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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 20345" data-attributes="member: 22">25/Dec/85: DYNASTY: The Solution v. 26/Dec/85: THE COLBYS: The Reunion v. 26/Dec/85: KNOTS LANDING: AftershocksIn each of the DYNASTY-verse’s central storylines this week — the Krystle lookalike plot and Sable’s scheme to have Constance declared mentally incompetent — there’s a sense of events spiralling out of control towards a yet unknown climax. “Let’s just get what we can and take off before this whole thing blows up in our faces!” Rita begs Joel on DYNASTY. “Oh God, when did this nightmare all start?!” Sable asks Frankie on THE COLBYS. The atmosphere’s a little different on KNOTS LANDING where the climax — the explosion at Empire Valley — has already happened and the characters are now left to pick up the pieces. Such aftermath episodes can be very interesting, sometimes even more than the Big Event that preceded them.This might be a fanciful comparison, but there are elements of DYNASTY's lookalike storyline that remind me of some of Shakespeare’s plays, specifically those where an equally far-fetched plot development involving disguise and/or mistaken identity (the ones I’m familiar with are Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor) results in scenes both dramatic and farcical. As in those plays, the Rita storyline shifts between moments of comedy, dark menace and romantic melodrama, sometimes within the same scene. Joel Abrigore provides a comic-book villainy as he prepares to not only double-cross Sammy Jo by stealing her money, but also betray Rita by running away with Krystle. At the end of this episode, he becomes an even darker figure as he orders Rita to minister a fatal potion to Blake (and it doesn’t get much more Shakespearean than that). Meanwhile, comic misunderstandings arise when Alexis runs into “Krystle” and taunts her over her liaison with the mystery man in last week’s episode. Krystle looks bewildered and one's mind is momentarily scrambled before remembering that the Krystle Alexis encountered at the roadhouse is not the one she’s speaking to here. Back at the mansion, Blake hits the roof after finding Rita and Joel in a compromising position. While this plot can hardly claim to provide any great insights into the human condition in the way Shakespeare’s did, Blake and “Krystle’s" situation does serve as an allegory of sorts. “What’s happened?” demands Blake of his supposed wife. "You look the same, you talk the same, but it’s as if my real wife has slipped away and a stranger’s taken her place.” Of course, we grasp the double meaning intended by the writers, but the drama also works on a surface level. If Blake and Krystle’s marriage were genuinely falling apart — not because of external plot machinations, but because one had simply fallen out of love with the other — then this is what it might look like and there’s a certain vicarious thrill in seeing John Forsythe and Linda Evans play out this scenario.Over on THE COLBYS, a similar marital situation is happening for real between Jason and Sable. "My God, what’s happened to you?” Jason asks his wife, echoing Blake’s question to Rita. “Look around you. You’ve got your home, your family, your paintings, half the money in California. How much is enough?" Sable and Jason provide Soap Land with a rare opportunity to examine a long-term married couple whose relationship has begun to crumble. (Indeed, there have only been three other couples in any of the main four soaps whose marriages lasted more than a decade — Jock and Miss Ellie on DALLAS, Sid and Karen on KNOTS, and Chase and Maggie on FALCON CREST.)The "married in name only" trend continues this week. As Jason arranges to have his personal belongings “moved into the west wing as soon as possible,” Gary withdraws from Abby on KNOTS. "I woke up this morning alone in my bed and I thought, ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’” cries Sable. “My marriage is a mess!” "Two people can’t live in the same house totally ignoring each other,” insists Abby. "You’re my husband, I’m your wife!” “I don’t know what that means anymore,” Gary replies.In amongst all the accusations and hurt feelings, there’s a rather moving scene on THE COLBYS where Miles offers Fallon an annulment: "I love you very much, Fallon, but I can’t handcuff you … Our marriage isn’t binding in California because of your amnesia … You don’t owe me anything.“ This gesture is all the more touching for being so unexpected. Indeed, THE COLBYS has an interesting habit of establishing characters with recognisable personality traits, then subverting them. As well as the petulant, self-absorbed Miles behaving so selflessly, this episode also includes the scheming Sable suddenly breaking down in tears in front of her sister and the revelation that the morally righteous Jason once betrayed his brother Philip by sleeping with Philip’s wife (later his own wife’s sister!) while Philip was fighting in Vietnam. Moreover, Jason seeks to rekindle that same affair at the end of this week’s episode."Digger Barnes was in love with Ellie,” recalled Rebecca Wentworth in DALLAS Season 5. "So was Jock Ewing. Two men in love with the same woman, happens all the time … History has a way of repeating itself. This time, the triangle is Cliff, Sue Ellen, and JR.” Soap Land storylines and dialogue have a way of repeating themselves too. “Do you know what it’s like watching Jeff and Miles in love with the same woman?” Jason asks Frankie this week. “Like history repeating itself — you and me and Philip,” she replies.After Rita slips some of the poison into his brandy at the end of this week’s DYNASTY, Blake starts exhibiting symptoms (hand tremors, fatigue) during the following night’s edition of THE COLBYS where he is finally reunited with Fallon. After discussing her dilemma regarding Miles and Jeff, he tells her, “I want to help you more than anything, but if you feel that you want to tackle this problem by yourself, of course I’ll understand.” This line serves the same purpose as Miss Ellie’s to Gary at the beginning of this season’s DALLAS: “I love you with all my heart, but we don’t have to be together to keep that love.” In each case, the message is the same — if you love someone, set them free to star in their own spinoff series.There’s a strong media presence in this week’s Soap Land. On DYNASTY, Alexis is dismayed to find herself the subject of a World Finance cover story which describes her as "a woman who forsakes family and fortune to save her royal lover from the jaws of death.” Over on KNOTS, Lilimae is interviewed for a cover story on Joshua for Inner Force magazine. The reporter compares Joshua to James Dean, John Lennon and Elvis Presley, “young men that had meteoric rises to fame and who suffered untimely deaths.” Here, Soap Land and reality intersect — Julie Harris’s most famous role (outside of the US, at least) was as James Dean’s girlfriend in East of Eden, while Elvis was, of course, married to DALLAS’s Jenna Wade. When Lilimae repeatedly reminds Cathy how her name will forever be inextricably linked to Joshua's (“His fans … loved him and they love you because you were married to him” “You will always be Mrs. Joshua Rush” “This will always be Joshua’s show”), it’s not hard to draw a parallel with Priscilla Presley's life. Much of the rest of this week’s KNOTS is spent with the media, represented by Ben, trying to get to the bottom of the explosion at Empire Valley. Towards the end of the episode, he returns home from a press conference where Greg has characteristically managed to extricate himself from any responsibility in the matter (“Sumner whitewashed the whole thing!”) to finds Gary in his and Val’s living room. The irony is not lost on Ben: “I have professional reporters out all over the place looking for you and I find you in my home keeping my son up way past his bedtime.”While the lookalike story on DYNASTY has reignited the Alexis/“Krystle" rivalry — there are two traditionally bitchy encounters between them in this week’s episode — this week’s KNOTS contains Karen and Abby’s first scene as adversaries since last season. Theirs too is a kind of "back to basics” argument as Abby reminds her old enemy of a few facts: “The truth is, Karen, Lotus Point, this place, is mine. It wouldn’t exist without me. You’re only here because you’re my brother’s widow. You lucked into it because of a stupid little piece of property that was left to you in my uncle’s will."Meanwhile, what has felt like an experiment to turn Greg Sumner and Gary Ewing into the KNOTS LANDING equivalent of JR and Bobby on DALLAS, Chase and Richard on FALCON CREST, or even Jeff and Miles on THE COLBYS, i.e., quasi-sibling rivals fighting over land and birthrights, has begun to yield some fascinating results. We’ve already seen Gary blow up Empire Valley, and now this week’s episode ends with Greg, in time-honoured Soap Land fashion, addressing a soliloquy to his late father’s portrait. Traditionally, such speeches are an opportunity for a son to reaffirm his devotion to his daddy’s memory. "You built Ewing Oil from the ground up,” JR told Jock’s painting in Season 4. "Whatever it took, you did it for Ewing Oil and I'm gonna do the same. I'm gonna pass it on bigger and stronger to my son." Here, the sentiment is somewhat different. "I let you reach back from the grave and manipulate my life,” Greg tells Paul Galveston’s likeness. "I allowed it because I was weak, because I wasn’t mean enough or hard enough or cruel enough … I wasn’t a barbarian like my father. Well, Dad, congratulations, you have hatched a new breed of barbarian, a creature determined to surpass even you in creating his own world.” Just as JR told his daddy, “Nobody's gonna take Ewing Oil away from me or my son or his son,” Greg also insists that "nothing's gonna stand in my way — not you, not anybody.” Both speeches end in a solemn vow. "I swear to you, by God I'm gonna make you proud of me,” JR tells his father. "I swear on your face never to have a son that I might treat as brutally as you have treated your son,” Greg tells his.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (3) DYNASTY2 (1) THE COLBYS3 (2) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?