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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 9989" data-attributes="member: 22">23/Feb/83: DYNASTY: Battle Lines v 24/Feb/83: KNOTS LANDING: The Fatal Blow v. 25/Feb/83: DALLAS: Brothers and Sisters v. 25/Feb/83: FALCON CREST: UltimatumsA week after Emma Channing's demands for a corner office and a male secretary at the New Globe are met on FALCON CREST, DYNASTY’s Alexis finally gets her own office - and an assistant called David - at Colby Co. In the female boss/male underling stakes, both women have already pipped to the post by Holly Harwood on DALLAS, but while Holly might boast the most unconventional workplace arrangements in Soap Land, (so far this season, we’ve seen her conduct business meetings aboard her yacht, beside her pool and in her bedroom) Alexis’s new headquarters are arguably the most extravagant. Previously hubby Cecil’s office then nephew Jeff’s, it’s been so extensively made over, (the desk now balances on what appear to be elephant tusks) that it might as well be a new set. It’s also filmed very impressively - the shots from outside the window looking in are particularly striking in this week’s ep.Once again, the power of the media makes itself felt in this week’s Soap Land. For JR in DALLAS, it is a welcome presence as he receives 143 pieces of fan mail prompted by his appearances on Roy Ralston's TV talk show. "If you ever decide to run for political office, those people would vote for you,” Ralston tells him. For sister-in-law Val on KNOTS LANDING, the press has now become the enemy. A small army of reporters and photographers have set up camp outside her front door, hungry for her reaction to Gary’s arrest for Ciji’s murder. “I feel like I’m in my own prison,” she frets, essentially under house arrest for almost the entire episode. Over on FALCON CREST, Angela uses the press as a weapon as she threatens to expose Henri Denault’s Nazi past. “You get Richard out of my way,” she orders him, "because if you don’t, I’ll have you on the front page of every newspaper in the Western world.” Travel is very much in the air this week, with characters to-ing and fro-ing all over the US and beyond. On DYNASTY, a freshly divorced Fallon returns from Haiti accompanied by Mark J while on DALLAS, Mark G flies Pam to El Paso on his private jet and Miss Ellie accompanies Clayton to San Angelo to bid farewell to the Southern Cross. Angela begins this week’s FALCON CREST in Paris before detouring to New York on her way home in order to blackmail Henri Denault. At the end of this week’s DYNASTY, Blake receives a call from Dan Cassidy in Hong Kong, declaring that he may have just seen Steven alive in a local hospital.There are just as many trips aborted as taken in this week’s eps. Blake prevents Alexis from whisking Jeff away from his hospital bed to a private clinic in Switzerland (in the hope that she can keep the cause of his collapse a secret). On KNOTS, Laura declining Richard’s suggestion of a Mexican vacation snuffs out his last hope that their marriage might be saved. Two doors down, Val tearfully refuses Jeff Munson’s offer of a return trip to New York, thereby ending their relationship. NY is similarly a no-no for both Chip Roberts, who postpones his fresh start in the Big Apple, (“I can’t desert my friends now, they need me”) and Richard Channing on FALCON CREST, whose defiance of Henri Denault’s summons to New York leads to a deadly confrontation on the Gorman Bridge.The parallels between Bobby and Pam’s estrangement on DALLAS and Chase and Maggie’s on FALCON CREST continue. Whereas Pam has lunch with Mark Graison to discuss a deal on her brother’s behalf, Maggie dines with Daryl Clayton to review the latest amendments to her screenplay. Both meetings are strictly business, but neither man can resist undermining his dining companion’s marital status. "It seems to me that your commitment to Chase is not as strong as you led me to believe,” suggests Daryl. “You're already a single lady, you just haven't made it legal yet,” maintains Mark. Pam’s sister Katherine and Chase’s cousin Emma each volunteer their services as an intermediary for the unhappy couple, but neither get very far. The difference between the two women, of course, is that Katherine is secretly trying to sabotage Bobby and Pam’s marriage. To this end, she arranges for Bobby to see Pam and Mark lunching together. Similarly, on FALCON CREST, Chase discovers Maggie and Daryl having drinks in the bar of the Tuscany Inn. Neither husband is exactly pleased by what he sees. Bobby’s subsequent visit to Pam’s hotel suite lasts three minutes before he loses his temper and storms out, which is a full sixty seconds longer than Maggie manages when she drops by the Gioberti house to see Chase.For all the similarities that now exist between the soaps - and let’s not forget the two whodunits running concurrently on KNOTS and FALCON CREST, where Mack Mackenzie and Chase Gioberti continue to second guess the investigations being run by Sheriff Robbins and Detective Baines respectively - each of this week’s episodes includes at least one scene that somehow encapsulates the flavour of that particular soap - i.e., a scene you could only imagine seeing on that specific show and not any of the others.On DYNASTY, it comes just after Blake has discovered Alexis in Jeff’s hospital room, about to spirit him away to the Swiss Alps. With wondrous DYNASTY logic, Alexis is already dressed entirely in white, from fluffy hat to kinky boot, as if she were planning to ski herself all the way from Denver to Gstaad. Having forbidden the trip, Blake drags a furious Alexis into the hospital corridor where she lashes out at him physically and he raises an arm to ward her off. Teeth bared in anger, she delivers the thrillingly nonsensical line, "God, how I hate to see you choke on your own bloody arrogance!”KNOTS’ defining moment comes at the end of the episode. Having learned that Ciji was actually killed by a blow to head in her apartment and that her body was only later dumped in the ocean, Val has concluded that she must be responsible for the fatal blow and that Gary then moved the body to protect her. She decides to give herself up to the police. Emerging from her house for the first time in the ep, a handheld camera then tracks her journey as she struggles through the media scrum to get to her car, Lilimae following behind, helplessly pleading with her to change her mind. Here, I’m reminded of two religious icons at the same time: Val is Joan of Arc, beyond all earthly reason and answering only to a higher calling, while Lilimae is Jesus’s mother weeping at the crucifixion. A trashy whodunnit evoking such emotive imagery? This can only be KNOTS LANDING.The end of this week’s DALLAS is classic JR. Having summoned dogsbody Walt Driscoll to his darkened office, he reveals his latest plan - to sell one million barrels of oil to Cuba. Highly illegal but hugely profitable, this is JR’s most outrageous scheme since … well, his last most outrageous scheme.The scene unique to FALCON CREST is the confrontation between Richard Channing and Henri Denault which results in Denault's demise. The circumstance of the death itself - a struggle between two men over a gun, resulting in one of them inadvertently falling from a great height - is hardly unique. From Julie Grey to Jason Gioberti to Joshua Rush to Marta Del Sol, a succession of Soap Land characters have met their destinies in quite a similar way. However, the events leading up to the death - the twisted, Frankenstein-like relationship between adoptive father and son ("You were nothing but a blank slate when I adopted you ... I created you!”), the sinister European backdrop - feel particular to FALCON CREST - not that there isn’t also a significant debt owed to MARATHON MAN in the climactic showdown between an unrepentant Nazi collaborator (“The opportunities were too great for me to allow archaic notions of morality and patriotism to stand in my way”) and a younger man, with E.G. Marshall and David Selby proving ideal Soap Land substitutes for Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman.Following Ciji’s murder and Rebecca’s crash, Denault’s plummet is the third Soap Land death in as many weeks. Each is commemorated by a touching scene this week. The best of these is the chance encounter between Ciji’s mother and the Averys in KNOTS. When Mrs. Dunne (we never learn her first name) starts recounting a story from Ciji's childhood, it sounds like the beginning of an epitaph ("When she was six years old, I enrolled her in Carolyn Dewbarry’s Tap & Ballet School above the Odeon Theatre on the seventh floor. It was Carolyn Dewbarry who changed Ciji’s life …”) before turning into something much darker (“She dissipated her life away! ... She was a tramp!”). With exquisite irony, it’s left to Richard Avery, of all people, to pay tribute to Ciji. (“She worked hard, long hours because she wanted to be the best, the best for the people she sang for … She touched us all in a very special way.”) I’ve always thought this was a really good scene that, while doing nothing to advance the plot, provided fresh and unexpected insights into Richard's and Ciji’s characters. This time around, however, I realise it does advance the plot, at least in regard to the Avery marriage. By defending Ciji so gallantly, Richard partially redeems himself in Laura’s eyes. This, in turn, gives him fresh hope they can start again - a hope that is swiftly dashed. “I just want to be alone,” she tells him.This sentiment is echoed in the final scene of this week’s FALCON CREST when Diana Hunter tries to assure Richard Channing of her loyalty in the aftermath of his father’s death. “Leave me alone,” he snaps, bitter and grieving. This leaves Diana, like KNOTS’ Richard, another soon-to-depart character, on the outside looking in.DALLAS’s equivalent grief-related scene is between Pam and Cliff, in which Pam attempts to assuage her brother’s guilt over their mother's death: “She didn’t blame you. All she ever did was love you ... She asked me to take care of you and I’m trying if you’ll just let me.” In contrast to the scenes of estrangement between the Averys on KNOTS, and Richard Channing and Miss Hunter on FC, this exchange serves to reestablish the bond between Pam and Cliff.While Jeff Colby’s sanity has apparently been restored on DYNASTY - having been discharged from Soap Land Memorial Hospital, he returns to the Carrington mansion to begin a romance with Kirby - Gary Ewing’s mental and physical health take a turn for the worse as he undergoes alcohol withdrawal in jail. This leads to Soap Land’s grimmest scene to date as a repulsed Abby witnesses him fitting and retching during detox. (Throughout this prolonged sequence, Ted Shackelford manages to look even older than he will when Gary returns to DALLAS in 2014.) By comparison, Phyllis's discovery of Bobby asleep on his office couch after tying one on at the Cattleman’s Club seems pretty mild.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (2) FALCON CREST2 (1) KNOTS LANDING3 (3) DALLAS4 (4) DYNASTY</blockquote>

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