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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 5899" data-attributes="member: 22">10/Mar/82: DYNASTY: Mother and Son v. 11/Mar/82: KNOTS LANDING: Best Intentions v. 12/Mar/82: DALLAS: Vengeance v. 12/Mar/82: FALCON CREST: House of CardsThis week’s KNOTS LANDING and DYNASTY are notable in that they give more focus than usual to their respective third and fourth female lead characters, Laura Avery and Claudia Blaisdel. Laura’s journey from unhappy housewife to Seaview Circle’s first career woman has oft been acknowledged, albeit bitterly, by spouse Richard, and this week Jeff Colby pays tribute to Claudia, a former mental patient abandoned by her husband and child who is now single and working at Denver Carrington, by calling her "a woman who had the courage to make a new life for herself.” Both women now find themselves burdened by secrets that could jeopardise their hard-won independence and self-esteem: Laura is pregnant by one man and sleeping with another, while Claudia is being blackmailed by her new lover’s uncle into spying on him.Real life ex-spouses Michele Lee and James Farentino dispense similar you’re-gonna-regret-it baby-related advice this week, to Laura in KNOTS and Fallon in DYNASTY. “If you have the abortion without discussing it with Richard,” counsels Karen, "you’re going to regret it. Even if he never finds out about it, you’re gonna feel guilty and bitter.” Not to be outdone, DYNASTY’s Dr Nick delivers an even grimmer prognosis. “You've given birth to a son who's fighting for his life,” he tells Fallon. "If you refuse to see him before the surgery, if you LOSE him ... I guarantee you, emotionally, you'll never make it through the rest of your own life!"Jeff Colby and Richard Avery are repeatedly wrong-footed by the women in their lives in this week’s Soap Land. Reconciled to the fact that Fallon wants nothing to do with their newborn baby and that he is to raise the child alone, Jeff is shocked when she changes her mind after the baby survives his dangerous operation. “I still want the divorce,” Fallon tells him, “but I’m not gonna give the baby up and I can’t give you custody." "How unstable can you be about all of this?!” he shouts. Over on KNOTS, Richard is overjoyed when Laura tells him she’s pregnant, believing the baby to be the solution to all their marital problems. Only after she has allowed him to talk her into a reconciliation and even a vacation in France does Laura finally come clean, announcing that she plans to leave him and get an abortion.Both situations lead to violence - if not quite on the scale of what Alexis describes as “that little contretemps in my studio" in last week’s DYNASTY. ("In my world, we call it a fight,” counters Krystle, "a good, dirty, no holds barred catfight.”) Jeff vents his frustrations with Fallon by punching Nick, while Richard slaps Laura across the face. "You said abortion and I saw Jason,” he explains afterwards.The moment where Laura tells Richard she has decided to keep the baby is depicted very differently to Fallon's change of heart regarding her abortion earlier in the season. There’s no last-possible-minute melodrama, no gushing displays of emotion, there’s not even any musical score. Instead, there’s a kind of grown up, matter-of-fact honesty about the Averys' exchange. The scene is small and understated, the unspoken feelings messy and complex. In short, it feels like a scene from a genuine marriage.As this week’s KNOTS and DYNASTY progress, it is Richard's and Claudia's situations that start to merge. Both characters are wracked with guilt - Richard for mistreating his pregnant wife, Claudia after she is caught photographing secret files in Jeff's office. Over lunch with Karen, Richard vows to change his ways, but there’s already a manic quality to his behaviour. Meanwhile, Jeff returns from confronting his uncle to find a fragile Claudia preparing to resign from her job. Worse is to follow when he tells her that Matthew and Lindsay, just like Jock Ewing ten weeks ago, are missing presumed dead following an accident in the jungles of South America.The final scenes of both shows see Richard and Claudia returning to their empty homes, shrouded in darkness. Richard calls out to Laura, before realising that she has already taken their son and moved out. Claudia, meanwhile, helplessly bemoans the loss of her spouse and child (“Matthew, my Lindsay - gone”). The episodes end with Richard and Claudia sitting alone in the dark - him staring at Laura’s goodbye note, her at the gun Matthew once bought for her. “I’ll kill him,” she mutters, referring to Cecil Colby.Like DYNASTY, DALLAS also ends with a character speaking aloud in an empty room. Having received written confirmation that he is Christopher’s father, JR realises that he is in a position to blackmail Bobby into handing over his Ewing Oil voting shares. “And soon, my son,” he says, addressing a photograph of Josh Ross, "with your ten shares, I’ll have total control of Ewing Oil.” Where Claudia is traumatised, JR is triumphant - but both declarations sound equally ominous.A theme recurring throughout all of this week’s soaps is that of meddling mothers. It is Lilimae’s snooping in KNOTS that affords Abby the opportunity to get her hands on Val’s novel-to-be. (“It’s all about the Ewings of Dallas,” Lilimae tells her, "right down to the nastiest thing JR ever did.”) Meanwhile, Angela Channing, who has spent an entire season of FALCON CREST keeping disturbed daughter Emma prisoner for fear the truth of Jason’s death will surface, now schemes to marry grandson Lance off to Melissa Agretti. Conversely, on DYNASTY, Alexis tries to conceal her involvement in breaking up her son's marriage. Now it looks as though a season’s worth of maternal scheming is about to catch up with both Angela and Alexis. "It’s all slipping away, isn’t it?” observes Angela’s former husband Douglas. "This carefully constructed plan to keep the truth from coming out.” “I wanna talk about Alexis and one of her Alexis lies,” Steven snarls at his mother on DYNASTY. "What are you holding back to protect yourself?” For both mothers, attack proves the readiest means of defence. “I can’t trust any of you,” snaps Angela when she discovers her daughter Julia has taken Emma to see a psychotherapist behind her back. "I am sick to death of being hammered at by both of my children when all I've done since I've been back is to try and help you and Fallon!” Alexis yells at Steven.Despite their bravado, Alexis and Angela must each make a serious concession this week. Alexis is obliged to admit to Blake that Cecil Colby could be Fallon’s father ("It's not enough that you betray me, but that you betray me with him?!”) while Angela confides to Julia that Emma “murdered” Jason. Julia’s heartbroken reaction is as surprising as it is effective.Maternal interference is par the course for Lilimae, Alexis and Angela, but it is far more unusual for the matriarchs of DALLAS to involve themselves in their sons’ personal lives. Miss Ellie and Rebecca's uncharacteristic behaviour, therefore, helps impress upon the audience how grave the implications of the JR/Sue Ellen/Cliff triangle have become. “This is quite unlike you to question me about my personal life,” a twitchy Sue Ellen points out to her ex-mother-in-law. "Normally I wouldn’t,” Miss Ellie agrees, "but there's a lot more at stake than just your personal interests. Two whole families are involved.” Ellie's sentiments are echoed later in the episode by Rebecca. "I'm sorry to pry into your private business,” she tells son Cliff, "but I have to know - are you using [Sue Ellen] to get back at JR?”As Angela's and Alexis's schemes threaten to crash down around them, Abby’s and JR’s are just taking off. Their respective pawns, Val Ewing and Cliff Barnes, can scarcely believe their good fortune: Val’s glorified homework assignment is apparently good enough to warrant the attentions of a prestigious New York publisher, while an opportunity to get rich, prove himself to Sue Ellen and get back at JR seems to just fall into Cliff’s lap. Given the scale of some of JR’s previous masterplans (i.e. the ones involving South East Asia), suckering Cliff into a phoney oil deal feels a tad lightweight - due in part to the use of a cartoony Marilee Stone as his front woman - but the show manages to sell the drama of it, even if it isn’t, to quote Lilimae, "the nastiest thing JR ever did." Meanwhile, Val’s concerns about not telling Gary that the book she has written is "a thinly disguised expose of dirty dealings in the Ewing family” are mirrored by her sister-in-law Donna's in DALLAS, who worries about informing Miss Ellie of the dirty dealings involving Jock that she has uncovered whilst researching her new book.Several relationships come to an end this week (at least for now - does anything ever really end in Soap Land?). Jeff’s discovery of Claudia in his office effectively destroys their budding love affair, JR shaming Clayton over his feelings for Sue Ellen ("You're a fraud - call yourself a gentleman, her friend, her protector, and all the time you wanted her for yourself”) kills that relationship before it can even get going, Laura finishes her affair with Scooter prior to walking out on her marriage and Mitch Cooper follows her example on DALLAS by asking Lucy for a divorce. Cliff Barnes bucks the trend by asking Sue Ellen to marry him.As one classic soap triangle (JR/Sue Ellen/Cliff) escalates, another (Abby/Gary/Val) gathers pace and a third (Alexis/Blake/Krystle) falters badly. Meanwhile, a fourth commences on FALCON CREST with the arrival of Melissa Agretti (as played by an actress instead of a mute extra). It is clearly established in her first scene that while Melissa might be all but betrothed to dark prince Lance, it is his fair-haired cousin Cole in whom she is really interested.Young, beautiful, wilful and capricious, Melissa fits easily into the same “spoiled princess” bracket as Lucy, Fallon and Constance (although we’ve never seen Claude Weldon or Blake Carrington manhandle his daughter as roughly as Carlo Agretti does Melissa when he sees her with Cole in this week’s ep. From the edit, it’s unclear whether or not he actually strikes her.) However, the Soap Land character Melissa most resembles at this point is DALLAS’s Marilee Stone. Like Marilee, she purrs all her dialogue and makes everything sound like a come on. “Marilee, you are insatiable!” says JR in this week’s DALLAS. “She looks like a man-eater to me,” says Vicky Gioberti of Melissa. Indeed, as well as playing Cole and Lance off against each other, she also toys with the affections of a third man.Just as the love triangle in DALLAS brings out Cliff's more reckless side - in his eagerness to prove himself worthy of Sue Ellen, he not only embezzles money from his mother’s company but sinks all of his own savings into the bogus deal as well - so Cole’s involvement with Melissa reveals a darker aspect to his character. In the scene where he keeps jealous watch outside her house when she returns home from a date, he’s like a less extreme version of Roger Larsen on DALLAS, who this week lies in wait for Lucy before jumping into her car and ordering her to “drive - I’ll tell you where.”Meanwhile, Lance Cumson’s bid for independence - he moves out of Falcon Crest and takes a job at the New Globe - is as short-lived as Eric Fairgate’s was in last week’s KNOTS when he defied his mother’s wishes for him to pursue a college education. In both cases, a conversation with an older male relative - Eric’s Uncle Joe and Lance’s grandfather Douglas - leads them to reconsider their actions.Douglas Channing also provides an interesting snippet of back story during a scene with his ex-wife Angela: "Prohibition almost ruined Falcon Crest and without my money, it would have been impossible …” At that point, Angela cuts him off, but it’s pretty clear that she married him to save her family’s land. Substitute the words “Prohibition" and "Falcon Crest" with “Depression" and “Southfork", and you’ve got the origins of Jock and Ellie’s marriage in DALLAS. Douglas even suffers a Jock-style heart attack at the end of the episode.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (3) KNOTS LANDING2 (-) FALCON CREST3 (1) DALLAS4 (2) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?