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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 3928" data-attributes="member: 22">16/Mar/81: DYNASTY: The Birthday Party v. 17/Mar/81: FLAMINGO ROAD: They Drive By Night/Hell Hath No Fury v. 19/Mar/81: KNOTS LANDING: More Than FriendsOnce again, DYNASTY leads the way on the cultural reference front with Julius Caesar, Marie Osmond, Jonathan Swift, Ben Jonson and Goldie Hawn all getting a look-in. KNOTS LANDING comes a close second with shout-outs for Henry Higgins, Gloria Steinem, Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers - plus there's a poster on a classroom wall for a production of "Equus". (Seems the spirit of David Crane is alive and well at Knots Landing High.) FLAMINGO ROAD's one concession to the outside world, aside from name-checking the Mayo Clinic, is an intriguing bit of advice Titus offers Field: "Read the mood of this country. Morality is becoming a respectable word again."In the first scene of "The Birthday Party", Michael gets his revenge for the beating he took last week by telling Blake about the necklace Krystle pawned to bail out Matthew. Later, we see a clearly preoccupied Blake getting beaten at pool by Joseph. "Your mind doesn't seem to be on your game today, Mr Carrington," Joseph observes. "I seem to find myself surrounded by people I can't trust," Blake replies. Then Krystle appears and a plan begins to formulate in Blake's mind. "I think we ought to have a birthday party for Cecil," he tells her. "Would you wear the emerald necklace I bought for you?" Krystle nervously agrees. After she leaves, the men resume their game and Blake wins with ease. "You seem to have turned your [game] around," Joseph remarks.There is an equivalent scene in "They Drive By Night", the first FLAMINGO ROAD instalment of the week (boy, NBC were really burning through these episodes back in the day). Titus is playing chess with an unseen opponent, with whom he apparently communicates by letter. (Whereas Blake at least has a paid servant to hang out with, Titus has no direct human contact at all.) He is puzzling over his competitor's latest move when he receives a telephone call regarding his ongoing scheme to rid Truro of Lane Ballou once and for all. It's good news. After hanging up, he looks at the chess board, chuckles and moves a piece. "Checkmate," he announces triumphantly. I guess what the two scenes illustrate is that Blake and Titus are strategists who see everything in terms of winning and losing.The weather is bad in Soap Land this week - appropriately so. The storm raging outside Steven's apartment when Ted asks if he can spend the night articulates Steven's turbulent emotions in a way he himself is unable to. Similarly, when Krystle visits the pawnbroker at the end of the episode to buy back her necklace, only to learn he has sold it, the dramatic rainstorm we see through the window tells us more about how she is feeling that she is free to express in that moment.Rain pours and thunder rumbles throughout "They Drive By Night" as well - the turbulent weather a fitting backdrop for Field and Constance's tempestuous marriage and the thunder evoking a sense of impending doom as Slade - the creepy Harry Dean Stanton-meets-Andy Warhol assassin who has been hunting Lane Ballou for the past five episodes - edges ever nearer to his prey. Slade is also responsible for Soap Land's grimmest death to date when he casually executes recurring character Frank Coyne, who has bridged the gap between Lane's past and present since the pilot episode, in a seedy motel room.This use of natural elements to mirror characters' emotions is known as "pathetic fallacy". According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, pathetic fallacy is the "poetic practice of attributing human emotion and conduct to all aspects within nature" - or as writer Grace Dent once put it, "Now and then someone on EASTENDERS remembers the concept of pathetic fallacy and turns on a bloody big hose." A cliché then, but an undoubtedly effective one.Just as the story of Sue Ellen's alcoholism culminated in a near tragic car accident at the end of DALLAS's first season, so Field's drinking seems to be following a similar pattern. Claude and Eudora finally address their son-in-law's booze problem in an equivalent scene to the one that took place between Jock, Ellie and JR in the first part of "John Ewing III" - but unlike JR, Constance won't hear of her spouse being sent to a clinic.While the Weldons discuss Field, he is driving whilst drunk with Christie in the passenger seat. Needless to say, it is raining heavily and, just as inevitably, the car crashes and Christie is seriously injured. Faster than you can say Chappaquiddick, the senator abandons the scene and calls Sheriff Titus for help. Titus then rearranges the evidence to make it appear that Christie was driving and Field is as innocent as a new born lamb. (We learn in the following episode that Christie has survived the accident, but has been left with "a face that would scare a lust-crazed sailor," as Titus delicately puts it.) A distraught Field turns to Lane Ballou who drops everything to rush to his side - much to the chagrin of Sam Curtis, who was just about to propose.Next week's instalment of DALLAS is the first (of sixty-two) directed by Michael Preece, but this week he makes his Soap Land debut helming "They Drive By Night" - and in this episode, he captures what is for me the quintessential Soap Land look, (prior to Invasion of the Pastels, anyhow) whereby the classic Hollywood glamour and opulence of the 1950s (think Douglas Sirk's women's pictures) is tempered by the low-budget pulp fiction mise-en-scène of film noir. (It's surely no coincidence that this episode title is a play on 1940 noir classic THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT.) This soap-noir look is most clearly illustrated in the final scene of the episode, where Constance finds Field embracing Lane in the darkness of his late father's house. While Donna Mills has been busy flirting with the neighbours and balancing the books at Knots Landing Motors, Morgan Fairchild has been quietly pioneering the classic soap diva look of big hair, thick eye makeup and lipgloss, shiny dresses and twinkly earrings. Speaking purely visually, at this point Constance Weldon rates higher on the Abby scale than Abby does. In this scene, all of Constance's glamour is framed within and contrasted against the dark shadows and lurid, looming close-ups of Preece's camera. Meanwhile, she hisses the kind of dialogue that strikes at the vengeful, passionate heart of Soap Land delirium: "You bastard, I'll never forgive you for this! … I swear on my life, I'll see you both in hell!"I swear on my life, I'd completely forgotten - if I even realised it to begin with - how much fun FLAMINGO ROAD could be. Surely the second of this week's double bill, "Hell Hath No Fury …", will prove an anti-climax? But no, the fallout from Field and Lane's reunion means that most everyone is at each other's throats, even former BFFs Lane and Lute-Mae. And once again, Field Carlyle proves he has much in common with Jeff Colby. Each is a newlywed whose marriage this week is revealed to have been predicated on a lie.Fallon to Jeff on the real reason she married him: "Because your uncle promised to bail out my father if I did."Field to his in-laws on Constance: "I don't love her, I never did and I never should have married her."Jeff and Field both have fathers-in-law with whom they have gotten on famously - until now. "Blake Carrington I never did like very much," Jeff drunkenly reveals to a table full of dinner guests at his Uncle Cecil's birthday party, before going on to insult his own wife - just as Field does in front of his father-in-law: "You wanna know the real problem, Claude? … You. You spoiled her rotten. No man could stand her self-centred, wilful, constant manipulation … You've pampered her, given into her, let her walk right over you." Claude's outraged-Southern-gentleman response is simply too much fun: "You ungrateful adulterous drunk! … He's no kin to me. I'm gonna git you, Carlyle!" Conversely, Field's scene with Eudora, where he prepares to move out of his in-laws' house and she speaks of marriage in terms of honour, commitment and duty, is probably FLAMINGO ROAD's first genuinely poignant moment.Cecil's birthday party is the DYNASTY equivalent of the first Ewing barbecue - a family gathering where almost everything that can go wrong does. Back then, it took the combined efforts of Jock, Digger, JR and Sue Ellen getting drunk and running off at the mouth to ruin the party. In this case, Jeff does the same thing almost singlehandedly, first by monopolising his uncle's girlfriend and then delivering the mother of all toasts where he annihilates each member of "this emerald studded zoo of ours" in turn. It's probably the character's finest moment."Hell Hath No Fury …" (FL'INGO RD) and "More Than Friends" (KNOTS) both ask the same question: What happens when a man who's been cheated on runs into the wife of the man who cuckolded him? If you're Sam Curtis, you rescue Constance Weldon from a couple of would-be gang bangers in a bar (imagine the scene where Bobby and Ray save a drunken Sue Ellen from those cowboys, and then factor in a flick knife). If you're Earl Trent, you find yourself teaching a creative writing class that includes Val Ewing, then you make her cry by trashing her essay in front of her classmates ("puerile ... a rehashing of the most outdated cliches") before apologising and planting the seed in both Val's and the viewers' minds for the first time that she might just have what it takes to be a genuine writer.Both double acts then move up a gear: Sam and Constance retire to a motel to engage in a spot of revenge sex. (In a parallel world once-removed, this is Mark Graison and Jenna Wade doing the nasty - which feasibly could have happened had Mark and Bobby ever been alive at the same time after "Swan Song"). Meanwhile, Earl attempts something similar by luring Val to his apartment and then locking the door behind them ... (My, what a busy month it's been for Val: two hostage situations, surgery to remove a malignant growth, and she still finds time to complete her writing assignment and arrange a visually pleasing fruit salad for Gary - and all without a word of complaint. Not so much Poor Val as Stoic Val.) Actually, the teacher-student section of Earl and Val's story is the more interesting. Once the story tips over into melodrama, both characters become so highly strung they kind of cancel each other out.Another question is posed on this week's KNOTS: "Can a man and woman who work well together remain just friends?" Given that the couples surveyed are Gary and Abby, and Laura and Scooter, the long-term answer would seem to be, "No, they can't." The Averys get the bigger slice of the subplot pie, and while Scooter's temporary head transplant is a tad distracting, there's some great interplay - both dramatic and light - between Richard and Laura. I'm not sure the similarities between the Pleshette/McCashin and Woody Allen/Diane Keaton partnerships are ever more apparent than during the bedtime exchange in this episode's penultimate scene.And the winner is … FLAMINGO ROAD2nd: DYNASTY3rd: KNOTS LANDING</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?