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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 21258" data-attributes="member: 22">12/Feb/86: DYNASTY: The Divorce v. 13/Feb/86: THE COLBYS: Fallon’s Choice v. 13/Feb/86 KNOTS LANDING: A Very Special Gift v. 14/Feb/86: DALLAS: Dire Straits v. 14/Feb/86: FALCON CREST: Finders and LosersBad girls Alexis Dexter and Abby Ewing are both on the receiving end of some unpleasant surprises this week. On DYNASTY, Alexis's latest catty exchange with Krystle results not in her getting the last word, but her breakfast tipped in her lap. Meanwhile on KNOTS, Abby can’t have predicted that this week's confrontation with Karen, where she tells her that Mack is having an affair with Jill Bennett, would conclude with Karen literally laughing her out of her office.And that ain’t the half of it. Early on in this week’s episode, Alexis finds her husband and daughter in bed together at La Mirage. She wastes no time in divorcing one and disowning the other. “I have nothing to say you,” she tells Amanda. "Stay out of my life.” Peter Stavros similarly renounces his daughter Sofia on this week’s FALCON CREST (“I have nothing to say to her,” he informs a servant. "See that she leaves this house at once”) in spite of her having killed her husband to save his life. (Given that this is the first instance of a Soap Land wife — and a heavily pregnant one to boot — shooting her spouse, one only wishes it was bit more exciting.) Abby's equivalent discovery to Alexis’s at La Mirage comes when she calls Jill’s room at the Bryant Hotel and hears Gary’s voice coming from the shower. (A Ewing brother taking a shower in the same week that Cliff Barnes utters the line, “It was Bobby’s dream, now it’s Pam’s nightmare” on DALLAS — hmmm, I’m sure one could find some unintentional foreshadowing in there somewhere if one looked hard enough.)Abby’s immediate response is to assign a detective to “find out everything you can” about Jill Bennett. "Let me be the judge of whether it’s of any value,” she adds. Over on DYNASTY, Adam Carrington is a little more specific when he likewise contacts a PI after witnessing some intriguing body language between his brother Steven and Bart Fallmont: "I want to know where he went school, who his roommates were, anything you can find out about the man’s personal life.” Meanwhile on DALLAS, JR tells Sly “to dig every piece of information you can on Dimitri Marinos … I want to see every frame of newsreel footage available and read every article ever written about him.” Sly proves a faster worker than either Abby or Adam’s detectives and by the last scene of the episode, JR is wading through newspaper clippings and fast-forwarding through video tapes. My own attention was caught by the clip of a British newsreader who mentions in passing a “closely contested match" where "Worcester defeated Surrey by three runs.” A reference to English county cricket in Soap Land — what could be more incongruous?Romantically speaking, it's an eventful week for the DYNASTY-verse women. As fast as Alexis divorces Dex in the Virgin Islands, her cousin Frankie weds Roger Langdon in London. Alexis’s plans to then “marry a king” are quickly abandoned when she discovers Galen has been faking his paralysis all along. Her daughter Amanda’s hopes of divorcing a prince to marry her stepfather are similarly dashed when Dex tells her he still loves her mother. Meanwhile in California, Fallon finally chooses Jeff over his cousin Miles.Having broken the bad news to Miles, Fallon rather unwisely accepts a ride from him in his red convertible. In a parallel scenario on KNOTS, Gary has finally persuaded Jill to join him for "a fast stretch" in his red convertible. Pretty soon, both women are hanging on for dear life. Each car’s acceleration is indicated by a close up of the speedometer. Even though Miles’s only climbs from 65 to 80, compared to Gary's 70 to 120, THE COLBYS’ sequence is by far the more thrilling of the two — erratically swerving both oncoming traffic and cliff edges. The shaky camera work reflects the driver’s state of mind. While Gary is having a ball (“Tell me you’re not excited!” he shouts gleefully at Jill), Miles is in a rage ("You’ve just turned this whole world ugly!” he yells at Fallon). When Jill asks Gary to stop ("I’ve had enough, please!”), he does so, laughing that whooping laugh of his the whole time. When Fallon pleads with Miles to do the same ("You’ll kill us both! … Stop the car! Let me out!”), he ignores her. Finally, she pulls the key from the ignition, jumps out of the car and runs dangerously close to the cliff edge to escape him. He chases after her. “Now you know what it’s like to have your life taken out of your control!” he snarls. In a way, this sequence — Miles’s aggression, Fallon’s helplessness, him ignoring her cries to stop — functions as a more graphic substitute for the rape scene in last week’s ep. Whereas this incident appears to draw a line under Fallon and Miles’s relationship, the KNOTS' equivalent serves as foreplay for Gary and Jill’s. “I’m not riding with you,” Fallon tells Miles, before throwing his car keys back at him and flagging down a passing car. “Wanna do it again?” Gary asks Jill and she nods mischievously.Soap Land is indeed a fast-paced world and the fact that Steven Carrington, Lilimae Clements and Jenna Wade are each still mourning for a departed loved one (Luke Fuller, Joshua Rush and Bobby Ewing respectively) is deemed as a cause for concern in this week’s Soap Land. “There is such a thing as too much grief, too much pain, more than you are able to bear,” Donna Krebbs informs Jenna with evangelical certainty on DALLAS. Krystle expresses the same sentiment in milder form on DYNASTY. “I know what it is to grieve,” she tells Steven. “That doesn’t mean we shut out the rest of the world forever.” Lilimae has been doing a pretty good job of shutting everyone out on KNOTS recently (“Whenever I go by her bedroom, the door’s closed,” observes Ben), to the point where she hasn’t appeared on screen in the last two episodes. “I’m getting worried about her,” frets Val.Like Lilimae, DYNASTY’s Claudia has been a no show for the last couple of weeks. Her onscreen absence, explained by a letter sent to her husband (“It’s goodbye, Adam — don’t try and find me”), is really due to Pamela Bellwood's offscreen pregnancy. Likewise, Pam’s abduction storyline on DALLAS has been constructed to accommodate Victoria Principal's own medical condition. In Pam's absence, the focus of the story shifts to Matt Cantrell who has been chosen to deliver the ransom money to her kidnappers. In this respect, the story plays out like a Colombian variation of “Kidnapped”, the story of Bobby’s abduction in Season 1. Back then, the designated go-between was Cliff Barnes whom the Ewings didn’t trust any more than Cliff and Mark trust Matt now. They suspect he is either in league with the kidnappers themselves or plans to make off with the ransom money ($100,000 — a mere pittance compared with the million dollars that Krystle discovers Rita and Joel withdrew from her account during their kidnapping scam). Eventually, we learn that Captain Rueda, the local chief of police, was the real mastermind behind Pam’s kidnapping. Perhaps one shouldn’t be surprised — the actor playing Rueda also orchestrated the abduction of Field and Constance during their honeymoon on FLAMINGO ROAD. (He got away with it that time as well.) Then as now, Sam Curtis, aka Mark Graison, was part of the rescue team.Speaking of actors recurring in similar roles, remember Oscar Stone, the “old coot” whose land Alexis wanted so badly she ended up singing 'See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have' for him in a saloon? Well, he had previously shown up in DALLAS’s first season as Wally Kessell, another “old buzzard" whose oilfields Cliff and the Ewings squabbled over. This week, he appears in FALCON CREST as Carl Beck, owner of yet another much-coveted piece of land. This time, however, there’s a twist — his vines have been infected and the land is now worthless. Facing ruin, he offers to sell out to Chase at a rock bottom price. Instead, Chase takes pity on him and so fools Angela into believing the land is still valuable and that he himself plans to buy it for a healthy sum. Eager to beat him to it, Angela makes Carl an offer of $75,000. He gladly accepts, then hightails it out of the country before Angela realises she’s been tricked into paying a small fortune for a worthless property.Elsewhere on this week’s FC, Emma and Dwayne follow the example set by Mark and Cliff on DALLAS by travelling south of the border to investigate a kidnapping — that of Dwayne’s truck Ursula. They even find a characterful police chief of their own with whom Emma flirts into helping them retrieve Ursula safe and sound. It’s a slight but amusing subplot and a lot more entertaining than the episode’s main abduction drama unfolding in Peter Stavros's Monte Carlo villa, which is possibly Soap Land's most boring storyline to date.More excitingly, it’s a three-horse race in this week’s Soap Land Song Wars. After her two-song stint on last week’s COLBYS, Dominique crosses back to DYNASTY for an impressive, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink rendition of 'I've Got You Under My Skin'. (It’s supposed to be a casual run-through with a pianist, but she gives it all she’s got.) In contrast, the lullaby Fallon delivers at her son’s bedside is barely audible. Ultimately, however, THE COLBYS’ Wayne has them both beat with a genuinely lovely ballad entitled 'Sweet Monica'. “You were my inspiration,” he tells Monica somewhat unnecessarily.Soap Land’s two disability-themed storylines each takes a turn for the personal this week. While blind Wayne kisses Monica on THE COLBYS (after that pretty song, how could she resist?), DALLAS's Donna bonds with a deaf boy at the Woodgrove School.On last week’s DALLAS, Angelica Nero ordered Grace to “get close to Jack, get him in bed.” On this week’s KNOTS, a rather more discreet Greg Sumner suggests to Peter that he “cultivate a relationship with Abby — a little social intercourse could prove invaluable to our team." What Greg doesn’t yet realise, however, is that Peter and Abby are already in bed together, metaphorically speaking. While Peter is confident he can play one off against the other, his mother Sylvia is less certain: “I’m not sure I like all this double dealing. It’s dangerous.”Indeed, there are examples in this week’s Soap Land of how easily such deceptions can backfire. While Sean McAllister explains to Bliss how he came to spy on her on THE COLBYS ("I thought I was doing the right thing — you, the spoilt daughter of a capitalist bandit, and me, the defender of the environment — except I fell in love with you”), Mandy confesses to the same crime on DALLAS. (“I was hurt,” she tells JR. "I had to punish you … [Cliff] told me there was a way to get even … There’s no excuse for what I did.”) Alas, there doesn’t seem to be a way back for either couple. “I can’t forgive you, not for using me,” Bliss tells Sean. “Maybe we can’t fix what’s gone wrong between us. I’m not sure I even want to,” JR tells Mandy. And when Peter runs into Gary and Jill at the end of this week’s KNOTS, we learn of yet another lover with a secret agenda. “Does he suspect anything?” Peter asks once Gary is safely out of earshot. “No, I don’t think so,” Jill replies.Just as the shadow of James Dean continues to loom over Miles on THE COLBYS — it's there as he speeds recklessly through the California hills with Fallon, and again during the electric father/son confrontation at the end of the ep where Jason backhands Miles across the face then immediately regrets it (“I've never hit you in your life, this is the first time, the first time, I’m sorry”) — there is also a late '50s vibe in the way teen rebellion is depicted on KNOTS LANDING. Watching Olivia Cunningham, who closely resembles the young Natalie Wood, defy her mother by applying lipstick on the way to school and then flirting with a Hispanic boy on a motorbike, she's could easily be a character from GREASE or WEST SIDE STORY. While her defiant attitude qualifies her for membership of the Pink Ladies, the reaction of her wholesome cousin Michael when he finds a joint in her bedroom is pure Sandra Dee. “This kind of thing doesn’t go on here,” he tells her solemnly. (There again, perhaps he’s recalling the trouble his brother Eric got into when faced with almost the exact same scenario during "Man of the Hour”, back in Season 2.)And this week's Top 5 is …1 (2) KNOTS LANDING2 (1) DYNASTY3 (3) THE COLBYS4 (4) DALLAS5 (5) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?