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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 17205" data-attributes="member: 22">13 Mar 85: DYNASTY: Photo Finish v. 15 Mar 85: DALLAS: The Verdict v. 15 Mar 85: FALCON CREST: The TrialIt’s a courtroom heavy week in Soap Land with the trials of DALLAS’s Jenna and FALCON CREST’s Lance now both underway. In each case, the jury is more ethnically diverse than the show’s cast as a whole, while the bailiff at Jenna’s murder trial is played by the same black actor who was the bailiff at Alexis's murder trial on DYNASTY four months ago. The hearings begin similarly, with each prosecution’s first witness being the cop who found the accused in possession of the offending weapon (Naldo’s gun, Lance’s car) at or near the scene of the crime. More police and legal experts are then called, creating a strong case against the defendant. After the prosecution rests, Bobby Ewing and Angela Channing each take their turn as a witness for the defence, although neither fares very well under cross-examination. Bobby produces a letter written by Veronica Robinson to her sister Ann shortly before her death in which she states Jenna’s innocence. (The letter has been obtained by Bobby during a flying visit to California where he finds Ann McFadden living in what could easily pass for the same not-too-shabby, not-too-swanky neighbourhood as Sheila Fisher, the housewife with twin babies whom Mack and Ben dropped in on during last week’s KNOTS LANDING.) Prosecuting attorney Scooter Warren easily discredits this evidence as the word of "a woman who was a kidnapper, an extortionist and a drug addict.” Meanwhile, the equivalent prosecutor on FALCON CREST (recently the paediatric surgeon who saved Krystina’s life on DYNASTY) riles Angela to the point where she calls the jury a bunch of idiots. Both Bobby and Angela end up appearing uncharacteristically impotent on the witness stand. With things looking grim for both defendants (“There's a strong case against you, and I don't have much to counter it with,” confesses Scotty Demarest to Jenna. “The trial is not going according to plan and we are fast running out of our supply of friendly witnesses,” admits Greg Reardon to Lance), the suggestion is made to call a controversial witness to the stand. In Jenna’s case, this means her daughter Charlie. "It's vital that the jury understand that the one goal in your mind was to get your daughter back,” Scotty explains. However, Jenna won’t consider it. "Charlie's been through enough," she insists. On FALCON CREST, Angela is equally opposed to the idea of Lance testifying on his own behalf. “I am absolutely against it — you’re making a terrible mistake,” she insists. However, her objections are overridden by Lance himself. At this point, it becomes apparent that Lance’s story is about more than whether or not he will be found guilty of attempted murder. The overarching storyline is the character’s redemption, his journey from semi-villainous playboy (“You have a reputation that Genghis Khan would envy,” Angela reminds him) to reformed good guy, wrongly accused (“It’s all in the past now,” he insists). When an emotional Lance explains to the jury how much he loves his grandmother (a speech reminiscent of Blake Carrington’s sentimental testimony about his son Steven at his own murder trial), the transformation appears to be complete. There is no such character journey for Jenna. She has already taken the stand at her trial, but with no memory of the night Naldo died, had little to offer (“All I know is I didn’t kill him!”). In terms of DALLAS as a whole, the primary function of Jenna’s trial is the obstacle it presents to a reconciliation between Bobby and Pam.In the event, Jenna is found guilty not of murder but of voluntary manslaughter, just Blake was following the death of his son’s gay lover on DYNASTY four years ago. Now that Steven has a new boyfriend, Blake is handling the situation rather differently. In this week’s ep, instead of dashing Luke Fuller's brains against a fireplace fender, he invites him to dine with the family at the Carrington mansion. As might be expected, the dinner table conversation is exquisitely excruciating, but somewhat less predictably, never devolves into a petulant spat with somebody storming out in a huff. Interestingly, while Blake makes an overt display of acceptance towards Steven and Luke, he is less tolerant of Claudia whom he seems to blame for failing to keep Steven on the strait and narrow. This allows Adam to play Claudia and Blake off against one another. I’d completely forgotten how much fun it is to watch him going from to other, slyly dripping poison in their respective ears in order to drive a wedge between father and daughter-in-law. A week after Lilimae’s long-lost son Joshua announced his engagement to Cathy on KNOTS LANDING, Blake and Alexis’s long-lost daughter Amanda receives a marriage proposal from Prince Michael on DYNASTY. Whereas Cathy, despite her reservations, meekly consented to Joshua's wishes, Amanda is less compliant. “You’re buying me,” she accuses Michael, echoing her near namesake Mandy Winger’s recent response on DALLAS when JR tried to buy her an apartment: “I’m not for sale.” Like JR, Michael insists that his motives are genuine. “I swear that I love you,” he tells Amanda. When this fails to impress her, he tries another tack. "You’ll change your mind — you’ll have to,” he snaps coldly, sounding more like the domineering Joshua than the gallant prince.The idea of Amanda as a piece of property for sale recurs throughout this episode of DYNASTY. “How much does a daughter go for on the open market these days?” Amanda asks Alexis during a very enjoyable confrontation scene. "Why would a mother sell her own daughter?” wonders Blake. In fact, the story surrounding this royal engagement is surprisingly layered. As chief matchmaker, Alexis has multiple motives for wanting to marry her daughter off to royalty. Some are self-serving — the marriage would indeed seal a business alliance between Colby Co and the Moldavian government, plus it would put Amanda safely out of reach of Alexis's own husband Dex — but she also believes Amanda and Michael are well-suited. “Even if I were the monster you think I am … don’t let that obscure your real feelings,” she urges her daughter. "Don’t throw away the chance of a lifetime because you feel it was pushed a bit by others.” And then there’s the whole fairytale-come-true aspect of marrying a handsome young prince. Alexis describes the proposal as “a dream, not for myself but for my daughter, a dream that comes once in a lifetime.” When Amanda still isn’t convinced, Alexis becomes amusingly exasperated: "Amanda, he’s kind, he’s intelligent — he’s a prince! What more do you want?!" All these motives are interestingly jumbled together until it’s hard to see where Alexis’s self-interest ends and her concern for her daughter’s happiness begins.Eventually, having been spurned yet again by Dex during a clandestine meeting which is staged more like an espionage scene from EMERALD POINT N.A.S. (two cars pull up alongside each other in a dark and rainy side-street, Amanda darting out of her car and into the back of Dex's) than a lovers’ tryst, Amanda agrees to marry Michael, but with an air of cynical older-then-her-years resignation reminiscent of Kirby when she accepted Adam’s proposal last season. However, she adds a Sue Ellen Ewing-style proviso: “that it be a marriage in name only." Michael reluctantly agrees. Back on DALLAS, Mandy Winger is proving equally hard to get. Like Amanda with Michael, she has already succumbed to JR’s charms once but is determined not to make the same mistake again. “I won’t go to bed with you, not while you and Sue Ellen are together,” she tells him flatly. “Well, we may not be together much longer,” comes JR's intriguing reply. Amanda’s not the only DYNASTY female who’s been taking a leaf out of Sue Ellen’s guide to marriage of late. A few weeks after Sue Ellen moved back into her own room at Southfork, Krystle did the same at the Carrington mansion. This week, Krystle goes a step further and follows the example set by Donna Krebbs in last week’s DALLAS by moving out of the marital home completely. This week’s DYNASTY ends with Blake standing in her wake, imploring her to change her mind. In a beautifully acted scene in this week’s DALLAS, Ray Krebbs picks up where Blake left off. He follows Donna out to the cardboard Southfork patio to ask her to come home. "Can't we just have things the way they were?” he asks. "People grow and they change," she explains tearfully. "Otherwise they just stay the same, Ray, and they die.”If Alexis can be accused (at least in part) of trying to sell her daughter, she’s not the only one. There’s a similar dynamic between Lila Cummings, an old flame of JR’s whom he runs into at the Oil Barons' Club, and her daughter Rhonda whom she allows JR to more or less pimp out to Nathan Billings, the head of the Texas Energy Commission, in front of her very eyes. This week's DYNASTY and DALLAS both use the familiar soap trope whereby a spouse or partner walks into a scene to find their other half in an apparently compromising situation with a third party. DYNASTY has deployed this device numerous times already this season — in fact, the Luke/Steven/Claudia and Alexis/Dex/Amanda storylines would be nowhere without it. Indeed, this week’s episode picks up exactly where last week’s left off when Alexis returned to her penthouse from Moldavia with Prince Michael in tow to find Amanda with her arm around Dex (the truth being that Dex had fainted after discharging himself from the hospital and Amanda was merely helping him). On this week’s ep, Adam spots Claudia and ex-fling Dean Caldwell in an embrace (it’s a platonic farewell) and Krystle sees Blake and Ashley Mitchell together by the La Mirage tennis courts (just a chance meeting). Over on DALLAS, Jenna is dismayed when she walks past the Southfork nursery to see Bobby hugging Pam (a comforting embrace following her fruitless search for Mark). Reversing the trend somewhat, the big reveal at the end of the Rhonda Cummings/Nathan Billings seduction is JR and Lila watching the scene via a hidden camera. “If she were my real daughter, I’d be very upset,” laughs Lila. So that explains that.An even bigger discovery is that Sammy Jo was behind the mysterious photos sent to Blake and Krystle of each other’s misleading liaisons, with Ashley and Daniel Reece respectively. Turns out it was a scheme to break up her aunt’s marriage. Over drinks with Morgan Hess in a New York bar, Sammy Jo pulls the plug on the operation. “They’ll split up the day the North Pole has a heatwave and melts,” she says gloomily. I love the sheer ballsiness of what happens next — no sooner has one far-fetched story-line been resolved than another one begins, as Sammy Jo’s attention is drawn to a red-haired woman who has been arguing with her boyfriend at the bar since the beginning of the scene. Her observation — “My God, that woman, she reminds me of my Aunt Krystle” — may not be quite as momentous as Gary Ewing's “Holy shit — it’s Ciji!” reaction the first time he saw Cathy Geary on KNOTS, but there is still something thrilling about that initial reveal of Linda Evans sporting a red wig and a Southern accent. There’s a late entry to this season’s long-lost-relative parade in the final scene of this week’s FALCON CREST. College dropout Robin Agretti shows up at her cousin Melissa’s door, simply dressed and carrying a backpack. So far so Joshua Rush and Jamie Ewing — but the way her eyes light up when she meets Melissa’s new husband (“What a hunk!”) and takes in her fancy new surroundings (“I’d do anything to have a place like this!”) suggests she’s actually cast from the same sexy young gold-digger mould as Kristin Shepherd and Sammy Jo Dean.And this week’s Top 3 are …1 (4) DYNASTY 2 (2) DALLAS3 (1) FALCON CREST</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =