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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 4415" data-attributes="member: 22">17/Nov/81: FLAMINGO ROAD: The Substitute v. 18/Nov/81: DYNASTY: Alexis' Secret v. 19/Nov/81: KNOTS LANDING: Critical Condition v. 20/Nov/81: DALLAS: BlockedThis week, the FLAMINGO ROAD landscape expands to include a new family, a new side of town and a whole new set of problems. Meanwhile, DYNASTY's world contracts: Steven aside, anybody who's anybody is now living and/or working on the Carrington estate. Both of these approaches works well. DALLAS, however, like FLAMINGO ROAD, has broadened its canvas of late, but with each of the Ewings segregated into their own individual storylines, the underlying tensions between them are dissipated. Sue Ellen flying from San Angelo for an office confrontation with JR, Donna pushing JR into the Southfork pool - these are reminders of how much fun DALLAS can be when the Ewings are in the same place long enough for sparks to fly.FL'INGO RD introduces us to the barrio, a large slum dwelling ("Our people are living ten to a room") populated by Cuban immigrants. Among these are the Sanchez family, the stand-out member of which is the son Julio, an archetypal Latino hothead: "I won't spend my life talking orders from Anglos as you do, Papa!" Like another character making his Soap Land debut this week, Italian-American Nick Toscanni on DYNASTY, Julio brings a new flavour, a new energy to Soap Land. Julio and Nick share a passionate, smouldering machismo which is both compelling and borderline ridiculous.The Sanchez family bring the topic of race back to FLAMINGO ROAD in the kind of juicy, complicated way the other soaps wouldn't touch. Julio and his father Ernesto work on Sam Curtis's construction site where they are subject to racial harassment from some of the white workers. Meanwhile, Julio's saintly sister Alicia is a volunteer worker at a day centre in the barrio alongside Eudora Weldon. The centre is also a target of racial intimidation, but from another direction - a bunch of barrio boys in bandanas resentful of Eudora's presence in their neighbourhood. This promptly sends Eudora to the brink of a breakdown. Still, for a timid matriarchal do-gooder, she is impressively hands-on. Ellie Ewing might be made of sterner stuff, but for all her committee meetings, you'd never catch her getting down and dirty with the common folk she purports to help.There's more slumming it with the hoi polloi in DYNASTY when Blake is obliged to queue outside the probation office with members of the great unwashed, one of whom tries to sell him a television set. It's a very funny scene which reminds me of the bit in "Paternity Suit" where JR and Sue Ellen are dismayed to find themselves in a doctor's waiting room surrounded by ordinary people and their ordinary germs.There are two deaths in Soap Land this week - both beloved fathers, each of whom fails to respond to CPR. The first fatality is Ernesto Sanchez who collapses with a heart attack on the F'LINGO RD construction site. Julio is quick to blame Sam for overworking his father (which is kind of true). When Sam tries to help the family out by offering Julio his father's job as crew chief, racial tensions on the site are further inflamed. Things come to a head when Julio is involved in a bar fight and Sheriff Titus wades in. Apparently, he has warned Julio about shooting his mouth off in the past. "According to your government, it's a free country where man is allowed to speak his mind," Julio tells him. "If you was an American citizen, I'd be obliged to agree with you," Titus retorts, "but since you ain't, and the laws of Truro County are my laws, you better consider my warnin'." When Julio refuses to back down, Titus has him arrested and beaten up.What does any of this have to do with the rich folks that live on the actual Flamingo Road? Well, Senator Field, anxious to redeem himself for past mistakes, has pledged to improve living conditions in the barrio by investing in urban renewal. The delicious twist is that the barrio is secretly owned by Field's father-in-law Claude and that much of the Weldon fortune is derived from his profits as a slum landlord.A highlight on both DYNASTY and DALLAS this week is the first meeting of two long-term adversaries, as Krystle and Clayton take on Alexis and JR. The good guys turn out to be more impressive opponents than might have been expected. Each takes the initiative in trying to ascertain their rival's motives. "You've spent a fortune trying to box me in - why?" Clayton asks JR. "You came back to hurt my husband, first in court, now by moving in ...You want something," Krystle tells Alexis. While JR shows his hand, ("I want Sue Ellen and John Ross off the Southern Cross ranch") Alexis does not ("Motives? That's an ugly implication"). Clayton and Krystle make it clear that they will not be intimidated ("No deal, JR." "I want you out of our house."), and that they will stand between their opponent and their opponent's real target. For Clayton, that means Sue Ellen: "I respect her. And she means everything to my son. And the child belongs with her." For Krystle, it's Blake: "My business is to protect my husband." JR and Alexis fight back the best they can, with threats ("I’ll break you") and bitchery ("Mrs Jennings - oh, I'm terribly sorry, that was your other husband's name, wasn't it?") respectively, but the good guys get the last word. "No, JR, you’re the one who’s going broke," says Clayton. "I was late getting here because I stopped to find out the latest report on oil prices ... By the time your daddy gets back from South America, there just might not be a Ewing Oil." "I want you out of our house," Krystle tells Alexis, "and since you're so familiar with it - the kitchen, the paintings, the missing Ming - I'm sure you can find your own way to the door."Children - be they unborn, unclaimed, stolen or estranged - fuel much of Soap Land's narrative this week. While Abby Cunningham's search for her kids leads her into a frustrating maze of bureaucracy and form-filling (a familiar bugbear on KNOTS), Claudia learns on DYNASTY that Matthew has taken Lindsay to South America. It's easy to imagine that he's gone there to join Jock Ewing and Punk on their governmental mission. As Andrew Laird puts it, "Wherever there's oil, there's bound to be Matthew Blaisdel." Upon returning home from the hospital, Claudia stands longingly in the doorway of her child's bedroom, just as JR did after John Ross was taken from him. Lacking his resources to fight back, Claudia goes down the Pam Ewing route instead and tries to kill herself. She later wakes to discover the Carrington mansion has become her Brooktree Hospital and Dr Amerigo Nicholas Francesco Toscanni her Dr Dagmara Conrad. "Dagmara, that's a pretty name," Pam observes this week. "You wanna be my mother's friend for life, call me Amerigo," advises Nick.On this week's Pregnancy Watch, Krystle buys her child-to-be an actual silver spoon, Fallon drags Jeff off to the nearest motel for an impromptu insemination and soon-to-drop Ginger complains on KNOTS that "all I am is pregnant." Meanwhile, Jordan Lee proves to Bobby's satisfaction that he is not Christopher's father, and Alexis announces, to Steven's dismay, that Blake is not Fallon's.There are plenty of mother/daughter reminiscences this week too: some are bitter ("Fallon, when you were a little girl, you thought you knew everything about everything … You still don't"), some are sweet (Karen recalling how supportive Sid was when Diana was born), some are both (Rebecca fondly recounting the moment when Pam started walking, but unable to say when she began talking as she'd already absconded by then). Her visit with her mother seems to trigger some sort of mental crisis in Pam, with Dr Conrad repeatedly describing her condition as "critical". Of course, there's critical and then there's … Sid Fairgate.Karen's superstition in last week's KNOTS, that if she breaks her hospital vigil even momentarily she will lose Sid, is cruelly borne out here. At the start of this week's episode, Sid has awoken from his coma and the effects of his paralysis quickly begin to wear off. A relieved Karen is persuaded to return home for a few hours. No sooner does she than the paralysis returns. Later, during a lengthy high-risk surgery to remove a blood clot from Sid's spine, Karen breaks her intense concentration long enough to laugh and joke about the twenty-four labour she went through with Diana. It is at that moment that Sid flatlines, becoming the second of this week's Soap Land fatalities.This episode of KNOTS breaks all the rules of television grammar. Don Murray shouldn't be in the opening titles, but he is. There should be an eleventh-hour miracle, but there isn't. (Even after all this time, part of my brain expects the heart monitor to beep back into life like it always does on TV shows.) And instead of an outpouring of emotion at the end of the hour, there's just the silent ride down in the elevator followed by the weary drive home. It's as if physical exhaustion has won out over grief. An inattentive viewer might assume the family are suffering from jet lag rather than bereavement.Not that anything else seems to matter in light of Sid's death, but Lane Ballou and Afton face off again in the latest round of Soap Land Song Wars. Happily, Lane is back to singing semi-obscure songs with the word "blue" in the title. This time, it's a ditty called "Last One Singin' The Blues". What we hear of it is pretty enough, but it serves mainly as a backdrop to Lute-Mae counselling Sam about his guilt over Ernesto's death. Afton, meanwhile, manages to showcase two songs, an angsty little ballad about hearing with her heart and seeing with her soul till it tears her apart, and a jauntier number that ends with a warning that she's "comin' to get yoo-oo-ooo-u". Based purely on screen time, Afton triumphs again.Episode-wise, the winner is … KNOTS LANDING2nd: DYNASTY3rd: FLAMINGO ROAD4th: DALLAS</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?