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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 4310" data-attributes="member: 22">03/Nov/81: FLAMINGO ROAD: The Arrangement v. 04/Nov/81: DYNASTY: Enter Alexis v. 06/Nov/81: DALLAS: The Sweet Smell of RevengeLast season, DALLAS finished a week after any of the other soaps and this season has started back a month earlier. This means that in the time it takes DYNASTY's surprise witness to cross the courtroom and take her place on the witness stand, JR has testified at two different court hearings and been cleared of any wrongdoing in either the counterrevolution or Kristin's death. Additionally, in-between Claudia Blaisdel crashing her car and waking up in hospital a few hours later to find out her spouse has taken away her child, JR has made the same discovery about his own son, made two foiled attempts to snatch him back, and lost a bid for temporary custody at yet another court hearing.In this week's DALLAS, a jubilant Sue Ellen returns to the Southern Cross, still in the same eye-catching black and white dress she wore at the temporary custody hearing. It's interesting that for their court appearances, Sue Ellen and Alexis should both favour striking monochromatic outfits that clearly reference 1940s Hollywood, and Joan Crawford in particular. (Not for nothing does Andrew Laird describes Alexis as a "melodramatic, almost cinematic surprise witness.") These are Soap Land's most stylised costumes thus far, and a world away from the prim Sunday school teacher dress worn by Leslie Stewart, the Alexis equivalent at DALLAS's senate hearing at the end of last season.JR, meanwhile, embarks on a more elaborate plan to win back his son - starving the Farlows' refineries of oil until they return John Ross to him. As JR's outrageous schemes go, this one is more convoluted than sexy, but it's still good to see him up to his old tricks. "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?" new secretary Sly observes astutely.The transition between Seasons 1 and 2 of DYNASTY, two very different animals, is kind of brilliant. In the same narrative day, and in the same courtroom, the believable Blaisdels are wiped out and Blake's mysterious ex-wife arrives, bringing a new flavour to both the series and the genre as a whole. Certainly, her cut-glass English accent is a Soap Land first (unless one counts Samantha Eggar's eerily similar voice in her role of Maggie in the unaired pilot version of FALCON CREST). Alexis also offers a fresh "I knew him when" perspective on Blake. Steven may have spoken contemptuously of his father's business practices in Season 1, but not in the same mocking way Alexis does on the witness stand: "My husband had worked very hard to get where he was, to build his empire, grab his prize, cling to his 'it couldn't be done but I did it'." And then there's the small matter of Roger Grimes, which adds a "he said/she said" dynamic to the Carrington mythology that will continue for the rest of the series.Steven's reaction to his mother's return is particularly interesting. With Claudia (apparently) out of his life, he instantly transfers his affections from one non-judgemental older woman to another. Crucially, both Claudia and Alexis are artistically sensitive - and in the same way that the Season 1 Emily Dickinson library scene between Steven and Claudia never gets old, so the "rainbow" conversation in this episode remains a wistful, melancholy highlight. "Did you ever find it, that special rainbow?" Steven asks the mother he has not seen since three days before his seventh birthday. "Almost, twice," Alexis smiles sadly, "once in Hawaii and once in Corsica - but somehow it seemed to vanish into the sun before I could get my easel and my new life together, without you and without Fallon."Another meeting of long lost family members, somewhat more low-key but no less portentous in hindsight, takes place in DALLAS this week between Cliff Barnes and half-sister Katherine. Instead of rainbows in Hawaii and Corsica, Katherine speaks of ski slopes in Aspen and Gstaad.As if FLAMINGO ROAD's Constance and DALLAS's Kristin both falling through broken railings at the end of last season wasn't Soap Synchronicity enough, the judge at Kristin's inquest now pops up as the doctor administering to Constance after her fall. He'll eventually turn into Leo Wakefield, the controller of Barnes-Wentworth.Just as the truth of Constance's biological mother finally starts to emerge - first Eudora overhears Claude comforting Lute-Mae in the hospital chapel, then a distraught Lute-Mae blurts out "My daughter's paralysed!" in front of Sam and Lane - a similarly long-hidden secret is introduced on DYNASTY: a "piece of filth" that only Blake and Alexis know about. "That night you first threw that lie at me," Blake reminds his ex, "I warned you that if you ever repeated that to anyone, I'd …" "You'd kill me," Alexis replies. Meanwhile, on DALLAS, a third long-term child-related mystery commences when an unidentified man contacts Bobby about "little Christopher Shepard."Following an impressively shot suicide bid, Pam Ewing joins Constance and Claudia to become the third female patient admitted to Soap Land Memorial Hospital this week. In physical terms, Constance is by far the most seriously injured of the three, but also the most resilient. ("Always did admire your determination," Sheriff Titus tells her.) Pam and Claudia, meanwhile, are neck and neck in the despondency stakes. "I don't believe in anything, Mr. Carrington," Claudia tells Blake. "Not in love, not in understanding, not in trust. Pain, I believe in that. I only believe in pain." "Nothing matters," agrees Pam, talking to her newly appointed psychotherapist. "[It's] like I’m dying or already dead." I've never thought much of Victoria Principal's acting during this period, but I think I've sold her short. Her performance is really the best thing about this story. However, it's hard to square the Pam we're presented with here with the one we were introduced to when the series began, and the plot just seems a bit depression-by-numbers. By contrast, Claudia's loss feels raw and desperately poignant. That Pam remains in full makeup throughout her ordeal while Claudia's anguished face is laid bare neatly illustrates the relative believability of their situations.The theme evoked by DALLAS's episode title, "The Sweet Smell of Revenge", permeates Soap Land this week. "You'll get your revenge and it will be sweet," Titus assures a crippled Constance in FLAMINGO ROAD, while Andrew describes Alexis's testimony as "a vengeful lie from the mouth of a woman scorned."While on the witness stand, Alexis describes her marriage to Blake. "Ideal, that's the word people used when they talked about us," she recalls. Constance, deciding to take advantage of both the media attention surrounding her accident and Field's guilt for causing it, aims to create a similar perception: "I think we'll concentrate on public appearances," she tells her miserable husband. "Mr. and Mrs. America are gonna show up at every single supermarket opening, every playground dedication, every single political function we can find until we make this country love us, and we'll be able to get anything we want. And I will also have the satisfaction of watching you every time you see me, knowing you put me in that wheelchair.""You two will be heroes," adds Titus approvingly, "but behind closed doors, you'll be no more Mr. and Mrs. than a couple of strangers." This gap between public facade and private truth is again echoed by Alexis who remembers the "social fibs, my speciality, taught to me by the Master when I was seventeen years old - 'Oh you look ravishing tonight, Marisa.' 'It's the party of the year, Duffy, the party.'"DYNASTY and FLAMINGO ROAD both end this week with a married couple pondering their future. "After tomorrow, if I'm freed, I'll be different," Blake promises Krystle. Senator Field, meanwhile, is given no choice in the matter: "This is your last chance," Constance snarls at him. "One more false move, one girlfriend in the closet, one single Lane Ballou, and you're finished."And on the very day that Alexis solemnly swears to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in Colorado, back in her homeland, the Crossroads Motel burns to the ground - thereby ending Noele Gordon's seventeen-year reign as Britain's Queen of Soaps. Joanie couldn't have planned it any better if she'd tried.And the winner is … DYNASTY2nd: FLAMINGO ROAD3rd: DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?