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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 17495" data-attributes="member: 22">10 Apr 85: DYNASTY: Kidnap v. 11 Apr 85: KNOTS LANDING: Four, No Trump v. 12 Apr 85: DALLAS: Terms of Estrangement v. 12 Apr 85: FALCON CREST: Devil’s HarvestDYNASTY's Alexis and KNOTS LANDING’s Abby find themselves in similarly helpless situations when their children’s lives are endangered in this week’s Soap Land. “Oh my God — Amanda!” Alexis gasps as her youngest daughter is snatched away by kidnappers in front of her eyes. “Please God, don’t let anybody be hurt,” mutters Abby as she and Gary rush to the site of a car accident involving both of her children. Amanda is ultimately rescued and Olivia and Brian are found uninjured, but both mothers are left shaken. “When those men grabbed her, I felt part of my life was being dragged away,” Alexis tells Dex. “I just can’t help thinking what could have happened,” Abby tells Gary.Each incident reawakens memories of past abductions. "All I remember is a loneliness, isolation, a feeling I didn’t quite belong,“ says DYNASTY’s Adam of his own kidnapping. "I never felt so alone or empty in all my life,” echoes Abby, referring to the time her ex-husband Jeff “stole” her children. “It’s the most awful feeling in the world to see something happen to your child and be absolutely helpless to do anything about it,” Alexis agrees.While the kidnapping prompts Alexis to take Amanda to Moldavia ahead of her wedding in the mistaken belief that she will be safer there than in Denver, the car accident has an even more profound effect on Abby who decides she can no longer live with her complicity in the disappearance of Val’s babies. In order to get her hands on Paul Galveston’s papers, which she believes contain the answer to the twins’ whereabouts, she is obliged to tell Greg Sumner everything. While it’s fascinating to watch her finally come clean, it’s even more interesting to observe Greg’s implacable reaction to her lengthy tale. At its conclusion, he agrees to give her his father’s papers with one proviso: “I don’t ever want to hear another word about this again. Ever.” Abby gratefully agrees and that appears to be the end of Greg's involvement in the situation. However, once she has left, we discover that he has given her all of his father's documents except the torn pages revealing the babies’ location!Meanwhile, as a falsely accused Lance Cumson becomes a fugitive from the law on FALCON CREST, it emerges that two genuinely dangerous men are also currently at large in Soap Land. While one is hiding in plain sight, the other could be anywhere in the world. The former is Yuri, Prince Michael’s head of security on DYNASTY, who was behind Amanda’s botched kidnapping. The latter is Andre Schumann, whose murder of Veronica Robinson on DALLAS comes to light via in-flight security footage. While neither Prince Michael nor the Carringtons have any idea of Yuri’s duplicity and continue to entrust him with Amanda’s safety, Schumann is identified by the Dallas police as a professional hitman, "and professional hit men are nearly impossible to find”. In each case, a bigger question is raised: who are Yuri and Schumann taking their orders from?“I'm acting the way everyone thinks that I should, the way I think everyone wants me to act … from the moment I wake up in the morning till the moment I try to close my eyes at night.” So says Val to Karen on KNOTS LANDING, but her words could just as easily apply to Bobby and Pam on DALLAS or DYNASTY’s Jeff Colby, each of whom is trying valiantly to put the past behind them and move on with their lives, only to find themselves being pulled back to the place where their heart secretly lies.Emboldened by catching Cathy’s wedding bouquet last week, Val jokes with Ben about getting married and even goes so far as sleep with him for the first time since her breakdown. But then he awakens in the middle of the night to find her staring broodily out at the ocean, and she continues to keep him at arm’s length for the rest of the episode. “I know those babies are alive,” she confides to Karen. "I felt their life inside of me and it didn’t stop.”Even as Bobby continues to battle for Jenna's innocence and Pam reasserts her commitment to Cliff and Jamie's fight for Ewing Oil, each is given a lingering tell-tale close-up at the end of a scene that indicates their real devotion still lies with each other. Even JR is aware of it. "Don't you deny you love Pam more than you do Jenna,” he challenges Bobby, who doesn’t reply.Likewise, on DYNASTY, Jeff tries to move forward with his romantic life, declaring his love for Ashley Mitchell and insisting that he no longer has any interest in Fallon, irrespective of whether she is alive or dead. Later, however, we see him staring at the portrait of Fallon that has been hanging in the Carrington mansion since Christmas — only now the face in the portrait belongs to someone else! As he looks at the painting, he flashes back to a love scene that took place between he and Fallon almost two seasons ago — only now the Fallon in the flashback resembles the woman in the painting! Adding to the feeling of disorientation, Jeff’s eyes are super-imposed over the flashback as though, like the audience, he is trying to make sense of what he is seeing. If this were an episode of DARK SHADOWS, the painting itself would have psychic properties and would be hypnotising Jeff (and us) into believing this unknown woman is the real Fallon and has been all along. There are many layers of reality going on here: Fallon used to be played by one actress, but now looks like another. Fallon was believed to be dead, but now possibly isn’t. Jeff insists he no longer loves Fallon, yet clearly, he does.Elsewhere on DYNASTY, Luke Fuller is taken aback when Steven invites him to the royal wedding in Moldavia. “Flaunting our relationship that publicly? It can’t do anything but hurt your family!” he exclaims. Eric Fairgate seemed to be anticipating a similarly strong reaction when he brought Whitney, his black girlfriend, to Joshua and Cathy’s wedding in last week’s KNOTS. However, when he anxiously asks people their opinion of her in this week’s ep, the only word they use to describe her is “cute”. This would suggest that, with the possible exception of Eric himself, the good folks of Seaview Circle are all as colour blind as, well, the Carringtons of DYNASTY were at the beginning of this season when Dominique Devereaux claimed to be their blood relative and no one even thought to mention her skin colour. However, there’s no mistaking the double meaning in Mack’s line when he says to Karen, with reference to Whitney, “Guess who’s coming to dinner?” — this, of course, being the title of a 1967 movie in which the liberal views of a married couple (Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn) are put to the test when their daughter brings her black fiancé (Sidney Poitier) home to meet the family.Back on DYNASTY, a possible consequence of Dominique's race never being referred to on screen is that it becomes the elephant in the room that no one talks about; one starts to see its significance everywhere. For example, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the speech in this week’s episode where she refers herself as two separate people — one rich, successful and embraced by the Carringtons, the other poor, hungry and married to Billy Dee Williams — reflects, on some level, her own mixed race background. “I have accomplished a great deal [in Denver],” she tells Ashley, "and I have my family name now, but what about the other me, that little Milly Cox who clawed and fought her way to get here? Brady would say that I have betrayed her, sold her for thirty pieces of silver.""What's going to happen to us as a family if we lose two-thirds of Ewing Oil?" Miss Ellie asks her husband in this week's DALLAS. Clayton's eloquent reply echoes the rallying speech Blake delivered to his family at the beginning of this season's DYNASTY. "It's when things are bad," Blake said then, "that's when we Carringtons are tested. We have to pull ourselves together. We have to be strong. We have to be what we always are — an example to others." "This family wasn't built on wealth," Clayton says now. "It was built on character. And you have to make sure that no matter what happens to the Ewing fortune, nothing happens to the Ewing spirit. With it, the family will survive and without it, it doesn't stand a chance." "I don't know if I have the strength," replies Ellie. "Together we do," Clayton concludes decisively, mirroring the end of Blake's speech: "We Carringtons will prevail." Whereas the Carringtons were united by Blake's words, the opposite occurs on DALLAS when Clayton subsequently becomes embroiled in a near fist-fight with his stepson after JR verbally attacks Sue Ellen in front of the family.A week after Joshua married Cathy on KNOTS LANDING, his poor relation counterpart on DALLAS, Jamie Ewing, accepts a proposal of marriage from Cliff Barnes. Just as Lilimae acknowledged how far her son has evolved within the space of season — from "a shy country boy who'd just left home not knowing much about the world outside" into "a man that people listen to, respect, are drawn to and seek out" — so a figure from Jamie's past shows up this week and observes the change in her: "New wardrobe, new hairdo, new you … Looks like we're moving uptown, baby!" Yep, in the same week that Emma Samms materialises on DYNASTY as New Fallon, Dack Rambo arrives on DALLAS as cousin Jack.Joshua and Jamie have each come a long way in less than a year, but Soap Land's newest long lost relatives — cousin Jack on DALLAS and cousin Robin on FALCON CREST — move even faster. In his very first scene during this week's ep — before he's even divulged his identity — Jack makes JR a compelling proposal: "If I can stop Jason Ewing's daughter and Digger Barnes's son from stealing two-thirds of Ewing Oil, I think fair compensation would be 10% of Ewing Oil for myself." Over on FALCON CREST, Robin offers Cole and Melissa her services as a surrogate mother. When Cole refuses, she seduces him anyway.While the exotic Ruth Galveston and homely Lilimae make unexpected lunch partners on this week's KNOTS, the level-headed Donna Krebbs and neurotic Sue Ellen make even less likely accomplices during a late-night milk-and-cookie binge on DALLAS. Both pairs of women find common ground when the subject of men is inevitably raised. "Have you ever met a man who wasn't trouble?" asks Ruth. "Well, I never met one who was worth a damn who wasn't!" Lilimae replies and the two women laugh. Meanwhile, on Southfork, the joke is more bitter than sweet as Donna surveys the fates of the Ewing wives: "Poor Pam, poor you, poor me." (The unspoken addition of "Poor Val" feels almost implicit.) "The Curse of the Ewings," diagnoses Sue Ellen. "It wasn't supposed to happen to me," Donna whispers tearfully. There's another unusual female pairing on FALCON CREST when Pamela Lynch drops in on Melissa — only not to break bread, but to blackmail. "You can help finance my new life," she suggests. "If you don't, I'm sure Angela would pay a great deal of money to know who hired Joel McCarthy to run her off the road ... Shall we say $100,000?" (Compared to what Jack Ewing's asking of JR, this seems a mere pittance.) Suffice to say, none of these scenes would score very highly on the Bedchel test, but they're all as juicy as can be.Each of this week's eps concludes with an exciting reveal. "Who are you?" a sympathetic cop in a Los Angeles police station asks a young woman with her back to the camera at the end of DYNASTY. When she turns around, we see it's the same woman in Fallon's painting and Jeff's flashback! "How can I tell you when I don't know myself?" she asks helplessly. At the end of KNOTS, we see Mrs Fisher, the woman Mack and Ben visited a few episodes ago, returning home with her twin babies. Who should be watching her from a discreet distance but … Greg Sumner! At the end of DALLAS, Dack Rambo shows up at Jamie's apartment to divulge his true identity. "Get lost? Just like that? Your own brother," he whispers sinisterly — a reveal almost as good as Dominique's equivalent quip to Blake at the beginning of the season: "We have so much in common, our blood, our genes, our daddy."FALCON CREST's cliffhanger employs the same back-of-a-woman's-head gimmick as DYNASTY's. This time, however, the big reveal is not the character's identity — we already know that she is Cassandra Wilder's mother. Instead, the big news is what she has written on her notepad before falling asleep in her wheelchair: "Final Phase — The Destruction of Falcon Crest!"And this week's Top 4 is … kind of hard to decide. Aside from FALCON CREST which is further away from the finishing post, each show now has its end-of-season groove on. While DYNASTY boasts a succession of sinfully thrilling pop culture moments (Krystle lookalikes! One-eyed Moldavians! Emma Samms in a raincoat!) and KNOTS its own specific dramatic richness ("I do what I have to to get what I want, but I don't do this — I don't take babies away from their mother"), it's DALLAS, with its interdependent story-lines, fast-moving pace and driving emotional score, that best captures the sense of a show careering inexorably towards a predestined but as-yet-unknowable climax. No matter how many times I've seen this ep, and I've seen it a lot, it still feels intoxicating.1 (-) DALLAS2 (2) KNOTS LANDING3 (1) DYNASTY4 (-) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?