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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Knots Blogger" data-source="post: 59919" data-attributes="member: 392">Episode Title:  <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0621177/" target="_blank">The Emperor’s Clothes</a>Season 06, Episode 20Episode 120 of 344Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0270570/?ref_=tt_ov_wr" target="_blank">Joel J. Feigenbaum</a> Directed by<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0684719/?ref_=tt_ov_dr" target="_blank"> Ernest Pintoff</a>Original Airdate: Thursday, February 21st, 1985The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Gary wants to shut down construction on Empire Valley until he can talk to Galveston. Galveston’s men try to placate Gary. A Minister marries a mystery woman and Galveston, who is on life support. Val cuts her hand at Empire Valley, so Ben takes her to the clinic in the town of Wesphall. Ben talks to the doctor and patients, who tell him that industrial chemicals from Galveston Industries got into the ground water and caused an epidemic, but that Galveston bought everybody out and paid medical bills. They say that one woman came to town and claimed that Galveston did it deliberately to drive them off of their property. Ben and Mack show them a picture of Lila Maxwell, and they identify her as the woman. Mack finds Jamison, who said that Galveston ordered the murder of Lila Maxwell. Val remembers going in to labor, and tells Karen that she "knows" the babies are alive. Karen asks Mack to consider the possibility of Val's babies being alive.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gQdhQyy8UGk/WPjU-xgroXI/AAAAAAAACZ4/TerMC5Kp79QuuzEs7wzYRJCHFRJK5UxSACLcB/s1600/emperor.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gQdhQyy8UGk/WPjU-xgroXI/AAAAAAAACZ4/TerMC5Kp79QuuzEs7wzYRJCHFRJK5UxSACLcB/s400/emperor.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>I’ve gone on at great length numerous times about my love affair with these thirty-episode seasons of KL, how I consistently marvel at the way the writers and directors and everyone else is able to juggle all these separate balls in the air for that enormous length of time.  Nowadays, so many of our TV shows clock in at, like, ten to fifteen eps per season, and while that is generally the way to do it, I just love being in the world of KL in which we have thirty episodes in a season and plenty of time to let the drama unfold naturally.  To be clear, KL is probably the only show I’ve ever seen in which I feel like thirty episodes per season is done well; at this same point, Dallas was also doing thirty eps in their seasons, but there would always be some arduous and painfully boring stretch in the middle in which absolutely nothing is happening (Jenna Wade’s trial) or in which it’s mostly just scenes of people getting together for lunch or drinks or boring business deals, all filling time until things can get exciting in the last five eps of the season.  Here on KL, I feel there’s not a wasted moment, that every ep is building towards something bigger, that the length is really giving us time to explore these characters and their complexities.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kDMf3dT1fHY/WPjVUBvO4jI/AAAAAAAACZ8/s31sPHc4FiIHJc6t-iOM9ugYlJC0JYZAACLcB/s1600/size%2Bmatters.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kDMf3dT1fHY/WPjVUBvO4jI/AAAAAAAACZ8/s31sPHc4FiIHJc6t-iOM9ugYlJC0JYZAACLcB/s400/size%2Bmatters.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>What’s my point?  Oh yeah, as we dive into The Emperor’s Clothes, we are gonna see the storyline of Val’s babies and what precisely happened to them really returning in a big way, coming back to center stage to be the focus of attention.  Now, if this was some modern show with only ten to fifteen eps in a season and they were trying to do a story like this, I just don’t know that it would work as well, because everything would have to be so accelerated; everything would be moving at such a rapid pace that we would have no time to breathe or get to understand our characters.  To better illustrate my point, let’s observe that Val gave birth to her twins in the eighth episode of the season, <a href="http://www.knotsblogging.com/2017/03/knots-landing-episode-108-of-344.html" target="_blank">Tomorrow Never Knows</a>.  Then the babies “died”/were taken away from her, so we had a few eps of her hanging around the cul-de-sac and being really upset about what happened.  Then, in the eleventh episode of the season (<a href="http://www.knotsblogging.com/2017/04/knots-landing-episode-111-of-344.html" target="_blank">Distant Locations</a>) she vanished to parts unknown, hanging around Nevada for awhile before officially settling in Shula, and then she made herself a cozy little life over in Shula all the way until the start of the eighteenth ep of the season, Fly Away Home.  The next ep, Rough Edges, primarily concerned itself with Val’s psychiatric sessions and retrieving her lost memories, and now that brings us up to our current ep, The Emperor’s Clothes.  So, it’s been twelve eps since Val gave birth to the twins and now, with typically perfect KL timing, it’s time for that storyline to really return to the forefront.  Thanks to that great season length, we’ve really had the time to let this stuff unfold, to have the drama come naturally and with perfectly deliberate pacing, rather than having to rush through everything.Most of our last ep concerned itself with Val, but The Emperor’s Clothes really concerns itself with everybody in the cast.  Thinking on it, I think absolutely every person in those glorious scrolling squares gets some good material to work with this week, so who to start with?  For now, I’ll start with Joshua and Cathy, but there’s not quite as much to say about them.  We first catch up with them having a romantic little picnic together, leading me to assume that they are officially back together.  Of course, perhaps I’m wrong; perhaps they are just trying out the tentative relationship thing, a nice picnic in the park here, a romantic walk there, see if they can get along.  Even though things appear outwardly pleasant, there is still some darkness lurking beneath the veneer of this romance.  See, Cathy has to get to her band practice or whatever; the band is waiting for her, and if there’s no singer, well, there’s not really any band.  However, Joshua cleverly manages to keep her occupied this whole time, doing it in such a subtle way that Cathy doesn’t really seem to notice until later that she completely missed her practice.  To her credit, however, she doesn’t just sit idly by and allow this to happen; she confronts Joshua directly about it, saying how she thinks he only wants to be with her so long as they continue to do the things he wants to do.  She says how she thinks he deliberately tricked her into missing her practice, that if they’re gonna be together, he’s gotta accept her life as it is, that she likes singing at Isadora’s and so forth.In looking at my notes, I see I wrote down something of earth-shattering importance, and that is “Mack’s rowing machine!”  Yes, I even wrote it in my notes with that exclamation point, just like that.  Thinking back on it, I can’t quite remember the exact contents of the scene in which the rowing machine makes its appearance, but I’m willing to bet that Mack and Jamison were probably having some sort of conversation about the Tidal Basin murders or whatever and that, the whole scene, Mack was working out on his rowing machine on the floor.  Why does this amuse me so much?  I think it’s just the inherent ‘80s-ness of it all, that he has a rowing machine in his office, that he works out on it frequently all while wearing a full business suit and talking to his partner.  I love the silliness of it, I love the whole HYPER MASCULINE vibe this rowing machine gives off; I just love this rowing machine and I wish we could see Mack working out on it in every single episode.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QdVCKYoFY04/WPjWfQ3iwdI/AAAAAAAACaI/Ed2Wt2VWoTAJlW7eO0NfYLC1OIm-kQ5TwCLcB/s1600/row%2Blike%2Ba%2Bpro.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QdVCKYoFY04/WPjWfQ3iwdI/AAAAAAAACaI/Ed2Wt2VWoTAJlW7eO0NfYLC1OIm-kQ5TwCLcB/s400/row%2Blike%2Ba%2Bpro.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>Aside from working out on the rowing machine, Mack and Jamison are also busy with getting some information out of that ‘80s Rapist Beard.  Now, one last time just to make it clear, this is the second ‘80s Rapist Beard we’ve seen this season, with the first one being Scott Easton, and I feel fairly comfortable saying with 100% certainty that we have seen the last of Easton, that he went skydiving without a parachute earlier this season and that we shall never be seeing him again.  So, for now, this is the only ‘80s Rapist Beard we have to concern ourselves with, and this particular gentleman is the one who was caught on that videotape when Gary Loader got shot or whatever.  Okay, so basically at the start of this ep, Mack gets a call from some guy that he, like, doesn’t particularly like all that much but that I think he did some sort of legal favor for once a long time ago.  The guy is like, “Hey Mack, I have some good secret information for you, so why don’t you meet me in a creepy warehouse with no working lights in the middle of the night?”  Obviously, Mack agrees, since there’s nothing strange about this scenario.  Actually, the surprise in this case is that nothing bad happens.  As Mack and Jamison headed into that dark warehouse with no guns or nothing to protect them (I’m wondering if Mack is a pro-second amendment kind of guy or if he doesn’t care to have guns around; with all these secret meetings and dudes beating him up in parking lots, you’d think he might start packing heat), My Beloved Grammy declared, “These people are always meeting in creepy dark warehouses,” and she was right.  I was expecting that any second, some random thugs would pop out of the blue and start kicking Mack’s ass, but instead he and Jamison just meet up with his old acquaintance and the acquaintance is like, “I got something for you,” and then he presents them with ‘80s Rapist Beard, all tied up and gagged in a chair, utterly defenseless.<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--o1dOILDIBg/WPjXCoIsZWI/AAAAAAAACaQ/cI2XH6OU_nINwyqt994HFutuMDQTyMcagCLcB/s1600/NRA.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--o1dOILDIBg/WPjXCoIsZWI/AAAAAAAACaQ/cI2XH6OU_nINwyqt994HFutuMDQTyMcagCLcB/s400/NRA.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>The next time we see these guys, they are in Mack’s office (I think) and ‘80s Rapist Beard is doing the whole, “I don’t talk without my lawyer present” thing, but they quickly manage to break him down and he starts to sing like a canary.  This is important plot stuff, because ‘80s Rapist Beard finally confirms that Lila Maxwell was, indeed, killed by someone from Galveston Industries, but the real kicker comes when Mack asks where the order for her murder was coming from and ‘80s Rapist Beard says something like, “From the very top.”  Yup, basically it was Paul Galveston himself who was ordering to have his own employees killed, but why?  We shall continue to explore this mystery a little later in the ep.TO BE CONTINUED</blockquote>

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