Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 6775" data-attributes="member: 22">03/Nov/82: DYNASTY: The Roof v. 04/Nov/82: KNOTS LANDING: Investments v. 05/Nov/82: DALLAS: Aftermath v. 05/Nov/82: FALCON CREST: The ExposéAfter the hysteria of the season opener, this week’s DYNASTY feels slightly more conventional. Broadly speaking, it depicts characters behaving plausibly in implausible situations. I’m particularly taken by the scene where Fallon tells Jeff that if she'd known at the time that she had an elder brother who was kidnapped as a baby, she would have gone through with aborting her own child - who has now been snatched away himself.The night before this episode aired, BROOKSIDE began in the UK. A twice-weekly soap opera, it explored the modern British class system by depicting four households from differing economic backgrounds living in close proximity in a newly developed cul-de-sac: an upper middle-class family obliged to downscale after the father is made redundant, a working-class clan from a rundown council estate now moving up the social ladder, and two young couples: one, upwardly mobile professionals, the other representing the black market economy. Socially realistic and overtly political, BROOKSIDE was as different from its glossy American counterparts as a soap could be - and yet the same theme of "the haves and the have-nots" reverberates throughout this week’s Soap Land."My father worked very hard for all of this,” continues Fallon on DYNASTY, looking around her missing child’s expensively furnished nursery. "He had genius and he had guts and he got it all for us, and until now it never occurred to me that people might hate him for that, might hate us, might even hate our baby enough to take him from us. Is this way it really is for people like us, Jeff?”We also hear from characters on the other half of the class divide - those whom Jeff and Fallon, in their (understandable) paranoia, now suspect of taking their baby. “You rich are all alike, ain’t ya?” snarls Alfred, the weirdo at the cemetery. "You put the cops on me - me, a guy who can barely eke by. People like me can’t even make a remark about the rich without them getting their hackles up … Maybe I ain’t a Colby or a Carrington, but I got my feelings too.” “Your money, it’s always your lousy money, isn’t it?” snaps Little Blake’s nurse Susan. "Well, it’s not going to buy a confession from me. There isn’t enough money or decent wine in the world for that!”There are also contrasting references to rich kid Jeff’s education ("A very intelligent man I put through Princeton,” brags his Uncle Cecil from his sickbed) and Montana farm boy Michael Torrance’s law degree which his grandmother struggled to pay for. With Kate Torrance now dead and Michael apparently believing himself to be the abducted Adam Carrington, he heads to Denver to redress the balance.On KNOTS LANDING, Gary’s inheritance means that he - and subsequently Abby - are now operating in a different financial sphere to the rest of the characters. This creates tensions of its own. After Gary offers to bankroll Kenny in his own record company so they can launch Ciji themselves, (“Damn,” he laughs, “this is the first time since the reading of the will that I actually feel rich!”) Ginger worries that Kenny is gambling their future on a rich man’s whim. Conversely, Abby turns Gary’s friendly loan to Richard into a formal agreement. “We can foreclose if you don’t make your payments promptly,” she informs him. “This gives you control of my entire restaurant!” Richard protests, but he has no choice but to comply.Nowhere in this week’s Soap Land is the class divide more noticeable than on FALCON CREST, where unethical labour practices in the vineyards are exposed by Richard’s newspaper. Chase is aghast to learn that Falcon Crest hires a third of its workers on a part-time basis in return for minimum wage and no benefits. He finds a large group of them (all Hispanic) living in a shack without running water, heat or sanitation - conditions that make the barrio on FLAMINGO ROAD look almost cosy. (A thought: if Mario Nunuoz had really wanted to help “his people”, he could have started in his own backyard instead of leaving the show. As it is, all the Hispanics left on screen are bit players and extras.)When confronted, Lance and Angela insist that the situation is perfectly legal. The episode sidesteps the issue of illegal immigrants raised in last season’s “Victims”, but the very fact that this practice is sanctioned, even acceptable, ("It’s the way it’s always been,” says Lance) is just as disturbing, and FALCON CREST’s willingness to question it feels somewhat bold. “The least these people deserve are the basics of a decent life,” insists Chase. “I don’t force them to live like this,” Angela shrugs. “Don’t you?” he asks, "How do you think this happens?” This is as close as this week’s Soap Land gets to making a political statement.The storyline concludes with Angela hi-jacking Chase's press conference and claiming his pledge to pay all of Falcon Crest’s workers a decent wage as her own idea, thereby turning a defeat into a PR victory in much the same way JR did back in “Community Spirit”, his first episode of KNOTS.Chase's recent inheritance of half of Falcon Crest means the Giobertis must now surely qualify as millionaires, yet the series continues to depict them as an ordinary, everyday relatable folk. We are told that the family has put up their house as collateral for Cole’s bail, and see them worrying about whether or not he has the right attorney, just as the Fairgates did after Sid was arrested for attempted rape. (The Giobertis aren’t the only Soap Land characters to have their wealth played down to fit current storylines. I’m not certain, but wasn’t Kenny Ward once the boss of Oracle Records? He certainly had the authority to hire Kristin as a receptionist and reject Lilimae as a potential superstar. Now he is depicted as an employee powerless to sign Ciji to his label - hence his eagerness to accept Gary’s offer of a partnership.)Talking about his son’s kidnapping twenty-five years earlier, Blake tells Krystle, "Denver Carrington is its way a tribute to my first child.” This reminds me of Jock describing Ewing Oil in his will as "precious to me beyond anything in my life save my dear wife Ellie and my sons.” On KNOTS, Richard Avery names his restaurant in honour of his newborn son Daniel, and this week DALLAS cartel member Wade Luce sadly bows out with the line, "I invested a lot of my life into that company”, before signing it over to Rebecca Wentworth. But while Soap Land’s men might refer to their businesses in such tender, almost romantic terms, its women are decidedly less sentimental. “Labour is a commodity and we pay as low a price as we can,” says Angela Channing after being shown the appalling conditions in which her workers are living. “These are human beings,” Chase protests. “But I’m a businesswoman and this is a business decision,” she replies flatly. Meanwhile, Abby’s response to Gary’s dream of living and working on his own ranch (“it's in me,” he explains, "it's a part of me“) is our first indication of the extent of her ambition. "Just because you dreamed about something as a kid doesn’t mean you have to do it,” she tells him. "You’ve got the money - now use it. Use it to make more money, to build bigger dreams. Money is power, Gary. Power to make things happen … We can build an empire much bigger than this ranch.”Blake also speaks of empire building in his scene with Krystle. "When I finally had to face the reality that we had lost Adam,” he says, "I poured all my energy into positive things. I built an empire on that energy.” It seems that when a man in Soap Land is deprived of a child, he builds an empire. When the same thing happens to a woman, she ends up on the roof of a building. This week, Claudia Blaisdel follows in the footsteps of Pam and Val Ewing by climbing to the top of a tall hotel, apparently carrying Little Blake in her arms. The moment where she drops the bundle over the edge and we see in slow motion a doll flying through the air before smashing onto the roof of the ambulance below remains as absurdly, shockingly surreal as ever. It's David Lynch meets “Fembots in Las Vegas”, laced with a paedophobic quality all its own. Once again, Jeff and Fallon’s reactions are quite believable in the extraordinary circumstances. Thinking they’ve found their baby, then seeing it fall to its death, then finding out it’s really a doll, then realising that means their baby is still missing … you can feel their heads about to explode.While Gary dreams of owning a ranch on KNOTS LANDING, on DALLAS, he is the dream. "My father appeared like a dream,” complains Lucy, referring to his near-mute appearance in last week’s episode. "Now he's gone. He appeared then disappeared. The Case of the Vanishing Father."At the end of this week’s KNOTS, following an unsuccessful camping trip where they bicker amusingly like characters in a Neil Simon movie, Karen and Mack take their relationship to the next level. Meanwhile on FALCON CREST, Cole and Sally Bullock simultaneously kneel down in her kitchen to clear away a broken plate and end up kissing - the very circumstances that led to the first kiss between Steven Carrington and his older woman, Claudia, during DYNASTY’s first season. “Then it’s true,” as Abby mockingly observed upon meeting “Karen’s Mack” last week, "older women really are more attractive.” A variation on the same theme: Chip Roberts, (“young and pretty”) who last week got dumped by Bess Riker, ("old and haggard”) now finds himself the object of Lilimae’s touchingly unrequited affection.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (-) FALCON CREST2 (2) DYNASTY3 (1) KNOTS LANDING4 (3) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =