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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 10692" data-attributes="member: 22">13/Apr/83: DYNASTY: The Threat v. 15/Apr/83: DALLAS: Things Ain't Goin' Too Good at Southfork Where DALLAS has former Head of the OLM, Walt Driscoll, DYNASTY has Senator Neil McVane. Both began this season as well respected government officials enjoying the fruits of their success - for Driscoll a sexy young wife, for McVane his own private jet. However, after getting caught between JR and Bobby, and Blake and Alexis, respectively, their lives and careers are in now shreds. This week, both men make Soap Land headlines. "Walt Driscoll Disappears - Former OLM Chief Jumps Bail on Day of Trial,” reports the Dallas Press while, thanks to Alexis, a scandal about McVane's private life hits the front page of the Denver Chronicle. “The Congressman and His Washington ‘Lolita’: Full Story of their Trysts” is soon followed by another headline in the Denver Reporter: “Party Disavows McVane As Candidate For Re-Election.” While McVane spends much of this week’s DYNASTY hiding in the Colby Co men’s room before leaping out at Alexis and trying to strangle her at the end of the ep, Driscoll lies in wait outside Southfork until the final moments of this week’s DALLAS when he rams JR’s car and then drives off (although we won’t actually know Walt was the driver for another couple of episodes).Just as Blake, of all people, arrives in the nick of time to save his ex-wife from McVane’s clutches so Sue Ellen - who has just called her husband a bastard for cheating on her with Holly Harwood - ends up inadvertently saving JR by taking his place behind the wheel of his car. Lucky escapes Alexis and JR may have had, but as this Soap Land season nears its end there’s an impending sense of chickens coming home to roost. “If you go on ruining other people’s lives, I wouldn’t give a dime for your chances of holding on to your own,” Blake warns Alexis shortly after saving her life. “You’ve destroyed her again — don’t you ever learn??” shouts Miss Ellie at her eldest son, with reference to Sue Ellen, moments before Walt smashes into his car with murderous intent.In the DYNASTY and DALLAS episodes immediately preceding this week's, Alexis and Holly Harwood set parallel traps for Mark Jennings and JR. On DYNASTY, having failed to drive a wedge between Mark and Fallon, Alexis arranged for Fallon to find her in Mark’s bed, thus making it appear that they have been having sex behind her back. On DALLAS, having failed to convince Sue Ellen that she and JR were involved, Holly arranged for Sue Ellen to see her and JR in bed together, where they were actually having sex for real. Neither scheme’s logic holds up to too much scrutiny - Holly's was entirely dependent on Sue Ellen neglecting to mention to her husband that she (Holly) had been harassing her for the previous few episodes, whilst Alexis would have had to have consulted Adrianna the psychic to know that Mark would be in the shower at the precise moment Fallon entered his room without knocking to find a “surprised” Alexis in his bed.This is the second occasion in Soap Land where a mother and daughter have become sexually involved with the same man. While the villain of the FLAMINGO ROAD ménage à trois was clearly Michael Tyrone - from two-timing Lute-Mae with Constance to deliberately arranging for her to find them together, it was all part of a malevolent plot on his part — this time around, things aren't quite as black and white. Since arriving on DYNASTY, Mark has been depicted as a decent guy — a tennis bum who’s not just a tennis bum — who only began his relationship with Fallon after his fling with her mother was over. His one sin was that of omission, in that he neglected to tell Fallon about the affair with Alexis.This week, he tries to blame the whole thing on Alexis, but Fallon isn’t buying it. “She set it up and you were just the innocent victim, right?” she scoffs, her mocking tone chiming with the one Sue Ellen will use in the next episode of DALLAS: “Oh sure, she raped him,” she'll sneer when Bobby tries to tell her that JR was, like Mark, tricked by a vengeful businesswoman.While Fallon deals with Mark’s apparent betrayal by feigning indifference and shuffling papers in a businesslike fashion, Sue Ellen reacts to JR’s irrefutable adultery by becoming the second Ewing of the year to fall off the wagon. (There’s actually a kind of boozy synchronicity between Sue Ellen on DALLAS and Gary on KNOTS. The first time they both started drinking again was in 1980, within the space of two weeks of each other; here, it’s within the space of a few months; and when Gary visits New DALLAS in 2014 following another relapse off screen, it anticipates Sue Ellen’s relapse a few episodes later.) This week, Sue Ellen winds up sleeping off her drunk in Clayton’s bed in much the same way Gary spent the night in Ciji’s after one of his binges. Now as then, there are suspicions about the true nature of the (platonic) relationship when Miss Ellie finds them together in Clayton's hotel suite.Krystle and Alexis duke it out it in the lily pond this week. This sequence feels like a successor to both their own Season 2 cat fight and DALLAS’s equivalent duel in the pool (at JR and Sue Ellen’s wedding) earlier this season. On one level, this is as enjoyably silly as those two set pieces were, but there’s an extra dramatic weight to it too. Where the two previous fights both served as chapter endings, a comedic way of drawing a line under what had gone before, this brawl actually serves to move the story forward. In other words, it has consequences.These manifest themselves in two ways. In what appears to be an amusing, incidental exchange, but which will turn out to have major ramifications, Alexis tells Joseph that unless he has the pond drained so she can retrieve a pearl and diamond earring she lost during the fight, she will tell Kirby “the truth about that woman," i.e. her mother. More immediately, Blake’s refusal to side with his wife against Alexis when he happens upon their brawl (and angrily compares them both to "a couple of female mud wrestlers”) proves to be the final straw for Krystle. “You’ve done an unforgivable thing, Blake,” she tells him. "You’ve not only humiliated me, but you’ve done it in front of her, the woman who cost us our child.” And so, like Pam Ewing and Maggie Gioberti before her, she walks out of her marriage and into a hotel.Ordinarily, Blake and Krystle - with their endless fireside declarations of undying love - boast the most idyllically romantic relationship in all of Soap Land. In spite of this, or maybe even because of it, the scenes of estrangement between them — such as those in the last two episodes — have an icy believability about them. There’s also something very effective about Krystle’s sense of isolation when it’s set against the grandeur of the Carrington mansion.The day after she walks out, Blake tracks her down to La Mirage. His appeal to her to return home carries more emotional weight, and is less formulaic, than any of the two-minute accusation/recrimination/storm-out routines indulged in by fellow super-couples, DALLAS's Bobby and Pam, and FALCON CREST's Chase and Maggie, following their recent separations. (“Try to understand this,” Blake begins, "no matter how much love two people have between them, a man is made up of many things …”) By comparison, Pam's behaviour towards Bobby when she returns from France in this week’s DALLAS — all strident jealousy and watery indecision — feels downright adolescent. By the end of the episode, however, Pam has won us round all over again when she finds herself in a no-win situation. As one-third owner of Wentworth Tool and Die, she has the casting vote on whether or not Bobby gets his all-important drill bit. "If I don't let Bobby have that drill, our marriage is all over,” she realises. "He'd never forgive me." "Then let him have it," advises Afton. "And help him win the fight?” she replies. "He's changed so much already I hardly know him — winning would just finish the job!" A plot device in human form Pam may be, but she’s a gorgeously irresistible one.With the relationships of Bobby and Pam, JR and Sue Ellen, Blake and Krystle, Fallon and Mark, and even Cliff and Afton, all on the rocks, DALLAS’s Mickey and Lucy and DYNASTY’s Jeff and Kirby are, briefly, the happiest couples in Soap Land - but even for these young lovers, disaster is just around the corner. While Kirby wonders how she could be suffering from morning sickness so early in her pregnancy, Mickey tries to stop a drunken Sue Ellen from driving JR’s car by climbing into the passenger seat next to her — the same car that then takes off, collides with a hit and run driver and turns over three times before landing upside down in front of the Southfork fence.And this week’s Top 2 are … it’s pretty darn close, but Linda Gray’s drunk acting swings it ...1 (2) DALLAS2 (1) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?