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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Knots Blogger" data-source="post: 64028" data-attributes="member: 392">Episode Title:  <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0620938/" target="_blank">A Piece of the Pie</a>Season 06, Episode 22Episode 122 of 344Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0673800/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr2" target="_blank">Parke Perine</a>Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0065568/?ref_=ttfc_fc_dr1" target="_blank">Robert Becker</a> Original Airdate: Thursday, March 7th, 1985The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Karen meets with Val's original obstetrician, who tells her that she and her partner were called away to a conference when the babies were born, and that Dr. Ackerman plays in a lot of bridge tournaments. Cathy sings on Joshua's show, and he announces on air that they are getting married. Cathy's upset with him for assuming things and not asking her first. Mack finds an address in some of Galveston's papers. He and Ben go there. Mrs. Fisher invites them in, but says she has no idea who he is or why he'd have their address. Then she has to go check on her twins who are crying. While there, they see a press conference that Greg has called on TV. Greg announces that Galveston was his father, had died, and he's resigning from the Senate and taking over his company. Laura is furious because Greg didn't tell her any of this. Abby tells Greg that she wants a piece of Empire Valley, the "real" Empire Valley.<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bnXufIgzt0w/WRMhZpGC_zI/AAAAAAAACf8/bvOa8sDOoeUPC1yVEAAukZrVet9sYDkawCLcB/s1600/pie.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bnXufIgzt0w/WRMhZpGC_zI/AAAAAAAACf8/bvOa8sDOoeUPC1yVEAAukZrVet9sYDkawCLcB/s400/pie.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>                When we last left off in the concluding moments of The Deluge, I was peeing my pants laughing over the Cheesy British Guy saying “Everybody” over and over and over again.  Happily enough, this comedy continues right away in the opening moments of A Piece of the Pie, as we pick up directly where the last one ended, with Sumner and Cheesy British Guy continuing their conversation in Greg’s little hotel room that he currently lives in.  They talk a little bit more about the whole issue of what Empire Valley really is, and then Greg says, “You say everybody is depending on me; who is ‘everybody?’”  To this, Cheesy British Guy replies “Everybody,” and I peed my pants all over again.  This, added to him saying “everybody” three times in our last ep, successfully manages to fuse things together so that Cheesy British Guy says “everybody” four times within the space of seconds.  I honestly can’t explain why it’s so funny in writing; you just have to see the show and the way he delivers the line (or perhaps I should say the way that the folks in editing managed to re-loop him saying the line just one time so that he says it four times and sounds exactly the same every time he says it).<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jcOirOO84vA/WRMiLuC6spI/AAAAAAAACgE/Y_z9RvBq0pYoLKnGFE9r4p954AO_4WYcwCLcB/s1600/everybody.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jcOirOO84vA/WRMiLuC6spI/AAAAAAAACgE/Y_z9RvBq0pYoLKnGFE9r4p954AO_4WYcwCLcB/s400/everybody.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>                Okay, enough about “everybody.”  Let’s talk more about this whole issue of what Empire Valley really is, and then I’ll explore some more developments in the Sumner story this week.  Even with My Beloved Grammy sitting beside me and helping to explain these developments, I’m still having a hard time getting a grasp on the whole Empire Valley situation, except for the basic gist that what would appear to be a planned community is really some sort of secret service James Bond-type spy s**t in which Galveston Industries would be able to keep tabs on, um, everybody (it’s becoming hard to even say that word without starting to giggle).  As we were watching this, My Beloved Grammy said how it’s interesting to watch these old shows and see how often they are able to accurately predict the future.  In this case, what is presented as a bad and scary thing in 1985 is now just the way we live our lives.  There was a time when people valued privacy and having parts of their lives that they kept to themselves, but that’s long gone now, as we are all now more than happy to have the government tapping our phones for The Patriot Act or have our entire lives plastered out onto the internet for everyone in the world to see in the form of FaceBook.  Nowadays, it seems like people know that the government is watching their every move and they just don’t care.  Personally it makes me sad, but whatever, I guess it’s the way the world’s changing.                 It must have been that fourth “everybody” that finally pushed Sumner over the edge, because not too long after his little chat with Cheesy British Guy (reminder: This character’s name is actually John Coblenz), he gives a nice little press conference in which he announces to the world that Galveston was his father, that he has died, and that he is going to ditch the whole moving-to-Washington-to-work-in-the-senate plan in order to continue his father’s legacy with the Empire Valley project.  Honestly, maybe it’s just my confusion over the whole Empire Valley thing, but why does Greg really choose to do this?  Ever since Galveston first showed up on the series, Greg has been vehement in his hatred and disregard for this man and all he stands for, but after the chat with Cheesy British Guy, he’s ready to do it, but why?  I’m sure it’s shown within the series and it’s just my own stupid brain that’s having trouble figuring it out, but I am a smidge confused in any case.                When Laura finds out that Greg isn’t moving to Washington, she’s livid, and rightfully so.  This is the first she’s heard of any of this, she has been working on doing a big move and pulling her kids (Jason 3 and Daniel) out or school in order to move them, and now none of that is happening because Greg has abruptly changed his mind, all without speaking to her about it.  First, we have a nice scene of angry Laura at the office, sorta yelling to her secretary or whatever about how angry she is, but then we have an even better scene in which she confronts Greg in her kitchen.  He walks in and she rips into him about how pissed she is, and Greg does something that I’m almost positive <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001137/?ref_=tt_cl_t2" target="_blank">William Devane</a> improvised (when I interview him one day, I’ll be sure to ask him), he runs over to the refrigerator and opens the door and then hides behind it, letting the door protect him like body armor.  It’s really rather cute and makes him seem like he’s not such a jerk for making these big decisions without consulting the woman he loves (and by the way, we have heard him tell Laura he loves her at least once this season, and I believe it was actually in our previous ep).  However, the playfulness of this hiding-behind-the-refrigerator-door move keeps him endearing and then, as a viewer, I’m not mad at him, although I think Laura remains pretty pissed.                 As usual by this point in the series, there’s just a ton going on with all the characters in this ep, so let’s move on over to Karen, who is continuing her aggressive pursuit to find out the truth of what happened to Val’s babies.  In this ep, she manages to secure a meeting with Val’s original obstetrician, the lady doctor named Dr. Kellin.  If you’ll recall, Dr. Kellin was Val’s first doctor and she was lovely and sweet and nice, but then she went off on a vacation or some sort of medical conference or whatever and the evil Dr. Ackerman took her place, forcing Val into premature labor and, well we’ve all seen the eps (hopefully), so we know what went down.  In this scene, Karen learns that it’s not uncommon for Dr. Ackerman to fill in whenever Dr. Kellin is absent, and she says how Dr. Ackerman is a professional and very respected and Bob Loblaw.  When Karen says how she’s been having a hell of a difficult time getting in contact with him, Dr. Kellin tells her that he’s semi-retired and “bridge takes up most of his time.”  As soon as I heard this, I had a vivid flashback to what is about to transpire later this season, but I shan’t spoil that particular development just yet, as we are still a good chunk of eps away from it happening.<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KRU9UEQO7IE/WRMjPvsX91I/AAAAAAAACgQ/z4CRcLPpDZgnI5zLyQw4_crjUJuAc7uwACLcB/s1600/bridge.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KRU9UEQO7IE/WRMjPvsX91I/AAAAAAAACgQ/z4CRcLPpDZgnI5zLyQw4_crjUJuAc7uwACLcB/s400/bridge.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>                The babies are the topic of conversation for pretty much everybody this week, as we also get a nice scene of Val having a little psychiatry session with Dr. Michaels, making his second and final appearance in this ep.  I must say I’m gonna miss this character, even if he was only in two eps, and it’s another powerful example of how KL so wonderfully manages to make all of its characters, even peripheral ones who are only in an episode or two, seem so real and so interesting.  In this case, I just thought Dr. Michaels radiated a warmth and gentleness and if I ever go looking for a psychiatrist, I would be looking for a doctor just like this.  The big take-away from this scene is that Val says how she’s been dreaming of the babies, sorta reliving what happened to her on the night of the delivery, her vivid recollection of hearing the babies cry, all that stuff.  At this point, it’s very clear to me that Val is absolutely confident in what she heard and what she experienced that night.  If I was living in the universe of this show (and God, how I wish I was), I would probably be like Karen and start to really believe Val at this point, as she no longer seems crazy or nutty (she doesn’t think she’s Verna anymore, for one thing); rather, she just seems very firm in her assertion that those babies are alive, that she heard them crying, and that she knows they are out there in the world somewhere.                There’s a random Val-related scene that I want to address real fast just to use it as an example of why KL is so amazingly good and so amazingly brilliant.  I’ve often marveled at the way that, even as the storylines on KL have gotten much more glamorous and dramatic and exciting and soapy starting in season four, the show has never stopped feeling grounded and real, and I think one of the key ingredients in the show maintaining that perfect balance is the way that, even in the midst of all this baby-stealing and big Empire Valley secret spy cover-ups and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001257/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t12" target="_blank">Ava Gardner</a> showing up in town and all that great drama, they will still take the time to show scenes of the characters just acting like real people.  In this episode, we get a terrific scene of Val helping to give Lilimae a perm and then having a grand old time and acting silly and laughing, and it just feels fabulously real.  In our next ep, The Forest For the Trees, we are going to see a scene of Mack using a plunger to try and unclog the flooding sink in the kitchen, and that’s another perfect example.  Who hasn’t had to deal with a broken sink in the kitchen before?  Who hasn’t helped someone try out a new hairdo?  It’s all super relatable stuff, so it feels realistic, and then therefore all the more soapy shenanigans going on don’t seem too especially ridiculous; since the world of KL feels grounded, so too does the big season-long drama feel grounded.                 We get a very important development in the Val’s babies storyline this week, and it comes along (perhaps a bit too conveniently; we’ll discuss it) when Mack and Ben decide to pay a visit to a random address that they found in one of Galveston’s files.  The house belongs to the Fishers, a nice married couple, although we only meet one half of that couple this week, Sheila Fisher, played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0320149/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t17" target="_blank">Robin Ginsburg</a>.  Real fast, I wanna mention this actress and say that I am shocked when I look at her IMDb page and see that, aside from her KL appearances (IMDb lists her for five eps, but as we’ve learned in recent days, IMDb can no longer be trusted to be accurate about the guest actors of KL and how many eps they may or may not have appeared in), she’s only been in three other things, and her last credit is in 1990.  This surprises me because whenever I look at this woman, I find myself thinking that she sure looks familiar and I need to go look her up, but I just kept forgetting to.  To see that she only has four credits altogether and that I haven’t seen any of those credits aside from KL was a bit surprising, as she just has a look about her and I was convinced I’d seen her in a myriad of other movies and TV shows.                I’ll let the cat out of the bag right away: The Fishers have Val’s twins.  This is revealed to us in an absolutely brilliant scene that, the first time I watched it, was actually too brilliant for me to comprehend (or perhaps I was just too stupid and vodka-influenced to comprehend it).  Follow along, here.  Basically, Ben and Mack pay a visit to the house, they knock on the door, Sheila Fisher greets them nicely, they explain how they found this address in a Galveston file and were hoping to find out why that should be, and then Sheila explains that she doesn’t know Galveston and doesn’t know why her name or address would be in any file, but she mentions that perhaps her husband would know.  Then we hear a baby crying off-screen and she disappears up the stairs to take care of it, leaving Ben and Mack alone.  The TV is turned on and, at this point, that big Sumner press conference comes on with him announcing his true father and his desire to pick up on the Empire Valley project and Bob Loblaw, and this gets Ben and Mack all excited and upset and they’re like, “Oh s**t, we gotta rush out of this house right away!”  By this point, Sheila has returned to the room and she’s holding a baby, but just one baby.  There’s nothing too surprising or notable about this, because people have babies, right?  We already met a lady with a baby a few eps back, when Val cut her hand on that barbed wire and went to the doctor’s office to get it looked at, and of course we saw the lady with the twins that Val made so uncomfortable back in <a href="http://www.knotsblogging.com/2017/04/knots-landing-episode-111-of-344.html" target="_blank">Distant Locations</a>.  However, the big kicker comes after Ben and Mack leave and Sheila is by herself.  We see her coming down the stairs carrying a baby and we assume it’s the same baby from before, but then she puts the baby down in a high chair in front of the table and the camera sorta zooms out to reveal, GASP, A SECOND BABY!  She has twins!  Obviously we viewers are meant to be smart enough to know what this means, but honest to God, the first time I watched this ep, and I remember it vividly, I was home from college for some break or other and I was watching this in my parent’s basement while drinking vodka and when the second baby was revealed, I actually said out loud (since I talk to the TV and I talk to myself even when I’m all alone), “Oh, how cute, she has twins, too.”  Then the scene switched to something else I didn’t even think about it at all, because that’s how dumb I am.  The rest of the episode came and went and I still didn’t manage to put the pieces together, but then after the ep is over and they run the closing credits, instead of doing the credits over that shot of the California landscape, they run them over a picture of the two twins sitting in their high chairs, and I remember thinking, “Gee, that’s a strange picture to put at the end of the ep,” and then a second later the light bulb finally went on in my head and, I kid you not, I actually gasped aloud as I realized what this means.  I think this story both aptly demonstrates how exciting it is to watch KL for the very first time and see all these magnificent plot points unfolding before your very eyes as well as demonstrating how very, very dumb I can be sometimes, particularly when I’ve consumed a lot of vodka.<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pmpZkpHQNpE/WRMhFgRCmKI/AAAAAAAACgA/E1gFgrlQoL03AjNVRCY1BvdObgJ-8jpLgCEw/s1600/the%2Bbabies.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pmpZkpHQNpE/WRMhFgRCmKI/AAAAAAAACgA/E1gFgrlQoL03AjNVRCY1BvdObgJ-8jpLgCEw/s400/the%2Bbabies.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>TO BE CONTINUED</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?