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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 8406" data-attributes="member: 22">05/Jan/83: DYNASTY: The Search v. 06/Jan/83: KNOTS LANDING: Cutting the Ties That Bind v. 07/Jan/83: DALLAS: The Ewing Blues v. 07/Jan/83: FALCON CREST: Pas De DeuxUnlike the Ewings’ search for Jock on DALLAS, Blake and Alexis’s quest to find Steven on DYNASTY spills over into a second episode. There are factors common to both searches - a meeting with an eyewitness to the accident (the pilot of the plane that crashed into Jock’s helicopter, the rig foreman who saw Steven just before the explosion), the discovery of a personal item which serves as evidence of death in lieu of a body (Jock’s medallion, Steven’s bloodstained jacket), and finally, a sole family member who refuses to accept that death - Miss Ellie in DALLAS, Blake on DYNASTY. "I gave up once on Adam,” Blake argues. “Turned out he was alive. I’m not going to give up on Steven.” It occurs to me that, had the DALLAS writers chosen to go there, Miss Ellie could have used the same argument. After all, she gave up on her brother Garrison when he was missing presumed dead, only for him to show up alive forty years later. With that in mind, it would be almost surprising if Ellie didn’t believe that Jock might still be alive.Where the DYNASTY storyline seriously diverges from its DALLAS equivalent is in the enlistment of a psychic, Dehner, whom Blake brings from California to Denver to help “find” his son. This is Soap Land’s first delve into the supernatural since the final days of FLAMINGO ROAD, but it lacks the exotic atmosphere of Michael Tyrone’s dabblings with voodoo magic. Nor is Dehner overtly eccentric or flamboyant in the way Adrianna the fortune teller was in DYNASTY Season 2. Instead, the character and story-line are played straight (which only serves to make it all the nuttier). In fact, the story seems less concerned with Dehner’s powers than with Blake’s state of mind. “You've cracked, Blake,” states Alexis unequivocally. "The redoubtable Blake Carrington has lost his mind … his tormented mind.” Krystle is rather more tactful, expressing to Blake her “concern for the way you’re driving yourself.” Blake is not the only Soap Land patriarch to have his sanity called into question this week. On DALLAS, Miss Ellie wrestles with the fact that the only way to break Jock’s will is to cast doubt on his mental competence prior to his death. “The Jock we all know is not the man who wrote that codicil,” insists Pam. "Jock was not mentally incompetent,” Ellie replies firmly. "He was a very rational man.” Ironically, the most clearly deranged Soap Land character of the week - Jeff Colby, currently suffering from hallucinations and mood swings - is diagnosed by his doctor merely with fatigue brought on by overwork.There are some interestingly meta moments in this week’s Soap Land. At times, DYNASTY’s Kirby and KNOTS LANDING’s Val seem able to talk about their lives only by framing them in a fictional context. (That is, a context even more fictional than the one they’re already in.) Kirby, on a visit to Jeff’s office, complains that her father "thinks I'm Sabrina”, the title character from a 1954 film starring Audrey Hepburn. She then goes on to describe an unnamed movie she has just been to see, the plot of which mirrors her and Jeff’s own situation: “There was this girl who loved this man, though she never spoke it. She couldn’t. And the man, needing and deserving love … couldn’t break down the deep, but unnecessary, barriers between them. Actually, it was a pretty dumb movie.” In his mentally altered state, Jeff thinks the plot she is describing is real and that they are the characters in the movie. Even more confusingly, he mistakes Kirby for his estranged wife Fallon. “Why did you never tell me this before?” he asks Kirby/Fallon. “Because I never dared to,” Kirby replies, seizing this opportunity to get close to him. “And you’ve always loved me?” he asks her. “Yes,” she says, "always.” They kiss, but the moment is ruined when Jeff calls Kirby by his wife’s name. Upset, she runs off … and straight into the clutches of Adam. He dries her tears and offers to take her to dinner. Cut to Adam and Kirby eating dinner in Alexis’s penthouse. “You fib so easily,” mock-chides a drunken Kirby, "not happening to mentioning that the restaurant in the sky just happens to be the very apartment where you live ... Isn’t there any music in this tower?” Her choice of the word “tower" conjures up the idea of a fairytale - more fiction.On KNOTS, Val is similarly surprised to find herself in a high-rise luxury apartment. “Is this really me on the terrace of a penthouse, thirty storeys high above New York City?” she asks Jeff Munson. "Things like this don’t happen to me. It happens in movies, but not in real life.” Just as the only way Kirby can express her feelings for Jeff is to disguise them as a plot from a film, so Val can only contemplate a successful future for herself by describing it in cinematic terms. “To a new life,” she toasts, "starring Valene Ewing and a cast of thousands.” Like Kirby’s Jeff, Val’s Jeff plays along with the movie concept. “To a new life - Act 1 Scene 1,” he replies before moving in for a kiss, just as Kirby's Jeff does. This one ends more successfully, however - more like an old fashioned movie kiss, in fact. (And just like in those old movies, it’s left to our imaginations as to whether or not Val and Jeff M then spend the night together.)Other “fictional" references in this week’s Soap Land: Kirby bitterly describing Jeff to Adam as "Fallon’s Hamlet of a spouse”, Maggie playfully referring to Angela as the Wicked Witch of the West on FALCON CREST and JR describing himself to John Ross on DALLAS as "the Robin Hood of the oil business - take from the poor and give to the rich. You remember that.” (Thirty-one years later, that advice will be countered by Bobby in New DALLAS episode “Playing Chicken”: “That’s what you get when you threaten to take away a man’s livelihood,” he tells his nephew after the ranch hands on Southfork have turned on John Ross over his decision to drill for oil on the ranch. While we’re on the subject of New DALLAS, it’s also a kick to contrast Tyler Banks’ version of John Ross scampering around the reception area of Ewing Oil in this ep with Josh Henderson’s strutting through the doors of Ewing Global in 2014.) Also this week, Cliff compares Sue Ellen to a historical rather than fictional character when he talks about her standing beside JR “like the Duchess of Windsor” during an appearance on Roy Ralston’s “Texas Talk Time” television programme.Following Val’s interview with Mike Douglas earlier in the season, this is the second instance of a Ewing guesting on a TV talk show. Interestingly, Ralston’s introduction to JR - “Some call him a saint, some call him a sinner” - chimes with Mike Douglas’s to Val when he told his audience, “If that name Ewing sounds familiar, then it’s who you think it is!” This week at least, DALLAS is in accord with KNOTS LANDING in its portrayal of the Texas Ewings as somewhat notorious - a result of JR courting the media as part of his cut-rate gas scheme perhaps. That the family is of interest to the public is underlined in the last scene of the ep when attorney Brooks Oliver describes Ewing as "a name that sells newspapers.” Sue Ellen telling JR that “it’s nice to be the wife of a celebrity” echoes Lilimae's reminder to Val that “you’re a celebrity” on this week’s KNOTS.JR’s television appearance, during which he slights his baby brother, (“He does not have the strength to run Ewing Oil”) prompts Bobby to announce his decision to start playing dirty. "My brother doesn't think I can play hardball,” he tells Pam. “Well sweetheart, I'm gonna have the pleasure of stuffin' that ball down his throat!” To that end, he dispatches one of his minions to dig into the small print of a contract Ewing Oil has with the cartel so that he can strong arm them into drilling for oil on the Wellington land. Instead, he learns that he can force them to buy out his interest for five times the market value. Given his fight with JR, this is profit Bobby badly needs. “Great,” Pam tells him sarcastically, "now you can lose a few more friends.”Over on KNOTS, Gary is the Ewing brother losing friends over a business deal when he fully endorses Abby’s decision to sign over Ciji’s contract to Jeff Munson - leaving partner Kenny out in the cold. While Jordan Lee accuses Bobby of armed robbery, Kenny's accusation of Gary is more personal: “At least I don’t make deals with my friends and then stab them in the back.” In a deliciously soapy move, Abby also mirrors Bobby’s actions when she assigns an attorney - one Jim Westmont - to pore over all of the investment deals she and Gary have made to see if there’s a way of protecting her individual interests in the event of them splitting up. It’s so cool that, even after three years in Soap Land, Abby is still surprising us by showing how ruthless she can be.Elsewhere on KNOTS, Ciji learns that she is with child. Just as Pam Ewing did in “Barbecue”, she stands in front of a mirror and playfully tries to imagine how she’ll look when heavily pregnant. For both women, it is a stage of pregnancy they are destined never to reach. After Ciji breaks the news to Chip, he orders her to have an abortion: “Get this through your head - no baby!” When she refuses, he becomes aggressive, pulling her hair and grabbing her roughly. “Don’t you know how much is riding on you?” he snarls. “The big time, stardom, everything we ever dreamed about. You and me, all the way to the top … Nothing’s gonna interfere with what I have planned for you.” The picture Chip paints of himself and Ciji as an ambitious couple destined for greatness (“You and me, all the way to the top”) mirrors Adam's description of himself and Kirby on DYNASTY: “Two people who knew what they wanted and how to go after it.”Just as Chip becomes violent when Ciji asserts control over her own body, so Adam rips Kirby's dress and wrestles her to the floor of the penthouse when she refuses to have sex with him. The most striking moment of Adam's attack is when Kirby stops struggling or protesting and simply lies still as the screen fades to black. This is - I hesitate to use the word sophisticated in such a context - but a comparatively complex depiction of rape in Soap Land. Kirby's passivity reads as reluctant acquiescence as if she believes she is responsible for the situation in which she now finds herself and must take the consequences. This is spelled out in the follow-up scene where she informs Adam coldly: “Your respect for me means less than nothing. My respect for myself, that’s what suffered … I’m not blaming you, I’m blaming myself. I’ve had champagne before, I wasn’t dragged here forcibly.” Here, Kirby could be speaking for Laura Avery in “The Lie” or maybe even Lucy after her rape in DALLAS. Certainly, Pam’s line about Lucy’s attack - “I think she believes she did something to allow it to happen” - resonates here.When Kirby returns to the Carrington mansion in the early hours of the morning, she keeps quiet about the rape - indeed, the word itself is never used. The closest she comes to speaking out is to drily allude to the events of the evening as “a comedy of errors” - another example of a character reframing their experiences in a fictional context. Back on KNOTS, despite intimate conversations with Laura and Gary, Ciji reveals nothing about Chip’s violent behaviour either. Like Kirby, she seems almost accepting of what has happened to her, as if this is all she can expect or all she deserves. And while neither DYNASTY nor KNOTS endorse this view themselves, they do nothing to really challenge it either. There is no counterargument, no voice to say, “Such behaviour is unacceptable, not to mention illegal.” Maybe the women’s silence, their isolation, is reflective of the real world, and maybe the drama on screen is the stronger for it. Maybe.There is also more commonplace violence in this week’s Soap Land. Ray Krebbs and Chase Gioberti each take a swing at their respective half-brother, JR Ewing and Richard Channing, for insulting a woman in their presence. While JR has been mocking Donna’s attempts to rescind his oil variance (“I believe the word is inept”), Richard has publicly branded his and Chase’s mother an adulteress. Miss Ellie and Angela Channing both look on in dismay as the punches are thrown in their houses.While DALLAS’s Donna might have foregone her writing career in favour of committee meetings, the work of Soap Land’s remaining scribes - Val Ewing and Maggie Gioberti - attracts unwelcome attention. While standing on Jeff's New York balcony, Val is blissfully unaware that Chip is stealing pages from her unfinished manuscript in order to impress his new boss. On FALCON CREST, having learnt that Angela was behind Daryl Clayton's interest in her movie script, Maggie tries to extricate herself from their contract, but finds Daryl unwilling to give up so easily.By now, Maggie has admitted her near-affair with Daryl to husband Chase and he has proved remarkably understanding about it. On DYNASTY, Blake is finding it harder to overlook the continued presence of Krystle’s ex in Denver, and the locket Mark has returned to her has become a symbol of the barrier between them. However, the most overt threat to one of Soap Land's “golden couples” arrives in this week’s DALLAS. Three months after Michael Tyrone showed up in FALCON CREST calling himself Richard Channing, Tyrone’s former adversary Sam Curtis reinvents himself as Mark Graison. Still a wealthy businessman, he again comes to the aid of an older woman - then Lute-Mae, now Miss Ellie - before openly declaring his interest in her younger friend - then Lane Ballou, now Pam. Like Lane, Pam is already involved with another man, but Mark is no more dissuaded by her declaration of fidelity to Bobby (“I’m a married woman and I’m not very modern when it comes to playing around”) than Sam was by Lane’s professions of love for Field.Other Soap Land marriages are also faltering. On KNOTS, Richard Avery’s memories of his and Laura’s early relationship ("Remember that first year? Morning, noon and night - we were insatiable”) only serve to point up the distance that exists between them now. There is a similar scene in FALCON CREST between Nick Hogan, the older man Vicky Gioberti has fallen for, and his wife Sheila. Again, fond recollections of the past ("Remember that weekend we spent at Mount Shasta, right after we were married?”) contrast with a chilly present.FALCON CREST’s plot-lines often seem like a compressed variation of what has already occurred on DALLAS. The same arc that took the length of DALLAS’s fourth season to play out between Cliff Barnes and his mother Rebecca, for example, takes place within the space of two episodes for Richard Channing and Jacqueline Perrault (although I’m not sure Cliff and Rebecca ever had a moment quite as dramatically heightened as the one where Richard screams “I WAS BORN DAMNED!” at Jacqueline’s retreating back). Conversely, FALCON CREST also contains moments one can’t imagine taking place anywhere else in Soap Land - for example, the scene in this week’s ep between Chao Li and Lance as they practice their martial art skills. “You are rash, Lance,” chides Chao Li, adopting the same tone of solemn mysticism as Blake’s psychic in DYNASTY. "The secret of t'ai chi chu’an is not for the impetuous … True strength comes only from inner peace."All four shows end on a relatively low key note this week. DYNASTY and DALLAS each close on an already established plot point being reiterated. On DYNASTY, we see Adam purchasing more of the same poisonous paint compound thingy that he bought at the end of the episode that aired four weeks ago. (In the absence of a confidante for him to explain his dastardly plan to, this serves to remind the viewer who is responsible for Jeff’s increasingly unhinged behaviour.) DALLAS, meanwhile, ends with Miss Ellie restating her intention, first made two episodes ago, to break Jock's will. (The key difference is that she now does so in the knowledge that she will have to besmirch his memory in the process.)KNOTS closes on an enigmatic note as Val, still on that New York terrace, finally signs the divorce papers that have been burning a hole in her attache case all episode, and then hears Jeff Munson’s voice calling her from off screen. “Are you ready?” he asks. He is referring to their impending shopping trip, but the question carries a wider implication - is Val now ready to leave her past behind her and start a new life? Before she can reply, the producers' credit appears on screen and the episode ends. In terms of plain old soapy intrigue, however, FALCON CREST wins the battle of the cliffhangers once again. Having discovered that Jacqueline sold Richard to Henri Denault when he was a baby - a revelation that has sent Jacqueline scuttling back to Europe - Angela ponders her motive. “I wonder what she got in return?” she muses. “You intend to use this information against her sons?” Phillip asks. “You’re damned right!” she smirks.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (4) KNOTS LANDING2 (3) FALCON CREST3 (2) DYNASTY4 (1) DALLAS</blockquote>

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