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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 10688" data-attributes="member: 22">23/Mar/83: DYNASTY: The Vote v. 25/Mar/83: DALLAS: Cuba Libre This week's Soap Land is all about business. While Blake battles Alexis to prevent her merging Denver Carrington with Colby Co, JR and Bobby continue to battle each other for - what else? - control of Ewing Oil. This episode of DYNASTY is full of colour, pace, awesomely insane dialogue (“Get off your bronco, Mercedes cowboy!”) and Joan Collins at her most playful. Even when exiting a scene up a flight of stairs, she does so while stylishly twirling a glove. I’m reminded of Larry Hagman’s sense of play back when he was still exploring the boundaries of his character on DALLAS - specifically the 79/80 season, which was his second year as JR, just as this is Collins’ second as Alexis.This week’s DALLAS, meanwhile, has a more muted visual palate. JR might be zigzagging between Dallas, Puerto Rico and Havana, but the plot dictates that he spend most of his time in these cities in plain beige offices talking to plain middle-aged men dressed in plain tan suits. The dialogue is less flamboyant than on DYNASTY too - these are business dealings where nobody says directly what’s on their minds and so one has to pay that little bit more attention to the games of cat and mouse going back and forth. Back at Ewing Oil, Bobby at least has Katherine Wentworth to perch attractively on his desk while he meets with yet more plain men in suits, but the talk is of frozen Alaskan oilfields and prototype cold weather drill bits. Again, the details of these discussions are of more significance than the equivalent ones on DYNASTY. I couldn’t tell you what Macguffins Jeff and Adam, or Blake and Alexis, were arguing about as they barged into each other’s offices this week, and I don't think it really mattered.Alexis borrows Jacqueline Perrault’s swivel chair to helm her first board meeting as majority shareholder at Denver Carrington this week. One can imagine Jock “women belong in the bedroom, not the boardroom” Ewing spinning in his swampy grave at the sight of her presiding over a quorum of frightened men, all of whom (with the exception of her future father-in-law Sam Dexter) are depicted as doddery and/or morbidly obese. DALLAS similarly caricatures the “concerned citizens” who accompany JR on his “fact finding excursion” to Cuba (really a smokescreen for his attempt to salvage his lost oil deal). Puffed up Texas businessmen, they visibly preen themselves when the "little lady" delegated to escort them through airport customs refers to "visitors of such importance as yourselves". Not so a clearly preoccupied JR, who physically towers above them in the same way that Alexis has the Denver Carrington Board of Directors quaking in their boots. She may not be the first Soap Land female to head up a board meeting, (that distinction belongs to Krystle when she deputised for Blake during his murder trial two years ago) but she nonetheless strikes an impressive figure. With her regal glamour and crisp ultimatums, she’s like a cross between Joseph Stalin and Joan Crawford in the MOMMIE DEAREST Pepsi scene.Although she inherited half of Colby Co at the beginning of the season, this is the ep that really launches Alexis as a fully fledged businesswoman, and the way she embraces the role is akin to both a child playing dress up and an actress having a ball. There is a remarkable moment where she sits behind her desk and launches into a speech, ostensibly spoken to Adam, but delivered almost directly down the camera lens: “A woman begins her young adult life being soft, loving and giving. Then what it all comes down to finally is use or be used.” If men were just nicer to women in the first place, she seems to be saying, then women wouldn’t feel the need to start running their own conglomerates out of revenge. In fact, Alexis is a woman scorned thrice over in this ep - by old flame Senator McVane (who has managed to pull strings in Washington on Blake’s behalf to delay the merger), by more recent lover Mark Jennings (who dumped her and is now sleeping with her daughter) and of course by Blake himself.Just as the fallout from Jeff and Kirby’s elopement last week paralleled that from Bobby and Pam’s at the beginning of DALLAS, the similarities continue as Adam and Jeff butt heads in a similar way to JR and Bobby back then. Where JR impugned Pam’s reputation to his brother in “Digger’s Daughter" (“Ray Krebbs has been telling me about that girl for years”) so Adam boasts to Jeff of his own sexual history with Kirby, referring to her knowledgeably as “one sexy doll.” That ep of DALLAS climaxed with Bobby making a grab for JR, snarling, "If you ever do it again …” before being restrained by Pam. With no Kirby present to hold him back, Jeff pins Adam up against a wall and finishes Bobby’s threat: “If you ever imply anything about my wife ever again, I’ll kill you." Bobby gets his macho on in this week’s DALLAS too when he grabs Cliff by his lapels and pulls him off his bar stool in the Cattleman’s Club. "You know, Barnes,” he tells him, "you are a nasty little man and no wonder my brother stepped all over you every chance he got. Now you just keep your nose out of my affairs or I'm gonna do the same thing.” This is one threat Bobby will eventually make good on - and how - in New DALLAS.Alexis and Miss Ellie make similar quasi-incestuous discoveries this week. Alexis's suspicions are confirmed when she spies Mark kissing her daughter Fallon at La Mirage, while Miss Ellie walks in on Clayton kissing her daughter-in-law Sue Ellen at Southfork. The latter kiss might be more chaste than the former but is still enough to stop Ellie in her tracks.In a subsequent attempt to split up Fallon and Mark, Alexis embroiders a small truth until it becomes a scandalous fiction, just as Holly Harwood did in last week’s DALLAS in order to drive a wedge between JR and Sue Ellen. Where Holly spun JR's pursuit of her into a full blown affair, Alexis uses Mark’s past as a self-confessed tennis bum to turn him into “a male tramp.” On a visit to Fallon’s office, she makes him sound a bit like KNOTS LANDING’s Chip Roberts minus the violence: “After he left Krystle, he embarked on a career of living off wealthy women, accepting gifts in return for nocturnal favours ... not only in New York but all over Europe.” The way Alexis emphasises this last part makes it sound as if selling one’s favours abroad is far more sordid than doing it exclusively on American soil. Perhaps international gigolos are what Mark Graison also has in mind when he cautions Pam against venturing out after dark during their vacation in Cannes: “Pam, this isn’t Dallas, you can’t just go for a walk on your own … It’s not that safe.”While Fallon is apparently indifferent to her mother’s allegations about Mark, (“So what?” she shrugs) Sue Ellen visits Holly at her house this week to inform her “that your rotten little attempt to destroy my marriage has failed.” For their meetings with these younger women, Alexis and Sue Ellen both favour matching monochromatic jackets with 1940s style shoulder pads. (Sue Ellen, however, decides against sporting Alexis’s natty little sailor hat.)It’s hard to think of two Soap Land characters less alike that DYNASTY’s stiff, priggish majordomo Joseph and Ray’s warm, unaffected Aunt Lil on DALLAS. However, during a visit to Southfork, Lil expresses reservations about her son Mickey’s relationship with Lucy Ewing similar to those of Joseph regarding his daughter Kirby’s marriage to Jeff Colby last week. Previously in Soap Land, it’s been the wealthy Ewings and Carringtons who have indicated misgivings about Lucy’s romance with impoverished medical student Mitch or Steven’s elopement with indigent roller skater Sammy Jo. Now it’s the poor folks who have qualms. "She's rich, she's really rich, and rich is different from us," frets Lil. It’s as if both she and Joseph feel that mixing rich and poor is somehow tampering with the natural order of things. “Different is different,” she states categorically.There are interestingly similar references to food and class on this week’s shows. "Not till I finish everything on my plate,” Lil declares firmly during a restaurant scene after Ray proffers dessert. Intentionally so or not, this is a somewhat pointed remark when contrasted with the rich Ewings' habit of abandoning their breakfasts after one mouthful. Meanwhile, on DYNASTY, Fallon attempts to cheer Krystle up by suggesting they rustle up “something goofy” for dinner, like baked beans and hot dogs with sauerkraut. Krystle takes mock offence at this, pointing out that she was raised on such goofy dinners. “Maybe that’s why you’re so ugly,” Fallon concludes with a straight face, before giggling at her stepmother’s reaction. It's a genuinely nice moment.Random coincidence of the week: On DYNASTY, we see Alexis’s Rolls-Royce pulling up outside La Mirage in the pouring rain, while on DALLAS, Pam watches through a restaurant window as would-be sunbathers run for cover during a Cannes downpour. Neither is a case of pathetic fallacy (e.g. stormy weather being used to represent stormy emotions) - it must simply have been a rainy week when both shows were location shooting in LA or thereabouts. Nonetheless, the DYNASTY sequence is visually quite striking.After one whole day of running an empire, Alexis returns to her penthouse at the end of this week’s ep and slips into an I DREAM OF JEANNIE costume for an attempted seduction of Blake, whom she has invited over, supposedly to discuss the merger. Meanwhile, on DALLAS, Katherine Wentworth also uses business to lure Bobby back to her place, where she too is a vision in lilac. But where Blake immediately sees through Alexis’s ruse and walks out, Katherine offers Bobby something he actually wants - help with his Canadian deal. While Katherine is clearly playing a long game, one can’t help feeling that on some level Alexis wants Blake to reject her so she can keep feeding her resentment and perpetuate her “woman scorned” routine.Each of this week’s soaps ends on an expression of impotent rage from its primary antagonist, followed by an unconventional freeze frame. Alexis’s yell of “I hate you, Blake - God, how I hate you!” to an empty room leads to a frozen image of a martini glass flying through the air as she hurls it in the direction that Blake has just exited. Over on DALLAS, as the door of a jail cell in Havana is slammed shut and the screen turns to black, we hear an angry voice protesting, “MY NAME IS JR EWING!” in the darkness. Unlike his concurrently incarcerated brother on KNOTS LANDING, JR is no willing victim. Still, at least now he knows how Walt Driscoll felt when he abandoned him behind bars two weeks ago.And this week’s Top 2 are …1 (2) DYNASTY2 (1) DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?