Episode Title: China Dolls
Season 03, Episode 21
Episode 052 of 344
Written by Joseph B. Wallenstein
Directed by Joseph B. Wallenstein
Original Airdate: Thursday,
April 29th, 1982
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Joe needs a date
for a faculty dinner. Kenny suggests he take Ginger, so he does. Richard is
ready to go home, and tells Laura he'd like to be part of the baby's birth.
Laura goes to see his doctor who tells
her only to go back to him if she's there to stay, but not if it's out of pity.
Gary and Abby continue their affair, but he feels so guilty that he ends it.
However, he keeps watching Abby from the window, and Val is extremely
suspicious. Val asks Gary if they're having an affair, and he locks himself
into the bathroom. Val then goes to see Abby, who tells her "I'm not
saying we are having an affair, and I'm not saying we're not. I am saying that
I can have him anytime I want." Val slaps Abby. Later, Gary sees Abby and
kisses her.
Welcome to China Dolls! I think now would be a good time to point out
that we are officially entering a time in the show where I will no longer
immediately be able to remember what an episode is about just by hearing the
title. For whatever reason, with seasons
one and two, prior to this viewing, if you said the titles to me, I would
pretty much immediately remember what the episode was about. With Community Spirit, I’d be like, “Oh yeah, that’s the one where J.R. comes to open up
oil drilling.” With Let Me Count the Ways, I’d say, “That’s the one where Karen almost
has an affair.” With The Lie, I’d be like, “Laura gets
raped.” With Chance of a Lifetime, I’d say, “That’s the one with Brian Dennehy where Richard loses his job.” With The Three Sisters, I’d be like, “That’s
the one weirdo haunted house episode with the ghost sisters.” But now we are reaching a point where the
titles are just titles to me, where I’ll start up an episode and really not
remember what’s in store based on the title.
I think Night marks the last
episode that I started and was like, “Oooh, this is Night, omigod!” This is
probably just an effect of having so many damn episodes. When you’re within the first two or three
seasons, you have less episodes, so it’s easier to remember them by title and
all that, but it gets harder to remember as you move along.
My point is that I felt rather
fresh and virginal as China Dolls
started up, but I knew it was gonna be a good one, especially based on that
thirty second preview which showed a classic
exchange between Val and Abs that will forever go down in the annals of
primetime soap history (we’ll get to it).
After the thirty second preview and the opening credits, we actually
open on a shot of, well, china dolls sitting on a shelf. Not only are we looking at these creepy china
dolls on their shelf, but this is where the episode title is displayed on
screen as well as the episode credits.
Too literal? Hmmm, maybe, but I
like that we’re getting started right away with a theme and we are seeing something
physical to help us represent that theme.
Okay, we pan out from the china
dolls and realize we are in a room. A
hotel room? A motel room? An apartment room? At first we’re not sure, but eventually we
realize this is a hotel (and it seems to be a pretty nice one; I mean, how many
hotels decorate their rooms with freaking creepy ass china dolls?) and that it’s the meeting place for Abs and Gary and
their debauchery and torrid affair. Now
might be a good time to mention that I love seeing people having affairs on TV
and in movies. I’m not really sure why,
because I do have certain moral objections to carrying on long, ongoing affairs
(remember that I’m gay and our standards for what is cheating and what is not
in a relationship can be very flexible, and I certainly don’t adhere to those
heteronormative standards; I'm not a proponent of SUPER DUPER STRICT MONOGHOMOUS relationships but I am a proponent of honesty and always telling your partner the truth), but for whatever reason I just love seeing them on
the TV screen. Maybe it’s because it
just looks so damn fun? I dunno. So I wanna make sure to stress that I believe
it is wrong for Gary and Abs to have
this affair behind Val’s back, and I believe Val deserves to be treated better
by her husband because she has always been a good wife to him. At the same time, I just love watching this,
and I love everything about it. For me,
this is nighttime drama at its finest, and when Abs and Gary start making out
and he picks her up and carries her onto the bed and throws her down and the
saxophone kicks in, I’m in Heaven. I
wanna make special mention of that saxophone, because I love it. It’s not
an ‘80s nighttime soap torrid love affair unless you throw some saxophone
in there, and that’s final.
This is a significant way to
begin the episode because it signals a few important things to us viewers. First of all, it shows that Abs and Gary’s
little roll in the sack last week was not an isolated incident, that there was
no off-screen dialogue where Gary said, “I think we should just forget this
ever happened and never do it again.”
Nope, instead the two have chosen to continue carrying on, and the fact
that they’ve even got the hotel room ready to go and they seem very at home in it tells me they are
getting good and comfortable about doing this.
Not
too long after this, we have a lovely little scene between Val and Lilimae in
which Lilimae, in classically
direct fashion, asks Val how long she’s going to allow this to keep going
on. She never comes right out and says,
“Gary’s having an affair,” but she’s like, “Ooooooooooh, breakfast meetings,
lunch meetings, dinner meetings, I’m surprised they aren’t putting on weight,”
at which point I turned to My Beloved Grammy and said, “They’re burning it off
with all the sex.” I’m really very
witty, you see.
Anyway,
Val says something about how, “I have a very delicate situation on my hands,”
and how she doesn’t wish to discuss it anymore.
I know I tend to focus on the micro-details of certain scenes rather
than what’s going on in the plot and dialogue and characters, and I’m gonna do
it again here. I love the fact that Val is cleaning the windows while this scene
takes place. It’s one of those small
details that helps to keep KL grounded
even as affairs and adultery are going on all around us. When on Dallas
would you ever see someone using Windex to clean their windows while
carrying on a conversation? All the
conversations on Dallas were, to
paraphrase Patrick Duffy, “In boardrooms and bedrooms.” On KL,
things always have a way of feeling familiar with me, and it’s the small things
like this that help to capture that.
So
to keep you all up to date, let’s remember that Lilimae is well aware of what’s
going on between Abs and Gary (or at least she looked out the window at like
two in the morning back in Acts of Love
and saw that Gary was staying late at Abby’s house), but she hasn’t told Val
yet. I think I understand her reticence;
she knows that Val will be absolutely crushed if she just says, “I saw them at
Abby’s house really late the other night when you weren’t home,” so she’s sorta
feeling her way around the situation. I
also think it’s worth noting that Lilimae is starting to change from mostly
comic relief in the background into one of the main players (she’ll be in the
scrolling credits next season) and we are starting to see her really
incorporate into the storylines at this point, and we are getting to see Julie Harris start to show off her dramatic chops.
I’m very excited about where all this is leading.
Gary
and Abs pretty much fall into the classic trap of losing all their discretion
and forgetting all about tact. See,
Uncle Joe is hanging around Knots Landing Motors because he needs to find a
date for some faculty dinner (we’ll get to his less interesting storyline a
little later), so he’s thinking of asking Abs out. However, just as he’s approaching Abs to ask
her, Gary comes bursting out of his office door and, speaking really loudly,
almost yelling, nearly going so far as to use a loudspeaker or maybe broadcast
it over the intercom for all workers and customers to hear, he goes, “Oh, Abby,
about Friday night….” Then he realizes
Uncle Joe is standing right in front of him so Abs quickly tires to rectify the
situation and is like, “Oh, that made up business thing I just invented right
this second? Yeah, that’s what we’re
talking about!” Uncle Joe’s eyes look
very sly and we know he’s getting clued in to what’s really going on.
Gary
has some hilarious moments this week and that’s the first one, although it’s
minor compared to his masterpiece, his piece de resistance, which shows up
closer to the ending of the ep. This is
pretty much a plot device to get Uncle Joe smart about the affair, but I just
love how flippant and careless Gary is about this. This affair’s been going on for, what, a
week? And he’s already bursting out of
offices and going, “Oh, Abby, about Friday night, when I plan to come over and
put my penis in you again….”
While
we’re at Knots Landing Motors, I wanna take a little side road and discuss
something I keep forgetting to bring up.
Remember how season two ended with that mysterious moustached fellow
glaring while working on cars at Knots Landing Motors and this all led up to
Sid’s brakes failing and him taking that big plunge off the cliff? Well, this whole season, every couple of
episodes, My Beloved Grammy has been like, “We still haven’t figured out what
happened to that guy who messed with Sid’s car,” and I have to be like, “Don’t
worry, it’s coming.” But only after she
has brought it up so much have I realized that they really do just forget all
about that for all of season three, don’t they?
We’ve have lots of Knots Landing Motors footage throughout season three,
but it’s always been interoffice dramas and flirtations between Gary and Abs;
they’ve never gotten back to the conspiracy against Sid. Now, if I remember correctly, they do return to this and wrap it up in a
nice tidy bow as we enter season four, so it’s not like the storyline is
forgotten. But I just think it’ s
interesting that it literally vanished for the entirety of season three before
being concluded in season four; in my memories it was more of an ongoing
thing. Do you think the writers just
forgot about it throughout this season and then realized they should probably
give it some closure with the next season?
Or do you think the writers really were playing the long game, the
really long game, and saying, “We’ll bring this up in the climax of season two
and then not wrap it up until the beginning of season four.” Readers, please gimme your opinions, cuz I
would love to hear them.
Anyway,
later that night, still at Knots Landing Motors, Uncle Joe pays Gary another
visit and this scene has something in it that got me real excited and harkened
all the way back to our first Brief Dallas
Interlude, Reunion: Part One. Remember how when we first met David Ackyord
Gary in Las Vegas and he said how he had not just a drinking problem but also a
gambling problem? And remember how I
asked if this would ever be brought up or mentioned again ever? Well it is, right here! In this scene, Uncle Joe asks Gary if he had
a gambling problem at some point and Gary says yes. I was so happy and got so excited! I was like, “Good on the writers for not
forgetting about that,” because I was convinced that they had. Uncle
Joe uses gambling as an analogy for the affair.
He’s like, “You know, inherently, the gambler always loses because the
gambler always wants to lose. How crazy
is that?” Obviously he’s saying that by
gambling with Abby, Gary is going to lose Val, and when Gary’s like, “What are
you trying to say, guy from Graveyard Shift?” Uncle Joe is like, “I think I just said it.” This is Uncle Joe’s coolest scene yet, and
I’ve gotten moderately more interested in his character than I was before just
because of how much I liked this scene and this speech.
Oh
yeah, and one more thing about the small details before I move on to a new
scene. I really like how this scene
doesn’t just begin with Uncle Joe and Gary talking, but instead takes some time
to show us a worker interacting with some grumpy old man who is dissatisfied
about something or other. The two are
talking about the guy’s car and the quality of the service, and the old guy is
getting kinda irritated and so Gary comes into the scene to help diffuse the
situation, and Uncle Joe follows after him.
See, on most shows they would just open with Uncle Joe being like, “Hi,
Gary, I wanna talk to you,” but here we get some small extra details regarding
the business of Knot Landing Motors, and I like that.
Later,
Gary gets home and receives a firm reminder of what a lovely wife Val is,
because she has got him a year’s subscription to Fortune and tells him, “If you’re gonna be a big business man, you
gotta know what’s going on in the world of business.” Yikes.
Then they hug and Gary’s face looks super guilty (even though earlier in
the ep he declared to Abs that he was feeling, “No guilt whatsoever;” we see
how his emotions are at war in this moment) and he says, sorta sad, “What would
I do without you, Val?” Val’s all like,
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that.”
It’s a painfully uncomfortable moment.
Thanks
to Val’s gift and Gary’s newly found feelings of guilt, there is a brief stall
in the affair of Gary and Abs, a moment where Gary decides, very very briefly,
that they should call the whole thing off.
They meet up at their usual little hotel room to shag, but instead of
shagging, Gary calls a halt to the affair, saying it was a mistake and they’ve
gotta end it now. I didn’t remember any
of this, and what struck me most about this scene was the very end of it. See, Abs tries to
act all cool and distant, like it’s no big deal that Gary wants to end it, and
they part peacefully, but then we get this really tiny little moment after Gary
leaves where Abs starts to cry! Omigod,
this part was awesome, and what made it so awesome was that it was super
fast! Again, the writers and director
and actors could have played this multiple ways. They could have just had Gary leave the scene
and then we cut to a new scene, or perhaps, for a more “soapy” ending, they
could have had Abs get either a wicked smile, like she’s hatching an evil plot,
or get really over-the-top angry (“Two , four, six, eight, who do I
annihilate?”), but instead they just give her like, one microsecond to cry and then
they cut to a new scene.
What
does this mean? Why show this? Well, I’m gonna say right now that I actually
believe Abs does love Gary. I don’t think she just has a lust for him or
some need for him as a conquest or as a way to hurt Val. I think, since moving on to the cul-de-sac,
she has been in love with Gary and I actually believe she stays in love with
Gary all the way until she leaves the show in 1989. Maybe some would disagree with me, but I
think part of what makes Abs such a fabulous character is her intricacies. She is never just presented as some evil,
adulterous bitch; she has layers. She is
often deceitful and a liar and a schemer, but then she does have genuine feelings and emotions, like when she cried
because of breaking the coffee cup Sid gave her (what episode was that, again?)
or in the way she loves her children or the classic
Olivia/cocaine storyline that we’re gonna
get a few seasons down the line (prepare for my write-ups on those in,
oh, about three years). So I think she’s
truly, legitimately upset that Gary wants to end this affair, and that’s why
she cries. From an artistic standpoint,
I love the choice made to barely focus on her crying. They don’t make a big deal out of it, just
sorta show a second of it before we cut away to a new scene. Great stuff.
This
episode has a theme of windows running through it that pretty much sets the
stage for every single episode of Melrose Place ever made. Remember how every
week on that show, we would have the characters gazing out their windows and
being like, “Who’s going home with so and so?!”
Well, it’s happening here, too, because Gary can’t get enough of staring
out the living room window and intently watching Abby’s house, and it leads to the
absolute most gut bustingly hysterical scene of the entire episode, a scene so
funny that I laughed so hard I couldn’t even follow all the dialogue for a few
minutes afterwards. It’s sad to say that
my mere description of this scene can’t possibly do justice to how campy and
hilarious and wonderful it is, though I shall try.
Basically,
Gary’s continuing to obsessively stare out the window, which worries Val. He’s also just acting like a psycho in
general, jumping up off the couch and saying, “Let’s go out!” Then seconds later he’s like, “Never mind, I
don’t want to go out.” But then he hears
Abs arriving home, her car door slamming, and he leaps up like his ass is on
fire and frantically says to Val, “I have to go talk to Abs about something!” Shrieking Bernard Herrmann violins start
to overpower the soundtrack while Gary runs for dear life across the street,
screaming, “Abby!” Then he reaches her
front door and starts beating the hell out of it and screaming, “Abby, open up,
damn it!” When she answers the door, he
comes flying into the living room all sweaty and crazy, convinced that she has
brought home another man to shag, but instead it turns out to be some old lady
who, presumably, babysits the children or something. So Abs is like, “Mrs. Old Lady, this is my
neighbor, Gary, please say hello to this sweaty, insane man who just sprinted
across the street to pound violently on my door and please ignore those
shrieking violins.” Like
I said, I probably can’t represent the sheer genius of this scene or properly
explain why it made me laugh so hard, except to say that it is so over-the-top and Gary is just losing
his cool so utterly and completely and it’s just hilarious to me how obvious he
is acting towards Val; at this point, there is just no conceivable way that she
can’t figure out what is going on.
But
anyway, Gary says to Abs, “I can’t stand the thought of you with another man,”
and Abs points out that she wasn’t with another man; she was with her kids and
some old lady. But then she kicks him in
the balls real nice by saying, “But I will be with another man soon.” Gary can’t handle the thought; it’s tearing
him apart. How much longer until he
gives in to his carnal nature once again?
Well,
not too much longer, but before he does that, we get that fabulous
confrontation between Val and Abs. This
is the scene I mentioned earlier that was a classic when it aired, is a classic
today, and shall always and forever remain a classic. See, after finally deciding that she is
damned mad and she’s not gonna take it anymore, Val marches across the street
to Abby’s house to finally speak with her, and she lets herself in and she
slams the door behind her and she says, “Are you having an affair with my
husband?” Abs skirts the issue for
awhile by insulting Val a lot rather than saying yes or no, but then finally
she gets to deliver this classic line: “I’m not saying we’re having an affair,
and I’m not saying we’re not, but I am saying I can have him anytime I
want.” Then Val slaps Abs, which was
fabulous and marks, I think, the second slap Abs has been on the receiving end
of (the first was from Laura in Moments of Truth last season). Yes, ladies
and gentlemen, I think any KL fan
should know this scene very well and it will always be remembered fondly. I think it’s an important one because this is
when the jig is finally up between Val and Abs.
Remember how I noted through season two and most of three how strange it
was to see Val and Abs interacting and being rather friendly with each other? Well, I think this scene marks the end of
that; for the rest of time, the two shall remain sworn enemies.
Oh
yeah, and I don’t want to write about this whole episode and skip out on a
fabulous little exchange between Abs and Karen.
I feel like I haven’t mentioned Karen much this week, and that’s because
she’s sorta hanging out in the background throughout the ep, but she gets one
killer line, and it’s right here near the end.
She comes by to tell Abs that Richard will be returning from the
hospital soon and would she please go by the house and water his plants for
him, straighten things out, make it look pretty over there, you know what I
mean? Abs doesn’t want to and is like,
“Karen, I’m really busy with something involving my vagina and I just can’t be
bothered,” and then Karen, my beloved Karen, who is never afraid to stand up to
someone and be totally direct, says, “I forgot, your specialty is wrecking
homes, not straightening them out.” Oh
God yes, go Karen, I love you so much.
Anyway, these words are enough for Abs to take the Avery key and agree
to go over and water some plants.
To
set the stage for our climax scene (and I do mean that quite literally), Abs is
doing some sexy plant watering at the Avery house in her incredibly short shorts (they are red and
I am pretty certain that this shot of her doing some sexy watering will make
its way into the scrolling credits next season) while Gary looks out the window
and yearns for her. Finally, he can’t
take it anymore, those short shorts are just too short and he can’t merely stare out this window any longer, so
he removes himself from his home and marches over to the Avery house to
shag Abby again. He enters the house,
she spins around, the two stare longingly at each other, waiting for that
saxophone to kick in again, and once it does, they can’t resist each other any
longer and fall back into each other’s adulterous arms, marking the fabulous
ending to our episode. Oh yeah, I also
wanna note the fact that this shag takes place in the Avery house. They are now reaching the point where their
loins are burning for each other so hard that they can’t even wait to do it in
their own homes or in a hotel; they must do it right here in somebody else’s
home, all very Body Heat style, wouldn't you agree? God, I love it.
Okay,
so that’s the end of the episode, but don’t worry, cuz we’ve still got other
characters to cover, some more interesting than others. I guess I’ll start with the less interesting
ones, although even they are sorta interesting,
and that would be Uncle Joe and Ginger.
Okay, remember I said sorta interesting,
and that’s about as far a compliment as I can throw Ginger. I’m still itching for her and Kenny to leave
town (just one more season!), but she’s not too bad this week, and I mean, at
least she’s doing something. The fact that Kenny and Ginger remain in the
scrolling credits and yet are given so little to do (remember how they just
disappeared for Night?) remains this
weird thing where you know the writers are, in general, not even bothering to
give them anything to do, so at least this week they’re making an effort.
Anyway,
an early scene is this ep shows Uncle Joe in the kitchen getting a phonecall
from Lorraine. You all remember
Lorraine, right? No? You don’t remember the incredibly boring and
forgettable lady who came into town and marred the episode Letting Go? Well anyway,
when Uncle Joe first got this phone call, I was like, “Oh no, don’t tell me
she’s coming back for another episode!”
I remembered looking at her IMDb and seeing she just had that one KL credit, but for a minute I still got
nervous. Fortunately, she’s just calling
to tell him she won’t be coming to town and she won’t be appearing in any more
episodes. By the way, am I remembering
incorrectly, or didn’t these two split up in Letting Go? Wasn’t that the
arc of their storyline that week?
Deciding they weren’t meant to be together? So what are they doing talking on the phone
this week? In any case, it doesn’t
matter, as it’s just a plot device to get Uncle Joe looking for a date.
Okay,
so he tries a few people, including Abs (that’s the scene where Gary busts out
and says, “About Friday night”), but finally he settles on Ginger. Kenny’s cool with it and says, “We’ve got a
real ‘80s marriage over here.” I always
love whenever characters refer to the decade they’re inhabiting, and the last
time we had someone do that was back in season two when Abs was talking to her
ex-husband and said, “Come on, Jeff, this is the 1980s.” I always love that and I’m gonna keep my ears
open for more of it. But anyway, since
Kenny and Ginger are boring and haven’t gotten a storyline since Possibilities (which Kenny wrote
himself), they are totally cool with Uncle Joe taking out Ginger.
This
storyline was weird for me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Were the writers considering getting these
two together? Or were they thinking of
having Ginger run off and have an affair of her own? As far as I remember, Kenny and Ginger stay
together until they leave the show and there’s no more adultery on either end,
but Ginger and Andy Moore in Possibilities
combined with her and Uncle Joe this week make me wonder what’s going
on. Now, I’m not just saying this
because of the fact that Uncle Joe takes her out; I think it’s understood that
this is just a sorta friendly date because he needs a date for this faculty
dinner thing; I’m referring to a later scene.
After
the faculty dinner (which we thankfully don’t have to see; we’re too busy
following Gary and Val and Abs for most of the ep), Uncle Joe drives Ginger home,
but before dropping her off, they have this conversation about romance and
dating. Ginger goes on about how she
wants Uncle Joe to kiss her, even though she knows logically that she’s happily
married and has a beautiful daughter (these are her words, not mine). Uncle Joe, like, tenderly kisses her hand or
something, but I don’t think they kiss on the lips, or if they do, I forgot
about it. In any case, it’s a strange
little scene and Ginger’s dialogue about missing her dating years made me
wonder if perhaps the writers were considering cooking up an adultery plot for
her (perhaps with Andy Moore?) before abandoning it. Or hell, maybe Ginger does have an affair in season four and I just clear forgot about
it; I guess we’ll have to proceed forward to find out.
That’s
it for that storyline, but the one I like much better this week involves my
beloved Richard and Laura. We get quite
a bit of Laura visiting Richard at his new sanitarium this week, and it’s good
stuff. I remind you that this looks like
one of those fun, friendly sanitariums where you are free to pretty much just
hang out and do whatever you want, so for most of their visits, Richard and
Laura are walking around the grounds, which are vast and lovely. Also, Laura meets a fellow sanitarium resident
named Nicholas, and I note this only because I discovered some interesting
facts about the actor who plays Nicholas.
His name is Barry Cutler and as soon as I saw him, I was like, “I
recognize that guy.” Well, he did appear
in an episode of the landmark work of demented television genius, 7th Heaven, and while I have seen every episode of that
show (not kidding), I don’t remember him from that. I’ve also seen Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo several thousand times, mostly because
it’s one of my dad’s favorite movies, but I don’t recall him in that,
either. What struck me when I looked at
his IMDb was that he’s already been in two
KL eps before this one, playing different characters. It says he was in Chance of a Lifetime as “Counterperson” and The Loudest Word as “Hot Dog Vendor.” I remember none of these, do you? Where would there have even been a hot dog vendor in The Loudest Word? You’ll all remember that was back in season
two and was that bizarre one-off episode where Val got cancer that was never
mentioned again ever, and didn’t most of that ep take place in a hospital? Was there a hot dog stand in the
hospital? In any case, I remember
neither of these other characters he portrayed, but by being in three eps as a
different character in each, Barry Cutler is officially A Tangled Knot.
I
liked this little character a lot, by the way, and I think he’s supposed to be
a Nam vet, because when he comes up to say hi to Richard and Laura, he sorta
drifts off into his own world and mentions opening the doors and finding the
bodies of, I think, dead babies or something.
As soon as he mentioned that, I immediately thought of Nam, but if you
disagree, please tell me. Oh yeah, and
he also mentions something about, “Their faces looking like china dolls,” again
calling back to the title of this ep.
The
bulk of the Laura/Richard storyline this week involves Laura wrestling with how
involved she wants to be in Richard’s life and whether she should move out of
the Kristin/Dallas apartment and move
back in with Richard. She talks to
Richard’s doctor, who tells her if she’s gonna move back in with him, she’d
better make it for good, that the very worst thing she could do is move back
in, get his hopes up, and then leave again and crush his spirits. See, Richard’s insurance is about to run out
and so he’ll have to return home, and should that be alone or with Laura as his
supporter? Clearly Laura has a lot of
thinking to do.
I
really love all this stuff. In fact, I’m
tempted to say I love it even more than the Gary/Val/Abs stuff, but I
dunno. It might just be my love affair
with Richard and Laura and their tumultuous relationship. I could probably watch a show that was
entirely about these two and had no other characters; there’s something about
their complexities that is just endlessly watchable for me. I also just admire how well written it
is. The writers are continuing to walk a
difficult tightrope because it was only two eps ago that Richard went
completely crazy and held Laura hostage with a gun. In another show, it would feel bizarre or
stupid to have Laura and him calmly interacting again just two weeks after
that, but in KL it feels organic and
realistic, and I think that’s a testament to the honest way that Constance and
The Plesh portray their characters.
There’s
also a fabulous little scene between Laura and Karen a little bit later. This takes place in the Avery kitchen and
involves Laura accidentally breaking a gift that Nicholas gave her and asked
her to give to Richard. After smashing
this gift, Laura has a little freakout on Karen and says, “I should never have
listened to you,” and starts to talk about how confused she is about Richard
and so on. Now, I was a bit confused at
first because I briefly thought this meant that Laura would be moving back in with
him; after all, she is standing in
the kitchen, is she not? But no, she is
referring merely to going to visit Richard, which she would not have done
without the bit of pressure Karen gave her.
What I like here is that she has a small little freakout, she calms
down, and the scene goes on. It doesn’t
turn into some big dramatic fight between her and Karen, but rather just
observes these characters and their behavior together.
Overall,
even with the Uncle Joe/Ginger storyline coming in easily at third place, I dug
all the stories this week and thought there was a lot to love in China Dolls. I forgot to mention a few small stylistic
things that run through the ep, even, things that keep it feeling cinematic and
not like TV. One of them is a series of
smooth transitions from scene to scene.
For instance, there’s a fabulous one where we cut from Richard and Laura
to Gary and Abs. In this case, Richard
and Laura are walking the grounds of the sanitarium, being photographed in a
long shot, and as the scene ends, the camera glides into a flowerbed and
focuses in on a yellow flower, before dissolving to a different yellow flower, zooming out, and revealing that we are now
in the adultery motel room and Abs is waiting to meet up with Gary. See, that’s some good style, am I right? Do you think the folks over on Dallas would ever bother with a stylish
little cut like that? Nah, I think
they’d be more concerned with just getting from scene to scene. Again, this is TV, and TV is filmed on a tighter
schedule than a movie and stylistic sacrifices have to be made (I am referring
to, say, pre-year-2000 television, by the way, before cable really took over
and completely upped the game on how television is made and filmed and
watched), so I appreciate when the creative team here at KL goes the extra step to keep their eps looking sleek and
interesting rather than just quick cutting from one scene to another.
Also,
there’s a weather theme running throughout this episode. It’s pretty much raining all the way from
start to finish this week, and there’s a real stormy weather/cloudy skies thing
going on. I think this works both
literally and metaphorically, as in there is literally rain and drizzle falling from the sky, but also in the
fact that stormy weather lies ahead for these characters, you know what I mean?
Overall,
great ep. So far, Night is still holding the top spot for quite possibly the best
episode of the season (or entire series), but this last stretch of eps leading us into the finale
has just been pretty much 100% great, and I’m so pleased to see the show really
finding its footing after that last batch of clunky, all-over-the-place eps
that included, say, Reunion, Cricket, and Silver Shadows. This upswing
reminds me of the climactic moments of season two, when we had to sit through Moments of Truth and Man of the Hour and were then rewarded
with More Than Friends, Designs, and Squeezeplay. The difference
here, and the thing that gets me so excited, is I know we are not going to
build up to a great finale, then have a great premiere for the new season, and
then sorta fizzle and get weird and episodic again. In this case, the stretch of great episodes
will just take us right into a solid, full, great season and then another great
season and then another great one and so on and so forth until the end of
time. In this way, I think I’m gonna say
that the upswing in quality taking place here at the end of season three is
even better and more impressive than the one from season two.
So
in case you didn’t get it, I think China
Dolls is great and I thoroughly enjoyed nearly everything about it. I am very eager to get to our final episode
of the season on Thursday, so stay tuned for me to come back and discuss Living Dangerously.
This is my favorite episode in the run of the show so far. The rain, the thunder, characters huddled inside their homes, their love nests, talking to each other through rolled-down car windows. It was all a great visual shift from the usual sunny California take, and an indication that there were major events on the way. You could feel that the vibe was off from the get go. And thanks for the nice nod to Bernard Herrmann, who is one of my favorite film composers. I listen to his music, quite literally, every day. I have about 20 of his soundtracks on a playlist.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you about Abby & Gary...I do think she genuinely loves him. And (jumping ahead!) when they are first married they do look very happy and it seems like Gary did the right thing for a while...until her natural Abby-ness starts to emerge again! This was a great episode, the thunderous overtones made it almost like a Tennessee Williams play in parts! Suffering severe KL withdrawal here in the UK after they finished showing all 14 seasons about 2 months ago. I was hoping they'd start again from the beginning, but not so far...
ReplyDeleteYou asked for thoughts about why Knots seemed to forget the mechanic who tampered with Sid's brakes. My theory is that the length of time was intentional. I bet they always had the intention of bringing Mack to the show but didn't want to do it too soon. Karen is not the type of woman who would fall in love so quickly after the love of her life died. They had to give her some space. And, to me, the story line was brilliant. The writers introduce Mack, the future love of Karen's life, to help her solve the mystery of the murder of Sid, her long-time beloved husband.
ReplyDeleteOr I could be WAY off and they truly did forget about it :)
I think this is probably the best episode of the first three seasons. There are a couple of others I could consider but I would also say this was a series best, top 5.
ReplyDeleteSuch a classic.
I always think that Night is the best of the early episodes--- and then I remember that China Dolls exists. God. I love Richard.
ReplyDeleteI always think that Night is the best of the early episodes--- and then I remember that China Dolls exists. God. I love Richard.
ReplyDeleteI think the writers in season 3 had more specific goals for what they wanted to do with story, like create the Abby-Gary-Val triangle, make the Richard-Laura marriage implode, and help Karen develop as a single woman and business owner. Sid was not a focus because the character died, and the writers wanted to focus more on how his death affected characters still on the show. Had Don Murray stayed, Tom/Wayne would have likely been dealt with in season 3. I hate that they not only changed the actor playing the character; they also change his name!!!
ReplyDeleteI think this is absolutely where the show hit its stride, they stopped doing those single-story episodes, some of which were godawful, and focused on the big long character arcs. Val hates Abby, and Abby cant live without Gary, right from here to the very end.
ReplyDeleteThe affair between Joe and Ginger could have been a potential story and would have made them more interesting
ReplyDeleteWasn't the gift Richard's friend gave him that Laura broke a China doll? Running metaphor throughout episode. That all our lives are as fragile as ... and only a break away from potentially unraveling.
ReplyDeleteCan I just say what a gift this blog is??? Here I am during the 2020 Pandemic and just started Knots again...finally getting to the good stuff! Stumbled upon this blog and just want to say...I love the writing and especially the humour! Such a treat. So excited to experience Knots again...saw it last on Soapnet in 96'. I remembered THE SCENE well..and its such a classic. Thanks again and great job Knots Blogger Joe!!
ReplyDeleteAmen Tom. This literally is filling my days. Brett is hilarious
DeleteThank you both for reading and for your nice comments :)
DeleteSorry...I looked up above and I thought your name was Joe...because it said written by Joseph Wallenstein..lol!
ReplyDelete