Re-watching the Ewingverse ... alphabetically!

[James from London]

The Deluge (KNOTS, 28 Feb 85) v Denial (DALLAS, 15 Jan 82)

The kings are dead, long live the kings. Denial follows The Search, the episode which ended with the Ewing brothers’ returning from the site of Jock’s helicopter crash without him. The Deluge begins with Paul Galveston flatlining, even though the character remains as off-screen as Jock Ewing has been all season. Out of the shadows steps Ruth Sumner Galveston, Paul's brand new widow (she married him on his deathbed). When Gary comes looking for him, she pretends he’s still alive, out of town on business. When Harve Smithfield tries to broach the subject of Jock’s will with his widow, Miss Ellie, she too insists that her husband is still alive. Ellie makes her case to son Bobby in an emotionally powerful scene at the end of DALLAS. “This house is still Jock’s house. This family is Jock’s family. You’re Jock’s son. And I’m Jock’s woman. And the rules we live by are the rules he made ... He's alive, Bobby. As long as I believe he's alive, he's alive.” Emotional isn’t the word one would use to describe the reunion between Ruth and her son Greg by Paul Galveston’s open casket: chilly, irreverent, compelling and unpredictable might be better.

As for who will be Jock’s and Galveston’s successors, it’s hard to say. JR, who’s interested in nothing but booze and hookers since his daddy’s death, suggests that maybe Bobby will lucky enough to cop for the lot when the will is read. Greg, meanwhile, is adamant he does not want to follow in his father’s footsteps — but doth he protest too much? “You were brought up to be powerful and you love it and you want it,” Ruth insists. “And now, baby, it can all be yours.” “Nuts to you, Mother,” he replies. "Nuts and bolts."

Elsewhere on KNOTS, Joshua literally steals Reverend Catherine’s TV show out from under him with a genuinely mesmeric sermon (“It’s not the way that is difficult, but difficult that is the way”). He is as brilliantly inspiring on camera as he is jaw-droppingly megalomaniacal off. These two aspects of him are indivisible. It’s riveting to watch him interact with Abby, his boss. It would be easy for Donna Mills to simply play Abby’s superior status in their scenes together — after all, she’s the bigger star playing the more powerful character who has the stronger grasp on reality — yet Abby is as much fascinated and impressed by Joshua’s total self-belief as she is amused and irked by it.

While Ellie insists that her dead husband is alive, Karen begins to entertain the idea that Val’s babies might not be as stillborn as everyone believes. “What if …?” she asks Mack. “What if …?” might well be embroidered on a tapestry hanging in the KNOTS LANDING writers room: imagine a wildly implausible scenario, then ask yourself “What if that were to happen in the relatively real world of Seaview Circle?” The ultimate “what if …?” emerges at the end of the episode when Greg is informed that whoever controls Empire Valley essentially controls the world. “Everybody is counting on you to help us out,” he is told. “Everybody. Everybody.” Gee, do you think that means ... you know ... everybody??

And the winner is ... The Deluge

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Denial, Anger, Acceptance (DALLAS, 18 Aug 14) v Denials (KNOTS, 15 Dec 83)

Or: The One After the 2nd Southfork Fire and Pamela’s Sexy Overdose Versus The One After Chip Impales Himself on a Pitchfork. Phew, this is a very strong round.

There’s a glorious pileup of storylines at Ewing-verse Memorial Hospital in 2014 as John Ross rushes his comatose wife into the emergency room to find half his family already there suffering from smoke inhalation. The storytelling is as taut as the metaphorical noose tightening around Drew Ramos’s neck, with everything impacting on everything else. I’m not sure, but this may well be the very first episode of DALLAS with no mention of JR, yet in the scene where Bobby lectures his remorseful nephew as they stand in the ruins of Southfork, he could just as easily be talking to his big brother: “You justify and then you ignore all the destruction you leave in your wake … Words are cheap. You are what you do. You want to be a better man? Be one.”

DALLAS ends with the devastatingly brutal execution of Drew Ramos. Although his childhood friend Nicolas doesn’t actually pull the trigger, he nonetheless sanctions his death to save his own skin, but with customary New DALLAS ambivalence, does so with tears in his eyes. “With what I've done I'm going to Hell,” Drew tells him. “I’ll save you a seat.”

Thirty-one years earlier on KNOTS, the characters must deal with the passing of another young man — only it’s not Chip Roberts Tony Fenice's bizarre death they are trying to make sense of, but his bizarre life. Like Greg did his father in The Deluge, Lilimae visits Chip Tony at the crematorium and, while she doesn't prise a ring off the deceased's finger as Greg did, neither does she pull her punches: “That smile of yours hides the hardest heart I’ve ever known," she tells Chip Tony. "You were hard and cold — but were you? Did you ever have a moment, a private moment when nobody could see, when you felt sorry for what you’d done, when you realised the hurt you’d caused and felt something?” The preacher at Chip's Tony’s funeral evidently never met him, but nevertheless makes a valiant attempt to explain who and why and how he was: “He chose a name for himself — Chip — a small piece of something cut away from the whole — which is all Chip wanted, to be something special and apart, yet part of the whole. He cherished his individuality yet he wanted to belong.”

As both episode titles suggest, several characters are in denial: While Pamela denies her overdose was a suicide attempt (“I did what I did so that every time you think about screwing that piece of trash, all you'll be able to see is me on the floor with my eyes rolled back in my head — sexy, huh?” she snarls at John Ross), Diana refuses to believe Chip was the cold-hearted monster everyone else, including his own sister, knew him to be ("Chip and I had a love that nobody will ever understand!"). Then there's Sue Ellen and Karen, who spend most of their respective episodes wandering around in dressing gowns insisting they don’t have a dependency issue. When the doctor at Ewingverse Memorial Hospital tries to broach the subject of her drinking, Sue Ellen coldly denies she has a problem, while Karen is affronted when she overhears Val, Mack and Eric discussing her pill habit.

These are two brilliant, but very different episodes, yet Diana Fairgate and Judith Ryland deliver remarkably similar speeches. Judith is consoling Emma who has been dumped by John Ross. “I know you think I’m weak and stupid to care for John Ross, but I can’t help it. It hurts being cast aside,” Emma tells her grandmother. "On the contrary, my dear," Judith replies. "The ability to feel pain is a gift. Feel that hurt. Nurture that hurt. Feed that hurt till it’s powerful enough to take vengeance on those that have wronged you.”

Meanwhile, Abby tries to comfort Diana following the death of her husband. “I promise you there’ll come a day when it won’t hurt as much as it does now,” she tells her niece. “I want it to hurt," Diana insists. "I don’t want it to stop hurting, ever … because if it stops hurting I might forget and forgive and I don’t wanna forget and I hope I never forgive. As long as I hurt, I won’t be lonely because the pain will keep Chip with me and as long as I’m in pain I won’t forgive anybody who did anything to let this happen. I don’t wanna forgive. I wanna hurt and hate and keep him with me … I cherish the pain. It’s the only thing I have left of Chip and I’m not ever, ever going to let it go.”

And the winner is ... impossible to decide. There's just too much pain to cherish in both episodes.

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Denials (KNOTS, 06 Feb 92) v Designing Women (DALLAS, 01 Feb 91)

An early ‘90s Ewing-verse double bill.

With both series so long in the tooth by this point, much of the drama is necessarily generated by newcomers poking the regulars with a stick. These take the form of familiar archetypes: the handsome opportunist (Alex Barth’s scruffy insouciance a ‘90s slacker variation on Chip Roberts’ and Peter Hollister’s steely ‘80s ambition), the short-skirted gold digger (while Vanessa Hunt All-About-Eves her way into the role of Anne’s assistant on KNOTS, DALLAS ends with JR learning that Michelle Stevens is the new owner of Ewing Oil) and the hate-filled, vengeful obsessive (where KNOTS has Pierce Lawton stalking Greg with a rifle, DALLAS has Lee Ann De La Vega — she’s meant to be hate-filled and obsessive too, but as played by the terminally perky Barbara Eden, is delightfully unconvincing. “If you want my company, JR, make love to me now, tomorrow and forever!” she trills bizarrely.)

Pretty much everyone in this episode of KNOTS is in some way impacted by Val’s decision to write Greg’s biography — even Frank is handling her publishing contract (an unlikely detail, perhaps, but a satisfyingly knotty one). Karen, Mack and Gary all have misgivings, to say the least, about this new venture, but put up a supportive, if slightly condescending, front. The underlying tension results in the Sad Laura Music recurring throughout the ep, which in hindsight seems to foreshadow Val’s imminent (temporary) demise. The highlight of the ep is Val and Greg’s “cigar smoke” scene — it’s their first proper conversation of the series and the chemistry between them is palpable. At this point, the storyline feels like it could run and run.

Karen and Paige have an interesting dynamic — never adversaries, but never quite at ease with each other either. A good example of this is the restaurant scene between Paige, Karen and Mack where there is a perceptible drop in temperature once the subject of Greg is raised. Karen puts her finger on an integral part of his enigma when she says, “Here’s a man who knows what decency is and yet he turns his back on it.” There’s an equivalent lunch scene in Designing Women between Vanessa Beaumont and son James where the inevitable topic of conversation is DALLAS’s resident bad boy, JR. He and Vanessa are engaged at this point and she wants to know if she can to expect him to remain faithful once they're wed. James isn’t optimistic: “JR can’t help cheating any more than a shark can help killing.”

Lee Ann sets a Holly Harwood/Kimberly Cryder-style honey trap for Vanessa to walk into, which she gracefully sidesteps, choosing instead to give JR the most romantic of elbows: “Perhaps we were only meant to be together for brief moments … I’m afraid if we did marry, our candle would never last the night.”

And the winner is ... Denials

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Jimmy Todd]

Two scenes that stand out: Greg puffing smoke at Val, and Mack, Karen and Paige. The former @Jingle Frosty Lapland described perfectly. A storyline in which Greg and Val interacted more would have been pure KL gold.
Regarding the latter scene, I recall reading a synopsis for that KL episode in the T.V. Guide which said, "Karen fights bitterly with Paige about Greg"
I have a very long memory when it comes to KL I was looking forward to a really juicy argument, but if I recall correctly, it was pretty tepid. Oh, Karen, how you mellowed since a certain blue-eyed she devil departed.

 

[James from London]

I recall reading a synopsis for that KL episode in the T.V. Guide which said, "Karen fights bitterly with Paige about Greg"
I have a very long memory when it comes to KL I was looking forward to a really juicy argument, but if I recall correctly, it was pretty tepid.

Hmm, I wouldn't call it a fight, more an interestingly tense discussion. Karen never locked horns with Paige directly, that was more Mack's role.

 

[James from London]

Designs (KNOTS, 26 Mar 81) v Devil on My Shoulder (KNOTS, 08 Mar 90)

In 1981, being a good Seaview Circle resident means alerting the police when your neighbour's ex-husband drives off with her kids and all their belongings; in 1990, it means performing an emergency tracheotomy with a pen on your neighbour’s estranged husband after she’s stabbed him with a letter opener.

As if often the case with early KNOTS episodes, it’s the small moments in Denials that fascinate: Olivia, in possibly the Ewingverse’s earliest example of cultural appropriation, asking Val for cornrows; Richard making Laura laugh with an ad-lib after she mispronounces “Jason’s shoes” as “Jashon’s shoes.”

Even though Denials is a JR episode and he gets the freeze-frame, he doesn’t dominate the ep the way he normally does. He’s more of a vehicle (no pun intended) for the show to explore the Abby/Sid/Karen dynamic. Karen correctly deduces that Abby has shown Sid’s engine plans to JR without his permission. Sid doesn’t believe it but nevertheless confronts his sister with his wife’s suspicions. Abby plays him like a violin, making him feel guilty, and he and Karen end up arguing. You wait for the satisfied smirk on Abby’s face after she’s pulled the wool over Sid’s eyes, but for once it’s not forthcoming. Maybe it’s not as much fun manipulating her brother as it is everyone else.

Abby also has another storyline in Designs, involving ex-husband Jeff. The episode really catches fire in its closing minutes when the two stories collide as Karen interrupts Abby and JR in bed (a year before she does the same thing to Abby and Gary) to tell Abby that Jeff has absconded with Brian and Olivia. JR reacts very casually to this incident of spousal abduction — it’ll be a different story in a couple of months when it happens to him.

In place of engine patents, the business storyline in Devil on My Shoulder involves Linda Fairgate’s early efforts to get ahead at the Sumner Group. Surprisingly, the plot in which she wangles her own desk and computer by pretending to have smoke allergies is at least as entertaining as Abby and JR’s machinations in Designs.

Both eps have that KNOTSian thing of characters battling their way through protocol and red tape to make themselves understood. When Karen rings the police about Jeff in Designs, she can’t get them to take her concerns about a father driving off with his own kids seriously. When she then goes to JR’s hotel to find Abby, the staff won’t give out his room number so she has to bribe a bellhop who assumes she’s a prostitute. In Devil On My Shoulder, Val has trouble making the authorities believe that it was she who was attacked by Danny rather than the other way round. “It’s your word against his,” Mack explains, “and he’s the one who got stabbed.”

Ironically, Abby and Val have opposing problems with their exes in these episodes — while Abby can't find Jeff, Val can’t get rid of Danny. No sooner does she explain to the twins that he’s not going to be living with him anymore than he shows up at the front door. “I’m home!” he announces with a smile.

And the winner is … Devil on My Shoulder

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Dial M for Modem (KNOTS, 06 Apr 89) v Discovery (KNOTS, 28 Apr 88)

In Devil on My Shoulder, Paula Vertosick spoilt Anne’s fun by insisting Greg wasn't well enough to party. In Dial M for Modem, she tries to spoil Murakame (aka Abby)’s fun by highlighting the harmful environmental effects of its drilling for oil on Lotus Point. Whereas Paula was a wholly benign influence on Greg in Devil ..., she is a more subversive one on both Mack and Karen in Dial M ..., albeit in different ways. Her presence in the Mackenzie house so discombobulates Mack that he ends up putting a pot of coffee in the fridge, while she actively encourages Karen to break into what used to be Lotus Point to see what the drillers are up to.

Anne dealt with Paula's interference by sending her away on a conference; Abby does the same by letting a virus loose on her college's computer system, thereby ruining all the evidence she has collated against Murakame. Karen manipulates Paula too, by trying to match-make her and Gary. They hit it off, but Gary’s next romantic storyline has already been introduced earlier in the episode when a ditzy woman who can’t figure out how to store her phone numbers correctly calls him by mistake and they hit it off.

Almost exactly a year earlier in Discovery, Gary has to deal with another flaky woman confused about her telephone devices — Val, who is convinced she has received an answering machine message from Ben but then can’t produce it for Gary to listen to. What we know, but Val and Gary have yet to discover, is that the message was faked by Jill as part of some mysteriously elaborate gaslighting plot. So far it’s working — Val’s on edge and she can't sleep. Gary's advice, that she chill out and take in an afternoon movie, is the same that Aunt Ginny will give her a year later in Dial M ... when she’s just coming out the other end of her Jill-induced ordeal. Ginny also tries to persuade her to start dating again, thus setting in motion her next year-long ordeal-by-psychopath.

In both of these episodes, Karen's precious Lotus Point is violated — first by Manny Vasquez who is running drugs through it, and then by Murakame who is drilling for oil under it. In the former situation, Abby is determined to take down the bad guys whom she holds responsible for her daughter’s addiction; in the latter, she is the bad guy. Plucky Paige, meanwhile, is on the side of justice in both stories — in Discovery, she plants a fake artefact on an archaeological excavation site, thereby sabotaging Manny's transportation plans, and in Dial M, she exposes Murakame's supposed representative as another fake when she recognises him as an actor in one of those Japanese monster movies. What a gal!

And the winner is ... Discovery

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

I had one job, to put the Ewing-verse in alphabetical order:

Dial M for Modem (KNOTS, 06 Apr 89) v Discovery (KNOTS, 28 Apr 88)

Digger Redux (DALLAS, 25 Sep 87) v Digger’s Daughter (DALLAS, 02 Apr 78)

And now I've gone and done it again:

Dire Straits (DALLAS, 14 Feb 86) v Deserted (KNOTS, 10 Nov 88)

On the plus side, as a result of my incompetence, I’ve ended up with a “Girls in Latin-flavoured Peril” double bill! While Pam is held hostage offscreen by some pesky Colombian bandits in Dire Straits, Deserted has Paige (along with Johnny Rourke, Michael and a smattering of Hispanic day players, including Salamanca from BREAKING BAD) trapped in the back of a boiling hot truck near the Mexican border for three days and nights. For a plot that was apparently cobbled together at the last minute when VP was taken ill, the DALLAS kidnap story is not too bad, if a bit vanilla. Mark Graison and Matt Cantrell’s macho competitiveness is entertaining and it’s fun to see Cliff thrust into the unusual role of peacekeeper. The KNOTS storyline is more inventive and interesting, while its premise — a group of people trapped inside a container in the hopes of achieving a better life, most of whom are turned away when they eventually reach their destination — has an even grimmer resonance today than was presumably intended at the time.

Whereas DALLAS doesn’t tell us anything about the conditions Pam has had to endure as a hostage (and no-one thinks to ask her about it when she is eventually released) , KNOTS does a great job of showing how its regulars cope in such a horrible situation. While Paige, only recently the plucky heroine of the Santa Tecla storyline, behaves like a prize cow (so much so that mild-mannered Michael threatens to punch her in the face), dodgy Johnny Rourke is surprisingly likeable. He also gets to accuse Michael of being a Pollyanna two years before Gary does the same to Karen.

Meanwhile, as those at home wait fretfully for news of the missing, Sue Ellen comes dangerously close to figuring out she’s living inside a soap opera when she says of Pam, “She’s the kindest person I know and the worst things in the world keep happening to her!” Anxious for word of Michael, Karen looks through old family photo albums with Val and regrets the Little League games and Tooth Fairy moments she missed out on when he was a kid. Val looks wistful — might she possibly be thinking of the things she never got to experience with her own firstborn? “You can’t make that time up to them,” Karen sighs. “I know,” she agrees. “I know you know,” Karen replies meaningfully and we realise that, yes, Val really was thinking about Lucy, who I don’t think has been mentioned on KNOTS for about four years at this point.

The main subplot in both episodes involves a female character everyone is convinced is seriously unbalanced. At Southfork, the Farlows and Krebbses — or rather, the sinisterly cheerful Stepford robots they have been replaced with — try to gaslight Jenna by telling she’s nuts to still be mourning the man she’s loved all her life less than a year after his death. “When you lost your baby, did I tell you how to grieve?” she asks Donna reasonably, but is undermined by plinky-plonky 'going mad' music on the soundtrack. “There is such a thing as much too much grief,” whirrs Cyber-Donna, decreeing that Jenna, having exceeded her allotted amount, must be sent to a doctor for reprogramming. Meanwhile, everyone on KNOTS thinks Val is nuts for (a) attempting suicide, (b) claiming Jill forced her to swallow pills at gunpoint and (c) throwing a plate of h'ors doeuvres in the air during Michael and Paige's welcome home party because she thinks everyone's talking about her (which if they weren't before, they certainly are now).

Whereas Abby being unusually nice to everyone at the party — offering Val moral support, playing with Julie’s hair, inviting Harold round for tea, even hugging Paige — is weird in an interesting way (hearkening back to the early years when she used to hang out with the neighbours even as she was sleeping with their husbands), Donna's intense concern for Jenna is weird in an annoying way. Even when she meets Tony, the ten-year-old deaf kid she and Ray will eventually take hostage adopt, the first thing she does is tell him how worried she is about Jenna. He’s a ten-year-old deaf kid — what the **** is he supposed to do about it?

And the winner is ... Deserted

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Willie Oleson]

Tip: put the list of episodes in excel and use the sort-from-A to Z button.
No need to worry your pretty little head about it if technology can do aaaaall the work for you.

 

[James from London]

Distant Echoes (KNOTS, 18 Sep 86) v Distant Locations (KNOTS, 20 Dec 84)

It’s another Girls Gone Missing double bill!

Val’s only been gone one night in Distant Locations while Karen’s been missing for two episodes and a season hiatus in Distant Echoes, but whereas everyone is frantic about Val (Lilimae fears she may have killed herself; Joshua makes his TV debut to appeal for her return; even Abby hires a detective to find her — albeit for her own reasons), poor old Karen’s disappearance is upstaged both in the press by Gary’s decision to run for the senate and in Mack’s subconscious by those lovely flashbacks to his courtship with Anne Matheson in '68. Her absence is felt most keenly during Mackenzie meal times as Mack, Eric and Michael try to carry on as normal but fail miserably.

The good news is that Karen and Val each get a makeover. At her mysterious captor’s urging, Karen reluctantly starts cutting her hair off in front of a mirror, while the mirror in Val's motel room becomes her confidante. First, she uses it to lambast her own appearance (“You look like a man, as flat as a board. No, you look like an old lady!”), then to transform herself into a vampy-trampy Abby-Val-Morgan Fairchild hybrid (“You are beautiful and there isn’t a man in town who wouldn’t want you just the way you are”), before transforming herself one more time from hungover Abby-Val into fresh-faced and perky Verna-Val. While Karen is too creeped to try on the clothes Phil Harbert has filled her closet with, Verna-Val goes shopping for some pretty dresses before taking the bus “back home” to Shula, Tennessee, where the local movie house is playing Being There — an apt choice for Seaview Circle’s very own Chauncey Gardiner.

In Distant Locations, Gary is being groomed by Paul Galveston, who offers to help him secure the water rights to Lotus Point; in Distant Echoes, it’s Gary’s doubts that Galveston’s son will make good on his pledge to clean up that same water than prompts his decision to run for the senate. Abby volunteers to play the supportive wife during his campaign even though they’re separated. Gary isn’t sure such a charade is necessary. “Our president is divorced,” he points out, making a roundabout reference to Angela Channing.

And the winner is ... Distant Locations

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Distant Rumblings (KNOTS, 13 Mar 86) v Divorce, Ewing Style (DALLAS, 15 Feb 80)

Sandwiched between Gary’s short-lived role as Paul Galveston’s protege (as seen in Distant Locations) and his temporary turn as a senatorial candidate (Distant Echoes) lies his even briefer phase as a driver of dangerously fast cars. Distant Rumblings finds him in hospital recovering from his latest prang when Val pays him a visit. “I know about dry drunks. Sometimes I think you still feel the need for the high,” she tells him insightfully. However, it’s Ben’s reaction upon learning of her visit that’s really fascinating: “I don’t think I know right from wrong anymore,” he tells her wearily. "Is it right for me to expect you not to care about the suicide course your ex-husband has set for himself? Is it right for me to resent you for going to visit him? … You could save his life. What is my resentment compared to that? You’re doing what’s right for you and I respect you for it. And if I also resent you for it, then I guess it’s my problem, isn’t it?”

Distant Rumblings also includes live coverage of Garbage Day, the weekly cul-de-sac event Anne Matheson found so mysteriously exotic in Deadly Combination. Val likewise manages to make a drama out of dragging a couple of trash cans to the kerb as she knocks one over and then breaks down sobbing over the state of her marriage. In the process of comforting her, Laura casually mentions that her marriage to Richard is officially over. I guess that’s what you’d call Divorce, Avery Style. The episode ends more dramatically with Gary asks Abby for a Divorce, Ewing Style.

The actual episode Divorce, Ewing Style is, alphabetically-speaking, the first instalment of the great 79/80 season and it’s one of my favourites — it's lean and mean and moves even faster than New DALLAS. The ep opens with Sue Ellen throwing a surprise anniversary party for JR at Southfork. Despite all previous evidence to contrary, everyone present, including the man himself once he’s had a few drinks, falls for her ever-lovin’ wife act. Only when they’re in the privacy of their bedroom does she gloatingly explain that it’s all part of her plan to divorce him and win custody of Little Josh.

Fuming, JR (who's in almost every scene of the episode and is really funny throughout) decides to fight fire with fire by making it look as if she’s back on the bottle so he can have her locked up again. Kristin, gleeful at the prospect of destroying her sister, agrees to help — on the strict understanding that she become the next Mrs JR Ewing once Sue Ellen is out of the way. Within three scenes of hatching their plan, they’ve got Jock and Ellie believing Sue Ellen's back on the booze, with Bobby and Pam following suit two scenes later. We're constantly reminded in later years how wise and shrewd Jock and Miss Ellie are, but here they’re gloriously gullible, swallowing every lie that’s put in front of them.

Sue Ellen, who began the episode on such a triumphant note, swiftly finds herself in an untenable situation. “I’m afraid to stay with JR and even more afraid to leave him,” she tells Dr Elby, who listens sympathetically but is ultimately powerless to help. In the final scene of the ep, she has to be restrained from physically attacking JR in front of the rest of the family who now think she’s gone completely round the bend. The freeze frame is of JR turning his face away so they won’t see what an absolute blast he’s having.

And the winner is ... Divorce, Ewing Style

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Julia's Gun]

Distant Rumblings (KNOTS, 13 Mar 86) v Divorce, Ewing Style (DALLAS, 15 Feb 80)

....
Distant Rumblings also includes live coverage of Garbage Day, the weekly cul-de-sac event Anne Matheson found so mysteriously exotic in Deadly Combination. Val likewise manages to make a drama out of dragging a couple of trash cans to the kerb as she knocks one over and then breaks down sobbing over the state of her marriage. In the process of comforting her, Laura casually mentions that her marriage to Richard is officially over. I guess that’s what you’d call Divorce, Avery Style. The episode ends more dramatically with Gary asks Abby for a Divorce, Ewing Style.

The actual episode Divorce, Ewing Style is, alphabetically-speaking, the first instalment of the great 79/80 season and it’s one of my favourites — it's lean and mean and moves even faster than New DALLAS.

I haven't seen either of these episodes in about 20 years. You're making me want to rewatch Knots Season 7 again. I'd forgotten those scenes, and early years Dallas is definitely overdue another look. Thanks for whetting my appetite!

 

[Daniel Avery]

In the process of comforting her, Laura casually mentions that her marriage to Richard is officially over. I guess that’s what you’d call Divorce, Avery Style.

Like Laura's death, which would be called "mostly off-camera". At least Laura got in a good one to Val, telling her there was "no use crying over spilled trash".

And while you make a great point about Ben's reaction to Gary's car crash being more multi-dimensional than one might expect, I do recall his mocking the situation to Mack, saying Gary "rolls the macho-mobile to get some TLC from the ex-wife". It was always fun to see Ben and Mack dropping their Knight In Shining Armor personae to be catty and/or sarcastic about the situations they found themselves in.

 

[James from London]

Do Not Attempt to Remove (KNOTS, 08 Nov 90) v Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate (KNOTS, 07 May 87)

Both of these episodes include an ugly break-up between Paige and her boyfriend du jour — in Do Not Fold, she throws plates at Peter Hollister’s head; in Do Not Attempt, Tom Ryan dumps all her clothes in her office.

Each break-up intersects with another storyline, leading to a classically soapy misunderstanding which exacerbates the conflict still further. Paige and Tom’s initial row in his apartment is continually interrupted by Paige receiving phone calls from Anne, who is enmeshed in her own fake blackmail plot, except Tom thinks the calls are really from Greg. “It’s tragic how jealous you are!” Paige tells him. Three years earlier, during her fight with Peter, Paige is the one jumping to conclusions, mistakenly believing that Sylvia’s infamous letter from beyond the grave contains confirmation that Greg is her father. “My father — your brother. That’s why you didn’t marry me, right?” she yells. Peter bursts out laughing at the irony of this — which is pretty much the last thing he ever does.

Ben's monologue to Val in Distant Rumblings about her visiting Gary in the hospital (“I don’t think I know right from wrong anymore …”) was a great example of how male characters on KNOTS are written in a way that allows them to articulate their emotions believably rather than in an "only on TV" way. Tom Ryan has an equivalent speech in Do Not Attempt to Remove. Part of what makes it so powerful is that Joey Gian doesn’t deliver it in anger, but in sadness:

“You don’t wanna hear me say ‘Go to hell, Paige’? You don’t wanna hear me say that you are a spoiled, immature big-league wannabe who doesn’t know her own mind? You don’t wanna hear me say you criticise guys for being too macho and the fact is, the man you chose is the most macho man that I’ve ever met? You don’t wanna hear me say that I tried to change my primitive view of women as being flaky and childish and instead of changing my mind, you convinced me that it’s true? You don’t wanna hear me say it? I won’t say it.”

The most effective moment in Do Not Fold is also a dressing down delivered to Paige, but this time by Abby:

“Don’t flatter yourself into thinking we’re at all alike. Everything I have, I’ve earned. Everything you have, you’ve been given. I know it galls you, it galls people of your class to see a woman like me who’s earned what you thought was yours by birth. People like you are threatened by people like me because, deep down, you’re worried you won’t be able to cut it without your trust fund. You know something? You’re right.”

What’s fascinating about each of these speeches is that while they are full of home truths — Paige is all the things Tom and Abby accuse her of being: spoilt, entitled, etc. — we also know that that's not the whole story. Paige is a lot of other things too. In each ep, Paige is an underdog, unfairly treated in the workplace (in Do Not Fold, Abby fires her from her job at Lotus Point because of their overlapping love lives, only for Karen to immediately hire her back; in Do Not Remove, a Sumner Group client doesn’t want her handling his account because of her gender, but is informed by Greg that her participation is nonnegotiable). She can also be cold and even cruel. “Don’t wax psychological with me, you haven’t got it in you,” she tells Tom so witheringly that his response, “What a bitch,” feels entirely warranted, while her telling Olivia about her mother’s affair with Peter just for the hell of it is about as vicious as you can get.

Both break-up scenes are swiftly followed by an act of violence. Tom, bristling with pent-up anger, finds himself alone with Greg in the Sumner Group elevator. He manages to control himself right up until the moment they reach ground level, whereupon he lets rip with a swift punch to Greg’s already severely damaged liver. And of course, after Paige’s bust up with Peter in Do Not Fold, Olivia and Abby find his bloodied body on the Lotus Point dance floor.

Elsewhere in Do Not Attempt to Remove, the first indication that all is not well with Val following the bump on her head she received at the end of the preceding episode is when Gary finds her alphabetising her cook books in the middle of the night. (Wait a minute — is alphabetising random crap a symptom of an all-purpose brain disorder??) Three years earlier in Do Not Fold, Val is the one on the receiving end of an erratically behaving spouse when, having waved Ben off on an assignment to South America, it slowly begins to dawn on her (and everyone else) that he probably isn’t coming back.

And the winner is ... Do Not Attempt to Remove

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Jimmy Todd]

Paige telling Olivia about Abby and Peter was one of the most heartbreaking scenes in Soapland. Yes, worse things have happened to characters, but for some reason this scene stands out. Maybe it's because it wasn't an over the top type of situation. It's just the cruelty with which Paige delivered the news and the look on Olivia's face. I really liked Tonya Crowe's acting.

 

[valkaren]

Elsewhere in Do Not Attempt to Remove, the first indication that all is not well with Val following the bump on her head she received at the end of the preceding episode is when Gary finds her alphabetising her cook books in the middle of the night. (Wait a minute — is alphabetising random crap a symptom of an all-purpose brain disorder??)

Hahahahahhahahahaha I just burst out laughing!

Those speeches you highlight, including the one from Ben, really are the essence of Knots. Thank you for reminding me of each of them, as they are each so beautiful. Each character so multifaceted, you can root for them while simultaneously disagreeing with them.

Regardless of what the storylines are, the characters react with almost a unique individual dignity to the ridiculous situations they are put in. Season 7 is a great example of generic plots saved by great characters. Ben's speech reminded me that I also tend to forget Val's darkness in the show's core years (4-7); particularly her inability to let go of Gary and how her subsequent actions constantly undermines her relationship with Ben, but it's played so well that you understand it, and you forgive both parties for continually trying to make it work.

It's really only in Season 12/13 I think where the complex characters start to fall out of the show completely. Perhaps one of the reasons why the show 'sours' so quickly is that the plots have to prop up the characters for the first time, rather than the other way around.

 

[James from London]

Do You Love Me? (KNOTS, 02 Apr 92) v Do You Take This Woman ... (DALLAS, 14 Dec 84)

It’s an OK-but-nothing-to-write-home-about double bill!

Like Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate, Do You Love Me? is the penultimate episode of its season, but there are no dead senators in this one. Instead, there’s a sort of ‘picking up the pieces’ vibe as Paige, recovering from her Melrose Place style kidnapping-by-yacht, feels a bit sad when Greg doesn’t come to visit her. Turns out he had a one of those near-death white-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel experiences when he almost drowned rescuing her. The really interesting bit isn’t Greg’s white-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-experience — any ordinary vanilla TV character can have one of them — the really interesting bit is near the end of the ep when he allows Paige to watch him watching Laura’s goodbye videotape.

As Paige’s shooting/paralysis/kidnap ordeal courtesy of Pierce Lawton draws to a close in ’92, Jenna’s kidnap/murder/prison ordeal courtesy of Naldo Marchetta is only just beginning in ’83. He loiters outside her condo, in much the same as Mary Robseon loiters outside the Mackenzies’ house in Do You Love Me?, before abducting their daughter and forcing Jenna to jilt Bobby at the altar.

Elsewhere in Do You Take This Woman …, everybody is reeling from Jamie’s bombshell at the Southfork barbecue that the Ewings aren’t the sole owners of Ewing Oil. This storyline will get really good really soon, but doesn’t quite take shape here. Instead, the highlight of the ep is Pam being all vulnerable but tough in the face of much male scepticism as she intensifies her search for her supposedly dead fiancé. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to feel that Mark is alive and not be able to convince anybody else?” she asks Mandy, her only ally. Her closest equivalent on KNOTS nine years later is Val, another Ewing wife everyone thinks is a flake but who determinedly sticks to her guns as she continues her investigation into Greg’s background. She and Greg get a nicely soapy confrontation scene where she accuses him of doing bad things to Mary Robeson so that's almost something to write home about.

And the winner is ... Do You Love Me?

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Double Jeopardy (KNOTS, 02 Mar 89) v Double Wedding (DALLAS, 21 Oct 78)

It’s a Double double bill!

Double Jeopardy does a great job of blending lots of disparate KNOTS ingredients into one big soapy stew. There’s straight ahead juicy melodrama (Gary’s arrest for Jill’s murder), neighbourly kitchen confessionals (Pat admitting her attraction to Gary, which elicits an intriguing response from Karen: “Every woman gets a crush on Gary once in her life”), unpredictable character moments (Val collapsing with hysterical laughter over Jill’s death), gritty procedural stuff (we attend Jill’s autopsy and learn she had a half-digested pizza inside her when she died) and some deliciously noir-ish backstabbing over at the Sumner Group where Paige secretly sabotages Greg’s mayoral campaign and Abby plays the supportive wife, but then forges an alliance with Ted behind Greg’s back.

There are some intriguing echoes of past and future episodes: Val is called in for questioning for the same murder Gary has been arrested for, just as she was following Ciji’s death in The Burden of Proof. The cop who then interviews her is played by the crooked detective Abby hired to find her after she disappeared in Distant Locations. And when asked why she threatened Jill with a pair of scissors, Val exhibits the same highly strung self-justification she will when questioned about why she stabbed Danny with a letter opener in Devil on My Shoulder.

In a way, Double Wedding is to Pam Ewing what Constant Companion was to Ginger Ward — a teen romance with a boy who went to Vietnam that had a major consequence she’s never told her husband about (an abortion for Ginger, a marriage for Pam) now returns to haunt her in the present. And Ed Haynes is a kind of a one-episode Naldo Marchetta prototype: a trouble-making ex-husband who shows up claiming he’s still in love with Bobby’s girl, but really wants to get his hands on some Ewing money.

Given that Double Wedding is a self-contained episode which focuses an incident never mentioned before or since, it might be regarded as dispensable. Indeed, when the BBC repeated the first two seasons of DALLAS on a nightly basis at the height of the “Who Shot JR?” hoo-ha, this is one of a handful that they skipped. But there is still a surprising amount of notable things going on in this instalment.

Ed is the first (but definitely not the last) person to get the Ewing brothers confused when he confronts JR thinking he’s Bobby and asks him what he knows about his wife’s past. “Mrs Ewing doesn’t have a past,” JR replies amusingly. When Ed then claims he and Pam are still married, JR is all ears. After he tried to make Pam look like adulteress in Digger’s Daughter, JR admitted that he “underestimated the new Mrs Ewing,” and vowed not to repeat his mistake. So when he brands her a bigamist in this ep, he makes sure to do so in front of Jock. In that same scene in Digger’s Daughter, Bobby declared that, “Pamela’s past is none of my business. She was not my wife in the past.” However, his anger when he learns that she had a secret husband foreshadows his anger when he finds out Ann had a secret daughter in New DALLAS.

This ep is the first time Cliff and Bobby spend any significant time in each other’s company when they’re obliged to work together to help Pam. Interestingly, Bobby is as uptight and angry as Cliff is clear-headed and humorous. (“Do you ever stop with the wisecracks?” Bobby snaps at him. “It’s in lieu of a bill,” Cliff assures him.) By the end of the ep, you sense they’re starting to like each other, thus setting the tone for their see-sawing relationship over the next 36 years.

It also marks the first time Cliff steps foot on Southfork, and his first of only two encounters with Lucy (“Hmm, you’re not bad,” she decides, looking him up and down). We’re shown a tougher side to Bobby’s personality than we’ve seen previously (he threatens to strand Ed’s accomplice in the Texas desert: “No water for miles, just plain dirt as far as the eye can see — a man left out there alone might not ever be heard from again”) as well as a nobler side to Digger’s (“Pamela’s marriage is very painful to me but I’m not about to see her suffer because of something I may or may not have done”).

Digger’s cigar box, in which he keeps various family photos and keepsakes, including Pam’s birth certificate, makes its debut appearance. It will resurface six years later in Do You Take This Woman? when Cliff searches for his daddy’s copy of the document splitting Ewing Oil into thirds, and again three years after that, in Brother, Can You Spare a Child? when he meets with Miss Ellie to end their family feud. Its New DALLAS equivalent would be Cliff’s safety deposit box, where Pam’s death certificate is discovered.

A stand alone episode this may be, but there are plenty of ongoing storylines simmering away in the background: Miss Ellie fussing over Jock as he recovers from heart surgery, Bobby juggling ranch work with starting his own construction business, Pam's new job at The Store, Cliff's upcoming election campaign and his ongoing flirtation with Sue Ellen. None of these story strands are developed in any significant way, but they do a good job of fleshing out the world of the Ewings.

Val and Danny, Paige and Pierce, Karen and Phil, Jenna and Naldo, and now Pam and Ed: there is certainly no shortage of Ewingverse women at the mercy of predatory men. Occasionally, they get to fight back as Val does with the letter opener. Here, Pam adopts a more devious approach when she calls Ed’s bluff and asks him to take her away from all this. “If I’d spent another day on that ranch, I’d have gone out of my mind,” she pouts, channelling the sex-starved wives married to boring old men played by Lana Turner and Barbara Stanwyck in The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity (and even Abby in Double Jeopardy). It’s as close as Pam ever gets to playing her own evil lookalike.

All this plus a cosily traditional TV ending where the rest of the family chortle over JR’s bemusement at finding Digger asleep in his office.

And the winner is ... Double Wedding

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

The Dove Hunt (DALLAS, 26 Oct 79) v Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out (1&2) (KNOTS, 18 May 89)

The Dove Hunt is The One Where the Ewing Men Go Hunting. As such, one could almost view it as a prequel to Call of the Wild, the Season 11 episode where JR and Bobby take their sons to Haleyville to shoot some deer. In that ep, JR paints a portrait of Gary as the overly sensitive brother squeamish about killing animals and is worried about John Ross turning out like him. In The Dove Hunt, however, it’s apparent that JR himself is the Ewing out of his comfort zone in the great outdoors — he doesn’t bag any birds, he hangs back when the rest of the men get into a barroom brawl and when they come under attack, he’s a positive liability: first, he gets shot while trying to help the already injured Jock and then falls asleep when he’s meant to be keeping watch, allowing the enemy to overpower them. It is then that Jock is confronted by a long-forgotten face from his past, just like Pam was in Double Wedding. And just as Pam was revealed to have had a secret husband before she married Bobby, Jock confesses to JR that he had a secret wife, Amanda, before marrying Miss Ellie.

I can pinpoint the start of my DALLAS obsession to the final scene of this episode — specifically the shot of Kristin eavesdropping on Jock and JR talking about Amanda on the cardboard patio. That’s when it occurred to me that every Ewing on this insane show has something they’re trying to hide from the rest of the family: Jock’s first wife, Miss Ellie’s cancer fears, JR’s mortgaging of Southfork and his affair with his sister-in-law, the riddle of Little Josh’s paternity, and Pam's genetic disorder. The one exception is Lucy, who talks openly and excitedly about meeting up with her mother and the fact that Val and Gary have reestablished contact: “They could get back together. We could be a family!” Bobby cautions her against getting her hopes up: “Sometimes these second tries don’t make it either.”

 Fast forward nine years to Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out and it turns out Bobby was right — Gary and Val’s second try didn’t make it after all. “You stole Val’s husband,” Karen reminds Abby in their final scene together. “Gary and I, we fell in love,” shrugs Abby, unrepentant to the last. “Nobody could help that, nobody predicted that, nobody could have prevented that and if Val was hurt in the process, I’m sorry. Val’s a nice person — a little dull, but she’s nice.” Too dull to appear in this season finale two-parter it would seen.

Abby’s goodbye to Karen is perfectly pitched — very funny and very poignant without tipping over into sentimentality. She also has a memorable last scene with Paige whom she rates a six on the Abby Scale. This is an improvement on Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate almost exactly two years earlier when she made it clear to Paige that they were nothing alike ("Everything I have, I’ve earned. Everything you have, you’ve been given.") Lest we think she’s softening towards her young adversary, however, Abby makes a point of telling the murderous Ted Melcher that Paige has incriminating evidence against him. She then happily rides off into the Japanese sunset, leaving Paige with a massive target on her back.

Both The Dove Hunt and Down Came the Rain involve characters deciding on a whim to take off on a two-day vacation. On DALLAS, it’s Miss Ellie who encourages Jock and their sons to go hunting in Landowne so she can consult a doctor without his knowledge. On KNOTS, Mack suggests a road trip to Karen as a way of distracting her from the whole Lotus Point/Murakame/Abby saga. Just as JR resents Jock inviting Ray along (“You know how he feels about Ray — like he’s one of the family,” Bobby tells him. “Yeah. Never could figure that one out,” JR mutters), Mack is dismayed to discover Paula has hitched a ride with him and Karen.

Karen’s impromptu Rodgers and Hammerstein road trip singalong with Mack and Paula is everything her and Val’s rendition of 'I’m Henry VIII (I Am)' during Back to the Cul-de-sac isn’t: charming, funny and believable. Whatever the “cooped up in a jeep” equivalent of going stir crazy is, Kevin Dobson captures it perfectly, as Mack goes from refusing to join in with the singing to losing his inhibitions so much the other two can’t shut him up. The whole thing’s just so natural and funny and real.

Thanks to Abby, Paige spends the second part of Down Comes the Rain trying to avoid being killed, much like the Ewing men do in Landsdowne nine years earlier, but whereas The Dove Hunt is set in the woods and has a kind of generic action-adventure vibe about it, Down Came the Rain Pt 2 mostly takes place in shadowy, claustrophobic places: elevators, dimly-lit offices, underground garages and, climactically, during a rainstorm at night that mirrors Paige’s inability to see clearly: who should she believe — Ted or Greg? You’d think the answer would be a simple one, but every time she takes a step towards Greg, something happens to make Ted’s accusations against him seem increasingly plausible.

Each time I watch the Abby-less second half of Down Came the Rain, the more I love it. It’s a such a bold, ingenious psychological game of cat and mouse that I almost end up thinking “Abby who?”

And the winner is … Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out.

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I can pinpoint the start of my DALLAS obsession to the final scene of this episode — specifically the shot of Kristin eavesdropping on Jock and JR talking about Amanda on the cardboard patio. That’s when it occurred to me that every Ewing on this insane show has something they’re trying to hide from the rest of the family: Jock’s first wife, Miss Ellie’s cancer fears, JR’s mortgaging of Southfork and his affair with his sister-in-law, the riddle of Little Josh’s paternity, and Pam's genetic disorder.

If I may say so, that's a very classy and nuanced beginning to an obsession. Far more than mine beginning with the wham-bam of the Who Shot Bobby? cliffhanger.