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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 3848" data-attributes="member: 22">09/Mar/81: DYNASTY: The Beating v. 09-10/Mar/81: FLAMINGO ROAD: Bad Girl/Secrets v. 12/Mar/81: KNOTS LANDING: Man of the Hour v. 13/Mar/81: DALLAS: Mark of CainThis week, Steven Carrington succeeds where Bobby Ewing and Skipper Weldon failed: he moves out of the family home - and what's more, his father approves. "A young man shouldn't be tied umbilically to the place where he was born," says Blake, even if the unspoken laws of Soap Land dictate otherwise. Admittedly, it helps that Steven simultaneously announces his intentions to start working for the family business - which Skipper also does in "Bad Girl", the first of this week's two FLAMINGO ROAD eps.Steven explains to Blake that he wants to become a man with dirty fingernails: "I want to do it the way you did it. I want to get my hands real dirty. I want my muscles to ache. I want to sweat and get dog tired and then come falling in to bed at night knowing that I'm learning, really learning this business the way you did."What brings about this change of heart in Steven isn't entirely spelled out, but is clearly linked to his relationship with Claudia. It's as if finding out he's capable of sex with a woman has made Steven believe he's also worthy of becoming his father's heir. Indeed, he seems to be in love not just with Claudia, but also his newly discovered heterosexuality. For the first time, he is able to speak of his future as one of growth and possibility: "Next spring, up at the lake, when this tree I planted begins to show off her leaves, prettier and greener than any single leaf in England, I want you to be there," he tells Claudia during a bedroom scene. Ironically, Al Corley has never looked more feminine than when lying in Pamela Bellwood's arms. At one point, it looks as if Claudia is sharing a post-coital moment with Kim Wilde."The Beating" contains the most moving scene in DYNASTY thus far where Matthew asks Claudia away on a belated honeymoon. By this point, he knows that she knows about his affair with Krystle, but neither can bring themselves to speak of it. He explains that the trip is an attempt to make up for hurting her in the past. What he doesn't realise is that the damage has already been done and Claudia is now sleeping with Steven. There is no anger in the scene, only sadness and regret. At different points, each character is in tears, but still don't say what's really on their minds.While on vacation, Claudia and Matthew run into Brian Dennehy, completing his trilogy of Soap Land characters. Previously Luther Frick in DALLAS and Lynn Baker Cargill in KNOTS LANDING, here he's Jake Dunham, an old college football pal of Matthew's turned lawyer. In just a few week's time, Jake will be doing his best to put Blake Carrington away for murder. Points to DYNASTY for tying him into the story ahead of time. Which other soap would make the effort? I can think of only one - PEYTON PLACE.One of PEYTON PLACE's great strengths was its flexible structure, in particular, its ability to expand at will, to include never-before-seen characters and locations that we willingly accept were part of the town all along. FLAMINGO ROAD pulls off something similar this week when Skipper takes over his father's position at the mill, and we're straightaway introduced to three characters who have apparently worked there for years - secretary Alice Kovacks, who has nursed a secret crush on Skipper's father for over a decade (echoes of Julie Anderson's relationship with her boss on PEYTON PLACE), Alice's gold digging younger sister Christie (aka Linda the Lady Mechanic from KNOTS who has evidently crossed over to the dark side following Sid Fairgate's rejection of her four weeks earlier) and Christie's horny, possessive boyfriend Tony.Christie is a blast - a hundred times more fun than she ever was as mousy little Linda - and brings a much needed element of dime-store novel sleaze to FLAMINGO ROAD. She immediately makes a bee-line for Skipper who is sap enough to fall for her little girl lost routine. Alice disapproves, but Christie doesn't care. "Now I've found him, I've got a shot at Flamingo Road," she says. Like the similarly named Kristin on DALLAS, she delights in taunting her big sister about how she won't make the same mistakes she did: "I'm not gonna be like you, Alice, growing old by myself in some mail order dress. I'm gonna be a Weldon."A wayward sister also pops up on KNOTS LANDING - Ginger's youngest sibling Cindy. "She's got rules and regulations and those rules become a prison," says Kenny of his whacko mother-in-law, thereby explaining why Ginger's sisters feel the need to cut loose each time they visit the cul-de-sac.The theme of characters being imprisoned - by birth, marriage or circumstance - continues to recur heavily in Soap Land this week. "You make the Weldon house sound like some kind of prison," observes Christie while talking to Field. "The only difference is that the spoons there are made out of sterling silver," he replies.Jeff Colby finds himself locked in the same kind of prison as Field this week. Taking a leaf out of Steven's book, he proposes to Fallon that they too move out of the Carrington mansion. Her refusal to even entertain the idea causes Mr. Affable to lose his temper for the very first time. "Most of all, you love your father," he shouts, "so why did you marry me? Why didn't you marry him?" This echoes Andrew Laird's line to Fallon earlier in the season ("Most little girls realise by the age of six that they can't grow up and marry their daddies") and sends her running barefoot from the house … and into the arms of Michael the chauffeur. Later in the episode, Michael is driving a limo containing Fallon and Krystle when he is set upon by two nameless henchmen who give him the beating of this week's episode title. "You know the rules," Michael murmurs to Fallon afterwards as a bewildered Krystle looks on. "I broke the rules. I had it coming." Fallon subsequently confronts her father ("You just can't go around beating up every man in Colorado I sleep with!") who orders her to make her marriage work.Elsewhere, we see Lindsay running away from her parents after learning of Claudia's affair with Steven, only for Matthew to catch up with her in order to bring her home. It's hard to think of two DYNASTY characters with less in common than Fallon and Lindsay, but in this ep we see each of them literally running from the truth, only to find themselves back where they started.It's interesting how disco dancing is depicted in Soap Land. What in reality began as an underground movement in about 1970 and was later co-opted (around the time of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER) by the real-life equivalents of Jeff and Abby Cunningham and the adventurous suburban marrieds of SWING TOWN no longer has anything to do with any sort of social or sexual subversion (Claudia's whirl around the dance floor with creepy Lawrence in last week's DYNASTY notwithstanding) and has instead become the sole province of white upwardly mobile couples. On KNOTS, it's the way the neighbours choose to celebrate Gary's promotion in "Bottom of the Bottle" and how Kenny schmoozes his contacts in the record business. On DALLAS, it's a harmless way for respectable young couples, Bobby and Pam and then Lucy and Kit, to spend their evenings out. And now that Matthew and Claudia are officially on the up, thanks to his oil strike, they also get a chance to shake their booties, alongside ambitious attorney Jake Dunham and his materialistic wife Louise.On FLAMINGO ROAD, it's a slightly different story. For all the talk of non-stop partying at Lute-Mae's, Lane Ballou's covers of MOR standards (more often than not with the word "blue" in the title) are usually as funky as it gets. This week, having been abruptly dumped by Skipper when her slut credentials are verified by the bartender, Christie hits the jukebox and embarks on some of the most libidinous gyrating this side of Betty Anderson in PEYTON PLACE. Meanwhile, the resident hookers, who include DALLAS's Dora Mae, watch from the sidelines with prim disapproval.There are a few big marital explosions in this week's Soap Land. As well as Jeff and Fallon's first fight, Matthew erupts when Lindsay fails to return home and all his festering resentments regarding Claudia falling pregnant when they were teenagers come boiling to the surface. His dialogue rings painfully true: "Isn't that what you tell your shrink? That it was both our faults, that we helped take away the best years of your life?" he yells at Claudia. "That's not true," she protests. "Then what is?! That I didn't suffer enough? That the boy doesn't suffer??" Meanwhile on F'LINGO RD, Field, mistakenly believing that Lane and Sam have eloped, has the mother of all fights with Constance, striking her across the face and knocking her to the floor. He heads to Lute-Mae's to drown his sorrows and in a fab little twist, it is he rather than Skipper, who ends up in bed with Christie.In this week's KNOTS, Karen finds a joint in Eric's pocket. "When I was a kid, we were taught that marijuana led to drug addiction," recalls Sid. "Then the pendulum swung in the totally opposite direction. Everybody called it harmless." This attitude is reflected in the stance taken by Blake a few weeks earlier with regard to Fallon and Jeff's weed-induced skinny dip. "Perfectly acceptable in this house," he shrugged. It's not so easy for Sid: "I feel betrayed by my own son." The scene where Eric waits in vain for Sid to provide him with some sort of comfort or reassurance after Ginger's sister ends up in a coma (thanks to Eric Stoltz lacing another joint with PCP) is just heartbreaking, even more so when one remembers that Sid has but a few episodes to live.However, the episode's best scene is where Abby, convinced that Jeff has abducted her kids, turns to the Averys for help - and finds Laura more sympathetic than Richard. Really good.DALLAS feels kinda muddled this week. Much of the episode is given over to Bobby dealing with the fact that he has an inherited a seat on the senatorial committee that will determine who gets Takapa - Jock or Ellie. The obvious conflict of interest does not prohibit his participation. The far-fetchedness of this scenario doesn't worry me - it's no more implausible than Miss Ellie rewriting her will from beyond the grave - but the concept of Bobby as an earnest politician is harder to accept. The idea that he has any kind of social awareness that stretches beyond the confines of Ewing Oil and Southfork just doesn't ring true for me. As he said at JR's graveside, his role as the good brother was always defined by JR's as the bad: that's all he knows.The funniest bit of the episode is Mitch returning home to find a camera crew in his living room and Lucy dressed as Little Jimmy Osmond. And isn't that Sheriff Titus's future KNOTS LANDING bastard son Steve Brewer ogling Lucy's cleavage on a magazine cover? This isn't the only interest displayed by the media in the Ewings this week: Louella fields a call from the Wall Street Journal following the release of Ewing Oil's pro-ecology, anti-strip mining policy statement. This plot development has never made sense to me. I get Leslie using reverse psychology on JR by sabotaging his meeting with the cartel, but this statement is reverse psychology with back-flips. Other unexplained weirdnesses: Sue Ellen appearing to drink champagne during an afternoon tryst with Clint, Pam and Ray both referring to "Ellie" without the prefix of "Miss", and Herbert Wentworth conveniently dropping dead so that Rebecca can be reunited with Pam - but without anyone in Dallas having heard of this captain of industry's demise which took place two months earlier.And the winner is … DYNASTY2nd: FLAMINGO ROAD3rd: KNOTS LANDING4th: DALLAS.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?