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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 248923" data-attributes="member: 22">17 Mar 14: DALLAS: Lifting the Veil v. 11 May 16: EMPIRE: Rise by Sin v. 30 Nov 18: DYNASTY: A Temporary InfestationWhile all of this week’s DALLAS occurs on the day of John Ross and Pamela’s wedding, EMPIRE begins on the day before the ASAs, aka “the 54th annual American Sound Awards,” and ends on the night of the ceremony itself.Last week, I was finding hard to get too excited about the ASAs, but from this episode’s opening sequence, which shows Lucious drilling his musicians obsessively through the night (“Tomorrow’s the ASAs and this song has to be the highlight of the show. I want the whole world talking about it … There’s no room for error”), the stakes feel very high. Paradoxically, this is partly because it’s not the awards themselves that are dramatically important, but what lies beneath them. As Cookie points out to Lucious, “This ain’t about the ASAs. This is about you avoiding your mother … You’re working yourself so hard so you can avoid. You have to deal with this.” Over on DYNASTY, where Fallon has thrown herself into her latest whim, starting a record label, there is a watered-down version of the same scenario. “Fallon, what is this really about?” Monica asks. Whereas Lucious is reluctant to discuss what’s really going on with him (“Stay in your lane, Cookie,” he warns), Fallon cannot wait to rattle off her latest romantic dilemma: “I just need to keep my head in something other than my head. I love Culhane so much so that I told Liam that I couldn’t talk to him anymore. I just wish that meant I didn’t think about him either.”When it comes to its use of language and depictions of sex, C21st Soap Land is, of course, far more explicit than it was in the ‘80s. In a genre driven by the sensational, the danger with everyone doing and saying increasingly outrageous things is that it will turn into shock for shock's sake: the audience become inured and it all becomes so much white noise. That’s the risk DALLAS takes this week when it goes further in its depiction of sexuality than it ever has before.While John Ross is after a permit from the Texas Railroad Commission that will allow him to overrule Bobby and frack for oil on Southfork, Harris Ryland is after the files Emma stole from him at the end of last season on John Ross’s behalf (he’s particularly eager to retrieve the flash drive containing evidence of his involvement with the CIA). The two men strike a deal which necessitates John Ross visiting C21st Soap Land’s very first whorehouse (an establishment we later learn is run by Harris’s mother Judith), and it’s a lot more David Lynch than Lute Mae Sanders. Previously, the only gay characters to ever appear in the Ewing-verse were Kit Mainwaring and his erstwhile boyfriend Sam in 1979. Both were gentle, unassuming and essentially sexless. Now, sauntering across the screen, arms draped around each other, come a tall black man clad in short shorts and a see-through leopard print blouse and a shorter, whiter man in a business suit. But this is as nothing compared to what comes next. Joining Harris in a private room, John Ross watches on CCTV as Stanley Babcock, the all-important Texas Railroad Commissioner, plays sex games with a woman dressed as a dog. The two men share a macho laugh at Babcock's expense. “What kind of sick, twisted, messed-up dude is this?!” asks John Ross. “I think his dog got hit by a car when he was a kid so he comes here to get his Rosebud rocks off,” Harris sneers in reply. (Gee, imagine that — a man being driven by urges that stem from an unhappy childhood.) “And now that you know, I’m sure he’ll do whatever you need to make sure you can drill your ranch.”One might argue that dressing a hooker in a dog suit is a gratuitous step too far  — the kind of stunt New DYNASTY might pull in search of nonexistent laughs. Viewed from a different perspective, as grist for what Dallas Decoder’s critique of this episode describes as John Ross’s “ever-growing hubris," it’s something else. John Ross has already started emulating his late father in several ways: wearing his watch and buckle, addressing the women in his life as darlin’, cheating on his wife in the name of business. Given that this is C21st Soap Land, however, he is obliged to go further. Sure, JR screwed around, but not even he was so audacious as to service his wife and mistress under the same roof the way his son is. Sure, JR caught countless patsies in compromising sexual positions and blackmailed them over it, but these days, merely finding a politician in bed with a hooker is so 1980s, so instead, John Ross must catch Babcock with a hooker dressed as a dog. And if John Ross is determined to be a more extreme version of his daddy, his enemies must, in turn, come up with more extreme ways of cutting him back down to size.To this end, Harris gives John Ross a little pre-wedding present: he turns a couple of hookers, Sapphire and Chastity, loose on him. (John Ross suddenly finding himself in the middle of a threesome: foreshadow alert.) He manages to fend them off and escape to his wedding, but not before a couple of compromising-looking photographs have been taken.In 1983, it was enough for Holly Harwood to leave a lipstick stain on JR’s collar to sow suspicions of an affair in Sue Ellen’s mind. In 2014, Harris has devised a way of upping that ante, as he explains to his mommy madam. “Remember Monica Lewinsky and how she kept her dress from her special time with the President and how on that dress there was evidence implicating him in foul play? Well, the girl wearing that dress in that photograph is only sixteen.” “That’s a very exciting plan, Harris,” Judith purrs, “but … it’s still lacking a key substance and for the life of me I can’t imagine how you intend on getting it.” Enter Harris’s secret weapon: John Ross’s secretary. “Candace here has been working double duty,” Harris explains, “and that dress is gonna fit her just fine.” While JR managed to sleep with every one of his secretaries in the original series sooner or later (Julie, Louella, Kristin and Sly), Harris has helpfully accelerated that process for John Ross by supplying him a secretary who’s already a prostitute. Add to this a mistress who gets inside his head by wearing the same lingerie as his wife and it’s as though the world of New DALLAS has conspired to present John Ross with a distorted hall of mirrors, David Lynch-meets-Alice in Wonderland version of his father’s sex life and is saying to him, “You really wanna be your daddy? OK — but be careful what you wished for.” Bum sums it all up perfectly when he issues him the following warning: “You’re flying mighty close to the sun in all this, John Ross.”Harris’ political reminiscence, “Remember Monica Lewinsky and how she kept her dress from her special time with the President?” echoes Lucious’s from last week: “Remember how, under Reagan, the government took all the mentally ill patients and dumped them out on the street?”Whereas Alexis and New New Cristal are involved in a relentless game of oneupmanship on this week’s DYNASTY that involves dead plants and ghosts and sprinkler systems and the Baby Jesus and so much double and triple-crossing that I probably couldn’t have kept track of it if I’d been interested enough to try, bitchiness between female characters is pretty rare on New DALLAS (just as it was in the original series). This makes Afton and Sue Ellen’s exchange on the day of their children’s wedding all the more enjoyable. John Ross has been delayed at the whorehouse and Afton is not pleased. “After all the despicable things JR did to you through the years,” she remarks to Sue Ellen, “I would think you’d have taught your son better than this.” “Just so you know, Afton,” Sue Ellen replies, “the most despicable thing JR ever did was you.” “How dare you? How DARE you?” Afton exclaims. There’s also a deleted scene where Sue Ellen tells Emma, somewhat clunkily, how much she reminds her of her sister Kristin: “She loved fooling around with married men — lying, scheming, drugs too. Didn’t care about anybody else other than herself. She ended up face down in the pool. Tramps don’t last too long around this house.”The best scenes in this week’s DALLAS and EMPIRE both involve a son arguing with a disapproving parent about his sex life. The one on DALLAS is classic soap opera: it slots into the same “home truths delivered on the morning of a wedding” category as Blake confronting Steven about his sexuality before tying the knot with Krystle in the opening episode of ‘80s DYNASTY, and then confronting Adam over his relationship with Claudia prior to the royal wedding in Moldavia five years later. Like Blake, Sue Ellen is concerned about her son’s choice of sexual partner. “I know you’re sleeping with Emma,” she says as he straightens his tie in his bedroom mirror. “All this time I was hoping that you wouldn’t make the same mistakes that your father did. Apparently, the blood of JR runs too pure in your veins.” Flushed with his victory at the whorehouse, John Ross smoothly deflects the accusation. “I don’t know what you think is going on, but I guarantee you do not understand what I am doing — or why,” he tells his mother. “I understand the pain you are causing Pamela,” she argues. “She doesn’t know anything about this and she doesn’t need to. This is just business,” he insists. “Just like your daddy, finding a way to explain infidelity,” Sue Ellen replies, her voice cracking, her eyes filling up. “I will not stand by and watch you destroy Pamela like JR destroyed me!” John Ross takes a step closer to her. “Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?” he asks her coolly. “Perhaps your drinking is making you forget your loyalties, Mama.” “If you don’t stop doing what you’re doing, I’m gonna tell Pamela myself,” she replies. John Ross responds with one last zinger before exiting the scene: “You have looked the other way your whole life, Mama. One more time’s not going to hurt.” It’s the old JR/Sue Ellen dynamic — she accuses him of having an affair, he justifies it in the name of business, she makes a threat, he taunts her about her drinking and then annihilates her with a final one-liner — repurposed for mother and son, and with that extra New DALLAS ingredient: a deeper emotional resonance. Sue Ellen has lived through all this before and is now powerless to do anything but watch history repeat itself while knowing that she is at least partially responsible for the way John Ross has turned out. Dallas Decoder’s critique makes the great observation that this ep "serves as a kind of companion piece to the funeral episode. The first one shows Sue Ellen grieving the loss of JR; in the second, she mourns his ‘return’ through the sinful nature of their son.”[URL unfurl="true"]https://dallasdecoder.com/2014/03/19/critique-tnts-dallas-episode-29-lifting-the-veil/[/URL]While this mother/son scene is familiar in all the best ways, the equivalent father/son confrontation on EMPIRE continually subverts our expectations. It takes place in the control booth of one of Empire’s recording studios and actually begins as an intimate chat between Jamal and his new lover, Major-D. Still in the closet, Major is assuring Jamal that, even though he’ll be arriving at the ASAs with a supermodel called Chanel on his arm, it’s all for show. “Don’t let that mean anything to you,” he says, pulling Jamal close to him so their foreheads are touching, “it’s just one night.” At the sound of a door opening, his demeanour instantly changes and he pushes Jamal away. “Get off me man!” he yells as Lucious appears. “Bro, don’t you ever come at me like that again!” he continues before storming out. There’s a tense pause as father and son look at each other warily, and we assume that an argument is about to erupt over whether or not Lucious believes Jamal to be a predator. But then Lucious laughs. “I see D-Major’s still on the DL,” he says. “You knew?” Jamal asks in surprise. “A real dog can always tell a fake bitch,” he replies. “I’ve been in this business so long, you don’t think I know a little about everybody in this industry? Even though D-Major’s a talented producer, his secret life is not so secretive and everybody knows how he likes to turn rich boys into his little bitch.” This rankles Jamal. “How do you know I didn’t make him my little bitch?” he asks. “He came onto me, I didn’t come onto him.” “Exactly — I bet you he’s on top,” replies Lucious. “You’re disgusting, Dad,” Jamal mutters. “No, what’s disgusting is what you’re doing in my studio,” counters Lucious, suddenly angry. “Anybody could have walked in here and saw you. I taught you better than that. You don’t crap where you eat … You think I enjoy watching my son become some closet phoney’s little bitch?” His voice is trembling and he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “Look man,” he continues, “I’ve tried to be sensitive to your way of life … I’ve tried to tolerate something that is intolerable to my nature. I’ve tried to understand and be respectful of your choices but you don’t respect me — you just keep throwing this unnatural way of life into my face. I’ve tried to talk to you as a man, but all you do is turn into some little girl, mad about something I did to you twenty years ago.” “Twenty years ago?” Jamal replies mockingly. “You’re crying like a little bitch about your mother throwing you in some water forty years ago. What does that say about you? Can’t even look the woman in the eyes without crying. I’m not crying. Always telling me, ‘Jamal, don’t be a sissy bitch, put it in the music.’ Well, don’t be a sissy bitch, put it in the mu —“ Lucious suddenly grabs him by the throat with one hand and raises his other like he’s about to punch him. He’s properly crying as he says, “You ain’t nothing to me but a disappointment and the day you die from AIDS, I’m gonna celebrate.” Again, one is reminded of Blake and Steven’s pre-wedding scene back in DYNASTY ’81, specifically Blake’s comparably homophobic line about endowing “the Steven Carrington Institute for the Treatment and Study of Faggotry.” But whereas Blake’s delivery of that line was laced with withering, icy contempt, Lucious’s is full of emotion and passion. His words come at a cost and that’s why, even though the AIDS reference is dated, they still have an impact.Compared with the nuptials at Southfork and the ASAs on EMPIRE, DYNASTY’s party of the week — a music showcase for Fallon's new label — is pretty inconsequential, but all three gatherings attract unwanted guests: Nicolas Trevino (“Elena, you don’t even know this guy,” objects Christopher. “Did you know he’s married?”), Lucious’s mother Leah (“They say the whole family’s performing but nobody’s invited me,” she complains to Andre, “I don’t like being left out”) and Evil Ada Stone (who freaks out Culhane by showing up in a black wig) respectively.Andre takes pity on his grandmother and agrees to sneak her into the ASAs, but insists that she can’t tell anyone who she is because Lucious has already been lauded for the “authentic” video which depicts his mother killing herself: “It would destroy his credibility if anybody found out.” Leah promises to keep her mouth shut, but we’re pretty sure how this is gonna go — she’s gonna arrive at the ASAs, lose her mind in all the excitement and say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Instead, just as Andre and Leah are leaving for the show, Thirsty arrives with a couple of heavies who lock them in Lucious’s panic room to make sure she can’t say anything.When Nicolas assures Elena that he and his wife are in the process of divorcing, one assumes he’s lying — until the penultimate scene of the episode when he returns to his penthouse apartment to find Lucia waiting for him and we realise she is the C21st equivalent of THE COLBYS’ Adrienne Cassidy, i.e., a woman who is determined to hold onto her husband despite knowing he has been in love with another woman his entire adult life. “A divorce would only colour us poorly in the church and we have too much invested in our life together to not give this another try,” she reasons. “At the very least, Nicolas, we owe it to our children … The Ewings seem determined to know who you really are. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll tell them what you owe and who you owe it to … It would also put an end to what you have going with Elena.”Lucious’s mother is not the only loose cannon relative in this week’s EMPIRE. While Harris Ryland is eager to conceal his five-year involvement with the CIA, it takes Cookie about five seconds after her sister Carol starts dating Tariq Cousins, an ex-cop from their hometown of Philly, to figure that “he’s a Fed now … Why [else] would he wanna get mixed up with Carol? Everybody know Carol’s a crackhead and she’s got three illegitimate kids.”Just as John Ross confronts his mother about her drinking (“Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?”), Cookie does the same thing to her sister: “You had a drink last night with Tariq, didn’t you? … Man, I told you if you fall off again your ass was out and I meant that!” Carol responds by accusing Cookie of snatching away the life that rightfully belongs to her. In the same way that Caress Morelle once told Blake that “my sister stole you from me” so Carol claims that Lucious should have been hers: “He met me first then here you come — 'here come Cookie!'” Cookie ain’t buying it: “Well then, bounce, Carol, bounce your ass out of my company … and you know what, forget about the ASAs because I’m not taking no washed up crackhead to no ASAs!”Earlier in the season, Cookie paid homage to Dominique Devereaux when she asked her other sister, Candace, to “stop acting like Diahann Carroll,” and now it’s time for another shout out to ‘80s DYNASTY. Throughout this week’s ep, Cookie has been teasing Lucious about his failed attempts to lose weight in time for the ASAs and which generic supermodel he plans to take as his date. Meanwhile, her own plan to bring Carol as her plus one has just gone up in smoke. Finally, when Lucious and Cookie are both dressed up to the nines and ready to go to the party, he looks at her admiringly, tells her that “a woman that beautiful shouldn’t walk the red carpet alone,” and extends his arm to her by way of invitation. Momentarily surprised, she does not respond. “You want my arm to fall off?” he asks. Recognising this as a line Billy Dee Williams, aka Brady Lloyd, delivered to Diana Ross, aka Billie Holliday, in Lady Sings the Blues, she laughs and says, “Shut up, Billy Dee!” Given that the character of Brady Lloyd was at least partially inspired by Williams’ impresario role in Lady Sings the Blues, this only strengthens the psychic link between that film, Brady and Dominique, and Lucious and Cookie. (That said, I heard on a podcast recently that Sylvia Robinson, the mob-connected singer/producer/label owner/mastermind behind ‘Rappers Delight’ by the Sugarhill Gang was the original inspiration for Cookie.) But Cookie is also eager to clarify what she is not. Unlike Karen Fairgate, who introduced her family on the first episode of KNOTS as “the neighbourhood Brady Bunch”, Cookie insists on the ASAs red carpet that “we’re not the Brady Bunch, we’re not the Partridges, hell, we ain’t even the Jacksons. We are the Lyons!”Meanwhile, Fallon’s decision to start a record company with Monica could be read as payback for Cookie naming her label Lyon Dynasty at the beginning of the season. “Welcome to Broken Glass Recording Artists, bringing the next generation of women into the spotlight,” Fallon declares smugly as if she’s just casually invented feminism. Alas, there’s less female solidarity in the music biz on EMPIRE, as Cookie, having realised that “the Feds are still coming for us”, is forced to tell Jamal the real reason he needs to sever all ties with sweet little Freda Gatz, with whom he has been collaborating on his new album. “You ever wonder how I got out on good behaviour?” she asks him. “Honestly, I assumed you informed on somebody,” he replies. “Frank Gathers,” she admits. “You snitched on Freda’s dad? … And he ends up in lock-up with our father. Ma, did Lucious have something to do with his murder?” “… He would have killed all of us without batting an eye. And Freda? Well, that apple didn’t fall far from the tree so I need you to let her go, Jamal. It’s dangerous for all of us.”Cookie on Freda: “Well, that apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”Afton on John Ross: “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh, Sue Ellen?"Storylines collide at the ASAs as Jamal tries to let Freda down gently on one end of the red carpet (“I’ll set you up with a new label … Trust me. Get away from Empire”) and Carol shows up at the other, high as a kite and yelling her head off. Mindful of the cameras, Cookie pulls her sister into an embrace while telling her to “walk away before I drag your drunk ass by your nappy weave!” A confused Freda and a stoned Carol then come face to face. Carol asks for Freda’s help in getting into the party. When Freda politely refuses, Carol gets mean: “You think you’re better than me, huh? You know what, you wouldn’t even be here if Lucious didn’t feel guilty about what he did to your daddy!” As Carol is dragged away by security, Freda goes into a flashback montage, which enables her to figure out precisely what Lucious did to her daddy. Then everything goes into silent slow-motion as Freda runs down the red carpet towards Lucious, snatching a gun from a security guard’s holster as she goes. Suddenly, the ASAs becomes the lobby of Belmar Hotel at the end of KNOTS Season 5: Jamal turns to see Freda raise the gun and aim it at Lucious. “No, no, no, stop, Freda, no!” he shouts, stepping in-between them. He takes the bullet and sinks to the ground. Then everything speeds up again and chaos descends. It feels like the end of the season, but it isn’t. It isn’t even the end of the episode.Just as John Ross was late for his wedding, Andre is conspicuous by his absence at the ASAs. It’s hard to say which of them has the more bizarre excuse for not being where they should be: John Ross, watching the Texas Railroad Commissioner playing sex games with a woman dressed as a dog, or Andre, pounding on the door of a panic room as he and his delusional grandmother watch his brother get shot on live TV.Andre and Leah are eventually freed and join the rest of the glamorously dressed Lyon family in the waiting room of Soap Land Memorial Hospital where Jamal is, of course, in critical condition and undergoing emergency surgery. It’s very much Soap Land business as usual, but with an extra layer of EMPIRE-style verisimilitude — the designer gowns are stained with blood, the emotions are raw, the characters are genuinely traumatised. (“Get your hands off me!” screams Cookie at Lucious. “This is your fault, you son of a — hey, put them damn cameras down!”) In a brilliant moment of irony, the family realise the ASAs are on the hospital TV and they gather round to see the Award for Song of the Year, the category for which both Lucious and Jamal were nominated, go to … someone we’ve never previously heard of. “They split the votes,” Hakeem realises before turning to his father: “All that fighting between you and Jamal for what? Nothing!”With all that’s going on at the hospital, everyone momentarily forgets about Lucious’s mother who wanders outside and is immediately besieged by reporters. “Are you part of the family, ma’am?” “Yes, I am part of the family.” “What is your relationship to Lucious Lyon?” End of episode.And the Top 3 are …1 (2) EMPIRE2 (1) DALLAS3 (3) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?