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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 15002" data-attributes="member: 22">02/May/84: DYNASTY: New Lady in Town v. 04/May/84: DALLAS: Love Stories v. 04/May/84: FALCON CREST: For Better, For Worse v. 05/May/84: THE YELLOW ROSE: Villa's GoldWith Tracy Kendall making her final appearance on this week’s DYNASTY, it’s time to survey the progress (or lack thereof) made by each of Soap Land's four working girls — Cathy Geary, Jenna Wade, Terry Hartford and Tracy herself — over the course of the season. Cathy and Jenna both started off as waitresses before bagging themselves a better job and a Ewing brother. However, after realising that Gary was still hung up on both his ex-wives, Cathy threw in the towel during the KNOTS finale and decided to move to Alaska. Jenna, meanwhile, has weathered Bobby’s ongoing preoccupation with his ex-wife and this week her tenacity pays off when he asks her to marry him. As for our two gold-digging opportunists, FALCON CREST’s Terry was a trashy hooker who became a respectable doctor’s wife while DYNASTY’s Tracy has travelled in the opposite direction. Introduced as a perky, ambitious career woman, she’s since become a self-described "corporate whore”. This week she bitterly quits her job at Colby Co after refusing to let Alexis pimp her out to Blake’s banker. (The order to sleep with a middle aged banker also proved to be the line in the sand for Afton in DALLAS’s fourth season.) And so the 1983/4 season working girl winner is … Terry Hartford Ranson.(Elsewhere, another blonde opportunist, DYNASTY's Sammy Jo, perhaps inspired by Terry’s success, abandons her sordid New York lifestyle to ingratiate herself with her rich relatives back in Denver. This week she moves into the Carrington mansion, makes nice to her Auntie Krystle, whips off her towel in front of ex-husband Steven, undermines his wife Claudia, and giggles flirtatiously with his brother Adam.)Tracy is not the only character to have her butter-wouldn’t-melt persona exposed as a lie at the end of the season. “I don’t really know you at all, do I?” Bobby finally realises on DALLAS after Katherine Wentworth confesses that she has been scheming (and sleeping) with JR behind his back. His kiss-off line to her — “You and JR truly deserve one another!” — echoes Tracy’s to Alexis at the end of her last scene on DYNASTY. “Lex/Dex? You two deserve one another!” she snaps after admitting that she has been scheming (and sleeping) with Dex behind Alexis's back.As one Soap Land door closes, another one opens. The introduction of a significant new character so near the end of a season isn’t standard Soap Land practice, but just four weeks after Lady Jessica Montford arrived at Southfork for Clayton and Miss Ellie’s wedding, the mysterious Dominique Devereaux books into La Mirage in time for the penultimate episode of this season's DYNASTY. There are some interesting parallels between the two women’s debut scenes. Both are given unusually prominent introductions, with the Ewings lining up to greet Jessica and Dominique making the grandest Soap Land entrance (flanked by five bellboys and two large trunks) since Alexis’s courtroom appearance at the end of DYNASTY’s first year.Whereas Jessica was quick to dispel any notions of grandeur her title might have implied (“You forgot to untie the drapes — oh don’t worry, Miss Ellie, I’ve got it!”), Dominique is imperious from the get go. “Junior suite?” she snaps at the La Mirage desk clerk. "I specifically asked for a two bedroom suite. I don't sleep in my clothes nor do I sleep with them. I require one bedroom for my wardrobe and one for myself. If you don't have a two bedroom available, please call another hotel in the area that can accommodate me.”That such an unapologetically regal character should be played by a black actress is significant — especially when one considers that the only other black person of note to have appeared in Soap Land this season was the nameless addict whom KNOTS LANDING’s Karen encountered in rehab. “I’m not like these people!” Karen protested back then, before her black roomie gently pointed out how similar their situations were. Similarly, Dominique, after showering Alexis with praise during their riveting face off at the end of this week’s ep, then dares to suggest that she is her equal — maybe even her superior: “I’m just as tough as you, maybe tougher."Like Jessica, Dominique ends her introductory episode on an enigmatic note. “I wouldn’t count on your marrying brother Clayton, Miss Ellie — I wouldn’t count on it at all,” Jessica murmured once she was all alone, thereby setting up a mysterious story-line that has yet to be resolved. "Who the hell are you anyway?” Alexis asks Dominique this week. "Who am I?” she replies teasingly. "You'll find out very soon — very soon.” She then exits Alexis's penthouse with a slyly mischievous “Ciao — for now.”Wedding fever is currently in full swing on Soap Land, with only a week to go before Pam and Mark’s big day on DALLAS and a fortnight before Miss Ellie and Clayton's and Jeff and Fallon's scheduled ceremonies on DALLAS and DYNASTY. This week, Clayton becomes the latest spouse-to-be (after Fallon and Pam) to suggest a last minute elopement to his intended (“We’re very big on tradition at Southfork,” Ellie informs him), while Fallon's dress fitting is interrupted by the noises in her head and Mark's stag party by Katherine Wentworth noisily drowning her sorrows at the Oil Baron’s Club. “Just promise me you’re not going to misbehave because I know what goes on at those things,” Pam tells Mark beforehand. Ironically, the only previous stag party we’ve seen in Soap Land was that of Mark’s former self, Sam Curtis, on FLAMINGO ROAD. If memory serves, what went on at that thing was mainly blue movies and cigars.In spite of all these wedding preparations by various Carringtons, Colbys, Ewings and Farlows, FALCON CREST’s Philip and Angela leap frog over all of them, plighting their troth in a full blown Catholic church ceremony only one episode after becoming engaged.This week’s instalment of FALCON CREST is more lightweight than I remembered. Partly this has to do with nearly all the major characters — regardless of their ongoing enmity towards the happy couple — being enlisted into the wedding party (Richard as best man, Maggie as matron of honour and Joseph, the very child Angela recently sold to the Giobertis, as her ring bearer). While assembling warring characters under the same roof whenever possible is an integral Soap Land convention (such as at the opening of Tuscany Downs in the last FC ep), the fact that in this instance the characters themselves seem to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation (as if they’re in on the joke) adds a different, more frivolous tone to the occasion.This sense of levity is offset by the kind of brooding religious atmosphere that’s specific to FALCON CREST among the soaps. In fact this week, religion — specifically Catholicism — becomes a Soap Land story point for the very first time as Julia, back in the Tuscany Valley with a wig and a gun, takes confession with Father Bob. “I am overwhelmed with murder,” she says before admitting that she intends to kill her mother. The priest, bound by the sacrament of Confession which prohibits him from repeating what she has said, can only look anxiously around the church during Angela and Philip’s wedding ceremony. (Father Bob evidently takes his oath of confidentiality more seriously than Dr Kenderson does his on DALLAS. This week, in a scene that never fails to move me no matter how many times I’ve seen it, he finally talks to Mark about his terminal illness — but only after a drunken Katherine has already let the cat out of the bag.)Tension-building as Father Bob’s silent dilemma is, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Julia's several thwarted attempts to shoot Angela, first during the ceremony itself and then later at the reception back at Falcon Crest, is Soap Land’s most blatant flirtation with self-parody since Alexis and Cecil’s deathbed wedding at the beginning of last season’s DYNASTY. (Did I mention that Julia spends much of this episode dressed as a nun?) The thrilling and comedic elements of this story-line coalesce in the closing minutes of the ep when Sister Julia makes her getaway with sweet little Joseph in tow: "You OK, sweetie? ... Then let's go get some ice cream!”Business-wise, the outlook is grim for both Blake Carrington and Cliff Barnes this week. Cliff’s situation is marginally worse but it’s a close run thing. The banks are about to foreclose on Denver Carrington and Barnes Wentworth, but while Andrew Laird urges Blake to start selling off prime assets in order stay afloat, Cliff simply has no assets left. “I have sold everything I own,” he admits. As a last resort, each man reluctantly turn to the richest woman he knows for help: Blake’s ex-wife Alexis and Cliff’s half-sister Pam.In the final scene of the last episode of DYNASTY (which originally aired two weeks earlier), Blake brusquely turned down a $100,000,000 loan from Alexis that came with the condition that if he failed to repay it within six months, she would automatically assume ownership of his company. "I'll see you in Hell before I let you get your hands on Denver Carrington!” he barked at her then. So it’s great fun to see him show up at her office this week and meekly offer to sell her his oil shale extraction process. Alexis delights in turning him down. "You're finally getting a taste of your own medicine,” she gloats, "and when it becomes too bitter for you, when you start to cough and choke on it, then you'll be back to accept the only offer that I'm ever going to make!” Meanwhile, an even more desperate Cliff bursts into his sister’s office in the final scene of this week’s DALLAS. "I'm in trouble,” he blurts out. "I need your help. The drilling is a disaster.” But before he can ask her for the money he needs, they are interrupted by a fateful phone call.And here Soap Land synchronicity strikes once more. The previous episode of DYNASTY ended with the news that a moustachioed Mark had plummeted to his death. ("Your bodyguard Mark Jennings? He's dead ... He fell from the balcony of your penthouse, Mrs Colby. Too soon to tell if he jumped or if he was pushed.”) And now this week’s DALLAS ends the same way. ("Mark was flying his plane and it exploded over the Gulf. He's dead!”)Lucas, the genuinely nice guy whom Julia left behind to face the cops in the previous episode of FALCON CREST, shows up on this week’s YELLOW ROSE as a not-so-nice guy out to steal some treasure that’s apparently buried on the ranch. The neat twist is that the criminal mastermind behind the operation is Juanita, the Rose’s new cook. Naturally no one suspects Juanita, she’s only the hired help. As a critique of the invisibility of Hispanic characters in Soap Land (e.g., the multiple servants answering to the names of Raoul and Teresa on DALLAS, or Gary and Abby’s housekeeper Maria, relegated to bit player status on KNOTS but who three decades later will appear on SOUTHLAND in the kind of multi-layered kick-ass cop role her white masters on KL could only dream of), it works. And in a week where Diahann Carroll's is the first black face to appear in a Soap Land title sequence since Melba Moore’s one-off appearance as a jailbird hooker in the FLAMINGO ROAD pilot, it also seems appropriate.And this week’s Top 4 are …1 (2) DYNASTY2 (3) DALLAS3 (1) FALCON CREST4 (-) THE YELLOW ROSE</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?