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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 14784" data-attributes="member: 22">04/Apr/84: DYNASTY: Birthday v. 06/Apr/84: DALLAS: Blow Up v. 06/Apr/84: FALCON CREST: Love’s TriumphTo paraphrase Ray Krebbs in this week’s DALLAS, "Soap Land’s getting to be a regular emotional roller coaster. Can’t tell who's up or down anymore". The latest news is that a week after Val and Ben break off their engagement on KNOTS LANDING, Fallon accepts Jeff’s proposal on DYNASTY, joining Pam and Mark, Kirby and Adam, and Miss Ellie and Clayton as one of Soap Land's latest betrothed couples.While Jeff presents Fallon with his grandmother’s engagement ring, Pam shows off the expensive ring Mark has just bought her. Meanwhile, on FALCON CREST, Pamela Lynch has to make do with a 60-carat necklace from boyfriend Richard Channing. However, all three women are keeping secrets from their men: Pamela L has been coerced into spying on Richard by the cartel, Pam E has persuaded Mark’s doctor to keep the news of his incurable illness from him until after their marriage, and Fallon secretly fears the headaches she’s been having might prove equally terminal for her.After a scan, Fallon's doctor assures her she has "one of the healthiest, most normal looking brains in town”. Maggie Gioberti’s brain on FALCON CREST, however, contains "the most frustrating tumour I’ve ever seen in my life,” according to Michael Ranson as he strives heroically to remove it. The surgery spans the first half of this week's episode and leaves Maggie is in a coma for most of the remainder. She eventually wakes up in the penultimate scene.While Maggie’s sister Terry tells Dr. Lillian Heller, Maggie’s anesthesiologist who just happens to also be an old flame of Michael’s, that “you’ve taught me a lot about being a woman”, DYNASTY’s Tracy Kendall acknowledges Krystle as a different kind of role model: “I'm just following in your footsteps ... the road you started on when you were just a secretary with an eye out for the boss and a better life. If that boss had been married, my guess is it wouldn't have stopped someone like you for a minute, maybe less.” Whereas Tracy’s tribute earns her a slap in the face, Terry’s leads to a sisterly embrace from Lillian that seems to set the seal on her official transformation into A Good Person.It’s party time on both DYNASTY and DALLAS this week. In terms of spectacle, Little Blake’s birthday bash on the grounds of the Carrington mansion easily trounces the two gatherings on the cardboard Southfork patio — an informal family barbecue and a slightly grander evening affair to welcome Jessica back to Texas. A few Chinese lanterns from the Braddock party store cannot compete with the platoon of jugglers, balloon shapers, trapeze artists, real ponies, pretend ponies and miniature trains laid on for the young Master Colby. There’s even what Bobby Ewing once described when recalling one of his boyhood birthday surprises as “an honest God merry-go-round, with music and mirrors and hand carved horses”. For those of us watching at home, the highlight of the party is an amusingly barbed exchange between Krystle and Alexis, during which the latter lets slip about having given birth to a fourth child. She then hastily reclassifies it as “the miscarriage I had after Steven” but Krystle’s suspicions are aroused. In an equivalent scene at the Southfork party, Donna overhears Jessica questioning Ray about Clayton and Miss Ellie’s impending marriage and starts to suspect that she isn't quite what she appears to be.The big bombshell on this week’s DYNASTY lands after the party guests have gone home and the family is toasting Jeff and Fallon’s engagement. Blake suddenly finds himself at the centre of a scandal right out of EMERALD POINT when Rashid Ahmed claims that Denver Carrington's $100,000,000 advance to secure the China Sea oil leases was really used "to buy arms to fight the other government claiming that area of the China Sea,” announces the TV news. "Naval forces have now moved into the China Sea and are patrolling the area. So there will be no oil exploration or drilling there in the foreseeable future. What does this mean for Blake Carrington who only a week ago was being touted as the American businessman who had just closed the deal of the century?”That the news should break in the middle of Jeff and Fallon’s celebration at least allows the Carringtons to greet disaster in full evening dress, just as the Giobertis and Channings did Melissa’s car crash on the night of Terry’s party in FALCON CREST. In the same way that Angela and Maggie waited anxiously for news at Soap Land Memorial Hospital in sparkling dresses and fur stoles so Krystle mans the phones at Denver Carrington in a full-length Nolan Miller gown.Where Mark St Claire and Mack Mackenzie were the puppeteers-in-chief in last week’s season finale of KNOTS, Alexis and JR are the ones pulling the strings week. While Alexis manipulates the Carringtons from afar ("It worked like a dream,” she purrs from her bubble bath as the family struggle to preserve their company) JR is more hands-on in his dealings — first insisting Peter attend Jessica’s party, then coaxing him to dance with Sue Ellen and all the while steadily dripping poison into Lucy’s ear until she gets drunk and explodes like a one-woman version of the Belmar Hotel sequence in last week's KNOTS.“Don’t you know his motto? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Sue Ellen warns Peter as JR observes them slow dance at the party. “I learned one thing in politics and it’s this: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Greg Sumner advised Laura on KNOTS two weeks ago. Whereas Laura’s response was characteristically sceptical (“How am I being kept — close or closer?”), Peter is as naive as ever, dismissing Sue Ellen as paranoid and describing JR as "the warmest guy in the world ... I’m actually beginning to like him!"In a genre and on a show where affairs are ten-a-penny, why do we find ourselves on tenterhooks waiting for Lucy to blurt out what everyone else in the room already knows — that Peter and Sue Ellen have slept together? Why is this infidelity (which doesn't even qualify as a one night stand) such a big deal? JR and Sue Ellen have each had “worse” affairs in the past (with her sister and his arch enemy respectively) and those took place in the days before they had an open marriage. Somehow DALLAS is able to tell a comparatively “small" JR/Sue Ellen story and make the stakes feel almost as high as they did when the plots involved Cliff Barnes and Kristin.While it doesn’t take long for Blake to figure out the identity of “the woman behind the man, of the person behind this dirty business" at the end of this week's DYNASTY, the deliciousness of JR’s scheme is that no one involved in it — not Peter, Sue Ellen or Lucy — yet realises he has set them up. This enables him to ride gallantly to his wife’s defence after the penny finally drops for Lucy (“Just how long have you two been having this little affair, huh?”). Sue Ellen is left feeling both touched and guilty. It also leads to a really good JR/Sue Ellen scene in which — in spite of the season’s worth of absurdity leading up to it, beginning with Peter Richards in microscopic speedos and ending with Lucy Ewing’s heroic drunk scene (a sight as joyfully ridiculous as the Alexis/Dex fight in last week’s DYNASTY) — they seem for all the world like real people. “Good Lord, woman, don’t you want a man back in your life?” a near exasperated JR asks, sitting on the edge of Sue Ellen's bed in his pyjamas. “Of course I do, JR,” she mutters in reply, her hair tied up in an unglamorous (if still becoming) way. "Do you think I like living like this?” After she rejects him once again, he regretfully returns to his soap opera world, calling Harry McSween to continue his plot to bring down Peter.Random trend of the week #1: At their respective get-togethers, Steven Carrington and Donna Krebbs each assumes the role of family photographer, capturing such classic moments as Alexis and Claudia with their arms round each other’s waists and Miss Ellie and Clayton’s first official pose as spouses-to-be. While Steven’s camera looks to be the fanciest that Carrington money can buy, Donna makes do with an ordinary Polaroid.Random trend of the week #2: Female characters with murder on their minds. With no one on screen for them to confide their plans to, the shows each opt for a different approach to convey their intentions to the viewers at home. Where Kirby fires at a ghostly apparition of Alexis while taking shooting lessons on DYNASTY, Lady Jessica defaces a snapshot of Miss Ellie with a nail file at the end of this week’s DALLAS. (This gesture also confirms that what we saw in an earlier scene - Jessica hovering dangerously close to Miss Ellie, kitchen knife in hand, before being interrupted by Donna - really was what it looked like.) Over on FALCON CREST, Lucas catches Julia about to abscond with his gun. Later in the same scene, she refers to her mother as dead.Random trend of the week #3: There’s a very charming scene during the DALLAS party where Punk and Mavis Anderson find Bobby and Jenna kissing in the Southfork living room. "These two were destined to be together ever since they was kids,” Punk remembers. “As soon as our backs was turned, they were always getting into some kind of devilment. Y'all weren't even up to our belt buckles,” There’s an equivalent anecdote on this week’s DYNASTY about the frog Steven dropped down Fallon’s back on Jeff’s sixth birthday. "She turned around to take a swipe at me, I ducked and she smacked you right in the face,” recalls Steven. "And established our relationship from that point on,” Jeff adds ruefully.The Wolfbridge Group might be a thing of the past on KNOTS LANDING (at least for now), but their spirit of "widespread and vicious criminal activity” lives on in the FALCON CREST cartel. Where Wolfbridge claimed to have rigged a bomb in Mack’s jeep, the cartel this week implant one in the trophy due to be presented at the inaugural race at Richard’s track. Where St Claire’s thugs dragged Abby into their car and sped off at the end of last week’s KNOTS, cartel leader Norton Crane has Spheeris do the same to Pamela Lynch on this week’s FC. The end of the episode finds Richard Channing in a similar position to the one in which we last saw Gary Ewing - at the scene of the abduction, looking on helplessly.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (3) DALLAS2 (4) FALCON CREST3 (2) DYNASTY</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?