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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 8819" data-attributes="member: 22">02/Feb/83: DYNASTY: Two Flights to Haiti v. 03/Feb/83: KNOTS LANDING: The Morning After v. 04/Feb/83 DALLAS: Crash of '83 v. 04/Feb/83: FALCON CREST: Love, Honor and ObeyAs the mental states of Jeff Colby and Gary Ewing continue to deteriorate on this week’s DYNASTY and KNOTS, the reactions of those closest to them are interesting to observe.Following Jeff’s attack on her, Fallon wants out of their marriage - and fast. In spite of Blake following her from scene to scene, pleading with her to reconsider, she is adamant: “I’ve already made up my mind … I have to have that divorce … He’s insane!” Conversely on KNOTS, now that Gary’s drinking again, Val struggles to keep her distance from him. “I intend to stay angry,” she explains to Karen. "I am holding onto that, because if I don’t, I’m gonna start to care again and then I’m gonna be right back where I started.” Her attitude is contrasted with Abby’s. “I’m not like Val,” she tells Gary coldly. “I’m not gonna count your drinks or hide your bottles or run around town checking up on you. If you wanna kill yourself, fine. Just don’t expect me to watch."Things aren’t quite that simple, however. Abby’s apparent indifference belies both her instinct for self-preservation ("Gary is no condition to make intelligent business decisions for himself right now and I have to do everything I can to protect my investment”) and the fact that she does genuinely care for him. Similarly on DYNASTY, Alexis is torn between worry over Jeff’s condition (“He could die!”), fear that she will be blamed for it ("They’ll diagnose what’s wrong with him and they’ll trace it back to that miserable paint!”) and like Abby, her own self-interests. Ultimately, both women are willing to take advantage of a sick man in order to acquire his signature on a document that will realise their own ambitions.As for the sick men themselves, there are moments of calm and introspection amidst the madness. We see Jeff gloomily cuddling his son in the Carrington nursery (“Sometimes I wonder if I’ll even be alive when you’re old enough to throw a softball"), while a more optimistic Gary takes a run on the beach and talks about getting his life back on track (“Oh Abby, I can beat it, I know I can!"). Both interludes prove fleeting, however. The sound of Mark Jennings’ voice on the phone is sufficient to send Jeff off the deep end again, and he collapses on the La Mirage tennis courts. Meanwhile, all it takes for Gary is a few hours holed up at the beach house without any booze to send him out on yet another binge. While Jeff is hospitalised, Gary winds up at the police station on a drunk and disorderly charge.Both situations lead to some wonderfully juicy scenes as assorted Carringtons and Colbys, and Cunninghams and Ewings, convene at Denver Memorial Hospital and the Knots Landing Police Station respectively. Having been alerted to Jeff’s collapse, Alexis turns up at the hospital to find Krystle already there, awaiting Jeff's test results. Val, meanwhile, receives a tip-off from a nosy reporter and makes an impulsive dash to the police station. She arrives in time to see Abby bailing out Gary. Just as Gary was separated from Abby by the glass of the recording booth in last week’s ep, so he and Val are removed from each other by two sets of windows at the station, with Abby in-between. They see each other but cannot connect. (In fact, Val and Gary have spoken to each other freely only twice since Val kicked him out of the house in the season opener: once in the underground parking lot and once outside the hospital during Abby's operation. Every other time they have come into contact, there has been some kind of physical obstacle between them.)Back at Denver Memorial, Adam arrives to find Alexis in a blind panic (“Tests?? What do they need to make tests for??”). He hastily bundles her into an elevator before her behaviour can make Krystle even more suspicious than she already is. Whereas Krystle and Alexis’s conversation in this scene has been full of lies and evasion, the interaction between Val and Abby at the police station is all about home truths. The two women haven't spoken frankly since Abby’s affair with Gary began, but this time around there's no dignified silences, no archly clever “I’m not saying we’re having an affair and I’m not saying we’re not” double talk. “With every fibre of my body, when I look at Gary and see what he’s become, I blame you,” Val tells Abby earnestly. "Whatever failings he had, at least he was strong, he was healthy and he knew who he was.” “And he left you,” Abby replies simply. “I loved him and I cared for him and I never did one thing to hurt him,” Val continues. “But still he left you,” maintains Abby.“Which one gets to be the man?” Richard asks Ciji elsewhere in this week’s KNOTS, thereby making Soap Land's first ever overt lesbian reference. (There won’t be any others until a casual remark from Vanessa Hunt regarding her bisexuality in KNOTS nine years later, followed by a certain New DALLAS scene twenty-three years after that.) By verbalising the possibility of such a relationship, Richard somehow breaks whatever romantic or sexual spell may have existed between Ciji and Laura. In fact, we later see the two women giggling at the very idea of them sleeping together. Alas for Richard, the idea has now taken up residence inside his own head instead.Throughout this week’s Soap Land, we see characters bringing up each others’ past sins. "I've seen the hours you spend weeping over costing Krystle Carrington her child,” mocks Adam when Alexis self-righteously scolds him over his lack of remorse regarding Jeff’s condition. On DALLAS, Bobby confronts George Hicks over both his cocaine habit and his sneaky little arrangement with JR, only for Pam to then present him with a list of his own recent misdemeanours: "The Bobby I love would rather be dead than blackmail Hicks or anybody else, double cross the cartel or force his own mother into court.” And on KNOTS, Ciji wipes the smile off Chip’s face when she unmasks his true identity - Tony Fenice, a man wanted by the police for beating up "some rich old lady” he was previously involved with. "That guy doesn’t exist anymore,” Chip insists.There’s an interesting parallel on KNOTS and DYNASTY between the former Tony Fenice and Michael Torrance, each of whom talks about the difficulties of adjusting to a new identity. “You know how hard it is to start over, really start over?” Chip asks Ciji. “New name, new city, new history. I thought I finally outran this.” “Up until a few months ago, the word mother was just that to me - a word,” Adam tells Alexis, "and then it became a reality - you - a beautiful reality. Along with that joy came a great deal of bitterness ... I was deprived for so long. You can say that you and Blake did everything, turned over every rock to find me after I was kidnapped … but somehow and somewhere along the line, you didn’t look hard enough, did you?” At this, Alexis closes her eyes in weary despair. "I have told you a hundred times, Adam, that I never wanted to give up the search. I begged your father, I pleaded with him …” At such times, Alexis becomes Joan Crawford in MILDRED PIERCE, a maternal martyr figure, doomed to be forever punished by her first born for events over which she had no control. In other scenes, she and Adam seem like forerunners of Judith and Harris Ryland in New DALLAS - a bizarre mother/son double act competing over who is the more twisted. "You and I are two of a kind - it's just that I'm more honest about it,” Adam concludes. Either way, each of the scenes between him and Alexis in this week’s episode is a blast.As Bobby Ewing puts the screws to JR’s inside man on the Texas Energy Commission, FALCON CREST’s Richard bribes his inside man on the County Board of Supervisors into supporting him on something confusing to do with right-of-ways and easements. It’s notable that these two committees are made up of the same types of characters: the self-righteously heroic one (Donna Krebbs/Chase Gioberti), the corrupted one (George Hicks/Nick Hogan), the neutral one (in each case, the committee chairman) and the token Hispanic who has no real voice (Mr Figuerroa/Supervisor Herrera).While Chase has spent the last few episodes of FALCON CREST searching for the elusive Mr. Fong, the gardener who may hold the key to Carlo Agretti’s murder, DYNASTY has been showing us occasional scenes set in a Hong Kong hospital where a Dr. Ling has performed life-saving surgery on a man whose face remains mysteriously swathed in bandages. When Mr. Fong appears, briefly, in this week’s FALCON CREST, we realise that these two men, the gardener and the doctor, are one and the same.On last week’s DALLAS, Clayton ran into Miss Ellie in Galveston (where she had gone to recover from her courtroom defeat) and proved to be just the supportive friend she needed. On this week’s DYNASTY, Mark Jennings follows Fallon to Haiti (where she has gone to divorce Jeff) in the hopes of providing a similar function. He is offended when she misconstrues his motives. “Don’t colour me as a dude on the make and take, Fallon … I’m not a tennis bum!” he huffs. Clayton, meanwhile, is also obliged to clarify his intentions this week when he invites Miss Ellie to accompany him on a farewell visit to the Southern Cross Ranch but manages to do so with more dignity than Mark.As one Soap Land marriage-as-business-merger draws to a close, (Fallon and Jeff’s) another gets an unexpected reprieve as Lance and Melissa step back from the brink of divorce and finally consummate their marriage. As with recent encounters between Holly and JR, and Kirby and Adam, there is an element of coercion involved. During a heated argument at Richard’s housewarming party, Lance forcibly drags Melissa into a secluded area and kisses her against her will. She then slaps him, he slaps her back, she slaps him again and he kisses her again. “I hate you!” she yells before being kissed yet again. This time, she responds in kind, and the camera pans discreetly away. Clearly, this is a case of he-kissed-her-till-she-liked-it, (see also: JR and Julie in “Spy In the House”, JR and Sue Ellen in “Black Market Baby”, James Bond and Pussy Galore in GOLDFINGER) as opposed to a-rape-by-any-other-name. It’s also quite a funny scene, in a ludicrously overheated sort of a way.The final scene of this week’s FALCON CREST is yet another that strongly resembles a moment from early DALLAS. In “Second Thoughts” (DALLAS Season 2) there’s an after-dinner drinks scene at Southfork where Sue Ellen is unusually affectionate towards JR - so much so that they hastily excuse themselves and retire upstairs to bed. Lucy makes some crack about them suffering from sleeping sickness, and far from being offended by the sexual implication, Jock and Ellie laugh - the fact that their eldest son and his wife are apparently about to have intercourse being a cause for celebration. In FALCON CREST, Angela’s late evening chat with Lance (who has moved back into the house) is interrupted by Melissa wearing a dressing gown. She bids Angela good-night. “You’re going to sleep so early?” Angela asks in surprise. “No - just to bed,” Melissa replies, before heading for the stairs with Lance’s arm around her waist. Angela looks on, an approving smirk on her lips.Bill Duke directs this week’s DALLAS but finds little opportunity to exhibit the kind of visual flair he did when helming last week’s episode of KNOTS. There's nothing to match the dynamism of the scene where Gary drunkenly disrupts Ciji’s recording session, for instance. In fact, the ep’s first striking visual image doesn’t arrive until nearly the end of the episode when Bobby returns to a darkened Southfork after blackmailing George Hicks, and fixes himself a drink while looking ruefully up at his father’s portrait. Nonetheless, the final third of this week’s DALLAS is pretty much irresistible as various plot strands - Afton’s one-night stand with Gil Thurman, Rebecca and Cliff's determination to stop JR buying a refinery, Bobby blackmailing Hicks, his problems with Pam - start to intersect, building inexorably towards … something.Back on KNOTS, Mack’s presence as an outside observer (“I only know what I see") adds an extra dimension to the ongoing crisis surrounding Gary’s alcoholism. The scene at the end of the episode where he finds a distraught Val on the beach and makes a clumsy attempt to comfort her is one of those unexpectedly moving moments where KNOTS seems to transcend the Soap Land genre.This scene and the one between Bobby and Pam in their bedroom where they argue over his blackmail of Hicks fulfil a similar function, with Val and Pam each looking back to the beginning of their marriages and wondering how they got to where they are now. Surprisingly, there is no equivalent moment of soul searching for Maggie on FALCON CREST, who this week walks out on Chase in protest at him resuming his investigation into the Agretti murder. One gets the feeling she is leaving solely as a reaction to his current storyline rather because of any inherent problems in their relationship.Of the parallel KNOTS and DALLAS scenes, the one between Val and Mack offers more complexity and genuine emotion. There’s a sense of the characters developing organically almost in front of our eyes as if the writers are discovering new depths to them at the same time we are. It’s hard to imagine, for instance, the programme makers anticipating this speech of Val’s when she and Gary first arrived in the cul-de-sac, much less when she debuted in that diner on DALLAS:“He’s a weakness,” she says, explaining her feelings about Gary to Mack. "He is to me what alcohol is to him. I don’t know why we all find it so appalling in him and not so in me. You know, we’re the same, Gary and me. I wrote this big bestseller, I changed my whole life, I think I’ve finally grown up, but I’m still the same. Might as well put my hair back braids for all the changing I’ve done.”The episode ends with an exhausted Val being led along the beach by Karen, Mack’s jacket around her shoulders, all three of them with their arms around each other. The weather is blustery, and the shot feels like a wintery, melancholic counterpoint to the freeze frame at the end of “Home is for Healing” (Season 1) where Gary, Lucy and Val are running happily, hand in hand, through the sunlit ocean. With Gary and Lucy essentially out of her life, Karen and Mack are Val’s makeshift family now.If the characters on KNOTS feel like they’re continually evolving, then there’s something entrenched and inflexible, but no less satisfying, about Bobby and Pam in their bedroom scene on DALLAS: Pam is angry that Bobby is not exactly the same as when she married him, while Bobby is still rigidly obsessed with winning the company. Whatever the end of this week’s DALLAS lacks in emotional complexity, however, it makes up for in melodrama as Bobby and Pam are called away from their argument by a surprise visitor, Afton, who brings news of an air collision involving the Wentworth jet. Pam assumes Cliff was onboard, but an extra twist comes in the final seconds of the episode - Rebecca took his place at the last minute. Mothers paying the price for their sons’ actions: first Alexis is in the frame for Adam’s crime, and now it's Rebecca’s turn to sacrifice herself for Cliff.Also on this week’s FALCON CREST: as well as leaving her husband, Maggie begins work as Associate Producer on the film based on her screenplay. Soap Land’s previous foray into the movie world, the KNOTS episode “Silver Shadows”, concerned itself with a bygone era of Hollywood and used SUNSET BOULEVARD - the classic '50s flick about a faded silent film star living in the past - as its point of reference. The name of Maggie’s leading actress, Gloria Marlowe, also evokes an earlier era: half Gloria Swanson, half Philip Marlowe. When we meet Gloria, her demeanour - aloof, jaded, believing herself to be younger than she is - echoes that of Norma Desmond, the role Swanson played in SUNSET BLVD. The plot of Maggie’s film might be set in the present day, but glamorous, fifty-something Marlowe isn’t the kind of actress who was headlining movies in the real life early '80s. Rather than a contemporary movie star, she more resembles the kind of old-fashioned film actress who at this point was getting work in prime time soap operas like … FALCON CREST (which, given that Maggie’s script is based on events that she has experienced as a character in FALCON CREST, makes a confusing kind of sense.)And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (4) DALLAS3 (3) DYNASTY4 (2) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?