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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 15240" data-attributes="member: 22">25/Sep/84: PAPER DOLLS: Episode 1 v. 26/Sep/84: DYNASTY: Disappearance v. 28/Sep/84: DALLAS: Killer at Large v. 28/Sep/84: FALCON CREST: RequiemShortly after FLAMINGO ROAD ended two years ago, two of its central players returned to Soap Land in different guises. Sam Curtis became Mark Graison on DALLAS and Michael Tyrone morphed into Richard Channing on FALCON CREST. Towards the end of last season’s DALLAS, Mark was killed in a plane explosion and the FALCON CREST finale cliffhanger suggested Richard was headed for a similar fate. In their place, the Soap Land gods have seen fit to reincarnate a third FLAMINGO ROAD character, Constance Weldon Carlyle, as Racine on PAPER DOLLS. While Mark and Richard were pretty much identical to their previous selves on FLAM RD, Racine is less similar to hers. Constance was a pampered and petulant princess whereas Racine presides over her own modelling agency with a cool head and a shrewd business sense. Still, as Angela Channing remarked towards the end of last season’s FALCON CREST, businesswomen are now in vogue in Soap Land and had FLAMINGO ROAD continued, it’s not inconceivable that Constance would have ended up behind a desk herself — especially if the knowledge that she was the illegitimate daughter of the town tramp had spurred her to build a new life for herself.As it is, Racine and Constance do have a couple of things in common: neither is averse to a bitchy wisecrack, and where Constance frolicked naked in a swimming pool with the future Richard Channing, Racine does the same thing in a jacuzzi with the future Jack Ewing.By chance, Michael Tyrone’s same swimming pool, and the grounds surrounding it, show up in this week’s FALCON CREST. After recently playing host to Little Blake’s birthday party on DYNASTY and a soiree for rich paedophiles on THE YELLOW ROSE, they now provides the setting for cartel leader Norton Crane’s assassination. The interior of the house appears later in the same episode, but this time doubling as the Buenos Aires residence of Crane’s successor, Johann Reibmann. In the same room where Michael Tyrone once fed his sinister-looking fish, Reibmann now pets his exotically-coloured birds.The season premiere of each of the week's returning soaps finds its characters in varying states of helplessness. On DYNASTY, Jeff finds Fallon’s abandoned car at the scene of an accident but no amount of quizzing of police or paramedics yields any clue to her whereabouts. Meanwhile on FALCON CREST, Cole and Melissa can only stand and wait for a similar combination of professionals to bring news of their loved ones from the site of the plane crash. Over on DALLAS, JR, Sue Ellen and Lucy wait anxiously at Soap Land Memorial Hospital as Bobby undergoes emergency surgery following his shooting by a mystery assailant. Later, it’s Pam and Jenna’s turn to nod politely as yet more medical experts point at x-rays and talk about Bobby’s blindness.Yes, three years after Blake Carrington and FLAMINGO ROAD’s Skipper both raged against the dying of the light, Bobby becomes the third Soap Land character to lose his sight. In spite of the dismayed reactions of those around him, it doesn’t feel like such a big deal for him. Certainly, he doesn’t seem to be experiencing the same kind of post-cliffhanger trauma this week as his alpha male contemporaries, DYNASTY's Blake and FALCON CREST's Chase.While Chase is plagued by nightmares of the plane crash he feels at least partly responsible for, Blake’s situation — and that of the rest of the Carringtons — is even graver, what with the loss of Denver Carrington, Alexis’s arrest for murder and Fallon’s disappearance occurring almost simultaneously. “What’s happening to us?” asks Alexis, as well she might. However mysterious and abstract Fallon’s final scenes were at the end of last season, her family’s reactions to her vanishing feel emotionally real. When Jeff returns to the Carrington mansion without her, Blake’s bewildered disappointment resembles Miss Ellie’s when the Ewing boys came back from South America without Jock.As Blake Carrington falls on DYNASTY, Cliff Barnes rises on DALLAS. “For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do,” Blake admits to Krystle. "You mean, after all these years I finally won?!” asks an incredulous Cliff after learning of his eleventh hour oil strike. "I've never seen you so defeated,” Alexis tells Blake — and for once she isn’t gloating. “Cliff Barnes has become a mighty big man in this town … You’re yesterday’s news!” Marilee Stone informs JR — and she is gloating.Following Bobby's shooting on DALLAS, which JR assumes was intended as an attempt on his own life, and the plane crash on FALCON CREST, which Richard Channing assumes was an act of sabotage by the cartel, both men beef up their personal security. For some reason, when JR employs bodyguards, it feels like an act of weakness — an example of physical cowardice that Jock would surely have disapproved of. Yet when Richard hires a Head of Security, it only adds to his mystique, to his Howard Hughes-like aura of untouchability. Either way, both security teams are soon put to the test, JR’s when Edgar Randolph takes a shot at him outside the Ewing building and Richard’s when someone — who turns out to be his girlfriend Pamela on the run from the cartel — breaks into his house and takes refuge in his closet.While Edgar’s attempt on JR’s life is unsuccessful, he at least gets to pull the trigger, which makes a refreshing change after all the fumbling with firearms we’ve seen recently from Kirby on DYNASTY, Julia on FALCON CREST and Sue Ellen early on in this week’s DALLAS when she attempts to retrieve the gun stashed under her pillow to fend off JR’s advances, only to be interrupted by a call from Soap Land Memorial with the news of Bobby’s shooting.While no one on DALLAS acknowledges that this is the second time a Ewing brother has been shot by an unknown intruder in the Ewing offices — the whole scenario is played completely straight — FALCON CREST comes dangerously close to suggesting its characters know they are living inside a soap opera. Before moving out of the Channing house, Melissa bids farewell to her soon-to-be-ex-grandmother-in-law with the line, "I'll always be available for the family gatherings, Angela — funerals, shootings, divorces and, of course, reading of wills.”As in any new Soap Land season, there are losses. Gone from the opening credits of DYNASTY and DALLAS are Pamela Sue Martin and Barbara Bel Geddes. Lost in the between-seasons-shuffle are DYNASTY’s Kirby and DALLAS’s Peter Richards, both of whom started out as sweet-natured young idealists who subsequently had their hearts broken and spirits crushed before being blackmailed off their respective shows (she by Alexis, he by JR) without so much as a good-bye scene between them. Killed off screen as a result of the FALCON CREST plane crash are new grooms Phillip Erickson and Michael Ranson, while returning for the new season only to bid farewell in its first week are FALCON CREST’s Linda Gioberti (another fatality of the crash) and DALLAS's Afton Cooper. Discounting the various minor players who bit the dust during THE YELLOW ROSE’s frequent shoot outs, Linda is the first character to die on screen since Chip Roberts on KNOTS LANDING. (That said, we have yet to learn if Karen Mackenzie was alive or dead at the end of last season's KNOTS.) Afton, meanwhile, is rewarded for four years’ loyal service to Soap Land with arguably the best farewell scene since the original Steven Carrington’s on DYNASTY. (Richard Avery’s and Mark Graison’s exits were very poignant, but neither actually got to say good-bye to anyone.) Like Steven, Afton tells it like it is. “Our relationship is ridiculous,” she informs Cliff, “and it’s over. I just wish I could say it’s been terrific."Of course, Afton’s departure becomes even more interesting when viewed in hindsight, when one realises that the character, like Sammy Jo when she first departed DYNASTY in Season 2, must be pregnant at this point. Her line to Cliff, “I’m not drinking with you,” leapt out at me this time around. For the first time, it occurred to me that Afton might already know she’s pregnant here. Perhaps it’s even the reason — combined with the fact that “Cliff Barnes has just become a mighty big man in this town” — that she decides to leave. Nothing if not intuitive, could it be that Afton senses what a dangerous combination power and a child could be for Cliff? Given how things will pan out in New DALLAS, one of her final lines to him — “You are the coldest man I have ever met; you make JR Ewing look like a saint” — now sounds oddly prophetic.There are also some new additions to Soap Land this week. DYNASTY and FALCON CREST each feature a suavely handsome newcomer in their opening credit sequence — Brady Lloyd and Greg Reardon respectively. On DYNASTY, Brady pays a surprise visit to his wife, Dominique Devereaux, at La Mirage. Given that this is Brady’s introductory scene and some character background must necessarily be shoehorned into their marital conversation, they make for an impressive — and convincing — couple. Also, a scene between two black people, much less a black couple, is very unusual at this point in Soap Land’s history. In fact, if one were to recall the last conversation between two people of colour one would have to reach all the way back to the DALLAS mini-series when “Barbecue” caterers Tilly and Sam speculated about which of the Ewings would be the first to get drunk. In contrast, all Dominique and Brady are interested in is each other. (With that in mind, it's hard not to notice that the only other black faces in this week’s Soap Land belong to Lloyd Bridges’ efficient secretary on PAPER DOLLS and Bobby’s skilled surgeon on DALLAS — both highly competent professionals who are entirely ancillary as characters.)Where Brady is black, FALCON CREST’s Greg is English — or at least half English. "My father was American … I moved over to California to go to Stanford,” he informs an unimpressed Angela during their first meeting. Likewise, Brady must remind his wife (in order to inform us) of his credentials: "Remember me, baby? I'm the guy that took a few talented unknown kids and parlayed them into a billion dollar recording business." "Oh Brady,” chides Dominique affectionately, "you're beginning to sound like your own press release. You do have that habit, you know.” To show a more personal side, Greg and Brady each manage to squeeze in an endearingly irrelevant anecdote about their mothers. "My English mother ... taught me not to ask sarcastic questions,” Greg tells Angela. "My mother used to say I had a way with words when I was a little boy and her dream was for me to grow up and write poems for a greeting card company,” Brady informs a completely charmed Claudia Carrington.Amidst all the upheaval in this week’s Soap Land, some past sins are unearthed. “You set Peter up, didn’t you?” realises DALLAS’s Lucy during a conversation with a prevaricating JR. "Peter was playing around with Sue Ellen and you found out about it!” Meanwhile on DYNASTY, Steven is going through Colby Co’s books when he finds out about the pay off Alexis made to Rashid Ahmed that led to Blake’s downfall. While Lucy’s realisation yields no immediate consequences beyond a desultory cry of, “Nobody around here cares about anybody or anything!”, the impact of Steven’s discovery is far-reaching, leading first to a major fall-out between mother and son ("There is nothing about you that I can believe in anymore, nothing!”) and then to Blake swearing revenge against Alexis in a way that feels like a turning point for his character: “I’ll bury her just the way she's tried to bury me!” Towards the end of this week's DALLAS, Bobby informs Pam and Jenna that just prior to being shot, he'd found a bug in his office phone — and he suspects JR of being responsible for it. Later, JR assures Bobby that he will take care of Ewing Oil in his absence. “That’s a little like having the fox watch the henhouse,” Bobby replies drily. JR will use the same metaphor himself a few decades later. “You’re not the first Pam to fox her way into the henhouse,” he tells Cliff and Afton’s offspring at the beginning of New DALLAS’s second season. With so many repercussions from last season, this week’s episodes could be forgiven for not ending with a fresh twist, yet that’s precisely what each of them do. On DYNASTY, just when it seems as if life cannot get any worse for the Carringtons, Sammy Jo snatches Danny at the airport, giving Adam the slip and making a quick getaway with the kid when she’s supposed to be boarding a plane to New York. Like the last Soap Land character to abduct a child, she leavens the sour taste of her crime with an irresistible quip. "You OK, sweetie?” Julia asked Joseph when she drove off with him in FALCON CREST. "Then let's go get some ice cream!” "My two best dresses were in that suitcase, honey lamb,” Sammy Jo tells Danny as she bundles him into the back of a cab, "but if everything goes the way I plan, your mom's gonna have more, lots more!” DALLAS ends with a slightly more predictable, but still fun, twist as it emerges that Edgar Randolph didn’t shoot Bobby as everyone has assumed. “Whoever tried to kill you is still at large!” Captain Fogarty tells JR. FALCON CREST, meanwhile, ends with the most unexpected, gloriously bonkers surprise of all — the revelation that there’s Nazi treasure buried under Falcon Crest and nobody knows about it apart from three sinister Europeans in Buenos Aires. "Falcon Crest will surrender its treasure!” shouts Gustav Reibmann, the most sinister European of them all.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (-) DYNASTY 2 (1) FALCON CREST3 (2) DALLAS 4 (-) PAPER DOLLS</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?