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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 5708" data-attributes="member: 22">02/Feb/82: FLAMINGO ROAD: To Catch a Thief v. 03/Feb/82: DYNASTY: Blake's Blindness v. 05/Feb/82: DALLAS: My Father, My Son v. 05/Feb/82: FALCON CREST: Victims"When two people from different backgrounds try to be together, it can only mean trouble!" wails Alicia Sanchez to Skipper Weldon in FLAMINGO ROAD, before running away in tears. Alicia and Skipper aside, there are three couples in this week's Soap Land who fit this description - Steven and Sammy Jo in DYNASTY, Vicky and Mario in FALCON CREST, and Julio and Constance in FLAMINGO ROAD.On DYNASTY, Blake's dismayed reaction to the news of Steven's marriage to Sammy Jo is underlined by his own prejudice. "It's done," he sighs wearily. "We'll get used to her and she'll get used to us, and we'll train her to fit into the family." "Like you train your guard dogs or your servants?" snaps back Steven.For Vicky and Mario, it's an issue of race and class. Mario comes from a family of vineyard workers, "three generations back." Thanks to his college scholarship, he's the first member of his family with a chance at a better life. "You're really hung up on this ethnic thing," Vicky complains when he tells her he'd rather study than make out. (There's an interesting if unspoken, irony in the Giobertis giving up their fast-paced New York lifestyle to get back to nature in the Tuscany Valley, while the Nunuozes will do anything - including selling out to Angela - to give their son the opportunity to escape the valley.)This week's FLAMINGO ROAD (directed by Bill Duke, who also helmed last week's KNOTS) centres around an ingenious plot that plays on both class and race prejudices. A cat burglar breaks into Constance's bedroom and steals her jewellery. Julio Sanchez's fingerprints are found at the scene and Sheriff Titus, eager to get back at Field for hiring a Cubano as his aide, is only too happy to arrest him for the crime. Julio cannot be exonerated without his affair with Constance being exposed. Only Constance's mother Eudora, who learned of the affair in the last episode, knows the truth.There are plenty more secrets to be discovered in Soap Land this week. In the same way that Eudora overheard Constance and Julio, Sammy Jo eavesdrops on Steven and Alexis arguing over her claim that Blake is not Fallon's real father. Alexis, in turn, learns that the object of Fallon's affections is Nick Toscanni. And when she stakes out Nick's apartment, Fallon's suspicions are confirmed that the object of Nick's affections is Krystle. This discovery is mirrored by JR's detective in DALLAS keeping watch outside Sue Ellen's townhouse and then reporting back to him that Cliff Barnes has stayed there overnight.Neither Fallon nor JR wastes much time in passing on what they have learned. Fallon tells Alexis about Krystle, and JR breaks the news about Cliff to Afton. While Alexis immediately starts scheming against her nemesis, Afton refuses to get involved in JR's plan to bust up Cliff and Sue Ellen. Instead, she throws the news right back in his face. "I think you’re jealous," she tells him. "I think you’re jealous right out of your cotton picking gourd.” (There's no Song Wars for her to compete in, but Afton still wins Line of the Week for that little doozy.) But while Alexis's endgame is to break up a marriage, ("Not only are we going to get Krystle out of Nick's life, we're gonna get her out of Blake's life too," she assures Fallon) JR's is to put one back together ("I have a feelin' your mama's gonna be back on Southfork again real soon," he tells John Ross).To that end, there's a great little montage scene where JR scrambles about in the kiddy park with John Ross while Sue Ellen looks on tentatively, having a good time almost in spite of herself. New DALLAS has given me a new perspective on such scenes. I guess that back in the day, JR made such an impression on me as an anti-hero that seeing him behave as anything other than a despicable husband or father felt like a compromise - a dilution of the character rather than an expansion of it. Somehow, the depiction of JR in New DALLAS - his physical frailty, his emotional vulnerability and ultimately his death - have helped humanise the character for me, and now these older scenes resonate in a way they never did before. Similarly, Sue Ellen's vacillation over her relationships now seems to me plausible behaviour for a recent divorcee rather than merely the result of a writer-induced lobotomy to help facilitate the plot.JR and Fallon have both leapt to the conclusion that the relationships they're so concerned about - Sue Ellen's with Cliff, Nick's with Krystle - has been consummated, but the reality is that Nick and Cliff are each besotted by a woman who may be dependent on him, but cannot match the intensity of his feelings. Having made a similar assumption about Mitch and Evelyn Michaelson when she sees them in matching tennis whites, DALLAS's Lucy turns to Roger the photographer, who promptly kisses her in a scene so emotionally overheated it never fails to make me laugh. Another Soap Land trend: Field and Constance, Fallon and Jeff, and Blake and Krystle are all now occupying separate bedrooms. (For the first two couples, it's by mutual consent. Not so the latter, as this nifty little speech by Blake illustrates: "I can get hundreds of people to bring me a cup of coffee. I can snap my fingers and have a table set for two-hundred people. I can pick up the phone and I can have a government in South America fall. These are not things I need a wife for. I need a wife in my bed. Now is that what you're offering? Don't bother to answer.") If Ray and Donna Krebbs haven't yet entered the "separate rooms" stage, it's only because the DALLAS set designers have just gotten around to furnishing their house with one bedroom, let alone two. As an alternative, Donna goes off to Laredo to research her new book, more or less telling Ray to consider it a mini-separation. While she has yet to learn of his fling with Bonnie, Field has pretty much figured out by the end of this week's FLAMINGO ROAD that Constance is sleeping with Julio, but he doesn't really care. Meanwhile, Jeff continues to feign indifference about Fallon's affair (unaware that it's with Nick Toscanni and that he's dumped her).The fact that FLAMINGO ROAD is still in "story of the week" mode means that however much fun it is, there's a limit to how far an episode can go - whereas on DYNASTY, the emotional extremes feel almost boundless. As Blake rages against his blindness and his inability to bring the man responsible to justice, the programme - specifically, the music - rages with him. There's an underlying hysteria that pulsates throughout the episode.This week's FALCON CREST is rich in atmosphere. There's something wonderfully sinister about the way Lance casually dotes on his pet falcon in the family living room while brooding over his latest plot. This bird of prey/nefarious activity interface is mirrored in FLAMINGO ROAD by Michael Tyrone, who has his own exotic birds to pamper while he goes about seducing Lute-Mae Sanders for reasons as yet unclear.An ancient Soap Land curse decrees that the first woman of a series to conceive a child is doomed to miscarry. As it was with Pam Ewing, Karen Fairgate and Krystle Carrington, so it must now be with FALCON CREST's Emma who finds herself with child as a result of the episode where Turner Bates kidnapped/seduced her and then burst into flames. Lance's reaction ("She can't have this baby! Another grandchild - another heir!") echoes Alexis's to Krystle's pregnancy five weeks ago and JR's to Pam's back in the DALLAS mini-series. Only last week, the subject of unwelcome heirs came up again in DALLAS, during a discussion about Jock's will. "All of the heirs would be provided for," JR was told by his lawyer. "Your brothers could have sons and ... the will would provide for them also." "That could spread a hundred shares of stock pretty thin, couldn't it?" mused JR worriedly.Without the word itself being mentioned, Lance suggests that Emma be given an abortion. In contrast to DYNASTY's recent flirtation with the topic, the issue is dealt with by Angela in five little words: "That is never gonna happen." Ultimately, Lance's role in Emma's miscarriage follows more in JR's footsteps than Alexis's. He and Emma argue, there's a struggle and she falls. Yes, it's "Barbecue" all over again, but this time set at the top of a winery staircase rather than a hayloft.The subplot of this week's FALCON CREST deals with the immigrant vineyard workers being threatened with deportation lest they give into the demands of a protection racket. It's an interesting dilemma and one for which the episode offers no a pat solution. "As long as there's people without work permits willing to do more for less, they're going to be exploited," Gus Nunuoz tells Chase. "The men who do this are usually undocumented themselves. You can stop them for a while, but they always come back, like parasites feeding on their own kind." Nor does the show make a judgement on the illegals themselves, which from a present day perspective seems kind of remarkable.Inevitably, however, it's the white man who comes to the rescue, with Chase giving Mario the courage he needs to speak out against the ringleader (the second of this week's Soap Land Latinos to be named Julio). As its title suggests, the episode largely depicts its non-white characters as helpless victims. The same might be said of the wrongly accused Julio in this week's FLAMINGO ROAD, but there are more interesting shades of grey in his case. Julio is portrayed less as a victim to be rescued than as a pawn to be fought over by Titus, Constance and Field, all of whom are motivated by their own self-interests. And the fact that Julio himself is hardly blameless - he is sleeping with his boss's wife while hypocritically condemning his sister for her relationship with a white man - makes him a juicier character than his saintly counterparts in the Tuscany Valley.FALCON CREST's Sheriff Tobias moonlights this week as Blake's ophthalmologist in DYNASTY. "I was detained at a convention in Los Angeles," he explains to Blake when he arrives late for their appointment. (Translation: "I got stuck looking for Vicky Gioberti in a weird porno-themed episode of FALCON CREST.") In neither role is he able to offer much practical help. Having diagnosed Blake's blindness as "a severe psychological trauma brought on by the accident," he is unable to say when or if his sight will return. He has no words of comfort for Chase in FALCON CREST either. "It just doesn't seem fair," says Chase, referring to the ongoing protection racket. "Not much up here is," the sheriff shrugs.And this week's Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (3) DYNASTY2 (2) DALLAS3 (4) FALCON CREST4 (-) FLAMINGO ROAD</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?