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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 17454" data-attributes="member: 22">03 Apr 85: DYNASTY: Sammy Jo v. 04 Apr 85: KNOTS LANDING: For Better, For Worse“You’re not going to do this to me,” seethed Adam Carrington at the end of last week’s DYNASTY after learning that his father had decided to bequeath control of Denver Carrington to Jeff Colby. “How could he do this to me?!” rages Greg Sumer at the beginning of this week’s KNOTS LANDING upon hearing that his father has left all of Empire Valley to Gary Ewing. Where Adam smashed a photograph in anger, Greg knocks a telephone off a desk.While Jeff Colby celebrates his good fortune by embarking on a romantic affair with Lady Ashley Mitchell, Gary Ewing commemorates his windfall by taking Abby and the kids out for burger and fries. When Abby bemoans his lack of extravagance, he promptly foots the bill for the entire restaurant. Abby’s steadfast bemusement indicates that her Season 2 days of happily hanging out with Richard Avery at Chick-O-Rama are well and truly over.On this week’s DYNASTY, Adam masks his resentment towards Jeff, but then surreptitiously discredits him in Blake’s eyes by doctoring a company memo that makes him appear incompetent. (As such behaviour goes, it’s not as drastic as FALCON CREST’s Melissa hiring an unstable drug addict to frame Lance after Angela reinstated him as her heir, but it is nonetheless effective.) Likewise on KNOTS, Greg keeps his enemies close by inviting Gary and Abby to another of those awkward dinner parties at the ranch where he states through gritted teeth that Gary owning Empire Valley (and in effect, becoming his landlord) won't be a problem.While Adam’s lover Claudia reacts to his boasts that, “I can do anything I want, anything! … We generate our own power!” with a mixture of fear, bewilderment and sexual intoxication, Greg’s girlfriend Laura enjoys needling him about his adversary. “I can handle Gary Ewing,” he insists. “While you’re 'not worrying about Gary',” she replies mockingly. "he may just be turning Empire Valley into one of those wildernesses he’s just so crazy about.”“My father thought that a little competition would be healthy for his legacy,” asserts Greg in an effort to rationalise this latest turn of events. It’s an enticing theory, suggesting a scenario where Greg and Gary battle for control of the Galveston empire in a KNOTSian spin on JR and Bobby’s fight for Ewing Oil — but things take an unexpected turn when Greg invites Gary to become a part of whatever’s really going on at Empire Valley. “We live in a complicated world, Gary,” he tells him. "The goals of our country and its allies simply cannot be met working within today’s political climate. The bureaucracy of it all is just impossible. That’s where we come in ... What’s involved at Empire Valley is vast and far-reaching.” As if that were not sufficient food for thought, Gary is then approached by John Coblentz who asks him to spy for the government on whatever’s really really going on at Empire Valley. It's all terribly impressive-sounding, but also frustratingly vague. We don’t know zilch about the top secret Libyan rescue mission DYNASTY’s Daniel Reece is about to embark on either, but the difference between the two scenarios is that we don’t have to understand or even care about what’s happening in Libya as it’s clearly a Maguffin, whereas whatever’s really, really, really going on at Empire Valley is central to the KNOTS plot. (Adding to the sense of confusion, the KNOTS make-up department this week start adding patches of white to Coblentz’s hair and eyebrows, presumably in an effort to make him appear older.)There are further echoes of JR and Bobby's feud in this week’s KNOTS. Joshua steamrollers a reluctant Ben into being best man at his wedding just the way JR did Bobby when he remarried Sue Ellen two seasons earlier. In the same way that the Ewing boys nearly came to blows over JR’s oil variance the night before the wedding, Joshua and Ben bicker furiously just prior to the ceremony over Joshua’s attempts during his televised sermon to undermine Ben’s exposé of Galveston Industries. The wider point that Joshua was making in his address is how the popular media deliberately and routinely use fear-mongering tactics to unjustly malign big business. This opinion is in line with how the press are usually portrayed in Soap Land — World Finance magazine’s antagonistic attitude towards Denver Carrington on DYNASTY, Richard Channing’s current smear campaign against Lance Cumson ("a child of privilege and wealth”) on FALCON CREST — but the irony here is that Joshua’s depiction of Ben as a scandal-hungry hack and Galveston Industries as a blameless corporation could not be further from the truth. For once (or twice if we include Maggie Gioberti), Soap Land is portraying a journalist as a beacon of integrity.Over on DYNASTY, Amanda and Prince Michael’s announcement that their wedding will take place in Moldavia in a month’s time leads Alexis to declare herself the happiest woman in the whole world — although Lilimae Clements may beg to differ. “I feel wonderful!” she trills on the morning of her son’s wedding. Whatever misgivings Cathy may have about Joshua’s controlling behaviour of late are apparently offset by her decision to get married in Soap Land’s skimpiest wedding dress to date. Like Alexis and Dex (and almost like Verna Ellers and Parker Winslow) earlier in the season, Cathy and Joshua are married in a church service. Compared to the vast majority of Soap Land weddings this season, it is an uneventful affair with nary a kidnapping or jilting in sight. Ben and Val are awarded the obligatory, “If anyone knows any just cause why these two people ...” reaction shots, but do little more with them than look pensive.Possibly the most notable moment at the wedding is the public debut of Eric Fairgate and new girlfriend Whitney, aka Soap Land’s first interracial couple. “What do you think?” Eric asks his stepfather nervously. “I’m shocked,” Mack replies. “What does she see in you?"With her marital problems now behind her, DYNASTY’s Krystle is free once more to focus on helping other people (the very role she railed against earlier in the season). So it is that she and her do-gooding counterpart on KNOTS, Karen Mackenzie, each travel out of town this week in the hopes of affecting a long-awaited union between a parent and their offspring. While Krystle flies to New York to introduce Daniel Reece to Sammy Jo, the daughter he has never met, Karen stakes out a bridge tournament in Las Vegas in order to confront Dr Ackerman, the man she believes stands between Val and her babies.While waiting for Dr Ackerman to materialise, Karen interacts with an enjoyably ditzy receptionist in the hotel lobby. While outside Sammy Jo’s apartment, Krystle runs into Rita, whom Sammy Jo has invited to room with her after hearing her tale of romantic woe. (“When it comes to lovin' somebody, I can never get it right,” Rita frets, sounding just like Lucy "I keep picking men who are wrong for me” Ewing in last week’s DALLAS.) Needless to say, Krystle and Rita’s meeting marks the first time two Soap Land characters played by the same actor have appeared in the same scene (let alone the same shot), but neither appears to notice their astonishing resemblance. (By chance, Cathy Geary’s equally astonishing resemblance to Ciji Dunne is referred to on KNOTS this week for the first time in well over a year by, of all people, John Coblentz, as a way of illustrating to Gary how much he knows about his past.)There’s a slight feeling of treading water on both shows this week, which in a way is mirrored by the behaviour of Daniel Reece and Karen Mackenzie, each of whom could be accused of manufacturing drama, or at least significance, where none necessarily exists. This episode of KNOTS concludes with Karen finally clapping eyes on Dr Ackerman after waiting for him to emerge from a bridge game — but exactly what she hopes to achieve is unclear. As Mack has already pointed out to her, “You know if you confront him, he’s gonna deny it.” “I’ll know,” she insists. When Mack subsequently calls her “the human lie detector”, he is clearly joking, but Karen seems to genuinely believe she has some truth-divining ability (and by awarding her the final shot of the ep, KNOTS endorses that belief).DYNASTY’s attempt at creating something out of nothing is more successful. Before leaving for Libya, Daniel asks Krystle to promise to take care of Sammy Jo should anything bad happen to him — although he assures her it won’t. Reluctantly, she agrees: “I promise — God help me.” The way the background music builds and the frame then freezes on her imbues her words with dramatic portent. We don’t yet know how but it’s apparent that somewhere along the line, Krystle will be obliged make good on this promise. (I’m also reminded of the vow DALLAS’s Pam made to Rebecca on her deathbed to take care of brother Cliff, a promise that later came back to bite her on the ass.)Meanwhile, just as Karen gets one step closer to Val’s babies at the end of KNOTS, another back-from-the-dead storyline is resurrected on DYNASTY when Jeff Colby, in an exquisitely arbitrary plot twist, picks up a random photo taken by Ashley of a crowd at a New York rock concert and exclaims, “The woman in the photograph — it’s Fallon!”And this week’s Top 2 are …1 (2) DYNASTY2 (3) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?