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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 20352" data-attributes="member: 22">02/Jan/86: THE COLBYS: Fallen Idol v. 02/Jan/86: KNOTS LANDING: Unbroken Bonds v. 03/Jan/86: DALLAS: The Missing Link v. 03/Jan/86: FALCON CREST: Fair GameThe characters on THE COLBYS grow ever more interesting. The “good” ones (Jason, Frankie) are now the most morally compromised, the “bad” ones (Sable, Miles) the most vulnerable. A few years ago on DALLAS, Bobby Ewing described Sue Ellen as living “in a fantasy world where everything is perfect. She’d rather crawl into a bottle than face reality.” This week, Sable admits to Miles that she too has spent her life seeking perfection. Having failed to find it in life, she has sought refuge, not in alcohol, but in art. “Do you see that world in there?” she asks, indicating a painting. “That is perfect. It needs nothing. It asks for nothing. No one can spoil it or change it or touch it … That’s what the Colby Collection means to me. If I can’t give your father perfection in his marriage, I can give it to him here." Although Sable is presently unaware of Jason’s romantic involvement with her sister, Miles is not.Last week’s KNOTS LANDING ended with Greg Sumner delivering the most scathing of speeches to his father’s portrait ("I swear on your face never to have a son that I might treat as brutally as you have treated your son”). This week’s episode of THE COLBYS concludes with Miles issuing a similarly powerful dismissal to his own father (so powerful, in fact, that Jason is reduced to tears). Whereas Greg has always despised Paul Galveston ("I probably even hated you before I knew who you were”), Miles has had his father on a pedestal from childhood. “I spent my life trying to be like you, act like you, think like you,” he tells him. “I loved you, Dad. You were my idol, a man to be proud of, the man I wanted to be proud of me." His parting words, “You don’t have a son anymore," echo Lilimae’s to Joshua on KNOTS three weeks ago: “I’m not your mama.” From Sue Ellen's conflict with her mother on DALLAS to Lilimae’s disavowal of her son and Greg’s of his father on KNOTS, to Miles’s confrontation with Jason this week and whatever is going on between JJ and Jordan Roberts on FALCON CREST (“Some secrets are best kept in the family,” mutters Jordan darkly), the wounds inflicted by parents and children upon each other during this Soap Land season feel somehow deeper and rawer than ever before.Having conquered the business world over the last couple of seasons, Soap Land’s women now find themselves on the receiving end of more diverse job offers. On this week’s DALLAS, Sue Ellen and Donna embark on new careers as charity fundraiser and helper at a special school respectively. Meanwhile on KNOTS, Karen Mackenzie is surprised to receive an invitation to join the state planning commission. In each case, it is the woman’s personal rather than professional experience that qualifies her for the job in hand. While Sue Ellen’s hunch that “people seem more generous when they’re dressed up” is based on “years of dressing up”, Donna is assured that all the requirements she needs for her new position are “love, love, and more love.” Over on KNOTS, Jill Bennett explains that Karen's “concern for the environment” is what has brought her to the governor’s notice.While KNOTS' depiction of Karen as a concerned conservationist is a wholly positive one, the DYNASTY-verse portrays the environmentalists campaigning against the Carringtons and Colbys as either unreasonable or untrustworthy, or possibly both. On last week’s DYNASTY, Bart Fallmont's refusal to even consider Steven’s suggestion of a compromise regarding the pipeline implied that his main interest in pursuing a court action was to enhance his own political reputation. Meanwhile on THE COLBYS, Clean Earth campaigner Sean McAllister has been using his relationship with Bliss to spy on her father for his uncle. Indeed, it is the information Sean has been feeding Zach Powers that leads directly to an oil spill in this week’s episode. Unaware that Zach deliberately engineered the spill, Jason is ready and willing to take full responsibility for the clean up. “We’re not going to try and duck out from under this,” he insists, apparently more concerned about the environment than the environmentalists themselves.Soap Land sons Bobby Ewing and Joshua Rush may be gone, but new storyline developments ensure that neither will be forgotten just yet. On KNOTS, the investigation into Joshua's death is reopened after his girlfriend Linda alleges he was killed by Ken Forrest. Meanwhile, Bobby’s “best friend ever since we were kids”, Matt Cantrell, shows up in DALLAS. While Pam offers to continue financing Matt's emerald-mining expedition as a way of keeping Bobby’s dream alive (“Bobby was stuck here so he put all of his dreams with Matt”), Lilimae refuses to tell the police the truth about Joshua’s death. “The only thing my son has left is his good name and I am not gonna stand by and let you or anyone else take it from him,” she tells daughter-in-law Cathy. When Cathy protests that they can’t let an innocent man go to prison, Lilimae reminds her that she has her “career to think of and it’s going so well. I would hate for a scandal to ruin it."Indeed, Soap Land’s girl singers are on the rise: While Pop View magazine puts Cathy on its cover under the banner "Hot New Teen Star”, FALCON CREST's Apollonia is off on a worldwide tour and Lance, in his capacity as her manager, is going with her — or is he? “If I decide not to go back to the priesthood,” his half-brother Christopher tells him, "I could be here [at Falcon Crest] indefinitely … Sometimes brothers are asked to share things that an only child can keep all for himself.” “You mean like land and wineries and all that sort of thing?” asks Lance. So it is that Lance and Christopher replace KNOTS' Greg and Gary as Soap Land’s sibling rivals du jour as Lance elects to remain at Falcon Crest to protect his interests. (This echoes Pam's description of Bobby’s situation at Ewing Oil: “Bobby was stuck here.”)Apollonia thinks Lance is confused. “You don’t want [Falcon Crest] when it’s yours, you want it when someone’s trying to take it away from you … You don’t know what you want in life.” Fresh from blowing up Empire Valley on KNOTS, Gary Ewing admits to feeling the same way. “I don’t know how to look ahead,” he tells Mack. "I know a lot of guys have got a masterplan … but I don’t do that. I walk around and I say, ‘OK, what’s next? Surprise me.’” No sooner are these words out of his mouth than Jill Bennett appears from nowhere and asks Mack to help fix her car. Despite never having met her before, Gary volunteers for the job instead and they exit the scene together. Blatant proof, if it were needed, that as one Soap Land storyline draws to a close, another Soap Land storyline begins.Donna Krebbs’ first day at the Woodgrove School on DALLAS is not the week’s only disability-themed storyline. Monica wanders into a cowboy bar on THE COLBYS (a culture shock equivalent to Alexis’s recent roadhouse excursion on DYNASTY) and commits the faux pas of ordering a Perrier water. This attracts the derision of a guy at the bar, Wayne Masterson, who first turns out to be blind and then turns out to be a singer. The song he subsequently performs, a country and western number with the exquisitely torturous title of "Maybe You Should Try Getting Over You”, is the first of two sappy ballads in this week’s Soap Land. The second is a cover of Michael Bolton’s "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?” performed by Cathy for her cable TV show on KNOTS. While Wayne’s song is enjoyably hokey, Cathy’s is dull and generic. Also, for the star of a religious TV programme who doesn’t wish to draw attention to her recent personal tragedy, a secular ballad about grieving for a lost love seems an odd choice (not to mention the see-through black top she performs it in). Therefore, the winner of this week’s Soap Land Song Wars is … Wayne Masterson.When Monica decides she wants to sign Wayne to Dominique’s record label, she encounters resistance from her fellow executive, Neil Kitteridge, just as Donna did from Ray when she decided to keep their Down’s Syndrome baby. However, it is not Wayne’s blindness that Neil has a prejudice against, but his musical genre.Disability may not be a theme on this week’s FALCON CREST, but with a bizarrely dressed pop singer and a lapsed Catholic priest currently residing under her roof, no one can say Angela Channing isn't doing her bit for diversity. There’s also a whiff of social concern when a distraught teenage girl bursts into Richard’s office looking for Jordan (“He beat me! I can’t go back there! He’s gonna do it again!"), her messy hysteria quite at odds with the glossy Soap Land surroundings.Popular innuendo of the week: “Dominique’s put us in bed together and I’d like to make that work,” Monica tells co-worker Neil on THE COLBYS. “Problem is, we can’t both be on top, can we?” he replies knowingly. “I like a woman who’s on top of things,” JR tells Angelica flirtatiously during a business call on DALLAS. “Where my number one client is concerned, I always like to stay on top of things,” smirks Lance with regard to Apollonia an hour later on FALCON CREST.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (2) THE COLBYS2 (3) KNOTS LANDING3 (-) FALCON CREST4 (-) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?