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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 6193" data-attributes="member: 22">27/Oct/82: DYNASTY: The Plea v. 28/Oct/82: KNOTS LANDING: Catharsis v. 29/Oct/82: DALLAS: Jock's Will v. 29/Oct/82: KNOTS LANDING: New BeginningsDYNASTY’s season opener is really fun. It starts off on an appropriately frantic note with Krystle and Fallon distraught over the disappearances of Blake and Little Blake respectively. Then it takes a turn for the funny when Alexis arrives at Soap Land Memorial Hospital and starts trying to arrange a bedside wedding to her ailing fiancee. This leads to clashes with indignant doctors, rude nurses and a bizarre speech delivered through a flap in an oxygen tent to Cecil, now made up to look exactly like Grandpa from THE MUNSTERS.When we return to Skycrest Mountain, the melodrama has been ratcheted up a notch, with Blake beset by a storm so ridiculously fierce, it genuinely made me laugh (funny weather - a Soap Land first.) If the fight between he and Nick Toscanni at the end of last season was an homage to SHANE, then his reunion with Krystle, where he staggers towards her out of the darkness, feels like a reenactment of Ashley Wilkes' return from the Civil War in GONE WITH THE WIND. It’s a sequence that manages to look both epic and cheap at the same time. I kind of love it. How intentionally funny it’s meant to be, it’s impossible to say - which kind of adds to the fascination. And when Blake is taken to the hospital where his and Alexis’s storylines collide - well, that’s when the fun really begins.In the midst of this absurdity comes the beautiful, haunting scene between Jeff and Claudia in the Carrington nursery where she compares the disappearance of his son to the death of her daughter, and then taunts him over it: “God’s punishing all of you.” (Interesting that some of DALLAS’s most atmospheric scenes have also taken place in a darkened nursery.)Little Blake’s kidnapping is the one plot line in this week’s DYNASTY that's played more or less completely straight, but even it provides a couple of unexpected moments of comedy: Claudia’s hilariously out to lunch description of Farouk Ahmed, and the unidentified old woman sobbing loudly on her death bed as she watches the Carringtons’ televised appeal for their baby’s safe return.The central plot of “Catharsis”, the first KNOTS episode of the week, has a whiff of generic TV movie about it. It deals with Karen’s attempt to foil the bad guys who killed Sid, and it’s kind of a relief when it’s over (even though things perks up whenever Joe Cooper or Mack get involved.)Over on DALLAS, Miss Ellie is also laying the past to rest by agreeing have Jock declared legally dead. After a date for the court hearing is set, she calls Ray in Kansas to tell him that the reading of Jock’s will is planned for the following day. Back on KNOTS, Gary receives a telegram from Bobby containing the same information. Ray and Gary’s respective women respond characteristically to the news. Abby whoops with delight (when no one is around to see her) while Donna frowns ominously.Gary and Ray both invite a third party to accompany them back to Dallas. Neither Gary’s estranged wife nor Ray’s cousin is overly keen on the idea, however. “What in the world would I wanna go to Dallas for??” Val asks incredulously. Mickey eventually agrees but is far from happy to find himself bunking with three other cowboys at Southfork. "I didn't have to leave Kansas to go to prison. We got Leavenworth right there,” he grumbles. I've assumed the bunkhouse in question to be what is now Elena's Petit Trianon in New DALLAS. If one takes the view, as I do, that Elena’s brother Drew is the 21st Century Mickey, then it’s kind of fitting he should end up living there too.Ray tells Donna that he has brought Mickey to Southfork to help put him on the straight and narrow. “Jock did the same thing for me,” he explains. Meanwhile, Lilimae surmises that Gary inviting Val to the will reading is really about his unresolved daddy issues. "Oh sugar, it probably just hit home to him that his daddy died, and he probably needed to talk to somebody who loved him,” she says. “Then let him go to her,” Val replies, referring to Abby.Gary and Bobby go on to speculate gloomily about the contents of their father's will. "That will is gonna determine who finally owns Ewing Oil,” Bobby tells Pam on DALLAS, "and I have a terrible feeling it's gonna be JR. If Daddy gave him the company, then you and I are gonna get out of here ... I'm not gonna sit around and watch him take over again." "My father never trusted me,” Gary tells Abby on KNOTS. "I wouldn’t put it past the old man to tie Val and me together, make her custodian of my money ... I just want you to be prepared. It’s just possible that I may come out of Dallas with nothing."Abby and JR, of course, already have some advance notice of what the will contains. When Sue Ellen overhears JR promising John Ross that Ewing Oil will one day be his alone to run, she also gets an inkling. What’s interesting is that when she asks JR about the will, (“I have a notion that you know something”) she doesn’t let on what she has overheard - yet it seems that is what prompts her (at least in part) to finally agree to remarry him, even going so far as to set a wedding date. Likewise, Abby, armed with similar foreknowledge, makes this pledge to Gary on KNOTS: "Look, you go to Dallas, you hear the will. And if you come back a millionaire - fine, terrific - but if you come back without a penny, that’s fine too - because from now on, rich or poor, we’re together.”Watching these episodes of DALLAS and KNOTS in sequence is really interesting. Gary’s look of silent anger at the will reading at Southfork, for instance, feels more resonant in the context of both shows.Harve Smithfield’s announcement at the end of this week’s DALLAS - that JR and Bobby are to be pitted against each other to determine who should finally control Ewing Oil - is both dramatically thrilling and pivotal to the future of the series. So is Alexis’s revelation at the end of DYNASTY that her and Blake’s firstborn son was kidnapped as a baby and never seen again. Admittedly, both plot twists are also kinda farfetched, but crucially, the contest between JR and Bobby feels somehow inevitable.The second KNOTS episode of the week, “New Beginnings”, picks up directly where “Jock’s Will" leaves off, with Gary saying his goodbyes to Bobby at Southfork whilst struggling to comes to terms with the fact that his $10,000,000 inheritance will be “limited for the first four years to use of the interest and loan.” The ep is a fascinating hybrid of the two Ewing-verse shows. A KNOTS episode set mostly in Dallas, it feels like DALLAS with extra brains or KNOTS with extra slippery soapiness.Gary and Abby are staying in the same Dallas hotel that Val is as part of her book tour, but both parties remain ignorant of the other’s presence for the bulk of the ep. In one scene, a dressed-for-bed Val takes receipt of her room service tray, closing her door just as an immaculate looking Abby saunters down the hallway on Gary’s arm, on their way out to dinner. The physical contrast between the two women here echoes a scene in this week's DYNASTY when Krystle and Alexis run into each other in the hospital corridor. Krystle is dirty and bedraggled following her one-woman mountain rescue mission, while Alexis retains her fur-coated glamour in spite of Cecil’s heart attack.When Abby and Val do see each other, in the last scene of "New Beginnings”, they are on an equal footing, stylistically and otherwise. "Paging Mrs. Ewing," calls the hotel tannoy, “paging Mrs. Gary Ewing." Abby and Val arrive from different directions and meet, finally, in the middle. "Val!" exclaims Abby in surprise. Save for a brief encounter at the dry cleaners a few weeks earlier, this is the first time the two women have spoken since Val caught Gary and Abby in bed together. "Well, you look terrific,” Abby continues. "Success seems to agree with you, I guess.” Unlike Krystle’s sarcastic tribute to Alexis in that earlier hospital scene, where she called her “my husband's innocent ex-wife and the splendidly irreproachable mother of his two children,” Abby’s compliment is genuine. "Thank you, Abby," Val replies graciously. "I might say the same about you. Success seems to agree with both of us." There follows a moment of something like mutual respect, and then Gary appears, throwing the situation off balance once again. Abby takes his arm, and Val takes her leave. On her way out, she stops briefly to look at the poster advertising her own book tour appearance and then continues walking, head held high, lonely but somehow victorious. The episode ends, not with the big dramatic freeze frames of this week’s DALLAS and DYNASTY, but almost tentatively with Gary watching Val as she goes, and Abby watching Gary, as if realising this is the new status quo: Gary may now have achieved a kind of peace with his father's memory, but he is still haunted by his past with Valene.And this week’s Soap Land Top 4 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING (New Beginnings)2 (-) DYNASTY3 (3) DALLAS4 (1) KNOTS LANDING (Catharsis)</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?