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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 6075" data-attributes="member: 22">04/May/82: FLAMINGO ROAD: Murder, They Said v. 04/May/82: DYNASTY: The Cliff v. 06/May/82: KNOTS LANDING: Living DangerouslySeason finale time. Following the strange voodoo vibe of recent episodes, FLAMINGO ROAD has seemingly returned to more familiar Soap Land territory, as various characters line up to threaten Michael Tyrone’s life: Lute-Mae (“Somebody has to stop Michael!”), Sam (“So help me, Michael, if you or any of your goons get near Lane again, I’ll kill you!”), Titus (“If we don’t stop Tyrone, we are all dead!”) and Claude (“I swear, he’s gonna regret it!”). The episode even opens with Constance, like Sue Ellen in “A House Divided”, slipping a pistol into her purse before leaving the family home to take care of business. (Smart cookie that she is, however, she then passes the gun onto Julio, begging him to do what must be done to protect their relationship from Michael.)So far so DALLAS, but then the inevitable attempt on Tyrone’s life (distinctly Kennedy-esque - a shot from a top storey window aimed at his open-topped car) comes just a third of the way through the ep. When Titus, in his capacity as sheriff, arrives at the scene, an uninjured Michael takes the opportunity to publicly accuse him of attempted murder.Only then does the real plot become clear: Thirty-one years before JR Ewing would engineer his own death in order to implicate his worst enemy, Michael Tyrone has devised the same master-plan. This is the first instance of Soap Land explicitly referencing its own history (i.e. the “Who Shot JR?” mystery) before cleverly subverting it.DYNASTY, meanwhile, sets up a more traditional (but just as fun) whodunnit scenario also reminiscent of early DALLAS, as “Whatever Happened to Baby John?” becomes “Who’s Taken Little Blake?” Even the list of suspects is familiar: the business associate with a grudge (previously Jeb Ames & Willie Joe Garr, now Farouk Ahmed), the enemy with a personal vendetta (then Cliff Barnes, now Nick Toscanni) and the disturbed, bereaved mother (Claudia Blaisdel substituting for Priscilla Duncan) - with a couple of oddballs thrown in for good measure (a nurse, a gravedigger).“Titus Semple’s day of judgement is finally here,” declares Michael, getting his supernatural groove back on FL’INGO RD. "Upon his execution, my father’s spirit will be reborn.” This theme of reincarnation recurs in DYNASTY when a concerned Joseph reports Claudia’s “almost Biblical” ramblings to Nick, her doctor: “Life is eternal. It ends and then begins all over again.” Nick himself, once again as consumed by his brother’s hanging as Michael Tyrone is by his father’s, is not a believer, however. “Nobody can bring my brother back to life,” he tells Farouk Ahmed, "but I can bring his body home.” However, once Farouk has persuaded him that Blake is responsible for his brother’s death after all, Nick also gets in on the resurrection vibe. “For this, I would have come all the way back from Hell,” he assures Blake when they meet for their final confrontation on Skycrest Mountain.This week, Lute-Mae becomes the first inmate to escape the Soap Land Sanatarium since Sue Ellen three years earlier. (What’s more, she manages to do so without hitting anyone over the head.) DYNASTY’s Claudia, meanwhile, agrees to a stay at the sanitarium but is secretly intent on fleeing the country before it can happen. Over on KNOTS LANDING, Richard has checked himself out of the sanitarium, which makes everyone around him uneasy. "He has to drag everyone into this drama, making it impossible for anyone to lead a normal life,” Laura complains. There’s an interesting ambiguity to Richard’s behaviour: is he as well-adjusted as he claims to be, which would mean everyone else is overreacting or is Laura right to be concerned about the abandoned suicide note she finds in the trash? “Sometimes he seems totally out of touch with reality and sometimes I think he's planned all of this, everything,” she says. Could it be that Richard, like Michael Tyrone, has a master plan? If so, it’s working, as Laura and Jason move back to the cul-de-sac in the final scene of this week’s KNOTS. Back on DYNASTY, Alexis makes no secret that she also has a plan: “Mark Jennings, Krystle and all the Colby wealth and power,” she purrs to Cecil, "I’ve finally got everything that I wanted, everything I’ve been planning for. And it’s finally going to be ours, darling. The whole world’s going to be ours!”Meanwhile, Michael Tyrone is putting the final phase of his plan into action. Titus is lured to his house where he discovers Michael lying dead, a gun beside him. Then Field arrives to see Titus kneeling over the body. As the two men argue over Titus’s involvement, a fire mysteriously breaks out, consuming all evidence of the crime. The cause of the fire is never explicitly stated, but I think the answer can be gleaned from KNOTS LANDING - specifically Chapter 8 of Val’s novel, now renamed “Capricorn Crude” by her pushy publisher. “Where Melissa gets burned in the fire, he [the publisher] wants to me to rework it so that the fire is deliberately set by CR,” frets Val to Joe Cooper, who thinks it’s a good idea. “If CR has one of his own men set the fire, then you’ve got a thread going right through the book,” he reasons. "He’s a man who will do anything at any time. It is a classic bomb ready to explode.” As well as being a (crappy) pseudonym for JR Ewing, CR backwards is the initials of Richard Channing, Michael Tyrone’s future self. And Michael is certainly "a man who will do anything at any time” - including faking his death and becoming a monk.Val is also worried that the character of Mary Sue in her book is "too cheap and too obvious.” “Obvious is the route we want to go,” her publisher insists before seeming to contradict himself: "The further we move Mary Sue from Sue Ellen Ewing, the less trouble we’re going to have from the Ewings’ lawyers.” Ironically, the ambiguity Val's publishers display towards her novel’s depiction of the Texas Ewings seems to mirror KNOTS’ own ambivalent relationship with its parent show.There are some unusually cinematic sequences in Soap Land this week. Swerving to avoid Michael Tyrone’s car after it has been shot at, a truck crashes into a storefront, then spills its load of oranges all over the street. It's the kind of extravagant detail you’d expect to see in some action based movie or other. Then there’s the knockdown, drag out fight between Blake and Nick atop Skycrest Mountain in DYNASTY, which feels like something out a George Stevens’ Western from the '50s. Blake’s tumble down a cliffside is particularly striking, and the sight of Nick staring down from above before leaving Blake to die is a shot worthy of a Johnny Cash album cover. And let’s not forget Alexis and Cecil’s remarkable sex marathon montage set to a disco beat which climaxes in Cecil’s heart attack and Alexis frantically slapping him across the face.Alexis’s last words of the season, delivered to her fiancé, (“You can’t die on me Cecil - we’re getting married tomorrow! I need you to get Blake!”) echo Sue Ellen’s to hers (“If Cliff dies, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to marry you”). The implication in both situations seems to be that sometimes there are more important things at stake than simply life and death - like power and/or revenge.Alexis is not the only Soap Land character whose master plan is jeopardised at the last moment. As accusations fly on FLAMINGO ROAD - first Titus is arrested for Tyrone's murder, then Julio threatens to confess to the killing and name Constance as an accessory unless she agrees to marry him - we discover Michael alive and well and wearing a monk’s habit in a remote mountainous monastery. (Possibly the same mountain on which Blake Carrington lies either unconscious or dead.) Whilst at prayer, a bible is passed to him containing a note from his voodoo servant: “I have failed you, Master. Titus has been freed while another suffers in his place.” That would be Lute-Mae, who has come forward to say that she was present at Michael’s shooting, but like Sue Ellen before her, has no recollection as to whether or not she pulled the trigger. (Lute Mae's blackout seems to be attributable to idiocy rather than alcohol, however.) “Let not my enemies triumph over me, for mine shall be the final judgement,” Brother Michael intones ominously from beneath his monk’s cowl.And that’s that for FLAMINGO ROAD. There is some consolation in knowing that the spirits of Michael Tyrone, Constance Carlyle, Titus Semple, Sam Curtis and Claude Weldon will all be reborn under new names in different soaps. To paraphrase Claudia Blaisdel, soap contracts end and then begin again.Like this season’s DALLAS, DYNASTY hedges its bets with a multiple cliffhanger for its finale. KNOTS LANDING, meanwhile, goes the same “game changer” route as FALCON CREST. Val walking out on Gary is Chase going into partnership with Angela - a sign that the innocent days of stand-alone episodes with happy endings are gone forever.And this week’s Soap Land Top 3 are ...1 (1) FLAMINGO ROAD2 (3) DYNASTY3 (2) KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?