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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 255138" data-attributes="member: 22">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 RemoveBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]JXiD138DQSI[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

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