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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 15598" data-attributes="member: 22">20/Nov/84: PAPER DOLLS: Episode 7 v. 21/Nov/84: DYNASTY: The Secret v. 22/Nov/84: KNOTS LANDING: Love to Take You Home v. 23/Nov/84: DALLAS: Shadows v. 23/Nov/84: FALCON CREST: The Trump Card"I've called the wrong woman mother for my entire life! You’re my mother! Don't you have anything to say to me?” That's the rather wonderful opening line, delivered by Amanda Bedford, née Carrington, to Alexis on this week’s DYNASTY. Over on KNOTS LANDING, Joshua Rush is just as angry at his father Jonathan J. Rush (aka Special Guest Star Gil Thurman) for deceiving him about his mother’s identity for his entire life. "You kept the truth from me!” he shouts. "I was protecting you,” Jonathan insists. Alexis defends herself similarly. "I know what scandal can do,” she tells Amanda. "I wanted to prevent that from happening to you.”"I was so sure of who I was and what I wanted,” Amanda continues, "and then in just one moment, I became someone else. Amanda Bedford ceased to exist.” "It was a shock to me to find out that I was … not who I thought I was,” echoes Francesca Gioberti on this week’s FALCON CREST. "I can’t help feeling that Jasper Gioberti cheated me out of a part of my life.” Meanwhile back on KNOTS, in a profoundly moving sequence, Joshua undergoes an identity crisis right in front of our eyes. “It’s all a lie,” he weeps, “my whole life. I don’t know what I’ve done that was good or that was bad. I don’t know if I’ve ever been right. I don’t know what is right.”A common theme in Soap Land’s current spate of "long lost relative” storylines, of which there are several, is a fear that the new character will fall prey to undesirable influences. “She’ll corrupt you,” predicts Joshua’s father on KNOTS, referring to Lilimae. Meanwhile, FALCON CREST's Richard Channing is uneasy about the developing relationship between step-daughter Lorraine and Lance Cumson. “I want you to watch her night and day,” he instructs his assistant Pamela. There again, Lance’s grandmother doesn’t approve of her new half-sister Francesca getting involved with Richard either. “Angela warned me about you,” purrs Francesca. Back on DYNASTY, Alexis is eager to keep Amanda away from Blake. "I'm not going to let you take her away from me,” she vows to him at the end of this week's episode, "not this child!”The exceptions to this rule are DYNASTY’s Dominique and DALLAS’s Jamie. Far from feeling protective of his apparent half-sister, Blake goes so far as to actively encourages Dominique to renew her acquaintance with the nefarious Rashid Ahmed in order secure a public apology from him. "Then will you finally trust me, Blake?” she asks. "Will you admit that I am your sister?” Over on DALLAS, Jamie is less in danger of being corrupted by the Texas Ewings than of being bored to death by them. “I'm getting kind of tired of wandering about through shops and malls and hair salons every day,” she complains to Sue Ellen. "I want more in my life than that!” This is the most insistent Jamie has been since showing up at the beginning of the season. Soap Land’s other recent twenty-something arrivals - KNOTS' Joshua and FALCON CREST’s Lorraine - have been similarly undemanding, humbly asking for little more than to be accepted by their new families. DYNASTY’s Amanda proves far more rebellious in her second ep, earning herself a slap in the face and a "You little bitch!” from Alexis when she leaks the truth of their relationship to the press.Even as Amanda’s identity as "ALEXIS COLBY'S SECRET REVELATION” becomes front page news, the name of her father remains a mystery. Blake's surprise when he first meets her that she is older than he was expecting parallels Miss Ellie’s in DALLAS a few weeks ago that Jamie should be so young. Whereas Jamie’s youth served to cast further doubt (if only momentarily) that she was really Jason’s daughter, Amanda’s age leads Blake to suspect she might be his own. After so much such suspicion exhibited towards Soap Land’s other recent family additions — JR’s hostility towards Jamie, Lilimae’s initial coldness towards Joshua, etc., — there’s something touching about Blake’s eagerness to claim Amanda as his child. His scepticism over Alexis’s claim that Amanda was the result of a brief fling with a ski instructor in Gstaad leads to a classic DYNASTY exchange. Blake: "There was no ski instructor." Alexis: "There were many ski instructors." Blake: "I'll bet there were!”The weighty significance of fathers is a recurring Soap Land theme, particularly in this week’s episodes. As well as Blake and Amanda getting to know each other on DYNASTY, there’s Jonathan and Joshua working out their issues on KNOTS. Meanwhile FALCON CREST's Maggie is moved to learn that the biological father she never knew was a World War II soldier killed in action and on DALLAS, Miss Ellie makes the controversial decision to remove Jock’s portrait from Southfork living room at the same time as assuring her boys that, “Your daddy is in every shadow of this house.”Ordinarily the epitome of effortless leadership, Miss Ellie has been undergoing a period of transition of late as she adjusts to her life as a newlywed while still living with her previous husband’s children at Southfork. This has resulted in her being wrong-footed in almost every scene. Confusingly, it’s also coincided with Donna Reed taking over the role as Ellie. I’ve always been very critical about Reed’s acting but now I can see that she conveys her character’s indecision and insecurity very well. So why does her presence still seem so odd? I think it’s to do with scale. What Reed is delivering, if one can get past the distractingly glamorous hairdo and designer dresses, is quite a subtle, nuanced performance — one that DALLAS itself, now that Bradford May’s triumphant stint as Director of Photography is over and the show has reverted to a more generic look and feel, isn’t fully equipped to capture. It’s as if the rhythms of the programme and actress are slightly out of sync.By contrast, on this week’s KNOTS, the acting, writing, camera work and music are all working in perfect unison. In one scene, Karen finds Mack, from whom she is still estranged, sitting on the rocks by the sea. For some reason, she brings a coffee pot along with her and tries to refill his cup but he won’t let her. It’s a small, seemingly incidental detail that somehow says so much. On DALLAS, such lower key moments — such as the subtleties of Donna Reed’s acting — tend to get lost in the shuffle. DYNASTY may not be quite so artful as KNOTS but the pull of the action, the swell of music, the boldness of the acting and camera work all feel like they're driving in the same direction.While Ellie's removal of Jock’s portrait becomes a major plot point on this week’s DALLAS, a framed photograph of another dead husband, Peter De Vilbis, conveniently displayed on a hotel room dresser, enables us to learn the secret identity of Jeff Colby’s latest squeeze, Nicole Simpson, on this week’s DYNASTY. Peter’s Euro-trash contemporary from last season, DALLAS’s Naldo Marchetta, also resurfaces this week. He claims that he wants to become part of his daughter Charlie’s life — but what’s he really after? Similarly, Nicole’s true motivations for insinuating herself with Jeff have yet to be revealed.This DYNASTY episode also introduces us to Soap Land’s latest PR guy, Luke Fuller. Whether he’ll turn out to be as duplicitous as his publicist predecessors — Leslie Stewart, Chip Roberts, Tracy Kendall — remains to be seen. He seems to possess the same unnerving eager-to-please preppy quality as Chip, and Claudia, who walks into her bisexual husband's office to find Luke straightening his tie, is already a little wary of him.In the same week that Mimi Rodgers suffers an abduction-induced miscarriage on PAPER DOLLS, radiant mothers-to-be Krystle Carrington and Val Ewing are each shown undergoing what appears to be a routine medical check up. Both about seven months pregnant, both are assured by their doctors that they and their babies are perfectly healthy. Nevertheless, each scene results in a sense of impending doom. In spite of her doctor’s blessing, Blake will not contemplate the idea of Krystle returning to work for the remainder of her pregnancy. "Krystle, darling,” he reasons, "in two months we'll be holding the most precious gift that could be given to us — a new life. Now is it too much to ask that you wait those two months?" "Two months - I wonder what could happen to us in two months?” broods Krystle portentously. The way the background music swells around her and the screen then fades to black suggests that whatever is going to happen, it won’t be good. Meanwhile, it’s only after Val has left her doctor’s office with some new medication that we glimpse his face and realise we’ve seen him before — lunching with Abby’s sinister associate Scott Easton earlier in the same episode. (We’ve also seen him several times on DALLAS as JR’s banker, but that’s another story.) We then see hear him on the phone to Easton. “It’s taken care of,” he tells him enigmatically. "I’d say two to three days at the most.” Again, we don’t know exactly what’s going on, but with the creepy doctor landing the final shot of the episode, there’s clearly something looming menacingly on the horizon.And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (2) KNOTS LANDING2 (1) DYNASTY3 (5) PAPER DOLLS4 (4) FALCON CREST5 (3) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?