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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 13392" data-attributes="member: 22">30/Jan/84: EMERALD POINT N.A.S.: Disguises v. 01/Feb/84: DYNASTY: A Little Girl v. 02/Feb/84: KNOTS LANDING: Lest the Truth be Known v. 03/Feb/84: DALLAS: Twelve Mile Limit v. 03/Feb/84: FALCON CREST: Power PlayThere’s a strong sense of urgency in this week’s Soap Land as several characters try to extricate themselves from situations that are spiraling dangerously out of control. “I don’t even care about the money anymore, I just want out!” pleads Laura Avery on KNOTS LANDING. “It’s too late for that, Laura. You’re in this as deep as anyone is,” snaps Abby. “I can’t do this anymore. Let me out, please!” begs another cornered redhead, Tiffany Case on EMERALD POINT. “It is too late,” replies the Russian Rashid Ahmed sternly. While Tiffany attempts to flee the country, KNOTS' Cathy Geary — another character whose past sins are catching up with her — tries to leave Gary's ranch, but both are driven back from whence they came by ruthless men who insist they finish the jobs they started. Meanwhile, on DALLAS, Edgar Randolph tries to leave the planet via a combination of pills and booze but is discovered by Ray and Donna Krebbs before it’s too late.Even death holds no escape. "At least if I had died, they wouldn't know about my past,” says Edgar, referring to his family in the final scene of this week’s DALLAS. "Sure they would,” JR replies. "I'd break your story to the newspapers before you were even cold in the ground.” JR ends the episode with a threat: “Don’t you ever mention my name to Donna Krebbs again or you’ll really regret that you didn’t die today.” On KNOTS, Laura makes the mistake of mentioning Mark St Clare’s name to Mack Mackenzie. St Clare then applies the same polite not-in-so-many-words method of intimidation to Laura that the sinister Mr. Spheeris did to Pamela Lynch on last week’s FALCON CREST. "You have such a lovely face, delicate somehow,” Spheeris told Pamela, his threat unspoken but obvious. “How old are your sons now?” St Clare asks Laura. "They depend on you, don’t they? … I’m sure you’ll find a way to sever all connections with Mack Mackenzie.”Both Laura and FALCON CREST’s Maggie are plagued by anonymous calls throughout this week's episodes. “He made threats against my children!” panics Laura. “He said something terrible would happen if I didn’t let Jacqueline Perrault rest in peace!” frets Maggie. Things are looking equally bleak for Richard Channing by the end of this week’s FALCON CREST: “This isn’t just a newspaper article — it’s my death warrant,” he murmurs after discovering Emma has published Maggie’s exposé of Jacqueline on the front page of the New Globe without his, or Maggie’s, knowledge.Back on DALLAS, Ray and Donna barge into JR’s office to accuse him of driving Edgar Randolph to attempt suicide, having correctly surmised that JR was blackmailing him. JR, however, manages to talk his way out of trouble and Donna ends up grudgingly apologising to him. Meanwhile on KNOTS, Mack bursts into Greg’s hotel suite, interrupting his smooch with Laura, and accuses him of being in cahoots with Apolune. Technically, he isn’t, but Mack refuses to believe his protestations of innocence. “I AM NOT, I REPEAT NOT INVOLVED IN THIS!” Greg screams, blowing the cool he has sustained since arriving in KNOTS all those weeks ago. The three-way showdown between JR, Donna and Ray is a blast but the one between Mack, Greg and Laura is electric. Soap Land’s been tense before but never quite as much as it is here. Larry Elikann is the perfect director for this kind of paranoid, explosive scene: all looming angles, tight close ups and shouting faces.At the end of this week’s KNOTS, a desperate Laura throws herself on Mack’s mercy: "I wanna tell you everything I know." There’s a confession at the end of this week’s DYNASTY too, as Adam finally admits to Blake that it was he, not Alexis, who poisoned Jeff. Whereas Alexis is exonerated by Adam, Abby is implicated by Laura (“Apolune is Abby’s company”). Just as Laura is looking for protection for her children so Adam is seeking absolution in the hopes of somehow saving his prematurely born baby. However, his efforts are in vain. “It was a little girl,” the doctor tells him sombrely.As if all this danger and darkness weren’t enough, another slightly loopier streak of paranoia also runs through this week's Soap Land. On EMERALD POINT, it’s slowly become apparent that newcomer David, the sleepy-eyed writer who lives by the beach like a slightly artsier Ben Gibson, is not the laid-back guy he first appeared to be. Having persuaded the widow Octopussy to let him use her life story as the basis for his new novel, he appears to be developing an obsession with her. Like previous Soap Land psychos, DALLAS’s Roger Larsen and Peter Horton in FLAMINGO ROAD, he has numerous photos of the object of his fascination pinned to his wall — but he also seems to have a past connection with her. Could he possibly be her missing-presumed-dead husband come back to life with a new face and a screw loose? A similar question hovers over the anonymous gifts Claudia keeps receiving on DYNASTY — has Matthew Blaisdel returned from the dead to torment his wife with violets and cryptic messages? Another long lost husband also shows up in KNOTS LANDING, Cathy Geary’s ex, Ray.Ray may not have returned from the dead, but one could argue that his appearance is still a resurrection of sorts. For if one buys into the theory that Cathy is a karmic reincarnation of Ciji, then who is Ray — a dangerously possessive and manipulative Svengali ("Skin and bones, but I saw what you could be,” he tells Cathy, recalling their first meeting) — but the spirit of Chip Roberts transposed to another body? For her part, Cathy regards Ray with the same doe-eyed passivity that Ciji did Chip. Her newly extended back story reveals that she too has been a singer since childhood — but while the young Ciji attended Carolyn Dewbarry’s Tap & Ballet School, Ray had thirteen-year-old Cathy playing clubs in Charlottesville whilst lying about her age and sleeping with him in the backseat of his car.In the same week that the neurotically needy Celia begs Navy boyfriend Simon not to embark on a reconnaissance mission in EMERALD POINT, KNOTS LANDING’s Val and Lilimae try to dissuade Ben from his reporting assignment in Central America. “There are wars going on!” reasons Lilimae. Unusually in Soap Land, where faraway trouble spots are customarily referred to no more specifically than "South East Asia" or "the Middle East", KNOTS dares to be a little more precise about Ben’s destination — El Salvador. Even more surprisingly, he invites Val to come along. This leads to a speech one would unlikely to hear anywhere else in Soap Land’s hermetically sealed world. “There is something about going to an undeveloped country, coping without all the gadgets that you think you need, there’s something about seeing the way people live in other parts of the world that helps you to look at your own world differently,” he tells Val. His persuasive pitch is countered by a touching monologue of Lilimae’s. “After all the adventures, strangers met and experiences had are over, there’s nothing really to hold on to,” she says to Ben. "At some point you have to be able to look someone in the eye and know that they know you … This is the best part of my life.” After listening to free spirit Lilimae extol the virtues of stability on KNOTS, it’s a little ironic to hear quintessential homebody Ellie Ewing embrace the inevitably of change during a cosy late night chat with Bobby on DALLAS. “Isn’t it odd how things work out? People change, partners come and go,” she muses philosophically.Also undermining Ben’s inclusive world view is Soap Land’s depiction of foreigners as uniformly sinister and untrustworthy, DYNASTY's Alexis and FALCON CREST’s Pamela notwithstanding. (While neither woman is exactly saintly — Alexis is on particularly bitchy form this week — Soap Land appears to regards Brits as honorary Americans at this point.) The remainder are portrayed as either cold-blooded killers (Russian Rashid Ahmed on EMERALD POINT, the Germanic-sounding Spheeris on FALCON CREST) or Eurotrash gigolos — while we have yet to meet Jenna’s ex-husband Naldo Marchetta, the description Katherine Wentworth’s PI gives in this week’s DALLAS of his escapades with an Italian countess in Argentina mirrors the tawdry tale Alexis tells of Peter de Vilbis and the Moroccan princess he drove to a suicide attempt when he jilted her "and flew off to Monte Carlo with some obscure little French actress with no talent — at least not for acting” in this week’s DYNASTY.Peter also finds time this week to goad Jeff into striking him in public. He does this by making a sexually crude comment about the woman Jeff loves. “I'm her instructor,” he boasts with reference to Fallon, "a very good instructor, in the air and in bed … She never told you about that?” Over on FALCON CREST, Lance does much the same thing to Cole. "If you ever wanna know what it's like to be with a real man, Linda,” he says to Cole’s wife, "you've got my number.” Just as Jeff knocks Peter off his La Mirage barstool so Cole pushes Lance into a clothing rack in the store they’re in. While Peter taunts Jeff merely for his own amusement, Lance has another motive for provoking Cole — to discredit him at little Joseph’s custody trial.This is the third custody hearing in Soap Land’s history. Earlier this season Blake fought Steven for custody of Danny in DYNASTY while two years ago JR and Sue Ellen battled over John Ross on DALLAS. (Incidentally, the same actor who played the judge at John Ross’s preliminary custody hearing is now Cole’s lawyer at Joseph’s. He was also the minister who married Alexis and Cecil on DYNASTY.) Both of those storylines took centre stage in their respective episodes; each was deemed more significant than any other concurrent plot. This, however, is not the FALCON CREST way. The story of Cole suing Melissa and Lance for custody of his son, which has been building for almost two years and which strikes at the heart of the show’s central conflict between the Giobertis and the Channings, is given no more weight or prominence than anything else in this week's episode. And while it’s still dramatic and juicy, it does not feel anywhere as momentous as it might have. Perhaps the trade-off is that we get remarkable scenes like the one in which Lance, in order to embellish the blow he received from Cole, orders Chao Li to give him (Lance) a proper beating. “Lance, tradition forbids this,” protests the mild-mannered Chao Li, but he is insistent: “My grandmother wants results, I’ll give her results.” Melissa looks on in horror as Chao Li reluctantly follows orders and beats Lance up. It's the kind of deliciously dark and twisted moment one would only get in FALCON CREST.After Chao Li gets through with him, it’s a toss up who makes the bigger dramatic impact: Lance when he limps into court with a bruised and puffed up face, or Mack Mackenzie in the opening scene of this week’s KNOTS when he whips off his dark glasses to reveal the gruesomely swollen eyelid that causes Laura to flinch and turn away in shock.And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (3) FALCON CREST3 (2) DALLAS4 (5) DYNASTY5 (6) EMERALD POINT N.A.S.</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =