Episode Title: Possibilities
Season 03, Episode 12
Episode 043 of 344
Written by James Houghton and
Mona Houghton
Directed by Nicholas Sgarro
Original Airdate: Thursday,
February 11th, 1982
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Richard and
Laura introduce Karen to a friend of theirs, Charles Linden, and she has her
first date, but they don't get along. Kenny has Ginger make a demo tape for a
song, and Andy Moore, another producer, encourages
Ginger to pursue a singing career. Kenny's against this, and wants Ginger to
stay home with the baby. When he finds out Ginger and Andy are working behind
his back, he's not happy, but Ginger decides to go ahead with it.
Hmmm, I know I’m starting to
sound like a broken record here, as I’ve said this about a myriad of episodes
in the past, but here with are with Possibilities
and, once again, I had completely forgotten this episode existed. As we worked our way through it, I had little
sense memory flashbacks of small details, but overall this was one of those eps
that had completely fallen out of my brain.
However, even if it’s maybe not the most exciting episode of the series,
I have to say there are still some interesting points to it that I am eager to
discuss.
For the time being, the drama of
Gary, Val, and Abby is going to be put on the back burner until we get closer
to the culmination of the third season.
This week, and get ready to clench your buttocks up as you prepare for
boredom, we’re going to focus mostly on Kenny and Ginger. But wait a minute, after all the bitching and
moaning I’ve done about these toxic bores through the last 42 episodes, maybe
the big surprise of Possibilities is
that they aren’t as boring as you
would expect when they get this episode strictly focused on them. Perhaps there’s a possibility (you see what I did there?) that they could surprise us
this week.
We open on a bird’s-eye angle
looking down at a card game. Present are
Kenny, Ginger, Richard, Laura, and some boring white guy we’ve never seen
before. Now, the credits play over this
shot and I immediately took note of the writing credits for this week, James Houghton and Mona Houghton. Now, this is
obviously not the first time or the last time that a cast member gets to pen a KL ep.
Don Murray wrote two eps in season two (Hitchhike: Part One and Hitchhike: Part Two) and of course The Plesh has given us many fine and outstanding
eps up to this point. However, this is
the first time James Houghton has contributed a script, and I also find the
name of his writing partner interesting.
Mona Houghton (pictured below), hmmm. At first I assumed this was his wife or
something, but it turns out she’s his sister.
IMDb says she is “Known for her work on The Godfather: Part II,” and my ears immediately perked up, but
then I looked up her credit and it’s for “Location Assistant,” whatever that
means. She’s also credited as a writer
for The Young and the Restless and Another World, and she has one more KL credit coming up later this season, Best Intentions, and one in the fourth
season called Encounters (incidentally,
both of these episodes are also written alongside her brother).
Now, the reason I note the
writing credits of this ep is twofold.
For one, I find it interesting that James Houghton pens an episode but
then also brings his sister along. Did
they simply work well together? Who
contributed what? Who provided more of
the story material? That’s the one thing
I find interesting, but the other thing worth noting is that, finally, Kenny
and Ginger actually have something to do this
week. If we go down the roster, they
haven’t really had a story in months.
During season two, there was the affair of Kenny and Sylvie (snore; I
didn’t say it was interesting, I just said it was there) and then Kenny and
Ginger’s reconciliation and the pregnancy storyline, yada yada yada. Well, since Erin Molly was birthed earlier
this season, this couple has really fallen by the wayside. The most exciting story they’ve had all
season was the one where Erin Molly wouldn’t stop crying, and that was a joke
that distracted us from other, interesting storylines and characters. In any case, I have to wonder if
James Houghton finally wrote his own episode because he was tired of having
nothing to do on the show. It’s a theory
I have, and of course there’s no real way to prove it, but I get the sense that
he was finally like, “Well, if you guys aren’t gonna give me anything to do,
I’ll give myself something to do,”
and so he wrote this week’s ep.
Sometimes I wonder if I should
feel bad because I insult Kenny and Ginger so much. The internet is a wide, vast forest, and
there’s a lot of material out there, but I do sometimes wonder if James Houghton or Kim Lankford could randomly stumble upon this blog and be like,
“Boy, this fag really hates our characters.”
The thing is, I’m not sure if it’s their fault or not. They almost never really get a chance to
shine or to get a significant storyline, and I don’t quite know if it’s because
the writers just never gave them the chance or if it’s because their acting
just wasn’t up to par so the writers let them fall by the wayside.
Okay, enough about all this
guessing and hypothesizing; what happens in this damn episode? Well, like I said, we open on the card game
and everyone is having a lovely time.
Karen comes walking in and I have to take a moment to say that, as much
as I love Karen, and I do, I always shudder whenever she rocks the pigtails. When does she stop doing this? I think this look disappears when we get to
season four, or at least I hope so, because it’s awful. I like everything else about her look right
here, as she’s wearing some sort of Hawaii sports jersey and just looks casual
and relaxed, but those pigtails, man, those damn pigtails, enough already with
the pigtails.
Anyway, Karen sees the boring
white guy sitting at the table and asks who he is. His name is Charles Linden and he’s played by
William Joyce. Let’s take a gander at
his IMDb page, shall we? Well, the guy
was born in 1930 and died in 1998 and, in addition to the random movies and TV
appearances on his resume, I note something very
interesting, and that’s the fact that he’ll be back on KL years later as a different character. Looks like he’ll be playing “Carl” in two
episodes from 1988, The Perfect Alibi and
A Weekend Getaway. Wow, this is interesting news. What do I call a person like this, by the
way? I call people who showed up on Dallas and KL as different characters Transmorphers, but what should I call
someone who is on KL as a different
character several times? I dunno, but I
should think of some sort of term, and if anyone has any suggestions, feel free
to leave them in the comments box. Just
for the record, this guy isn’t a Transmorpher as he doesn’t ever appear in a Dallas episode, but we will indeed be
seeing him years and years down the line turn into a different character; how
fascinating!
This guy’s a bore, but that’s
not a criticism of the episode. I think
he’s supposed to be a bore, and Karen’s storyline this week is that she decides
to give dating a shot, return to that world, and she just happens to pick a
boring white guy who is also, like, a conservative Republican and has elements
of control freak in him. In any case, he
seems nice enough at first as Karen decides to join the poker game and sits,
well, directly next to him, basically breathing on him. I guess this is supposed to demonstrate that
Karen is nervous and doesn’t know how to behave around new men, but Jesus,
girl, give the guy some space.
What about Kenny and Ginger this
week? Well, I guess Ginger is getting
bored sitting around the house and raising her little demon spawn. When one of Kenny’s singers gets sick or dies
or something, she volunteers to go to a recording session and lend her
voice. Oh yeah, this part was pretty
funny, because Lilimae hears about the sick singer and is like, “What kind of
song is it?” and Kenny almost says, “Country,” but then he stops himself and is
like, “It’s very modern.” Instead of
hiring Lilimae (who I think he might still be frustrated with for hijacking
that cool black guy last week and becoming his friend), he hires Ginger on as a
temp singer or whatever. So he takes her
to a recording session where she meets this other guy named Andy Moore.
Okay, Andy Moore. I’m about to give you a real headache, so
apologies in advance, but Andy Moore is some sort of Super Transmorpher, and
not even that, he’s a Super Duper Transmorpher.
Allow me to explain. He is played
by Philip Levien (pictured below) and will be returning for a few more KL eps as Andy Moore (Svengali,
New Beginnings, and Abby’s Choice, all from 1982), but in
addition to that he also appeared on Dallas
as not one, but two different
characters. He is in four episodes
spanning from 1985 to 1986 as Lee McHenry, however, he is also in the 1978 ep Reunion: Part One (playing Jimmy) which,
if you’ll recall, was actually the first episode of anything I discussed on this blog.
That was our first Brief Dallas Interlude
and it introduced us to Gary and Val (or should I say David Ackroyd Gary and
The Real Val), so it’s significant to television history for that reason. So, in conclusion, not only does Philip Levien appear on both series as different characters, but he also appears as
different characters within Dallas and one
of those episodes was our very first Brief Dallas
Interlude, so this guy gets some sort of a special medal and a key to the
city. I think he really ought to meet
the President and shake his hand, as well.
Andy Moore clearly has a boner
for Ginger, and since I’ve blocked out most of the Kenny/Ginger footage from my
first viewing of the series, I can’t remember if this leads anywhere or not,
but I get the feeling it will, like maybe he’ll try to have an affair with her
or something; I’ll keep my eyes open as we proceed forward. But anyway, Ginger records a song and, quite
honestly, it’s not bad. That’s right,
I’m complimenting something Ginger-related this week; can you believe it? I think I’m also grateful to see the show
moving away from those awful public domain not-really-music stock musical
effects they’ve been using and get to some real singing (Ciji is just around
the corner….), but I also just kinda dig this song. Country isn’t necessarily my bag, baby, but I
can still appreciate some country songs, and I’m gonna say it, I like this
one. Who wrote it? I’d really like to know this but, as is the
case with so many of my KL questions,
I really have no way to find out at the moment.
I almost wonder if Kim Lankford wrote this song. Make no mistake, it’s not a masterpiece and
I’d rather listen to Ciji/Cathy sing any day of the week, but it’s pretty good,
pretty catchy, and her voice is actually good.
Now, just when you start thinking I’m getting way too complimentary of
Ginger, I do have to interject with a comment My Beloved Grammy made that I
found hilarious, but I’ll also add the caveat that it’s not particularly
nice. So my apologies go out in advance
to Kim Lankford if she has somehow stumbled upon this blog and wants to see
what I have to say. Kim, I’m sure you’re
a lovely human being, a real nice lady, but as Ginger was singing in this
scene, My Beloved Grammy opined, “She’s not such a bad singer as long as you
put a bag over her head,” and I almost peed my pants and immediately put that
little comment into my notes. Forgive
me, Kim, for My Beloved Grammy said it, not me.
Back to Karen for awhile. Even though Charles is a bore, I like this
story because it feels real, the forty year old woman who has kids and has lost
her husband awkwardly trying to feel her way around the dating world
again. And again I reiterate that
Charles is supposed to be boring, so
the actor is doing his job well (let’s see how I feel about him when he returns
in six years as “Carl”). One scene I
really enjoyed comes between Diana and Karen and takes place in Karen’s
bedroom. See, first Karen says she
doesn’t want Diana to wear her blouse tonight because she wants to wear it
herself. Then Diana finds Karen sobbing
in her bedroom and she’s like, “What’s wrong?”
All choked up and full of tears, Karen says, “I have a date.” I like the mix of funny and sad in this
scene, because the scene is actually rather amusing, but my heart also goes out
to Karen because I know how weird and mixed up she is feeling.
I also gotta say Diana is being
unusually supportive in this episode.
She is nice to Karen the whole time, nice to Charles aside from some
friendly arguing later on (more on that later), and doesn’t throw a hissy fit
or act like a bitch about anything.
Jeez, Diana, are you in there?
Considering how cunty she’s going to act when Karen starts dating the amazing and hilarious and unbelievably
charismatic Mack next season, I’m not sure why she’s being so friendly to
boring white guy Charles, but there you go; I guess she’s in a friendly mood
this week.
On Karen and Charles' first date,
we immediately see that he’s the controlling type. Now, make no mistake, he’s not controlling in
the abusive sense, he’s not like Tom Drogan from IT or anything like that, but he does that “ordering food for the
date” thing that I really hate and you can tell Karen doesn’t like it
either. He orders them some sort of
fancy dish, and he just sorta says Karen will have the same thing. One thing this episode does a few times that
I liked is make use of those “flips.”
You know what I’m talking about?
It’s like when we cut from scene to scene, the image flips, so we know
some time has passed, yet we’re still following the same characters in the same
location. There’s a flip when Ginger is
singing and there’s another flip here on the date.
Their next date is smaller, to a
greasy looking hamburger place where Charles again orders for Karen, this time
a burger and fries and a milkshake. As a
neurotic fag who eats exactly the same food every day and is obsessed with his
weight, I can tell you that a man ordering me a burger and fries and a milkshake
would be an instant turn off. What are
you, trying to turn me into a whale? I’m
kinda surprised Karen doesn’t make mention of the sheer heart-attack inducing
caloric intake that he is throwing at her without even asking if she wants any
of that food.
Oh yeah, there’s also a real
cute scene between Michael and Karen a little later in the episode where he is
feeling blue and he admits that he doesn’t want her to go out with anyone
else. “Things are fine just the way they
are,” he says, and I gotta give some kudos to Pat Petersen, who not only grows
up to be a smoking hot babe that I want to do vile, possibly illegal things to
a few years down the line, but he was also a pretty realistic and endearing kid
actor. It’s something about his voice, I
think; it’s rather husky and he always sounds very genuine when he speaks. I gotta say bad kid acting can really ruin a
scene, and I can’t think of really any bad kid actors on KL, can you? Jason (in all his incarnations) is kinda
non-existent, but he’s never bad. I feel
the same way about Brian, as well; he’s just kinda there, but Olivia is great and she obviously only gets better
and better as we move along. Whoever
cast the kids for KL should get some
sort of special medal or a blowjob for their work.
In any case, the dates with
Charles come to a pretty fast end after Karen has him over for a family dinner
near the ending of the episode. Another
great scene, very perceptive, and filmed well, with Michele’s face doing all
the acting that needs to be done. See,
Diana is arguing with Charles about how the Equal Rights Amendment is a good
thing, and Charles is like, “Oh, I’m an old white straight Republican man and I
hate all people who are different!” The
camera just slowly goes in on Karen’s face and you can tell that she realizes
this is not going to work. How can she
be with a man who doesn’t defend the Equal Rights Amendment? It only gets worse when she sees him out
after dinner and he’s like, “Boy, your kids sure don’t understand being seen
and not heard.” Great scene here, by the way,
cuz I like how Karen doesn’t get mad or anything. She’s just like, “You don’t really believe
that, do you?” When he asks her to stick
to private restaurants for their dates, she just says, “No, it’s not going to
work,” and bravo Karen for your honesty.
What I appreciate, however, is that she’s very gentle, very kind, she
doesn’t say, “Oh, you’re an old white straight Republican,” but instead just
sorta lets him down easy.
And another thing I appreciate
is that, despite the fun I’ve poked at this character, he is never portrayed as
a bad person. Even the dialogue at the dinner table is not
done in such a way as to say, “Look at this awful man!” Instead, it’s just a matter of a simple
dialogue, and even though he’s a smidge controlling of Karen on the dates, he’s
never portrayed as evil or a bad person.
It’s just a situation where these two people are not compatible. I feel other shows would make him very
extreme, a very nasty character who is easy to hate. But KL is
better written than other shows, so they play it more realistically and more
subtly.
Also, and I think this is very
important to note, we are seeing Karen going through the natural stages of the
grieving process over the course of this season. This will finally culminate in what I
remember as a season highlight, Letting Go, and that’s still a few episodes down the line, but we’ve seen her lose
Sid and go through pretty much all the classic stages, most notably anger when
she lashed out at Gary in Aftermath. Now I think she’s starting to work her way up
to acceptance, and she’ll get there pretty soon, and going out on a few dates
with Charles is the first part of that, but she’s not quite ready yet. I acknowledge that it’s really only been a
few months since Sid died, so probably in real life Karen wouldn’t be trying
dating yet, but let us remember that this is
a TV show and things have to be expedited a bit, lest we end up watching
every boring bit of minutia of these characters’ lives. The way it’s presented throughout this
season, for me, feels very real.
Back to Kenny and Ginger. Ginger impresses lots of people at the record
place with her singing, but for Kenny, this was just a temp thing. Now that she’s finished, he’d like her to go
back home and raise that adorable Erin
Molly that I really don’t hate with
an unnecessarily seething passionate rage (this is sarcasm; I really despise
Erin Molly and her stupid name). See,
Kenny is an old fashioned kinda guy, and he’s like, “Ginger, you have a vagina
and you were make for making babies!
Stop trying to do silly things like think and just get back into the
kitchen!” Ginger argues that Kenny has
the nice house, the great kid, but he also needs
his work; it adds that extra ingredient to his life that’s so essential, and
she wants that, too. In all seriousness, I’m
obviously exaggerating Kenny’s misogynist attitude and I do understand where
he’s coming from. He doesn’t think that
they had a baby just so they can shuffle the baby off to nannies and
babysitters while the parents go off to work, and I think that’s a good point,
but I also see Ginger’s point. As fun as
it is to stay home all day wiping a baby’s ass, a lady’s gotta get out and
explore the world a bit or she’ll go stir crazy.
Okay, we’re up to 1982, so
obviously we’re still really early in the run, but this ep got me thinking as I
drove home from My Beloved Grammy’s house, the love of KL pouring through my veins as I operated the motor vehicle, loudly
screaming the sounds of the theme song.
I started thinking about the change in attitudes towards women and
feminism from 1979 to 1993 and how, really, we will see that reflected on KL.
Let’s flash back to season one for a minute, and I’ll remind you that
during that year, all the women stayed at home and tended house (or went out to
bars to get raped, in the case of Laura) while the men went off to work in
order to bring home the bacon (EDIT: Only as I went through this paragraph to get it ready for posting did I realize I forgot all about Ginger being a kindergarten teacher, which only helps to demonstrate how quickly any Kenny/Ginger footage just falls right out of my brain). By the
time we reach the series finale in 1993 (in a few decades, if the internet even
still exists by the time we get there and if I am still alive to continue maintaining
this blog), all of the women on the show, if I recall correctly, are gainfully
employed as successful career women in their own right, often with
extraordinary power. Throughout that fourteen
year span, the world changes and that change is reflected on the series. We have already seen that change begin to
take place even at this very early juncture in the series. After all, in season two Laura got her own
job in real estate, and of course Valene is taking her college courses and
becoming a writer and this will wind up paying off for her very well, Karen is
now in charge of running Knots Landing Motors, Abby is a working single mother
(maybe not the ideal role model, but I’m just pointing out the example) and now
we see Ginger trying to expand beyond the confines of her boring house and
motherhood, as well.
Anyway, when Kenny puts his foot
down on Ginger and says, “No, you’re a mother, not a singer,” she decides to
take matters into her own hands, so she calls up the Super Duper Transmorpher,
Andy Moore, and arranges a meeting with him.
I think she gets Lilimae or someone to take care of Erin Molly for
awhile as she goes down to this guy’s office.
In any case, this episode ends
on a cryptic note, as eps have been doing a lot recently (and I like it!). In this instance, when Kenny sees Ginger in the
recording booth at his work, getting ready to sing another, new song, he
desperately pleads one last time with her to go home and stop all this singing
foolishness. Well, Ginger says no and
she gets her ass back into the booth and starts belting out this song, which I
also kinda liked, by the way, and we just sorta end the episode with her
singing and Kenny looking frustrated.
Not a bad way to go out, don’t you think?
Now, for the life of me, I can’t
recall if this storyline actually goes anywhere. Similar to the J.R. crossover last season
with Designs and the whole energy
efficient engine and what have you, I think this might be another storyline
that just sorta gets forgotten about, though I could be mistaken. The ending of this episode certainly sets a
tone like, “Get ready, Ginger’s gonna become a big singer and Kenny ain’t gonna
like it,” but I just feel like it doesn’t actually unfold that way. Remember, though, that there are a lot of
episodes and I’ve only watched the series once, so I could have forgotten the
details.
Okay, what of Possibilities? Well, I’ll say that My Beloved Grammy said it
was her favorite episode of that particular disk (a disk that also included The Rose and the Briar, The Three Sisters, and Power Play) and at first I thought I
disagreed with her. Immediately after
finishing the disk, I thought Power Play would
be my top episode of those four, but now I think I actually did like this
episode best, and that’s a bit surprising considering the high content of Kenny
and Ginger, my two absolute least favorite cast members in the entire fourteen
year run of KL. But I gotta say that either James Houghton or
Mona Houghton or both really did put in the effort to give these two characters
something to do this week and I felt like they were almost interesting in this episode, and that’s a pretty high
compliment to pay. Also, the Karen
storyline was pretty good, too, and gave Michele Lee a chance to demonstrate
her excellent acting skills. So, while
not a masterpiece and not one of KL’s
most unforgettable episodes, this was a pretty pleasant surprise and I would
have to say I thoroughly enjoyed Possibilities.
I don’t know if I will be able
to say the same about next week’s ep, but let’s discuss that when we discuss
it, as Karen receives a visit from none other than Mama Bluth herself, Jessica Walter, in Reunion.
Love love love love! Please keep these up!
ReplyDeleteOk, here is my vote for someone who shows up within the same series as a different character...Intratransmorpher :)
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't worry about Houghton and Lankford. If they haven't learned by now that Googling their time on KL only leads to heartbreak and wrath, they get what they deserve.
ReplyDelete