Spring of ´80. The super soap rivalry shyly began
in USA: all was kept in the family, the only
competitors were DALLAS and its new spin-off KNOTS LANDING. As
JR was shot in his office, GARY EWING went back to
the bottle and VAL made him go to AA...
DALLAS was
aired on Friday nights and KNOTS LANDING on Thursdays.
The other Networks tried very hard to attract the
audience, even with clones of the Texan series.
Next
year, also in spring, the start of the soap war was a
fact: 2 new series, DYNASTY & FLAMINGO ROAD, reached
their first season finale:
- DYNASTY: The
CARRINGTONS´ series ended its year 1 with the enigmatic
arrival of ALEXIS at the courtroom where BLAKE CARRINGTON
was being judged by a court for the murder (intentional or not,
accidental or not) of his son STEVEN´s lover, TED DINARD.
ALEXIS seemed to be going to ruin the family and she
really tried very very hard. BLAKE just was released
under parole. The next season, ALEXIS´s identity would
be revealed: English JOAN COLLINS, who really saved
the series, which wouldn´t disguise his condition of
being a DALLAS clone. Unbelievable but true: there were
rumors for awhile saying that veiled lady was SOPHIA
LOREN...
- FLAMINGO ROAD: The tackiest of all, the only
remarkable things about it was the atmosphere, breathtaking
in a Florida corrupt to the core. Year 1 finished
with MARK HARMON (FIELD) pushing her wife MORGAN
FAIRCHILD (CONSTANCE y DALLAS first JENNA) downstairs, in
front of her father and FIELD´s lover LANE (C.RAINES).
Let´s also remember the cliffhangers for the Ewing
sagas:
- DALLAS: KRISTIN was found dead in the Southfork
pool and JR and CLIFF accused each other. SUE ELLEN
and PAM might have been the victim because you
couldn´t see her face. JR and SUE ELLEN were separating
for the 1st time and so did LUCY and MITCH. AFTON
framed CLIFF for a fist of dollars from JR and DONNA
suspected of RAY taking her money away...
- KNOTS
LANDING: On its first real cliffhanger ,
the spin-off
featured the car accident that would kill SID FAIRGATE
(DON MURRAY) for business. DONNA MILLS´s ABBY was the
victim for the very first and last time with the babynap
of her 2 kids by their father JEFF.
That
season 1980-1, DALLAS topped the ratings, more for the
furor of Who Shot JR than for the season itself, rather
mediocre. KNOTS was getting an audience but only thanks to
ABBY´s power as a character and JVA and ML as actors.
DYNASTY got enough audience to long 8 more years but not
FR, which ended one year later: la FAIRCHILD and
DAVID SELBY, would pass to FALCON CREST, JOHN BECK to
DALLAS and HOWARD DUFF to KL. BUT THE BEST WAS YET TO
COME: FALCON CREST WAS FLYING IN THE CLOUDY
SKY...