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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 217595" data-attributes="member: 22">The Buck Stops Here (DALLAS, 02 Dec 83) v The Burden of Proof (KNOTS, 03 Mar 83)There are a few themes linking these two episodes. The first is “Former Ewing Wives Acting Strangely”. In the case of DALLAS, that means Pam behaving moodily towards boyfriend Mark and ex-husband Bobby while being openly jealous of Bobby’s old-new girlfriend Jenna. Even the saintly Mark finally runs out of patience. “When is it time for you to give?” he snaps at her before driving off. Paradoxically, Pam’s somewhat childish behaviour makes her seem more like a relatable, recently divorced real-life adult and less like a gorgeous plot device as she often has in the past. KNOTS, meanwhile, has Val confessing to a murder her ex-husband has already been arrested for. She insists that she caused the head injury that killed Ciji, yet cannot explain how Ciji’s body subsequently ended up in the ocean.The reason for Pam and Val’s behaviour, it is suggested by other characters, is that they are each still in love with their ex. Mark reckons Pam is “still emotionally tied to Bobby” while Abby sees Val’s confession as a desperate attempt to win Gary back: “She’s never given up hope of that.”“This is so Val I could scream,” Abby mutters. “Jenna Wade has always bothered me,” Pam snaps.In each case, a female relative acts as an advocate: Katherine, allegedly on behalf of her sister, offers to set Jenna up with a swanky new job in Houston if she breaks things off with Bobby; Lilimae, worried sick about her daughter, publicly accuses Abby of committing the very crime Val has confessed to.Whereas Jenna casually refuses Katherine’s money, Abby has to suppress her glee as a disinterested Gary signs over control of his fortune from the other side of the glass in the prison visitor’s room. (There’s a parallel between this scene and the one on the previous season’s DALLAS when a similarly despondent Ray handed over his Ewing Oil voting shares to JR through the bars of a jail cell.)The second common theme is “Older Women Trying to Disentangle Themselves From the Younger Men They’ve Become (Sort Of) Romantically Involved With.” While Lilimae finally telling Chip to pack his bags (“This all started with you”) is satisfying and sad at the same time, the three DALLAS scenes that deal with Sue Ellen’s non-relationship with Peter Richards are very interesting. An argument between her and JR contains some fun lines (“What’d you do, Sue Ellen, pick up a case of whooping cough from your teenage lover?”), but the animosity between them is real — this is one very unhappy marriage. Despite her insistence that they have no future together, Peter can’t let go of his obsession with Sue Ellen. The poor sod looks genuinely exhausted — the way one does when one is entirely at the mercy of one’s own emotions. I’m struck by the dissonance between these scenes and the way the storyline had been originally publicised in the press. As I recall, this was the first time an upcoming DALLAS guest appearance had been so aggressively hyped, complete with photos of Christopher Atkins pouting sleazily, his arms draped around Sue Ellen and Pam, amidst rumours that his character was set to seduce them both.<img src="https://cdn10.bigcommerce.com/s-x8dfmo/products/6836/images/29893/Christopher-Atkins-%2526-Linda-Gray-in-Dallas-1978-1991-Premium-Photograph-and-Poster-1026305__21021.1432425424.386.513.jpg?c=2" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />These salacious hints of a “toyboy lover” scenario with its Joan Collins overtones bear no resemblance to the confused, tentative romance we were eventually presented with. No wonder we were confused — and still are. Even now, people seem to blur this actual storyline with the one they were expecting: complaints that Atkins was miscast as a stud when that wasn’t what he was playing any more than Sue Ellen is supposed to be a man-eating cougar.The third common theme: “Private Scenes Between Characters Played Out in a Public Arena.” In DALLAS, this means the Good Ol’ Boy Charity Rodeo, where Pam and Bobby dance under the watchful gaze of Mark and Jenna before Jenna stakes her claim by landing a smacker on Bobby's mouth in full view of the crowd. (This is the only time the charity rodeo ever appears on screen yet we’re told it’s an annual event and that Pam and Bobby have been regular attendees. Moreover, Ray and Mark both competed the previous year — even though that was before Mark’s first onscreen appearance, which is when he met Pam for the first time. Hmm, kind of feels like there are alternative timelines emerging in the Ewingverse already — maybe the one in which Mark competed against Ray is also the one where he hung out with Angelica Nero in Paris in the mid-70s.)The private is made public on KNOTS too where everything happens in front of the eyes of the law: Lilimae’s yelling match with Abby in the lobby of the police station, Abby laughing uncontrollably when she hears Val has confessed and then blurting out the wrong thing in front of Detective Baines, and nuttiest of all, Val and Gary running into one another in Ciji’s apartment while each is separately in police custody. Upon seeing each other, they both start screaming and shouting and going crazy and have to be restrained. It’s just NUTS. While the DALLAS gang are mostly acting like recognisable human beings for once, the KNOTS lot are completely out of control.The character behaving the most calmly amidst the chaos on KNOTS is Richard — but that’s only because he’s already planned his escape route. His lonely drive out of Seaview Circle, pausing to put a family photograph in his bag, mirrors Laura’s out of Greg’s ranch, Mack’s at the end of Back to the Cul-de-sac Part 1 and Heather Haversham’s out of Brookside Close. This is the “actor’s own” photo of Richard I mentioned on the Versus thread:[ATTACH]21093[/ATTACH]Both episodes end on a delicate, piano-scored point of no return: Richard leaving the cul-de-sac never to return and Mark carrying Pam upstairs to bed for the first time.(This episode of KNOTS is also the one where Abby has her one-sided phone conversation with Miss Ellie. To head off any possibility of a crossover appearance, she adopts the same tactic Pam and Bobby did with Gary regarding Lucy’s disappearance the previous year — she plays down the seriousness of the situation and suggests Mama’s presence on KNOTS might even be counterproductive.)And the winner is ... Burden of ProofBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]PpNlM9eF5hA[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?