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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Knots Blogger" data-source="post: 59917" data-attributes="member: 392">Episode Title:  <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0621144/" target="_blank">Rough Edges</a>Season 06, Episode 19Episode 119 of 344Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0326549/?ref_=tt_ov_wr" target="_blank">Richard Gollance</a>Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0786989/?ref_=tt_ov_dr" target="_blank">Nicholas Sgarro</a>Original Airdate: Thursday, February 14th, 1985The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Joshua apologizes to Cathy and says he's making a lot of mistakes as he's never had a girlfriend before, but he's unhappy without her. Galveston's men contact Greg and want to transfer power to him, but he refuses. Meanwhile, Gary's frustrated he can't get in to see Galveston and is told he's away on business. Abby finds Scott Easton's notebook, but the pertinent pages about Val's babies are ripped out. Val starts therapy with Dr. Michaels, but misses a lot of sessions and Karen tries to convince her to go. She hears Lilimae and Ben talking about having her committed, so she yells at Lilimae for abandoning her and calls her a tramp. She hears Lilimae crying, but is unconcerned. Finally Val opens up to her doctor and then feels bad about attacking Lilimae. Ben gives Val a ride home, and she suddenly remembers his beach house and orchids. He is overjoyed.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jz-fnEIzAOQ/WPDfgzlwffI/AAAAAAAACUQ/MFq79AyAJjgzOnDVv8cFuVyfkVowGsmmgCLcB/s1600/rough.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jz-fnEIzAOQ/WPDfgzlwffI/AAAAAAAACUQ/MFq79AyAJjgzOnDVv8cFuVyfkVowGsmmgCLcB/s400/rough.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>Val disappeared to Shula and turned into Verna for such a good long stretch of episodes that one can easily assume it won’t be a completely smooth reintegration into her normal life, and that’s what the majority of the story for Rough Edges is about.  Interestingly, the writers and directors choose to start this episode out in a rather unusual way, with Val back at her little Shula apartment, walking around and seeming happy as a clam.  This caused some brief whiplash for me, as we just watched Fly Away Home in which Val, well, flew away home, so to then start this episode and have her back in Shula was a bit off-putting and I could see this opening sequence confusing viewers way back in 1985.  However, it’s actually a rather brief scene and then we sorta get out of Shula to reveal that Val is back in California and is talking about her adventures over the past few months with a new psychiatrist, Dr. Michaels.  Now, as soon as My Beloved Grammy and I both saw this doctor, we knew we recognized him but we didn’t know why.  Well, after a glance at his IMDb page, I’m still not entirely sure what it is I recognize him from so strongly, but my conclusion is that this actor, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0014493/?ref_=tt_cl_t14" target="_blank">Charles Aidman</a> (pictured below), has just been in five thousand movies and TV shows, so it must be buried in the back of my unconscious somewhere that I have seen him in something once before, like perhaps two eps of Dallas (Ray’s Trial and The Oil Baron’s Ball, both from 1983) as Judge Emmett Brocks.<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-13WiTYuLZWg/WPDgCoL5saI/AAAAAAAACUU/8AZKrV3egbAF8JxEW61zHMpe6J6tS9v-wCLcB/s1600/aidman.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-13WiTYuLZWg/WPDgCoL5saI/AAAAAAAACUU/8AZKrV3egbAF8JxEW61zHMpe6J6tS9v-wCLcB/s400/aidman.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>Okay, I’ll say right off the bat that my favorite scenes from this ep all occur between Val and her doctor, and I am pleased to note that he will be returning one more time a little later this season in A Piece of the Pie.  I’ll be curious to see how the Val/Dr. Michaels scenes are filmed when we get to that ep, because here in Rough Edges, they are actually filmed in a rather interesting way.  Essentially, Dr. Michaels hardly speaks, so we get to see Val go off on a lot of long speeches about her life, about her time in Shula, about her relationship with Gary, stuff like that.  I liked the way the camera would generally just stay on Val’s face as she speaks and we didn’t really see or hear much from Dr. Michaels, who just listens patiently.  Even without speaking or doing too much, I do get a sense that I like this doctor; he just seems pleasant and sweet, like he really cares about his patients, and of course it goes without saying that J.V.A is exceptional in these scenes, just as she’s exceptional throughout the entire length of the sixth season.  I think some of the hardest acting a person ever has to do is when they are just sitting and talking, not really getting another actor to bounce off of, just having to carry the material all by themselves, and I think J.V.A does a fine job of that here.  Mind you, this is all just the first damn scene of the ep; I may be getting a little ahead of myself, but I’m just trying to stress that I liked the unorthodox way this ep started.  As we are working our way through this monumental sixth season, I’m noticing that the entire creative team is really having no problem with trying out new things, new styles, with starting episodes in strange or unconventional ways, with having surreal dream sequences thrown in every now and again (not just the start of this ep right here, but also Val flying the kite with Gary back in <a href="http://www.knotsblogging.com/2017/04/knots-landing-episode-110-of-344.html" target="_blank">Message in a Bottle</a> or that awesome dance sequence the two of them shared back in Lead Me to the Altar).  To me, this symbolizes that the show has reached a point where, six seasons deep and with more than 100 episodes under their belt, the creative team is feeling the freedom to experiment and kinda do whatever they want with each episode; there’s a rich feeling of possibilities and exciting ideas floating around in a way that I frankly never really felt over on Dallas.Honestly, my notes on this ep are very sparse, and that’s not because I was drinking and got dumb or anything like that, but because in many ways this is a rather simple ep with one thing it’s focusing heavily on: Val.  The vast majority of this ep is Val with her doctor or something else occurring with Val that forces her to examine her own character.  However, there are still of course other stories going on, so let’s focus on those for a few moments, starting with the saga of Gary and Galveston and all that.  If you’ll recall our last ep, we ended on a pretty great cliffhanger with Galveston having what appeared to be a stroke, asking Abs to call his doctor for him only for her to respond with, “Call him yourself, Cookie.”  Now, I don’t mean to get into spoilers here, but I am fairly certain that we have seen the last of Galveston now, that Fly Away Home represented his last appearance on the series (with the exception of just one more surprise appearance in a 1990 ep entitled My Bullet, an ep I remember being very arty and interesting).  However, even if we don’t get to physically see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003318/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1" target="_blank">Howard Duff</a> the actor in this ep or the next one, the character isn’t dead yet.  This was a surprise to me, because after the ending of our last ep, my memory was that Galveston just died.  Nope, instead we have a scene of a bunch of his lackeys gathering around to discuss the state of affairs and helpfully telling the audience that Galveston had a cerebral hemorrhage and is very near death.  We are told he could die pretty much any minute but that he could also last, at the very most, one month before he dies.  So in any case, the man is at death’s door, and whether it happens right this second or a month from now, it’s inevitably going to happen.  Meanwhile, Gary is having a hell of a time trying to get in contact with Galveston.  He stops by the ranch, he makes calls, he tries all he can just to go see him, but he keeps getting the runaround from the henchmen, who tell him that Galveston had to fly off somewhere to do something related to business, that eventually he’ll be back.  Gary is starting to get suspicious; after all, he and Galveston were getting pretty tight (I believe in this ep, Gary declares that he now sees Galveston as a good personal friend), so for him to suddenly just vanish like this doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, does it?I’ll confess that some of these plot points continue to fly over my head, but I also must stress that this is not the fault of the show, but rather the way that my own stupid brain works.  Actually, I’m doing a lot better when it comes to following storylines and plot convolutions upon this viewing versus my previous viewing back in college.  Back in college, all the stuff with Mack investigating Wolfbridge and then the Tidal Basin murders and how this shit connected up with Galveston Industries, that all went flying over my head and didn’t register at all, since I was probably too busy making another martini.  Now I’m following it a lot better, but I still get a little confused with this whole Galveston-in-a-coma-or-whatever thing and how it relates to Greg.  See, in this ep, the henchmen are trying to convince Greg that he should take on the power with Galveston about to expire, I guess meaning that he should sorta step in to fill his old daddy’s shoes now, but Greg’s not interested.  In fact, there’s some rather fabulous dark humor going around at this juncture with the sheer delight Greg seems to feel towards Galveston’s impending death.  Seriously, there’s some funny stuff here displaying how Greg does not care one bit that his father is about to die; he cracks jokes and seems to take such relish in this inevitability.  Greg has been with us for roughly a year and a half now, and he’s feeling comfortably established as part of the core cast, but we are also starting to unwrap those different layers of his character, to find out all the different complexities brewing inside.  Thanks to the great writing and Devane’s brilliant acting, Greg is quickly elevating up to become one of the most interesting characters on the entire series.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RirJAJDbRWQ/WPDhndGcdWI/AAAAAAAACUY/YxFEdh5YH8khRZsyA_nUHdCDT6xcAn_XwCLcB/s1600/sumner%2Bgreg%2Bsumner.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RirJAJDbRWQ/WPDhndGcdWI/AAAAAAAACUY/YxFEdh5YH8khRZsyA_nUHdCDT6xcAn_XwCLcB/s400/sumner%2Bgreg%2Bsumner.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>Meanwhile, Joshua and Cathy I think get back together in this ep, and the reason I say “I think” is because in looking at my notes, I begin the next episode (The Emperor’s Clothes) by scribbling, “Joshua + Cathy +romantic picnic/are they back together now?”  So, based on that, I do believe they get back together in this ep after a nice little speech from Joshua about how he’s never had a girlfriend and this is all new to him.  At this juncture, I’m supporting Cathy and not liking Joshua too terribly much.  I think Cathy is sweet and wonderful and I love listening to her sing; she could easily do better than some preacher’s son with a ton of religious guilt and repression issues.  I believe it was only our previous ep in which Joshua basically said that singing at Isadora’s made Cathy evil, and those are pretty strong words, so I think I’d rather see Cathy dump him and get with a boy who is more on her wavelength, maybe another musician or something, maybe a member of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_(band)" target="_blank">KISS</a>, perhaps?  <a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TaaD1BRSVW8/WPDh6iNfeEI/AAAAAAAACUc/clvRFQvCeEsdohobbXcL6T6vTAcN9b6YgCLcB/s1600/lisa%2Band%2Bpaul%2Bstanley.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TaaD1BRSVW8/WPDh6iNfeEI/AAAAAAAACUc/clvRFQvCeEsdohobbXcL6T6vTAcN9b6YgCLcB/s400/lisa%2Band%2Bpaul%2Bstanley.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>TO BE CONTINUED</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?