from here" - in each case, hopes turn to dust as characters are dragged back into their former lives by a combination of their own failings, the manipulations of others and a powerful sense of predestination - that the die has already been cast and they are ultimately powerless to escape the lives they were born into. "You'll never leave Falcon Crest," Lance tells his mother with absolute certainty."Someday, somehow I'll find the strength to leave here," Julia vows at the end of the episode - but at this stage, no one can predict the extraordinary, bloody lengths she'll have to go to in order to achieve this. Interestingly, a character once as trapped as Julia, Sue Ellen Ewing, moves into uncharted territory this week as she embarks on a new life as a single, independent woman. "I've never been alone before," she admits. "I'm sure I'm going to make a lot of mistakes." Indeed she will - mistakes that will eventually lead her right back into the trap she has only just escaped from.In the same week that Donna Krebbs' book hits the stores and her publisher asks her to write another, Maggie Gioberti's writing career also gets a leg up. Just as JR once used his influence to get Pam a promotion at The Store knowing the adverse effect it would have on her marriage, so Angela Channing talks her ex-husband into giving Maggie a reporting job on The New Globe. Sure enough, Chase quickly becomes as resentful at the time-consuming nature of his wife's new job as Ray is jealous of Donna's success. FALCON CREST being largely episodic at this stage, however, the marital status quo must be regained in time for the end credits and so a compromise is reached (Maggie finds a part time job on a smaller, more local paper). Conversely, just when some kind of stability seems finally to be within reach of the DALLAS Ewings, the unthinkable happens: "They say that - they say that - oh, they say that Jock is dead!”And this week's Soap Land Top 2 are …1 (-) DALLAS2 (1) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

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