New posts

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 23371" data-attributes="member: 22">9 Apr 86: DYNASTY: The Warning v. 10 Apr 86: THE COLBYS: Double Jeopardy v. 10 Apr 86: KNOTS LANDING: Arsenic and Old Waste v. 11 Apr 86: DALLAS: Serendipity v. 11 Apr 86: FALCON CREST: Dangerous GroundIn the opening scene of this week’s DYNASTY, Blake is turned down for the same kind of billion dollar loan recently acquired by JR on DALLAS. “The truth is the oil market’s very weak right now. We don’t know what kind of money you’re going to be able to get for your oil,” his banker explains. In the opening scene of this week’s DALLAS, JR informs an underling that “any stripper well producing less than fifteen barrels a day gets shut down … It’s just not profitable anymore. Costs more to produce than we can sell it for." Such remarks suggest that both shows currently occupy the same economic universe. There again, as Blake points out, “that’s the nature of the business. It’s always been that way.”Immediately following the meeting with his employee, JR receives a visit from an angry Mark Graison. “You stay away from Pam and me and you stay the hell out of my life or I’ll take that head of yours off at the shoulders!” he yells. Chase Gioberti makes a similarly worded declaration to Jeff Wainwright on FALCON CREST: “I want you to stay away from my wife … I want you out of this valley!”The strongest episodes of the Soap Land week belong to DYNASTY and KNOTS LANDING, but the feel of each is quite different. Where DYNASTY hits the ground running and never lets up — there’s an exciting sense of dramatic urgency driving through the ep — the pace of KNOTS is slower, allowing for interestingly introspective moments such as when Greg Sumner explains to Laura how he spends his day conducting the city from the lofty viewpoint of his executive terrace (“making the cars go in the right direction, softening the sirens, bringing up a crash or two … I conduct the sun up and sometimes I conduct the moon down”). There’s also an impromptu slow dance between Ben and Cathy in his office which feels both illicit and sad, and a rare sentimental speech from Abby about her late brother: “Sid was always so sweet, so strong … Sometimes when I’m alone in the car or in the shower, I think about him and he becomes so real and then I realise he’s gone.” (By contrast, Miss Ellie is unusually clear-eyed when recalling her late husband in this week’s DALLAS. "Your granddaddy in his own way was a very difficult man to live with,” she informs John Ross.)While Blake Carrington and Greg Sumner are obsessed with taking over Colby Co and Empire Valley respectively, those near to them do not share their vision. “You’re crazy, you know that? Somebody’s got to tell you. It might as well be me,” Blake’s business associate Dex Dexter tells him. "You and Alexis have pledged to destroy each other and you’re willing to kill anything that gets in your way … I am not gonna allow you to take me with you.” Laura puts it more succinctly on KNOTS. "I have had it, I am out of here,” she tells Greg. “Take Empire Valley to dinner … let it poison the rest of your life.”Caress Morelle gets an unusual amount of screen time on this week’s DYNASTY as she digs into the past in order to learn the identity of the mystery woman Ben Carrington was in bed with on the day of his mother’s death. Her investigation leads her to a bordello in Colorado Springs, the kind of house of ill-repute we haven’t seen since the days of Lute-Mae’s in FLAMINGO ROAD. While the girls themselves are a much fresher looking bunch than the backcombed streetwalkers Angela Channing briefly shared a cell with in FALCON CREST last week, the establishment's flame-haired, luridly made-up madam, the terrifically named Cora Van Heusen, wouldn’t look out of place in a John Waters movie. The subsequent scene where Caress toys with Emily Fallmont before getting a squirming admission out of her that she was "the young bride” married to a senator with whom Ben was having an affair all those years ago is just great.This week’s KNOTS and DALLAS each feature a scene where a male character takes a shower while his partner competes with the sound of running water for his attention. On KNOTS, the privacy of the shower curtain gives Ben temporary respite from Val as she prattles on about Cathy’s impending departure, oblivious to his feelings on the subject. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” Val challenges him when he fails to respond. Then she probes deeper: "Are you, OK? … You seem so quiet.” By now, Ben has collected himself sufficiently to burst out of the shower singing opera as a way of lightening the situation.The equivalent DALLAS scene is light-hearted to from the start. It begins in Pam’s bedroom where Mark is complaining about JR, following their run in earlier in the episode. “I can’t believe somebody hasn’t tried to do away with him by now,” he says as he heads for the bathroom. “Somebody has, but he recovered,” Pam replies from her bed. “They ever find out who it was?” Marks calls as he turns on the shower. Ironically, while 30,000,000 viewers shout “It was Kristin!” at their television screens, Pam fails to hear the question. “I’ll bet they had a list of suspects from here to Houston and back,” Mark guesses correctly.It goes without saying this somewhat disingenuous reference to “Who shot JR?” is a massive wink to the audience. It’s also the first time DALLAS has poked fun at its own history in such a blatant way. While the “Who shot Bobby?” cliffhanger was a spin on the earlier storyline in a way that most viewers would have been aware of, the show itself played it completely straight. With hindsight, we know that the DALLAS shower scene also serves another narrative purpose — it foreshadows what will occur in the final scene of the season in three episodes time. (Pam makes the same journey from her bed to the shower as she will then.) Consequently, this seemingly unremarkable scene becomes significant for the fact that it self-consciously references the two most infamous moments in DALLAS history: the shooting of JR and Bobby’s return in the shower.However, and at the risk of getting boringly bogged down in continuity, it’s somewhat implausible that Mark Graison — a Dallas native familiar with the Ewings long before his first onscreen appearance in Season 5 — wouldn’t have already known about JR’s shooting. There’s a similar instance in another scene in this week’s episode where Cliff Barnes fills Mandy Winger in on the on/off nature of JR and Sue Ellen’s past relationship. “They’ve been through this before?” she asks in total surprise, in spite of the fact that last season she knowledgeably referred to the couple as “practically an institution — you’ll have your fights, but you’ll never marry anyone else.” There again, looked at another way, might Mark and Mandy’s sudden ignorance of past events be a clue that what we’re currently watching is about to be revealed as a dream?Ironically, DALLAS is one of only two Soap Land shows in which we don’t see a character dreaming this week. On DYNASTY, Blake has a nightmare, a terrible nightmare, which is essentially a flashback of his brother accusing him of killing their mother in court. “I must have been dreaming that same dream again,” he tells Krystle upon awakening. “I can’t bear to see you go through this night after night,” she frets. Over on FALCON CREST, Chase is similarly concerned about Maggie. “Nightmares? I’m worried about you,” he says when she wakes up from what she describes as "the strangest dream … scary.” Meanwhile on THE COLBYS, Sable’s dreams are more pleasant. Like Blake's, they consist of flashbacks — but this time of happy occasions between her and Jason. As a result, she awakens more determined than ever to effect a reconciliation with her estranged husband.While the dream sequence is now a convention familiar to each of the soaps (even if DALLAS had never had one before this season), there is another narrative trope unique to the DYNASTY-verse. Whenever a character flies off to Reno or Acapulco or somewhere equally scenic for a quickie divorce, it is an unwritten law that they will be approached at a cocktail bar by either a horny barfly or a hardbitten divorcee eager to bed them and/or share the wisdom of their own marital experience. This week, it's the turn of Frankie, in Acapulco to end her short-lived marriage to Roger Langdon, to encounter Brenda, a divorcee from New York whose hair is as almost as red as Cora Van Heusen’s and who speaks almost entirely in slogans: “A quickie divorce means a quickie recovery … It’s a man’s world, honey … People who feel guilty never get what they want … Life’s too short … This could be your last chance — go for it!” Brenda’s list of cliches ultimately serves the same narrative purpose as Sable’s dream sequence — it gives Frankie permission to pursue a future with Jason with renewed purpose. So it is that Sable and Frankie are set once again on a collision course.KNOTS gathers pace in its final act after Abby tells Gary and Karen what she knows about the source of the arsenic contamination at Empire Valley. Suddenly, there’s a sense of urgency: “The gas is moving fast … it could contaminate all of Lotus Point! … What are we going to do?” exclaims Karen. Gary declares that Greg must be held accountable for the pollution (“His father buried those chemicals … His company’s still responsible”) only for Abby to turn the tables and argue that Gary himself is to blame. “Those chemicals were buried in containers that were lined and sealed,” she points out, "and they stayed that way until a few months ago when you got it into your head to blow up those buildings at Empire Valley … You did it, Gary. You’re responsible!” Linking this current KNOTS crisis back to Gary’s seemingly heroic act earlier in the season is a very satisfying twist.While Gary and Abby are one estranged Soap Land couple currently bound together by an external emergency, Sable and Jason are another. (In this instance, it’s the murder charge hanging over Miles.) Whereas Gary has no trouble keeping his wife at an emotional distance, Jason is less successful. In fact, Sable has now convinced herself that they are on the verge of getting back together  “I can think of nothing to stand in the way of a reconciliation,” she tells Miles confidently. Meanwhile on DALLAS, JR is on the brink of winning back his estranged wife. “There’s a magic between us, Sue Ellen. I know that and so do you,” he tells her. Over on DYNASTY, Dex favours a similar, if less poetic approach, towards his ex. “Face it, Alexis, I’m the best man you’ve ever had in your bed and you know it and you miss me,” he informs her. But then when she leans in for a kiss, he pushes her away.There’s a slight sense of deja-vu running through KNOTS this week. Abby stumbling on the truth about the arsenic poisoning at Empire Valley and then keeping it to herself is a rerun of her "missing babies” dilemma, only instead of waiting almost a year to admit what she knows, it only takes her an episode. Elsewhere it’s Season 3 all over again — Laura dealing with Greg’s depression has echoes of her relationship with Richard during his breakdown, while Ben working late in the office to avoid coming home to Val who waits fretfully in the cul-de-sac for him feels like the build up to Gary’s affair with Abby all over again. Lilimae is even on hand to offer the same kind of advice she did then. “Stand by your man, not on top of him,” she counselled Val in 1982. "Sometimes a man needs a little space … Ben’s only human,” she tells her in 1986. This last sentiment is echoed by Sable on THE COLBYS. “Your father is an extraordinary man, but he’s only human,” she tells Miles.At the end of last week’s FALCON CREST, Angela returned from her honeymoon with Peter Stavros to find Richard Channing’s attorney in bed with her grandson Lance. This week’s episode of THE COLBYS starts with Jeff and Fallon returning early from their honeymoon as a gesture of support towards Miles following his arrest. Miles’s cool response — “You should have called first. I’d have told you stay and work on your tans” —  mirrors Angela’s towards Jordan at the beginning of this week’s FC which picks up where last week’s left off. “I would offer you breakfast but I think it would be awkward for one of us,” she tells her. “It’s not what it looks like,” Jordan insists when boyfriend Greg arrives on the scene. “It’s worse,” Angela assures him.Later in the episode, Greg receives a distraught phone call from Jordan asking for his help, but by the time he arrives at her place, she’s squeezed herself into a sexy cocktail dress and is once again answering to the name of Monica. Likewise in the final scene of this week’s DALLAS, JR answers an emergency summons from Mandy only to find her posed seductively in a bath full of bubbles. “You said you wanted to talk,” Greg reminds Jordan/Monica. “Talk? That’s all we ever do is talk. You like what I have on?” she replies. “When you called, you said it was important,” JR tells Mandy. “It is, but I still have to bathe,” she coos, stepping naked out of the tub.KNOTS concludes with a similarly sultry scene as Ben shows up at his beach house to find Cathy wearing only an old shirt of his. Whereas DALLAS ends with JR unable to tear himself away from the sight of Mandy's nude form, Cathy and Ben give into their feelings and the ep ends with them kissing passionately in a way that echoes Gary and Abby’s kiss at the end of “China Dolls” (Season 3 again).Actress Concetta Tomei shows up twice in this week’s Soap Land, as a financial informant DYNASTY and as Jordan's psychiatrist on FALCON CREST. In the former role, she finds herself on the receiving end of Alexis Colby’s sharp tongue ("Miss Robson, you have the reputation for being one of the shrewdest insiders in the Wall Street community and you are not telling me anything I couldn’t find out from a bank teller!”). In the latter, she must deal with Jordan’s provocative alternate personality. “Think I’m attractive, doctor?” Monica purrs. "I’m just wondering what kind of woman I’m dealing with.”Having established themselves as Soap Land’s most reckless drivers earlier in the season, Miles Colby and Gary Ewing are now preoccupied with other matters. In their absence, DYNASTY’s Amanda Carrington and DALLAS’s Angelica Nero each take a spin in the driver’s seat. Amanda’s behaviour behind the wheel alarms even professional thrill-seeker Clay Fallmont who throws himself into the passenger seat in a Mickey Trotter-style attempt to stop her from harming herself. While he can’t prevent her from crashing, he gallantly takes the blame when the police arrive on the scene by insisting that he was driving. Angelica, meanwhile, is stopped for speeding, but it’s only after the cop spies a gun in her purse that she is hauled in for questioning. There’s more firearms action on FALCON CREST where we see Jeff Wainwright in a gun store after his altercation with Chase. "That’s perfect. I’ll take it," he says gleefully, holding an air rifle in firing position. Back on DALLAS, Angelica’s second scene of the ep ends on a similarly ominous  note. Having been released by the police, she is free to continue on her journey. “Which way you heading?” a cop asks her. “Dallas!” she snaps in reply. (In the case of both Jeff and Angelica, the threat they pose is clear to the viewer at home, but not to the people they are speaking to onscreen — the gun store owner and policeman respectively.)While Krystle pays an unexpected visit to Ben at Alexis’s penthouse on DYNASTY, Jamie Barnes pays an equally unexpected visit to JR at Ewing Oil on DALLAS. Both women are concerned about their husbands. “You’re destroying him,” Krystle tells Ben, referring to Blake. “I’m worried about him,” Jamie informs JR, referring to Cliff. "I thought that he’d finally forgotten about Ewing Oil, but that’s all he ever talks about again.” It soon transpires that Krystle and Jamie are out to make peace. "What would it take for you to give this up?” Krystle asks her brother-in-law. "Is it the money? Then keep the money. Just tell the truth and clear his name.” "JR, I want to strike a deal with you,” Jamie tells her cousin. "If I can promise to keep Cliff away from you and Ewing Oil, will you leave him alone? Can we all just go our own ways in peace?”While there’s a certain novelty value to seeing JR interact with Jamie for the first time in over a year — he responds to her proposition with the same laid-back attitude he exhibited in the introduction to "DALLAS: The Early Years" a few weeks ago (“That feud has always been one-sided. It’s all in Cliff’s mind … I give you my word that I won’t go after him first. I’ve got more important fish to fry than him”) — Ben's response to Krystle is in another league, dramatically: “Lady, you don’t know what it feels like to be an outcast, despised by your family, a scapegoat for something beyond your control, but Blake did it — blamed me for something I didn’t do. So now he’s suffering? Good! Clear his name? Why should I? I haven’t enjoyed anything so much in years!” “He hates you,” Krystle later tells her husband. "I've never seen anyone so angry … He won’t be satisfied till he’s destroyed you … It’s like Cain and Abel. He wants to see you dead!”Speaking of death, no sooner do we hear on DALLAS that “a major earthquake has struck Colombia … the town of Los Gatos has been virtually destroyed with the death count in the thousands" (“Oh my God — Matt!” exclaims Pam) than Chao Li’s long lost daughter Lee Ying turns up on FALCON CREST, having been "chosen at the last minute to represent my country at an international symposium on earthquakes.” A dedicated manservant and his overseas-educated daughter, the dynamic between Chao Li and Lee Ying clearly echoes that of Joseph and Kirby on DYNASTY three years earlier. There is an awkward moment when Lee Ying, while dining at Falcon Crest as Angela’s guest, insists on helping her father serve the meal: “I am your daughter. If you serve, I serve.” “Mrs. Channing has been good to me. It is not dishonourable to live this way,” Chao Li tells her in a later scene. “I know, but it makes me sad,” she replies. Issues of race and class are quickly glossed over when it emerges that the real cause of Lee Ying's sadness is a boyfriend she’s just split up with in China. (More echoes of Kirby, who arrived in Denver with a disastrous love affair as a recent part of her back story).Lance is immediately smitten by Lee Ying, but in a more chaste way than his one night stand with Jordan/Monica at the beginning of the episode might have led one to expect. In fact, his starry-eyed attitude towards her ("She’s so pretty, grandmother!”) mirrors that of Ray and Donna’s prospective son Tony towards Charlie Wade during a getting-to-know-you dinner at Southfork on DALLAS. Between both pairings the subject of pop music arises, but in a way that feels more bobby-sox '50s than MTV ‘80s. “Would you like to learn how to dance?” Charlie asks Tony. "I have to practice anyway.” “Any rock and roll in China?” Lance asks Lee Ying. “We could listen to the latest hits."And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (3) DYNASTY2 (1) KNOTS LANDING3 (2) FALCON CREST4 (-) THE COLBYS5 (4) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =