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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 17762" data-attributes="member: 22">25/Sep/85: DYNASTY: The Aftermath v. 26/Sep/85: KNOTS LANDING: The Longest Day v. 27/Sep/85: DALLAS: The Family Ewing/Rock BottomA strong feeling of powerlessness runs through this new Soap Land season. On DYNASTY, where it appears that the extended Carrington clan didn’t so much die during the Moldavian massacre as collectively fall asleep, it’s as if they have now awakened to find themselves prisoners in a nightmarishly topsy-turvy world. Any attempt to assert their customary authority is met with derision — or worse. Similarly, the opening third of this week’s KNOTS LANDING finds the majority of the cast hovering uncertainly outside a strange couple’s house, unable to prove that the babies inside have been stolen from Val. The cops are called but quickly concede that they too are in over their heads. In his attempts to get a court order against the Fishers, Mack spends the remainder of the episode increasingly entangled in bureaucratic red tape, only to be told in the final scene that there is no legal evidence that Val’s twins ever existed. The Ewings of DALLAS are at least on familiar ground in their opening scene, having returned to Southfork from the hospital after Bobby’s death, but they too remain helplessly grief-stricken for much of this week’s two episodes.There is a collective sense of worlds being turned upside down — the accepted rules no longer applying. This is especially true on DYNASTY. When Steven’s boyfriend Luke appears on screen critically injured, Blake launches into a variation of his familiar “I want the best surgeon in the state!” routine, but instead of a flurry of white coats and concern, his words are met with mockery and indifference, and Luke subsequently dies untreated from his injuries. When Prince Michael calls royal bodyguard-turned-revolutionary Yuri a traitor, his response — “I wiped your nose as child” — recalls Joseph’s Season 2 reminiscence about changing Steven’s diapers when he was a baby. Where Joseph’s tone was dryly affectionate, Yuri’s drips with contempt. This is a world where seemingly faithful family retainers harbour murderous intent. Even the Carrington wealth counts for naught. “I know these revolutionaries,” Dex tells Amanda when she suggests trading her jewellery in return for her family’s safety. “They can’t be bribed — at least not for the next year or so.”Adding to the sense of strangeness, not only are these the first ever episodes of DALLAS in which Bobby Ewing does not appear, but this instalment of DYNASTY is the first since the Season 1 finale not to include Alexis, who has mysteriously vanished during the coup. Nor are there any scenes set in Denver. Although four scenes in this week’s KNOTS take place in the familiar surroundings of the cul-de-sac, Val cannot settle there (Joshua’s overbearing presence doesn’t help) and she is compelled instead to return to her round-the-clock vigil outside the Fisher house. Meanwhile, Bobby’s absence leads JR to feel similarly ill-at-ease in his spiritual home of Ewing Oil. Even Southfork itself feels somewhat unfamiliar — specifically, the area of the ranch Ellie visits the morning after Bobby's death and where he is subsequently laid to rest. With its treehouse, wildflowers and small lake, it is depicted as a childhood idyll (“of all the places in Southfork where he used to play, this was his favourite”) and looks unlike any part of the working cattle ranch we’re used to seeing. In fact, it resembles Gary’s picturesque ranch on KNOTS more than it does Southfork.This week, the timelines on KNOTS LANDING and DALLAS converge for the first time since the reading of Jock’s will three seasons ago. Towards the end of KNOTS, Abby tells Gary that “a call came in from Dallas a little while ago. Your family's been trying to reach you ... It's Bobby. There's been a terrible accident.” "I just heard about Bobby," Gary subsequently tells Miss Ellie near the beginning of DALLAS. "It can't be true, it just can't be!” “I’m afraid it is,” she replies gravely. Indeed, the very fact that Bobby’s death is acknowledged on KNOTS serves to make it more “true” than Gary’s apparent death on KNOTS a year earlier. Back then, the non-attendance of any Dallas Ewings at his funeral provided a narrative clue that he might not be so dead after all. Here, Gary’s presence at Bobby’s only underlines the finality of his passing.Viewed through the prism of New DALLAS, particularly those instalments pertaining to JR’s death, a lot of this week’s DALLAS feels freshly significant and poignant. The minor fact that Bobby is dead here but will be alive in the future is no impediment to this. In fact, after watching Bobby mourn JR in 2013, JR’s grief for Bobby in 1985 feels somehow more real and moving than it ever did before. Likewise, the scene at John Ross’s bedside where JR turns to his young son for solace ("You're all I got”) acquires a deeper significance when one connects Omri Katz’s John Ross to Josh Henderson’s.Shortly before his death on DYNASTY, Luke regains consciousness long enough to describe a dream he has just had in which he and Steven meet each other as children on a beach. It recalls Val’s dream from last season’s KNOTS where she and Gary frolic like teenagers on a beach before Abby appears to lead Gary away. (That dream was also echoed in the KNOTS season finale when Abby finds Val, again on a beach, and takes her to find her babies. If memory serves, the two women are each wearing the same colours as they were in Val’s dream.) “Us as kids — it was as if we’d known each other our whole lives,” Luke tells Steven, expressing the same longing as Mark Graison the night before his death on DALLAS ("I wish I'd met you when I was ten,” he tells Pam, "I wish we'd had all that time together”) and Bobby Ewing just before his death (“All that wasted time — we should have been married,” he says, looking at Pam and/or Jenna).Not only does Bobby’s death prompt Gary’s first visit to DALLAS for three years, it also triggers the return of Miss Ellie to her former self. While it’s kind of sad to see the back of Donna Reed’s quietly unassuming incarnation of the character, it feels an appropriate time for Barbara Bel Geddes to wrench back control of both the character and the Ewing family itself. "Sue Ellen, it's about time you stopped this," she snaps when her hungover daughter-in-law berates herself for not being with the rest of the Ewings at Bobby’s deathbed. "We have a lot more to worry about than your guilt … This family is going have a terrible time facing up to the loss of Bobby. If you can't help us, don't make it worse.” The acuity of Ellie’s words, if not their harshness, is matched during an interesting exchange between Ben and Karen on this week’s KNOTS. Like Miss Ellie, Ben cuts straight to the truth of the matter when Karen refuses to accept the possibility that the Fishers’ babies might not be Val’s at all. “You don’t want to believe it,” he tells her. "You’ve got too much invested … You’re not infallible.” Whereas Karen reacts with absolute certainty when challenged (“I know I’m right about this”), Sue Ellen simply crumbles.As the rest of the Ewings band together in the aftermath of Bobby’s death, with even Ray and Donna reconciling, Sue Ellen drifts further and further away until she finds herself in a strange world, just as bizarre and alien as the one currently inhabited by Carringtons on DYNASTY, where her status as a Ewing and privileges as a rich man’s wife count for nothing. While Krystle ends this week’s DYNASTY sobbing on the floor of a Moldavian jail cell, looking increasingly bedraggled in the once immaculate outfit she wore to Prince Michael and Amanda’s wedding, Sue Ellen, looking equally dishevelled in the previously chic ensemble she wore to Bobby’s funeral, ends this week’s DALLAS sharing a bottle of meths in an alley. Both women have lost their wedding rings as well as their dignity by this point. While Krystle used hers to bribe a guard to take her to Blake (instead, he shut her in a room with the corpse of King Galen, who turns out to still be alive), Sue Ellen's was snatched from her finger while she was passed out drunk in a motel room.There’s also a parallel between Sue Ellen’s motel meltdown after she loses her ring and Val’s in last season’s KNOTS. "How could anybody love you? How could anybody want you?” sneered Val, looking at herself in the mirror. “You are disgusting! I hate you!” shouts Sue Ellen at her own reflection. While Val lambasted herself for her physical appearance (“You look like a man, as flat as a board!”), Sue Ellen has other people to do that for her. "She looks like a Dallas Cowboy!” laughs a jive-talking black guy, fondling one of her shoulder-pads (another Soap Land taboo broken). “It’s Nancy goddamn Reagan!” a hooker then jeers as she passes by. The guards in Moldavia make fun of Krystle’s appearance too: “This rich American is pretty!” “She won’t be for long! Ha ha ha!”Elsewhere on DALLAS, the Ewings emerge from their Southfork cocoon long enough to attend the reading of Bobby’s will. As predicted by JR, he has left his shares of the family business to his son Christopher. Inevitably, there is a twist in the tale. Just as Krystle was recently appointed the executor of Sammy Jo’s inheritance on DYNASTY so Pam becomes the administrator of Christopher’s thirty percent of Ewing Oil. JR is no happier about this development than Sammy Jo was, but there’s nothing he can do. “There are no legal grounds to contest here,” his lawyer tells him flatly — another example of powerlessness in this week’s Soap Land. Sammy Jo, however, has a Krystle lookalike in her arsenal and this week proposes to Rita that she “go to Denver and play her for a while … It’ll be quick and easy and no one will get hurt.”Currently in Los Angeles with no memory of her true identity, DYNASTY's Fallon has adopted the name of Randall Adams, thus making her a sister of sorts to Kay Adams, Julia Cumson’s alias during her time on the lam on FALCON CREST. Both Kay and Verna Ellers, Val Ewing’s alter ego during last season’s KNOTS, found fulfilment in their new lives by taking on humble domestic chores — Kay happily playing housewife to boyfriend Lucas while Verna contentedly waited tables in a coffee shop. Randall/Fallon, however, is intuitively drawn to the other extreme of society when an article in a newspaper sends her to a polo match where she meets Miles Colby.It feels significant that our introduction to the Californian Colbys should be in such surroundings. On DALLAS, Mark Graison was the first character to be seen enjoying the gentleman’s game of polo, thereby distinguishing him from the comparatively unsophisticated Ewing boys. On KNOTS, Greg Sumner's interest in the sport was our first clue that his background might be somewhat grander than had previously been indicated. The fact that we have never seen a Denver Carrington or Colby wield a polo mallet implies that however rich and powerful the Colorado branch of the family are, the Colbys of California are even more so.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (-) DALLAS2 (-) DYNASTY3 (1) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

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