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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 12859" data-attributes="member: 22">14/Nov/83: EMERALD POINT N.A.S: Episode 8 v. 16/Nov/83: DYNASTY: Tracy v. 17/Nov/83: KNOTS LANDING: A Change of Heart v. 18/Nov/83: DALLAS: The Oil Baron's Ball v. 18/Nov/83: FALCON CREST: Solitary Confinement v. 19/Nov/83: THE YELLOW ROSE: Moving TargetsThis week’s KNOTS and DALLAS begin similarly, with Diana making a statement to the police about Chip killing Ciji and Lil testifying in court as to the circumstances surrounding Mickey’s death. “For the record,” surly Lieutenant Morrison instructs his typist, "list her as Diana Fairgate Roberts aka Fenice - don’t ask.” Meanwhile, on the witness stand, Lil is asked to state her name and address, also “for the record." "Lilian May Trotter, 16 Briar Lane, Emporia, Kansas,” she replies carefully, "or the Krebbs house in Braddock.” Then she becomes anxious. "I-I don’t know the number,” she stammers. It’s the kind of detail no one else in Soap Land would concern themselves with. So in one corner, there’s Diana's melodramatic teen romance unravelling in a grimy police interview room and in the other, a plain country widow cast as the star witness in a big city murder trial. Despite their differences, both women are a long way from home.In the course of their testimonies, Diana and Lil attempt to absorb responsibility for Chip and Ray’s crimes. “He did it because he loved me,” Diana insists, explaining that Chip killed Ciji because she was threatening to expose her pregnancy. "This all happened so we could be together.” “If anyone’s responsible for Michael’s death, it’s me,” Lil asserts, explaining that it was she who talked Ray into ending Mickey’s life. "All Raymond did is to keep me from having to find the strength myself.”In the KNOTS scene, there’s an effective use of a two-way mirror through which a ghost-like Mack silently observes Diana giving evidence. As she sobs for Chip, he weeps for her. Lil’s testimony on DALLAS, meanwhile, impacts everyone in the courtroom. Lucy cries, the Krebbses blink back tears and even the judge and district attorney are moved.The night following Lil’s testimony, Donna admonishes Ray for keeping the exact circumstances of Mickey’s death secret from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks. "You didn’t have enough to faith in me to tell me the truth.” Echoes of her indignation are detectable three decades later in “Hurt”, the extraordinary New DALLAS episode in which the truth about JR’s death finally comes to light and Ann rounds on Bobby for keeping her in the dark while Sue Ellen is furious that she didn’t know about JR’s illness before he died. "JR was my husband!” she cries. Seems the wife is always the last to know. That’s certainly the case on this week’s DYNASTY where Kirby realises Jeff and Fallon are keeping something from her (Blake has sworn them to secrecy over Adam’s suspected involvement in Jeff’s poisoning). When she accuses them of having slept together, they both vehemently deny it - even though it’s true. Val is more honest with Ben on KNOTS when she admits to her brief reconciliation with Gary. Ben turns away from her, but Jenna Wade stands her ground with Bobby on DALLAS. “Lots of people who are divorced love each other,” she says, looking him in the eye. "Are you one of them?” Bobby evades the question, but of course, he is - along with Pam, Val, Gary, Jeff and maybe even Fallon.In the event, Lil’s evidence helps ensure Ray a suspended sentence, thereby bringing this storyline to a close. Conversely, Diana’s statement to the police only serves to further complicate matters for Chip. When she returns to his hospital bedside, she is shocked to find he has emerged from his coma. He greets her cheerily (“Hi, hon!”), unaware that she has just implicated him in a murder. He is subsequently placed under arrest and handcuffed to his hospital bed. By the end of the episode, however, he has miraculously slipped his chains and escaped.While Ray is now a free man and Chip is nowhere to be seen, KNOTS’ Lilimae and FALCON CREST’s Julia still languish in the Soap Land Sanatarium and state penitentiary respectively. Julia’s storyline continues to go where no other Soap Land plot has gone before. This is the first time we’ve gone behind bars with an imprisoned character to see how they interact with other inmates. The closest we’ve gotten previously is a conversation between Lane Ballou and her cellmate in the pilot episode of FLAMINGO ROAD. Like Lane, Julia’s only ally on the inside is a young black girl. Everyone else is trying to beat her or drown her - or worse.This week sees the Soap Land debuts of Tracy Kendall and Terry Hartford, the new girls on the DYNASTY and FALCON CREST blocks respectively. Along with the newcomers we met last week, Jenna Mk 3 on DALLAS and Ciji lookalike Cathy Geary on KNOTS, these are Soap Land’s new breed of female characters, all somewhat lower down the social scale than the shows' existing leading ladies, most of whom are getting richer by the week (“We’re millionaires a hundred times over!” exclaims Abby when Gary receives his Ewing Oil inheritance on this week’s KNOTS). All four are working girls - in one way or another. “I’m keeping the ring. I've earned it,” Terry tells the elderly man she walks out on in her first scene.As a low-level publicist hungry to climb the ladder of success whilst sexually involved with her immediate (and somewhat older) superior, DYNASTY’s Tracy occupies the same position that Chip Roberts did when he arrived in Soap Land just over a year ago. Like Chip, Tracy is faced with a serious career setback almost immediately. Where Bess Riker fired Chip for getting ideas above his station, Bill Rockwell’s promise to Tracy that she will succeed him as Denver Carrington’s Head of Public Relations is overruled by Blake’s decision to appoint Krystle to the position instead.Tracy masks her resentment at this display of nepotism behind a sycophantic veneer. "I know this may sound corny and a bit cliché,” she gushes at Krystle, "but I can't tell you how happy I was when I found out I'd be working for you!” When Maggie Gioberti starts work as a features writer at the Globe on FALCON CREST, her new boss Ralph Delaney is rather more open in his disdain. "It took me thirty years to break out of the sports department and into feature writing,” he tells her. "Now you walk in here with no experience and I’m supposed to drop everything and train you?” If anyone has a problem with Eric Fairgate working at Knots Landing Motors, meanwhile, they’re keeping it to themselves. “The guys on the floor love him!” beams mother Karen. Maybe the guys on the floor are as philosophical as DYNASTY’s Bill Rockwell. “Nepotism is a fact of business life,” he shrugs.Terry, FALCON CREST’s newcomer, is Maggie’s younger sister. We first meet her in the New York bedroom of a guy even older and less desirable than the one who was keeping Sammy Jo in her New York apartment last year. (In fact, the actor appeared in last season’s DALLAS as a contemporary of Jock Ewing.) Terry's reaction to the news of brother-in-law Chase's inheritance (“Suddenly life is just ripe with possibilities!") and her description of Maggie as "a real soft touch" as she packs her bags and heads for San Francisco tell us all we need to know. Cast from the same mould as Kristin on DALLAS, Sammy Jo on DYNASTY and Christie Kovacks on FLAMINGO ROAD, Terry is another slutty young gold digger with familial ties to an established female character. Tracy might get a DYNASTY episode named after her, but it’s Terry’s “I think I’m gonna like it here” grin upon arriving in the Tuscany Valley that's deemed worthy of a FALCON CREST freeze frame.If KNOTS LANDING’s Cathy or DALLAS’s Jenna, both waitresses, share either Tracy’s ambition or Terry’s opportunistic tendencies, they have yet to be revealed. Both are approached in their place of work this week by a rich Ewing brother who asks them out on a date. Neither is overly keen, but each eventually agrees. Cathy promises to meet Gary for lunch but then stands him up just as he did Val in last week’s KNOTS. Jenna, meanwhile, having stood Bobby up at an Oil Barons’ Ball thirteen years earlier, has the good grace to show up as his date this time around.Given that this week’s DALLAS is written and directed by its mastermind, Leonard Katzman, it’s perhaps surprising that it should start to resemble some of its neighbouring soaps. Lil’s flash back to Mickey’s death, with its shaky hand-held camera moves, has a verisimilitude far more in keeping with KNOTS than with traditional DALLAS. It certainly feels more authentic than Julia’s dreamlike flashbacks on FALCON CREST or KNOTS' expressionist representation of Ciji’s murder. At the other end of the scale, the five-way powder room bitch-fest at the Oil Barons’ Ball is extremely DYNASTY - in fact, it recalls a similarly situated encounter between Krystle and Alexis just three episodes ago - only on a bigger, more glamorous scale. Sue Ellen, Katherine and Pam, all dressed to the nines, line up to take pot shots at working girl Jenna - who holds her ground with admirable restraint and good humour - before Katherine and Afton then turn on each other.The Oil Barons’ Ball itself, with its oil-rig shaped champagne fountain, tuxedos and designer ball gowns, is certainly a lot grander than last season’s affair, which had a kind of “works outing” feel about it. This version - part charity fundraiser, part awards ceremony - is Soap Land’s biggest display of opulence since Blake and Krystle’s wedding on DYNASTY.Another curio in this week’s DALLAS is the scene where Sue Ellen watches a group of young men playing touch football in a park. As she ogles the men, all of whom are clad in only the shortest of shorts, so does the camera, relaying the sight in fetishistic slow motion. It’s certainly like nothing we’ve seen in Soap Land before, least of all on DALLAS, and that Katzman himself should be at the helm of the ep makes it all the more interesting. Add to this Casey Denault's house-arrest on EMERALD POINT, which seemed to necessitate him wearing as little clothing as possible at all times, and Peter Richards' blue speedos, which make another appearance this week, and it would appear that Soap Land is developing a new found interest in the male form.In the same week that Cliff Barnes is named Oil Baron of the Year in DALLAS, Jeb Hollister receives the Oil Man of the Year award on THE YELLOW ROSE. Jeb's ceremony is more of a lunchtime rubber chicken affair than the Oil Barons’ Ball, but both have the same miniature oil rigs as table decorations. While receiving his award means the world to Cliff (“You are looking at the next king of Dallas,” he crows), for Jeb, its principal function is to serve as an alibi. If he’s receiving his award in San Antonio then he can’t be responsible for the explosion that’s about to sabotage the Champions’ cross-country cattle drive, can he? Trouble is, like a certain explosion Cliff himself would order thirty years later, he is unaware that his daughter (Mandy Winger) has joined the cattle drive. Unlike Cliff, he doesn’t find out she’s there until the precise moment the explosives are discharged. The subsequent explosions and mayhem that follows (an avalanche of rocks, a stampede of cattle) is by far the most ambitious and heart-in-mouth exciting set piece Soap Land has ever staged. When it comes to these sorts of scenes, THE YELLOW ROSE is in a league of its own.DYNASTY’s Claudia and KNOTS LANDING’s Chip share contrasting but equally juicy scenes with their recently acquired mothers-in-law, Alexis Colby and Karen Mackenzie, this week. Both exchanges become battles for control, with Chip and Alexis emerging as clear winners. Interestingly, the DYNASTY scene is the more subtle of the two with Alexis amusingly undermining Claudia's tactful-to-the-point-of-abstract request for her not to further the rift between Steven and Blake. Alexis pretends not to know what she’s talking about. "I like specifics, darling," she tells her crisply. "Be specific.” Meanwhile, Karen visits Chip in the hospital and alternately flatters, cajoles, threatens and pleads with him to persuade Diana to return to her family. Chip’s bland smile gives nothing back. His automated politeness (“It was really nice of you to come and see me, I’ll tell Diana you were here”) finally pushes Karen over the edge. “I hope you rot in hell,” she tells him coldly.Of the three couples who tied the knot in last week’s Soap Land, only FALCON CREST’S Linda and Cole get to enjoy a proper honeymoon. (Exchanging pieces of jewellery engraved with their marriage vows, they really are the most lovey-dovey of newlyweds. They’re living the kind of idyllic married life Chip and Diana can only daydream about in-between disasters.) The day after marrying on KNOTS, Abby is back at the office while Gary is on the trail of the girl who looks like Ciji. Following his elopement with Claudia on DYNASTY, Steven at least gets to spend the night in a hotel - with his mother. Alexis lures him to San Francisco on the pretext of a business meeting, then engineers a delay so they are obliged to stay overnight. It’s not quite as incestuous as it sounds. Or maybe it is.As Abby savours her new title of Mrs Ewing (“It does have a nice ring to it”), JR refers to Jenna as "the next Mrs Ewing” on DALLAS. “Nothing would make me happier,” he grins. With hindsight, of course, we know that this prediction won’t come true, but Jenna nonetheless meets the man she’ll eventually marry this week when she is introduced to Ray at the Oil Barons’ Ball. So does Laura Avery on KNOTS when she enters Abby’s office and catches the blushing bride about to kiss Greg Sumner.And this week’s Top 6 are …1 (2) THE YELLOW ROSE2 (1) KNOTS LANDING3 (4) DALLAS4 (3) FALCON CREST5 (5) DYNASTY6 (6) EMERALD POINT N.A.S.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?