Spring of ´82. On USA TV, 5 SUPER SOAPS WERE
AIRED SIMULTANEOUSLY: DALLAS, KNOTS LANDING, DYNASTY,
FLAMINGO ROAD AND NEWCOMER, FALCON CREST.
FALCON
CREST, as everybody knows nowadays, replaced oil with
vineyards and the baddie with a Golden Girl female baddie
called ANGELA CHANNING, played to perfection by JANE
WYMAN, an expert in melodramas and by then, the USA
president´s ex wife. However, on its first year, FC ended
with an anticlimax (no real suspense) with the legal
split of FC between ANGELA and his nephew goody-goody
CHASE GIOBERTI (ROBERT FOXWORTH).
Meanwhile, on
the other shows:
- FLAMINGO ROAD: The
tackiest, corniest supersoap in town (until THE COLBYS came
up...) ended its life in a very sinister way, with the
mysterious murder of D. SELBY´s part, TYRONE. FIELD &
CONSTANCE got a divorce and LANE finally married SAM. On
the final scene, we saw TYRONE disguised as a monk,
in an isolated monastery, vowing revenge, presumably
dead...F.CREST recycled the plot, the actor and even then
monastery clip!! for its season 7 cliffhanger...
-
DYNASTY: The CARRINGTONS series featured BLAKE K.O.,
after falling down from a horse, out in a mountain resort,
due to a fight with Dr. NICK TOSCANNI (J. FARENTINO), who
watched him agonizing...Back in Denver, FALLON (P. SUE
MARTIN) & JEFF (J. JAMES) feared unstable CLAUDIA
(P. BELLWOOD) might have kidnapped their baby, and ALEXIS
caused his fiancé CECIL (L. BOCHNER) a heart attack in
the middle of a sex encounter...
- KNOTS
LANDING: In California, VAL finally found out the
extramarital affaire his husband was having with wicked ABBY
and left him in tears, letting "poor" GARY perplexed,
almost recovered from his drinking problem...KL was
getting more and more audience discreetly, more out of
its actors´ great playwork (T. SHACKELFORD, J. VAN ARK,
M. LEE y D. MILLS) rather than of the storylines or the
cameo appearances of some DALLAS stars like JR or
BOBBY...
- DALLAS: At the lowest point of its
history, the show presented the degeneration of the JR-SUE
ELLEN-CLIFF triangle plot, climaxing sadly with BARNES´s
suicide attempt. Just divorced from and about to remarry
JR, SUE ELLEN promised not to marry if CLIFF would
die...At the same time, BOBBY & PAM found out little
CHRISTOPHER was not JR´s son, but JEFF FARRADAY´s, a
boyfriend of KRISTIN´s. LUCY discovered she was shockingly
pregnant with his kidnapper ROGER´s baby and miss ELLIE
eventually accepted JOCK´s death, the only slightly
interesting plot on the last 15 episodes...
With such
an unspectacular and boring cliffhanger as this was,
you can easily understand DYNASTY and FC took
advantage of this minicrisis and appeal the audience of
their networks.
But DALLAS had a few aces,
especially JOCK´s testament and newcomers LOIS CHILES, JOHN
BECK and the return of incomparable MORGAN BRITTANY,
KATHERINE for her enemies...