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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 7160" data-attributes="member: 22">17/Nov/82: DYNASTY: The Will v. 18/Nov/82: KNOTS LANDING: Man in the Middle v. 19/Nov/82: DALLAS: The Ewing Touch v. 19/Nov/82: FALCON CREST: The NamesakeAnother week in Soap Land, another last will and testimony. “All that money and power riding on a few lines in Cecil’s will,” taunts Fallon. "Is Alexis in or is Alexis out?” Meanwhile, on FALCON CREST, Melissa sneaks a look at Angela’s will. Chao-Li’s inheritance of $25,000 and lifelong employment compares favourably to the $10,000 and year’s salary awarded to Cecil Colby’s housekeeper.DYNASTY being DYNASTY, Cecil’s will reading is more formal than Jock’s was in DALLAS a few weeks ago, (it’s more of a business meeting than a family gathering) and also more glamorous (Alexis looks quite stunning in her widow’s weeds). Just as Jock’s will contained a codicil drawn up shortly before his death in South America, Cecil’s includes some last minute instructions added by the deceased the day before his death in hospital. Like the codicil, these instructions - a letter and videotape revealing that Cecil was behind the assassination attempt on Blake last season - trigger a war from beyond the grave. That, in fact, is his main bequest to Alexis: “I haven’t achieved my goal of control of Denver-Carrington,” he writes to Blake, "but that I leave in the hands of the woman who shares my dedication, my wife Alexis - confident she will find a way to bring you to your knees.”This is not Soap Land's only vow of vengeance this week. Losing out to Bobby over the McLeish oil deal is enough to reignite Cliff’s anger towards the Ewings. He promises to "turn the Ewing empire into a broken down, two-pump filling station.” Meanwhile, four weeks after the announcement of the Jock Ewing Memorial Scholarship, Richard Channing proposes the Douglas Channing Memorial Garden as a tribute to his late father. However, this is really a front for a winery he plans to build - which in turn is a way of attacking Angela. "I’ll start a bidding war in this valley for all the available grapes and force Angela to pay more for premium crops than she ever has before,” Richard explains to Miss Hunter. "Within a year, Falcon Crest will be in a complete negative cash flow position."Meanwhile, back on DYNASTY: Left alone after the reading of the will with only half of Cecil's fortune and a triplex penthouse apartment for company, Alexis wonders what to do next. “Damn you, Cecil,” she says aloud, addressing her thoughts to her late husband's office chair in the same way Karen Fairgate used Sid's headstone and Miss Ellie a pile of broken crockery, “damn you for dying and leaving me to take care of this myself! Bring Blake to his knees? How??” “You're gonna have to do it with brains,” Afton advises Cliff on DALLAS, “not passion.”In last week’s DALLAS, JR implicated the wife of government official Walt Driscoll in a car accident in order to obtain an oil variance. In this week’s FALCON CREST, Richard Channing has county supervisor Nick Hogan’s vintage truck blown up as a way of persuading him to vote his way over a land deal. Like JR, he retains his gentlemanly charm throughout the transaction.Three life-changing events on the theme of parentage take place in this week’s Soap Land: Bobby and Pam’s adoption of Christopher is finalised at a court hearing in DALLAS. A rainswept Melissa collapses in Cole’s arms before telling him that he’s the father of her baby on FALCON CREST. (She then observes the Soap Land tradition of giving birth prematurely to a male heir whose life is left hanging in the balance.) And in a near-majestic scene at the end of this week's DYNASTY, Alexis is reunited with her son Adam twenty-five years after he was snatched by Kate Torrance from his baby carriage. For some reason, I’ve always been a sucker for Adam’s detailed description of the day it happened: "It was a fine September morning, she said, and as she got on the bus with me, it began to rain - a sun shower. It was as if the very skies were sharing her sorrow and her newfound joy, she said.” There are more meteorological memories on FALCON CREST. "It was a rainy night like this one, twenty-two years ago, in this very hospital, when you were born,” Julia tells Lance, "and I had such hopes, such dreams.”Elsewhere on DYNASTY, Fallon tries to convey to designer Billy Dawson her vision for turning the stuffy La Mirada hotel into "a pleasure palace … a fantasy land.” “A class A bordello,” translates Billy teasingly. Over on KNOTS LANDING, when Richard Avery attempts to explain his upmarket vision for Daniel’s, Abby complains that he is "running that restaurant like the Court of Versailles.” Two weeks after stomping on Gary’s dreams of owning a ranch, she now does the same thing to Richard: “It [the restaurant] might be your dream,” she snaps, "but as long as Gary and I are in control, you better learn to dream a bit more profitably. Otherwise, you might find your dream turning into a nightmare.” Money might not be a problem for Fallon, but getting her father and husband to respect her as a serious businesswoman is.Serious is the key word here. Fallon, previously so witty and insouciant, is now oh so anxious to be taken seriously. Similarly, Alexis, whose brazen wit allowed her to glide effortlessly through the Carrington mansion for much of last season, now appears to have exchanged her joie de vivre for a kind of shrill paranoia. (This week, she accuses Krystle of trying to seduce Cecil before she married Blake.) Even Abby, now that she has money, seems to have mislaid the sense of humour and excitement she had when she was still scheming to acquire it. The one businesswoman to retain her sense of fun this week is Holly Harwood, who conducts a meeting with JR whilst stretched out by her pool in a bikini and flirting outrageously.As DYNASTY grows more earnest - this week’s episode contains at least three long discussions about Fallon’s journey to become “a woman who's found a sense of self” - KNOTS LANDING becomes a shinier, glitzier, more glamorous place. Those stay-at-home, down-to-earth Fairgates are suddenly established members of an exclusive beach club (“This place is very popular with the young execs”) and are sufficiently well-connected for the ambitious Chip to attach himself to Diana. (“Oh man, if I stick around you long enough I could build up a whole new career!”) In fact, the family now have a lifestyle Sid’s snobby first wife would have approved of. With shy little Val becoming a public speaker and everyone else preparing for Ciji’s singing debut at Daniel’s, it feels like Victoria Hill’s charity fashion show all over again, only now it’s the show itself that's playing dress up.The transformation is augmented by some typically striking direction by Larry Elikann - scenes filmed from odd angles that make the familiar look fresh and strange, and lots of big, bold close-ups that give the characters a kind of feverish, almost cartoon-like quality.Watching Val cringe as she listens to Chip boast to Lilimae about how impressed Gary and Abby were when he persuaded Richard to let Ciji sing at the restaurant, we suddenly realise how knotted together all the characters have become - not in the geographical way they used to be when they all lived in the same street, or even via a shared family history like the characters on the other soaps, but through several cleverly stitched together plot contrivances. In fact, KNOTS is probably the most contrived and plot-driven of all the soaps at this point, but when the results are this much fun, who cares?As the world of KNOTS contracts, becoming tighter and knottier, the world of DALLAS expands. The cartel, Punk and Mavis, Afton and Rebecca, Harve, Clayton, Mickey, Holly … the show’s regular ensemble comprises more than just the Ewings and Cliff these days. For the first time, we start to get a sense of the Dallas oil community as a whole.With “Capricorn Crude” and “Sam Culver: The Early Years” now available from all good Soap Land bookshops, FALCON CREST’s Maggie finally finishes her screenplay. Like Val’s novel, it is a fictionalised version of “real” events - in this case, her son’s arrest for a murder he didn’t commit. Unlike Gary, Chase has no problem with his wife plundering their family’s personal lives for inspiration and calls the script “darn good". Meanwhile, Val has already completed the first two chapters of her next book, but won’t reveal the subject matter, and Donna fills her free time by renewing her interest in Texas politics. She persuades Miss Ellie to accompany her to one such meeting - only for them to find the main item on the agenda is JR’s variance. No matter how broad DALLAS’s canvas becomes, all roads inevitably lead back to JR.While Diana invites Chip to dinner at the beach club to spite her mother’s new beau, Miss Ellie shocks her sons by inviting her new friend, Walter Lankershim, aka Frank Crutcher, to dinner at Southfork. Whereas Karen’s attempts to get Diana to talk about her issues with Mack are met with teenage prevarication, Bobby Ewing is more honest with his mother. "It felt strange, seeing you with another man," he admits. "Nobody will ever take your daddy's place,” Miss Ellie assures him.The DALLAS equivalent of the KNOTS beach club is the nightspot where Afton sings. “It’s getting to be the place in town,” she informs Cliff. “A lot of influential people are dropping in … They’d be good contacts for you, people you should socialise with.” Just don’t let Chip know or he’ll be on the first plane over. However, not everyone in Soap Land is driven by ambition or vengeance or the need to a discover a sense of themselves as a woman. In contrast to Chip “man in the middle” Roberts, his twenty-something DALLAS counterpart Mickey is content to bunk off work and “wax some dumb bar stool,” much to cousin Ray’s disapproval.On KNOTS, Ciji somehow manages to be both ambitious and passive. Krystle might accuse Blake of treating Fallon "like one of her old dolls,” but it’s actually Ciji who is the most doll-like character in this week’s Soap Land. Kenny and Gary tell her what she should sing and when, Abby picks out her clothes - and Ciji goes along with it all, strangely disengaged. She is spoken of as commodity - “a hot property” and "an important investment”. The only time she truly comes alive is when she’s on stage singing.For her big debut at Daniel, in front of an audience of regular characters, she sings Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch”, an ultra-conventional romantic ballad. Again, it is gutsily delivered and persuasively filmed. Throughout the song, there are close-ups of the lovers in the restaurant exchanging meaningful looks (or in Lilimae’s case, a forlorn glance at Chip and Diana gazing into each other’s eyes), and these have the same cumulative effect as the musical montages that have since become commonplace in TV drama (including New DALLAS). Within this context - the inward-looking, interconnected world of KNOTS - the standing ovation Ciji receives at the end of the song feels entirely credible. The appearance of an enraptured music critic from Rolling Stone is pushing it a bit, however.In a nifty bit of foreshadowing, Chip tries to convince Diana that his interest in Ciji is strictly professional: “Diana, business is business. Confuse it with pleasure, it’s certain death.” Cut to Ciji looking longingly at him. (His words are echoed by Lucy Ewing in DALLAS: “I cannot mix business with my personal life ever again,” she tells a pushy client who objectifies her in the same way KNOTS does Ciji.)Crossover of the week: the grounds of the Carrington mansion have now become those of Michael Tyrone in FLAMINGO ROAD, with Blake and Krystle lunching by the same pool in which Richard Channing and Morgan Fairchild writhed naked just seven months earlier.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are … again, it’s a close one, especially between KNOTS and DALLAS ...1 (2) DALLAS2 (-) KNOTS LANDING3 (3) DYNASTY4 (1) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?