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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 8462" data-attributes="member: 22">12/Jan/83: DYNASTY: Samantha v. 13/Jan/83: KNOTS LANDING: And Teddy Makes Three v. 14/Jan/83: DALLAS: The Reckoning v. 14/Jan/83: FALCON CREST: Above SuspicionThis week’s DYNASTY, DALLAS and FALCON CREST each focus on a character intent on a course of action they believe is in the best interests of their family, but which other members of that family fear may jeopardise it. On DYNASTY, it’s Blake’s use of a psychic to find Steven. On DALLAS, it’s Miss Ellie’s decision to challenge Jock’s will in court. On FALCON CREST, it’s Chase insistence on investigating Carlo Agretti’s murder. "If you don’t believe in the effort I’m making to find my son,” Blake tells Krystle, "that’s fine, that’s all right, that’s your business … but I do believe in it. I intend to keep on doing it despite your feelings and everybody else’s feelings in this house.” "I’m doing this for Cole,” Chase explains to Maggie. "I’ll keep digging, I’ll keep probing and I’ll keep stepping on toes until I get to the truth!” "I don’t know how else to save this family,” Miss Ellie tells her sons. "You’re both so caught up in this battle that neither one of you understand what’s happening!" While Miss Ellie’s reasons for her actions have already been clearly established, there is more room for interpretation regarding Chase and Blake’s motives. Chase insists that he is trying to clear his son’s name, but Julia - for the first time saying anything negative about her cousin or his family - suggests that his investigation is part of "an obsession to wage war against my mother.” The same word crops up on DYNASTY when Alexis talks about what motivates Blake’s "obsession that Steven is still alive ... He is a guilty man who is responsible for that death and that is why he cannot accept it.”In a surprising and touchingly acted moment, Blake lets down his guard and admits to Fallon that Alexis is right. "You can’t understand me now, can you?” he says softly to his daughter. "None of you can understand me. That’s because none of you were responsible for driving Steven away. I’m responsible.” John Forsythe is great throughout this episode, showing us a whole different side to Blake. We’ve never seen him quite this weary, humbled or desperate before. He even sounds different - hoarse, husky, spent. Listening to him speak, you can really believe he’s been keeping a round-the-clock vigil in Steven’s room with Dehner the psychic. I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen this episode of DYNASTY before - maybe three or four - but for the first time, I found myself touched by the scene, absurdly operatic though it is, where Blake scrambles up the side of Matthew Blaisdel’s old drill site (“the place where Steven was happiest”) and attempts to make contact with his son. There have been Soap Land monologues to the dead before, Karen’s to Sid in KNOTS being the most moving and memorable, but none so pitiful and desperate than this one: “Can you hear me, Steven? … I’m going to find you, I’ll never stop searching for the rest of my life until I find you … Steven, do you hear me? Let me know if you hear me, please!" Having keyed into John Forsythe’s performance, other parts of the ep also begin to fall into place for me. A scene that I’ve always hated, where Fallon and Krystle heal their differences with an emotional embrace, now makes sense for the first time - with the captain no longer at the helm of his ship, where else can his crew turn in a time of crisis but to each other? And so what Blake has been trying to achieve since Episode 1, (i.e., “put this family together”) finally occurs - but at a time when he is too preoccupied to even notice. Reconciliation is in the air this week. Taking a leaf out of Fallon’s book, Diana Fairgate also buries the hatchet with a prospective step-parent when she encourages Mack not to give up on Karen after her somewhat vague response to his marriage proposal. Whereas Krystle is initially wary of her step-daughter’s attempt at conciliation, ("Don't be nice to me, Fallon, you'll just turn on me again”) Mack is happily surprised by Diana’s gesture. “Is this the new you?” he asks. “I like it!” Meanwhile on DALLAS, after declaring war on the Ewings at the end of last season, Rebecca Wentworth abruptly decides to make up with Miss Ellie. "Wouldn't it be nice if you and I could show them that the Barneses and the Ewings can be friends?” she sighs wistfully. The DALLAS equivalent of the Krystle/Fallon relationship is Pam and Sue Ellen's. In both instances, the bride from the wrong side of the tracks is viewed with jealousy and disdain by her snootier rival until the two women eventually find a common bond in their show’s third season. The Ewing wives share a couple of scenes this week which illustrate that although they are now friends, there remain some interesting differences between them. First, Sue Ellen takes Pam out to lunch at JR’s behest, in an attempt to dissuade her from backing Miss Ellie’s court fight. “Shouldn’t a wife stand by her husband?” she ventures. “Of course she should,” Pam replies, “but that doesn’t mean she can’t disagree if she thinks he’s wrong.” Later, when Sue Ellen is speculating as to why Mark Graison should be showing such an overt interest in Pam, Pam loses her temper. “You’re making me angry,” she snaps. “Pam, I’m your friend,” protests Sue Ellen. “Then act like it,” Pam retorts. If Mark G popping up at Pam’s place of work on the lame pretext of enquiring about Miss Ellie’s court case feels a tad inappropriate, it's nothing to Mark J gatecrashing Steven's memorial service on DYNASTY to complain that Krystle hasn’t called him lately. Pam and Krystle both feel the need to clarify their positions. “I really appreciate what you did for me and Miss Ellie, but that’s as far as it goes,” Pam tells Mark G, "I am a married woman.” “Mark, we are friends and I appreciate your co-operation with the divorce,” Krystle tells Mark J, "but I have another life now.” Completing the triumvirate of pushy would-be suitors in this week’s Soap Land, Karen’s old flame on KNOTS, Teddy Becker, makes an unwanted advance the day after Mack’s proposal - leading to a very awkward (and funny) dinner between the three of them and Karen’s kids. Teddy is one of two returning characters this week. The other is DYNASTY’s Sammy Jo. Loosely speaking, one could say that both Teddy and Sammy Jo work in the media, but that’s where the similarities end. Teddy is in town to cover a conference on bilateral nuclear disarmament, while Sammy Jo is recognised at a gas station for her photo spread “in one of those girly girly jobs - you were laying on the beach after being shipwrecked, all your clothes lost at sea.” Teddy and Sammy Jo each attempt a change of image upon their return to Soap Land. Teddy has been recast with a sleeker, younger looking actor, but remains just as needy (if not more so). Meanwhile, Sammy Jo now insists on being called Samantha - only everyone keeps forgetting, which is quite funny.Each of this week’s shows contains a quote that reaches back to the beginning of its respective series in order to make a point about a character or relationship in the present. “I’ve been fighting you all the way, all this time, for his love - I’m so sorry,” Fallon tells Krystle in their conciliation scene. “How long have I known you - three, maybe four years? Nothing in that time has prepared me for this,” says Ginger to Gary on KNOTS LANDING, referring to his betrayal of Kenny. “Ever since you’ve moved into this family, you’ve been trouble. Now stay out of it, this is not your fight!” JR barks at Pam on DALLAS as he accuses her of manipulating Miss Ellie to her own ends. “When we first moved out here from New York,” Vicky recalls in FALCON CREST, "it was supposed to be for the good of our family, to bring us closer together, but in all the time we’ve been out here, I don’t think that my father and I have had a single meaningful conversation, not one.”How much of Vicky’s speech is sincere and how much is part of a ploy to seduce Nick Hogan (“You’re really the only one who understands me,” she coos) is hard to say, but no sooner does Nick begin to comfort her than they’re making out on the front seat of his Packard truck. Another affair begins in similar circumstances on DYNASTY when an unusually contrite Alexis visits Mark Jennings to apologise for luring him to Denver under false pretences, but then breaks down over the loss of her son. “I’m not an evil person in spite of what you might think,” she weeps. "If I were, I wouldn’t be in so much pain.” Just as Nick did Vicky, Mark takes Alexis in his arms (“When a woman cries and begins to tremble, that’s what a man does,” he explains helpfully). Inevitably, one thing then leads to another. (“In moments of grief, we need to be held, held close,” Mark continues.)On this week’s KNOTS, the fall out from Mack’s proposal to Karen results in some charmingly funny, Hepburn-and-Tracy-style bickering between them for much of the ep. Elsewhere, the excitement surrounding Ciji’s first recording session is marred by Kenny’s anger at being excluded from it, while the optimism of her song of the week, “New Romance (It’s A Mystery)”, contrasts with the bitter conflict she seems to unintentionally trigger wherever she goes (between Gary and Kenny, Richard and Laura, herself and Chip). Lance Rubin’s score for the ep is the one he will also use on “Swan Song”, the DALLAS Season 7 finale. The same eerie piano notes that anticipate Katherine’s murderous attack on Bobby evoke a similarly ominous feeling on KNOTS."One day Abby will do it to you, just like she’s doing it to us,” prophesies Ginger during her scene with Gary. There are other doom laden predictions in this week’s Soap Land. “That battle is really gonna hurt somebody, really hurt somebody,” foretells Pam in DALLAS, referring to the fight for Ewing Oil. “If you persist in pursuing this murder investigation, I just feel it’s gonna do us more harm than good,” Maggie warns Chase in FALCON CREST - a prediction that appears to come true in the final scene of the episode where a mysteriously gloved someone knocks Cole unconscious and then shuts him in the family garage with his car engine still running.By this point, Chase has already around to Maggie’s way of thinking. “No more dime store Dick Tracy,” he promises her. Similarly on DYNASTY, the news that Sammy Jo has given birth to Steven’s son allows Blake to finally accept his death. “He lives on in this beautiful child,” Blake declares, looking down at his new grandson. Meanwhile on DALLAS, Miss Ellie’s determination to break Jock’s will come what may is unwavering - right up to the point where she has to testify on the witness stand as to Jock’s mental competence. Even then she persists, albeit falteringly and through tears: “If that’s the legal term you need to break the will, then yes, Jock was not mentally competent.” In the event, the judge rules against her, but unlike Blake and Chase, Ellie does not then return to the bosom of her family. Instead, she exits the courtroom without acknowledging any of them.Line of the week: On FALCON CREST, Richard is on the brink of an affair with Melissa when a jealous Miss Hunter accuses him of prostituting himself for the Agretti land. “Diana, my dear, for these stakes, I will gladly turn an occasional trick,” he replies. That has a kind of New DALLAS ring to it.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are … boy, it's a really tough call - each show stands out in a different way - but ...1 (4) DALLAS2 (1) KNOTS LANDING3 (3) DYNASTY4 (2) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?