Festive Names

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 5817" data-attributes="member: 22">23/Feb/82: FLAMINGO ROAD: Double Exposure v. 24/Feb/82: DYNASTY: The Party v. 26/Feb/82: DALLAS: The Maelstrom v. 26/Feb/82: FALCON CREST: The CandidateThere’s an unusual sense of optimism in the air in this week's Soap Land. DALLAS begins with the Ewings toasting Christopher’s adoption while Fallon, now blissfully in love with Nick Toscanni, spends much of this week’s DYNASTY planning a party in honour of Steven and Sammy Jo’s marriage. Blake and Krystle are back together, Ray Krebbs has turned over a new leaf and FLAMINGO ROAD opens with Sam and Lane enjoying an idyllic honeymoon. (Conversely, this week's FALCON CREST begins with a cold-blooded murder.)Clothing wise, the Carrington party is DYNASTY's equivalent of Victoria Hill's fashion show in last week's KNOTS, with the female characters decked out more glamorously and/or ridiculously than we've ever previously seen them. One might say the outfits on KNOTS symbolised the tail end of the 70s - viewed from today's perspective they have a certain retro charm - while the gowns in this week's DYNASTY represent a large step towards what we now regard as the quintessential '80s look: opulent, garish and borderline tasteless. In their shiny, boldly coloured party dresses, the DYNASTY women resemble various Quality Street wrappers, with Claudia, appropriately enough, as the nutty purple one (aka everyone's favourite). The women of DALLAS, meanwhile, continue to dress like office workers. The frock Lucy wears under her fur coat while sprawled on a car bonnet during a photo shoot, for instance, could just as easily belong to Sly or Phyllis.With their marriages each now under repair, the time has come for Ray on DALLAS and Krystle on DYNASTY to bid farewell to their respective love interests, Bonnie and Nick. While both goodbye scenes are equally effective, the contrast between them helps to illustrate the difference between the two soaps at this point. Krystle and Nick's farewell, which takes place against the backdrop of the Carrington party with Blake (still pretending to be blind) eavesdropping from a distance, is exciting and glamorous, the dialogue fraught with melodrama. ("You're still the most beautiful woman I've ever known, the most desirable!” "I can't believe that routine you handed me - those lies ... Thank God I never let you touch me!") Meanwhile, the scene where Ray ends his relationship with Bonnie at the Longview Bar is down-home, poignant and bittersweet. ("I feel terrible about using about using you. It was wrong. I know it." "Listen, your wife isn't one of my favourite people ... but if it can work for you, for keeps, then you can't beat it.")There again, there are times where DALLAS and DYNASTY seem to occupy the same dramatic territory. A simmering Sue Ellen suddenly smashing the sculpture given to her by JR against a wall, Fallon losing control of her car as Alexis confesses she doesn’t know who her father is - both actions are the result of emotions too large to be contained spilling over into a kind of destruction that is riveting to watch.Two formerly adulterous affairs are rekindled this week: between Alexis and her ex-husband's nemesis Cecil in DYNASTY, and between Sue Ellen and her ex-husband's nemesis Cliff in DALLAS. Neither party keeps their relationship a secret - Alexis brings Cecil to the Carrington party as her date while Sue Ellen delights in calling Cliff in front of JR ("I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed being with you last night").Whereas Alexis appears to take pleasure in her time with Cecil purely for its own sake, ("Isn't it wonderful how afternoon lovemaking still hasn't lost its charm?") Sue Ellen is clearly out for vengeance ("Does Cliff know he's your way of getting back at JR?" Clayton asks her). Nor is she the only lover in Soap Land with an ulterior motive. Just as Field falls for Sandie Swanson in FLAMINGO ROAD, it becomes clear (to the audience at least) that Sandie is allied with Michael Tyrone and that the affair is part of some mysterious master plan of his. Concurrently, Field's wife Constance misleads her lover Julio about the strength of her feelings for him in order to persuade him to spy on Field and Sandie. On DYNASTY, Claudia more or less picks up Jeff at the Carrington party in order to spy on him while Krystle accuses Nick of using Fallon, calling her his "new victim". And back on DALLAS, Lucy publicly kisses Roger's face off just to spite estranged husband Mitch. In this context, Bonnie's sad little question to Ray ("You don't think I know the difference between this and somethin' real?") feels particularly apposite.There are two jewellery thefts in Soap Land this week. On DYNASTY, Sammy Jo steals Fallon's diamond and emerald necklace, leading to a showdown where she blurts out A Big Family Secret. Meanwhile, the subplot of this week's FALCON CREST focuses on the repercussions of Emma’s attempt at some Lilimae-style shoplifting from a jewellery store.This week's DALLAS and DYNASTY both end with a long held paternity-related secret coming to light. After a drunken Sammy Jo informs her that Blake ain't her real daddy, Fallon takes her mother for a drive and demands to hear the truth. "Blake could be your father," admits a nervous Alexis as the car swerves dramatically all over the road, "or … " "Or, Mother?" "Cecil Colby!" Over on DALLAS, the equivalent revelation takes place against a far more tranquil, domestic backdrop. Bobby, Pam and Ellie are cooing over Baby Christopher in the Southfork living room when a call from a lawyer in New York tips JR off to the possibility that Bobby and Pam's son and Kristin's baby are one and the same. JR instructs the lawyer to dig deeper. As he looks over at Bobby and his little family, Larry Hagman's sweet-but-sinister delivery of the line "I'm mighty interested in that little baby" carries as much drama and excitement as the DYNASTY car crash following Alexis's confession. (Well, maybe almost as much.)Following Claudia and Lindsay's at the end of Season 1, Alexis and Fallon's is DYNASTY's second mother/daughter car accident. However, if the sight of a heavily pregnant woman slumped unconscious behind the wheel of a crashed car prompts memories of any previous Soap Land storyline, it is, of course, Sue Ellen's at the end of DALLAS's first season.This week’s FALCON CREST is a richly satisfying stand-alone instalment which marries the plots of two early DALLAS episodes, "Election” (Chase runs for County Supervisor against a candidate owned by Angela) and "The Dove Hunt” (one of the little people whose life has been casually destroyed by Angela is driven to violent revenge).In a week where DYNASTY starts to lose objectivity about its own characters - Fallon, once a source of cynicism and wisecracks that served to undercut the pomposity of the Carrington world, now talks with wide-eyed sincerity about how proud she is to be Blake's daughter - FALCON CREST portrays a murderer and hostage taker as an ordinary, decent family man driven to desperate measures by Angela Channing. The series might be fascinated by Angela, but it does not yet celebrate her.The episode also serves to illustrate the difference between Angela and her Soap Land counterparts. The Jock Ewing we’re introduced to when DALLAS begins may have committed an awful lot of wrongs in the course of building his empire, but since his retirement has mellowed somewhat - while JR's own ambitions are tempered (to an extent) by the rest of his family. On DYNASTY, the global scale of Denver Carrington's business means that the majority of Blake's ruthlessness (at least professionally) is alluded to rather than shown on screen. Unlike Jock, Angela has not mellowed. Unlike JR, her actions are not constrained by more powerful members of her family. And the human cost of her business practices, unlike Blake Carrington’s, can be seen in the very valley in which she lives.And this week's Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (2) DALLAS2 (3) FALCON CREST3 (1) DYNASTY4 (5) FLAMINGO ROAD</blockquote>

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