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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 21981" data-attributes="member: 22">19/Feb/86: DYNASTY: The Dismissal v. 20/Feb/86: THE COLBYS: The Trial v. 20/Feb/86: KNOTS LANDING: Irrevocably Yours v. 21/Feb/86: DALLAS: Overture v. 21/Feb/86: FALCON CREST: Flesh and BloodThe Moldavians may be gone, but pomp and protocol live on in the DYNASTY-verse thanks to arrival in California of the British vice counsel and his wife, Lord and Lady Langdon, aka Frankie and her new husband Roger. The reception to welcome them to Los Angeles is the centrepiece of this week's COLBYS and strongly recalls Blake and Krystle's wedding at the start of DYNASTY. The procession of fancy cars through the gates, the oh so civilised ambience, the characterful bit part players (let's hear it for Mary, "the diplomat's wife who can sense a chilly silence at five hundred paces") — they all combine to create a strong backdrop against which the hushed conversations and stolen moments between Jason and Frankie, Jason and Roger, and an especially sizzling showdown between Frankie and Sable, can play out.The latter is one of two long-awaited sisterly confrontations to take place in Soap Land this week. After lurking around the periphery of DYNASTY for the past few episodes, Caress Morelle finally comes face to face with her sister Alexis. Whereas Sable and Frankie's encounter takes place in an ultra-refined public setting, Alexis and Caress’s meeting takes place in private, over lunch in Alexis’s office. On THE COLBYS, the dramatic tension arises from Frankie and Sable's efforts to retain their outward composure even as they level accusations and insults at one another ("Why do you hate me so much?" "Stop playing Bo Peep!"). On DYNASTY, the tension works the other way around. Caress and Alexis each maintain a facade of politeness, even though it is clear they loathe each other. The condescending way Alexis pities Caress ("Darling, my life's been a fairy tale compared to yours") recalls a line Sable delivered to Frankie earlier in the season: "Life hasn’t been very kind to you, has it, poor darling?”There are no sisters in DALLAS. Instead, we have Donna and Jenna who have forged, to borrow the title of Maggie Gioberti's novel, a sudden friendship that is as intense as it is unlikely. (At least, it's intense on Donna’s side; Jenna appears to have no say in the matter.) They too have a private conversation which threatens to turn public this week as Donna accuses Jenna during a restaurant scene of lying about attending her therapy sessions. Jenna stands up to leave, but then a weepy Donna grabs her by the arm and begs her to sit down. Jenna complies. "I don't know what's happening to me anymore," she admits. Watching the scene, I kind of know how she feels.Indeed, it’s an indication of how upside down this period of DALLAS is that Donna, a character I’ve always really, really liked, due in no small part to Susan Howard’s truthful, no-nonsense approach to the role, has now become so cloying and needy that I almost hate her. Her only real competition for the Most Irritating Person in Soap Land Award at present is her furniture-rearranging accomplice Miss Ellie. “I can't think of many things I like more than taking a long walk and picking flowers," trills Ellie this week. I'd find that line far more acceptable, and believable, from Donna Reed's version of the character.Over on FALCON CREST, the original Jenna, Jordan Roberts, is also under pressure to seek therapy, this time from boyfriend Greg who is frustrated by her continued avoidance of any intimate physical contact. KNOTS LANDING's Karen is similarly uncomfortable with the idea of making love with Mack and avoids the act almost as strenuously as Rita did Blake's advances earlier in this season's DYNASTY. When questioned by Mack, Karen isn't able to explain herself any better than Rita did. “It’s … um …,” she manages weakly. Whereas Blake threatened Rita with divorce, Mack pretends he'd sooner watch TV anyway. FALCON CREST's Greg, meanwhile, storms off in a huff after being rejected by Jordan who then transforms herself into her vampy alter-ego Monica. This recalls Val's attempt on last season's KNOTS to turn herself into a sexy man-eater, dragging herself up as if she were a regular TV viewer who had watched one too many Morgan Fairchild movies. “You are beautiful and there isn’t a man in town who wouldn’t want you just the way you are,” she told her reflection. Where Val failed miserably at being Morgan Fairchild, Jordan/Monica proves rather more adept at it - that's if the string of one night stands she's accrued over the past few episodes is anything to go by.This week's FALCON CREST delivers its own version of Abby and Val/Verna's coffee shop meeting on KNOTS when Terry approaches Jordan in a night-club, only for Jordan to fail to recognise her. "Sorry lady, you've got the wrong number. My name is Monica Smith," she tells her. "I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else," echoes Jill Bennett on KNOTS when a passer by on the street interrupts her and Mack, addressing her as Dottie Simpkins. The woman then apologises and Mack and Jill continue their conversation without skipping a beat. There’s a similar moment on DALLAS where JR meets with Harry McSween at a street-side coffee shop and asks him to dig into Jerry Kenderson's past. It’s the kind of scene we’ve seen a dozen times before, but the director adds a little flavour to it by having a vagrant come up to their table. Harry hands him some change and then he and JR, like Mack and Jill, carry on talking without referencing him. While the DALLAS encounter is of no narrative consequence, the one involving Jill later provides us with a clue as to her real agenda.This is the first time we've seen Harry McSween on DALLAS since he apprehended Katherine Wentworth at the beginning of last season. Likewise, recurring PI Morgan Hess makes his first appearance of the season on this week's DYNASTY. It’s never occurred to me before, but with their similar height, age, colouring, narrative function and taste in jackets, Harry and Hess could almost pass for twins.While Blake is still looking for the mysteriously vanished Rita and Joel on DYNASTY ("You people have had enough time on this thing ... Try harder!" he shouts at the police), Richard Channing continues his search for the equally elusive Cassandra Wilder on FALCON CREST ("You let her slip through your fingers ... You're fired!" he shouts at his detective). Whereas reformed bad girl Sammy Jo tries to make amends by helping Blake with his quest (hence the return of Morgan Hess), the not so reformed Terry deliberately sabotages Richard’s search by keeping crucial information about Cassandra's whereabouts from him. This leads to Richard and Terry putting their own spin on the Soap Land fight scene. Last week, Krystle tipped Alexis’s breakfast in her lap and that theme continues as Richard pours a glass of milk over Terry’s head. They then proceed to pelt each other with soft furnishings, leading up to the inevitable anger-turns-to-passion moment ( “I despise you!” “I wouldn’t have it any other way!”).On this week's DYNASTY, Alexis undergoes a dramatic turning point while she is asleep. It occurs during a dream sequence which is part flashback (a montage of past fights with Dex followed some of her more romantic moments with Blake), part fantasy ("I've never stopped loving you and I never will," Blake tells her during a stylised, soft focus embrace). She then awakens with the realisation, “Oh Blake, it’s always been you, always!” KNOTS LANDING similarly relies on flashbacks and voiceovers to convey what is taking place in Lilimae’s mind. Firstly, we see her in her bedroom where she has spent the last couple of episodes. Her actions — the way she puts down her bible, straightens the bedcovers, looks tearfully at Joshua's photo and adjusts a picture on the wall — have an air of finality abut them. She then comes downstairs where Val and Ben are busy with the twins in the kitchen. Rather than speak to them, she watches them unobserved for a moment before quietly leaving the house. One last hesitation, one last look behind her, and she's gone. It's very much like the scene in Season 4 where Richard Avery leaves the cul-de-sac for the very last time.But whereas we never saw Richard again, here we continue to track Lilimae on her journey. Just as DYNASTY's Krystle recently revisited the attic where she was held captive so Lilimae returns to the Mission District where Joshua died, her pilgrimage accompanied by appropriate flashbacks. As she approaches the building from which he fell, she "sees" Joshua's body where it landed in the street. Then she looks up and there's Cathy's billboard as it was on that fateful night. Is she "seeing" this as another flashback or is it there in the present? As with Alexis's dream/realisation (“Oh Blake, it’s always been you!"), there's a sense that the barrier between the character’s conscious and subconscious is breaking down in order to move the narrative forward. As Lilimae climbs the stairs to the roof, her last proper conversation with Joshua plays on the soundtrack, concluding with her line: "I would give my life to make that up to you.” Indeed, the implication is that "giving her life" is what she has planned. However, after reliving Joshua's final moments on the roof and then breaking down, she evidently has a change of heart and returns home to the cul-de-sac. (In the meantime, Val has grown anxious about her unexplained absence in the same way that Miss Ellie and Donna worry when Jenna is late for dinner at Southfork after skipping a session with her psychiatrist.) "I wasn't the best mother to Joshua," Lilimae tells Val and Ben as they are putting to the twins to bed. "I can't do anything about that now ... but there is something else I can do ... I will be the best grandmother that I can be to two little pumpkins." Having made her own pilgrimage, to Bobby’s emerald mine in Colombia, Pam Ewing comes to terms with the past in a similar way this week. “You've been right all along," she tells Mark. "I’ve been following a dream that belonged to Bobby. I guess I had to ... but now it’s time for me to move on." Lilimae and Pam both then pay touching tribute to the men who now serve as Joshua's and Bobby's replacements. "Do you know what makes me the happiest? That you were here to see me through it,” Pam tells Mark. "I lost a son -- I would dearly love to have another son," Lilimae tells Ben. Mark and Ben are both moved. "I don't know what to say," Mark admits while Ben responds to Lilimae with a silent embrace.Back on DYNASTY, Alexis has a proposition for Blake. In order to appease environmental concerns about the Carrington/Colby pipeline, she suggests donating "Lake Colby and the surrounding acres" to the state as a sanctuary for wildlife. "If both of our companies did this as a joint venture, it would prove how pro-environment we were and it would totally disarm our critics." (Interestingly, no one on DALLAS raises any environmental concerns when Matt Cantrell explains what constructing an emerald mine in the middle of a jungle entails. "You're practically going to be building a town," Pam remarks cheerfully.) Meanwhile, JR invites Sue Ellen to accompany him to the upcoming oil conference in Martinique. “We used to be a hell of a team,” he reminds her. "We should join forces," Alexis tells Blake. "We could accomplish so much together." In the final scene of their respective episodes, Alexis and JR each makes it clear to their former spouse that what they really want is a reconciliation. "I've divorced Dex. It's over between us," Alexis informs Blake. "Mandy's a thing of the past. It's over with," JR assures Sue Ellen. Neither Blake nor Sue Ellen is interested, but while Blake is adamant ("Whatever we had died years ago and there's no way to breathe life into it") Sue Ellen does at least leave JR with a sliver of hope ("Nothing is going to change between us — until you do")."Vengeance can eat a man's guts out ... chewing away till there's nothing left," warns Jason Colby this week. In spite of this, Soap Land has had some exciting end-of-episode vows of revenge recently. At the end of KNOTS two weeks ago, Greg Sumner unveiled his plan to "recover what Gary Ewing stole, Empire Valley, and ... bring down Gary and Abby Ewing." Last week's instalment of THE COLBYS ended with Miles telling his father to "be sorry for that tramp you fell for. I know what she is and I'm going to prove it! Maybe I can't make you help me, but by God I'll make you watch!" This week, it’s Alexis’s turn to join the vengeful fray after Blake rejects her. "I'll make you pay for this, Blake, and I know just the man who's going to help me do it ... your brother Ben. You're going to regret this. Damn you!"This week, while Greg is still reeling from the news that Gary has deeded half of Empire Valley to Val's babies ("He what??!"), Miles springs into action on THE COLBYS by instigating the inter-family court case we’ve been teased with since the series began — only instead of Connie’s mental competency, it’s Jeff’s legitimacy as a Colby that is being challenged. But the aim remains the same — to wrest Connie’s half of Colby Enterprises back from Jeff.While Miles is out to prove that Jeff isn't Phillip's son on THE COLBYS, Gary Ewing's gift to the twins "amounts to a public statement that you fathered another woman's children" on KNOTS. "You just can't accept it, can you, that Fallon chose me? ... Don't you realise how pathetic this makes you look?" Jeff asks Miles. "You hate your ex-wife so much ... that you decide to humiliate her in public ... You are still so self-centred, you're blind to the rest of the world," Ben tells Gary. Fallon and Val each adopt a more tactful approach when appealing to their ex to change his mind, but to no avail. "You're the cause of all this," Miles tells Fallon. "You never even told me you were having my babies," Gary reminds Val. While Ben finally gets through to Gary with a stirring speech about fatherhood which manages to be sentimental and gritty at the same time ("There's a lot more to being a father than passing genes and a pot of land ... How may teeth does Betsy have? What was Bobby's first word? A father knows ... A father is there"), nothing's going to stop Miles from having his day in court. "I have to do this, I just have to — for me," he explains when Constance suggests a compromise similar to the one Clayton offered Jamie to dissuade her from taking the Ewings to court in last season's DALLAS. “Then God help you, Miles -- God help us all,” says Connie after Miles turns her down. Dex has an equivalent line to Prince Michael on this week's DYNASTY: “I'm sorry for you, Michael — I'm sorry for all of us.” While Dex's words refer to the damage already done by his affair with Amanda, Connie's serve as an ominous warning that the worst is yet to come.There are further similarities between the Colby lawsuit and Cliff and Jamie's fight against the Ewings last season. The letter Phillip wrote when he was Vietnam insisting he was not the father of Frankie’s baby serves the same dramatic purpose as Jamie Ewing’s copy of Jason's hand-written agreement splitting Ewing Oil into thirds. Phillip Colby and Jason Ewing are both depicted as unstable, unreliable men, but the veracity of the papers themselves cannot be refuted. Just as the Depression of the 1930s provided a historical context for Jason and Digger's actions, Vietnam in the late '50s does the same thing for Phillip's frame of mind. ("They hated us over there. After two years of that we were all ready to snap," his soldier buddy recalls on the witness stand.)Subpoenaed by the prosecution to testify as to her marital fidelity, Frankie is the case's sacrificial lamb, just as Claudia Blaisdel was at Blake's murder trial. "Did you ever cheat on your husband at any time?" she is asked while her present husband Roger sits in the courtroom the same way Matthew Blaisdel did. Will Frankie tell the truth about her affair with Jason the way Claudia did about hers with Steven? We'll never know because before she can answer, a last-minute surprise witness arrives. Instead it being a vengeful ex-wife in a big hat, it's Phillip's medical officer, Captain Timothy Holmes (hey, that's my cousin's name!) who states that medical tests performed on May 23rd, 1957 (hey, that's exactly one year before my parents got married!) revealed Phillip to be sterile. "Therefore, he couldn't have been the father." Cue dramatic music and a succession of stunned reaction shots that seem to go on forever.Elsewhere this week, Blake and Sable both attempt to distract their blonde and slightly useless daughters, Amanda and Bliss respectively, from their recent relationship break ups (Dex having dumped Amanda, Bliss having dumped Sean) with offers of trips and jobs. Blake invites Amanda to join him on a business trip to Hawaii while Sable asks Bliss to work at the Colby Collection. "The answer to Hawaii is no ... because I'm in love with Dex," sighs Amanda. "That works for you, Mother, but not for me," sighs Bliss. "You're not happy unless you've someone special in your life," suggests Sable. "What life? I don't have one of my own ... I have nothing to share, nothing to give," replies Bliss, sounding exactly like Lucy Ewing a year ago. Ah, the difficulties of being a blonde twenty-something heiress. In any case, Amanda and Bliss are both back with their unsuitable boyfriends by the end of their respective episodes. "I want you. Only you," Dex tells Amanda. "I love you. I don't care about the rest," Bliss tells Sean.Meanwhile on KNOTS, Abby can’t even interest her daughter Olivia in a caesar salad during their weekly dinner date — she'd rather sneak off to the john to smoke grass. Somewhat inevitably, it's her innocent cousin Michael who eventually gets busted after she leaves a couple of joints under his passenger seat. While this storyline continues to echo "Man of the Hour", it's DALLAS's Peter Richards -- another hapless blond pretty boy found by the police with drugs in his car -- whom Michael most resembles here. In contrast to Olivia's slouchy, snarly demeanour, her DALLAS equivalent Charlie could scarcely be perkier or more obedient this week, offering to help John Ross with his homework and dressing up as a Victorian doll for dinner at Southfork. Her sole act of defiance is to decline JR’s arm on the way to the dining table.When Olivia ran away from home a few episodes ago after hearing something unpleasant, she sought refuge with the most wholesome couple on her show: Karen and Mack. When little Joseph runs away on FALCON CREST after hearing his parents fight one too many times, he makes a similar choice, turning up at Chase and Maggie's door in the middle of the night. "Olivia is not some battered child that needs to be protected from a couple of monster parents,” Abby subsequently snapped at the Mackenzies and Cole adopts the same defensive tactic here. "What do you think we're doing — abusing him?" he shouts at Maggie. "You bet I think you're abusing him, in one of the worst ways possible," is Maggie's surprising response. She goes on to describe Cole and Melissa as “fighting some kind of a battle to the death.” It's the same metaphor Alexis uses to describe her relationship with her newly ex-husband Dex (“We're enemies on a battlefield"). By the end of this week’s FC, after Cole surrenders legal custody of his daughter to Robin, it looks like his battle is over. "We're lousy parents and we have a lousy marriage," he tells Melissa. She responds by slapping him then telling him that said lousy marriage is over. Likewise on DYNASTY, Amanda finally convinces Michael that their lousy marriage is over when she admits she loves Dex. "I think I always have." Instead of slapping Amanda as Melissa does Cole, Michael takes a swing at Dex, but Dex is too quick and grabs him in a headlock. “I could break you in two. You know that,” Dex tells him. “You already have, Dexter,” he replies. That's Prince Michael of Moldavia's very last line and it's a genuinely poignant one. I’ll miss him — I don’t think a week’s gone by where I haven’t laughed out loud at his specifically English strain of impotence. Still, now we've got THE COLBYS' Lord Langdon to provide that.Sudden Friendship, Maggie Gioberti’s thinly veiled expose of her super-soap in-laws, has, of course, much in common with Capricorn Crude, Val Ewing's thinly veiled expose of her super-soap in-laws. In each case, the original manuscript was sent to a publisher without the writer's consent and now, just like its predecessor, Sudden Friendship is well on its way to becoming a national best-seller. As the unassuming author finds herself plunged into the media spotlight, a super-organised, super-enthusiatic PR guy rides to her rescue. Just as Chip Roberts showered Val's book with genuine-seeming praise so Jeff Wainwright does the same thing to Maggie's. Whether Jeff will turn out to be quite so psychotically dangerous as Chip remains to be seen. Given that he's played by Quisto from THE YELLOW ROSE, aka the nicest soap character who ever lived, it seems unlikely.Finally, it's the Battle of the B Word with Sable Colby and Abby Ewing each deploying it to maximum effect this week. "You have no right to tell the world that your family means less to you than Val's bastards!" snarls Abby at Gary on KNOTS. "I don't give a damn about your little bastard — or you, you slut!" Sable informs Frankie on THE COLBYS before turning on her heel and walking calmly away, leaving her sister and each of their husbands open-mouthed in shock. Sable wins.And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (3) THE COLBYS2 (1) KNOTS LANDING3 (2) DYNASTY4 (4) DALLAS5 (5) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?