Episode Title: Cutting the Ties That Bind
Season 04, Episode 13
Episode 066 of 344
Written by Michael L. Grace
Directed by Ernest Pintoff
Original Airdate: Thursday, January
6th, 1983
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Abby sells Ciji's contract to
Jeff Munson. Jeff wants Kenny to produce Ciji, but Abby will only sell if they
cut Kenny out of the deal. She tells Kenny he's out, and he's very angry. Kenny
and Gary get into a fight. Abby goes to Gary's lawyer, James Westmont, and
wants him to protect her interests in case Gary doesn't marry her. Chip is
offered a job with Thornwell and Associates if he can bring them Val's account.
Chip steals two chapters of her current manuscript and gives it to them. Ciji
tells Chip that she's pregnant, and Chip yells that this will ruin everything
and manhandles her. Val has been putting off signing her divorce papers. Jeff
takes her to New York for the weekend, and she sees a new, more down-to-earth
side of him. Val finally signs the papers.
Ah,
now this is more like it. For those who read my thoughts on The Block Party last Thursday, you’ll know
that it was hardly my favorite episode of the series, and I believe I even went
so far as to declare it the worst of season four. My main problem with that one was that I
didn’t feel a lot was happening in it, that the majority of the plot was
devoted to Mack’s lame Pop who disappears into the ether and is never spoken of
again, and that the material given to the rest of the cast that week was
lacking. Well, this week, with Cutting the Ties That Bind, we’ve got a lot going on with everybody in the
cast, so let’s all perk up and pay attention.
The
very first scene of the episode is Val sitting around the house and staring at
her divorce papers. Yup, it’s official,
um, well, almost. All Val has to do is sign these papers and
send them to her attorney or whatever and she will officially be divorced from
Gary Ewing. However, she’s reticent, and
why not? It’s moments like these that
make me further appreciate that rich history that has been well established
between Gary and Val, and it’s moments like this that also make me happy we did
all those Brief Dallas Interludes
before the KL Pilot. Because of watching all those Dallas eps and of course the previous 65
eps of KL, we know what a big part of
Val’s life Gary is. The two fell
instantly in love when she was fifteen and he was seventeen and got married and
made baby Lucy (who nobody is really mentioning anymore). Then we hit those years between 1962 and 1978
and there’s that great big gap in which the two didn’t see each other until
they were finally reunited in the Brief Dallas
Interludes Reunion: Part One and Reunion: Part Two, before finally
getting married again in late 1979 with our Brief Dallas Interlude Return Engagements. So now, after all that
history and their remarriage and three rocky years of being married out in
California, now Val has to decide if she wants to sign this piece of paper and
be officially divorced from this man.
What to do? Like I said, this
decision feels like it carries a lot of weight, and that’s entirely because of
how well done Gary and Val’s past history has been conveyed throughout the
series and on the parent series, as well.
Lilimae
certainly wants Val to sign the papers.
We are now seeing the era of Lilimae who truly hates Gary. I’m not even kidding around here; I really
think that she hates him. Later on, the two will start to get along
again, but right now sees him as the man who broke her daughter’s heart,
cheating on her and then leaving her for some hussy, so she makes no bones
about telling Valene she needs to sign the papers and get on with her
life. Val promises that she will sign
the papers, but she simply isn’t ready yet. Valene
is a busy little bee lately, staying active as she transitions from one of Us
to one of Them. Let’s think back just
one year, shall we? When we were around
mid season three, Val was still living with Gary as his wife. She wasn’t really working, but rather her
work was keeping up the house and being a good wife. Her other predominant occupation to fill her
days was going to school and working on her writing, and now we see how that is
paying off for her. Now she’s a
published author with one hit book to her name and she’s starting work on the
second. In addition, she is managing to
get up off her feet and start to move on from her breakup with Gary; she’s not
the same angry and hurt Val that we saw at the start of the season; she’s
starting to be real independent. If
that’s not enough, she’s also attracting the attention of boring white guy Jeff
Munson. Speaking
of boring white guy Jeff Munson, he gets a lot of screen-time this week when he
somehow manages to whisk Val away to New York for a romantic getaway. I’m trying to remember how this all goes
down, exactly, and basically he’s just like, “Val, let me take you to New
York. You’re a stupid hick country girl
and you’ve never seen the big city and you have no idea what culture truly is,
so let me show you.” At first Val is
hesitant, but Lilimae is very persuasive, mostly because she wants Val to get
the fuck over Gary and start dating this guy, so she’s like, “Go on, sugar, go
see the big apple!”
There’s
no real footage of New York in this episode, so don’t get too excited. We instead get that stock shot of, I think,
the Brooklyn Bridge, the shot that is in every movie or show set in New York
ever made, and then we cut to Val and Munson up on the 32nd floor of
this big, sexy penthouse. Presumably
this is Val’s first time in a big skyscraper, and she looks down at the city
below her with true wonder. Then Munson
shows up with champagne and starts to tell her what a wonderful, awesome, sexy
person she is, how she deserves the finest things that life has to offer
because she’s written a book and the book has given so many people so much
pleasure. The sentiment is good and it’s
nice to see Val be treated well by someone, but I just wish it wasn’t Munson,
because he’s so God damned boring.
Our
next scene is the worst one in the episode, and I cringed having to watch
it. Munson takes Val to Little Italy and
The Restaurant of Italian Stereotypes.
This scene made me flash to a minor recurring character on The Simpsons circa season five. This character’s name was Luigi; you all
remember Luigi? Actually, his full name is Luigi Risotto, which only makes the joke even funnier. Luigi Risotto was the waiter at
this Italian restaurant that Skinner and Bart went to when they were briefly
friends, and the whole joke was that he was such a ridiculous Italian
stereotype in every way, the way he spoke, the way he acted, the way he looked
with a big, ridiculous moustache. Well,
Luigi is hilarious because he’s supposed to
be a joke, but I don’t think there’s an intentional irony in this scene where
Val and Munson chat it up and dance to obnoxious music alongside the entire
cast of The Godfather. I think this scene is supposed to be funny or
endearing but I just found it annoying and I was glad to move on. Just to be clear, this isn’t any sort of
PC-attack on my part in which I suddenly disapprove of stereotypes, and I feel
no particular loyalty to Italians just because I happen to be sorta Italian (if
you really wanna see the cast of The Godfather, just look at photos of my
relatives from my paternal grandmother’s side when we arrived from Italy and our original last name was, not even kidding, Madonna), no, instead it’s just as simple
as I found this scene obnoxious.
Next
up, I’m pretty sure Val and Munson shag.
Obviously we don’t get graphic HBO footage of this event, nor do we see
any penetration or anything like that, but I’d still say it’s pretty
clear. Val’s hanging out on that
penthouse patio again (I’d probably stay out there all day if I had a swinging
pad like that) when Munson receives a phone call from Abs. I can’t remember the exact details of why Abs
is calling, but it has something to do with Ciji and her contract and all that,
but Munson doesn’t want to hear about it.
He’s like, “I’m about to go put my penis inside of Valene; please call
back tomorrow,” and he hangs up. Then he
goes out on the patio and the two exchange paltry romantic dialogue before
making out a bit while the music swells and, well there you go. Like I said, it’s not shown explicitly but I
think we can all figure out what goes down (or who goes down) in the following couple of hours.
Val
gets the concluding scene of the episode (don’t get nervous; I’m gonna cover
the other characters in just a moment).
Now it’s the next morning and Munson’s semen is presumably dripping down
her leg as she gazes out at the beautiful morning skyline. She’s working on her manuscript or whatever,
when she happens to pull out the divorce papers, slyly inserted into her travel
bag by her doting mother. A bit of piano
music starts to kick in as Val looks over the papers, thinking really hard, and
then the final image of the ep is her signing the papers, officially moving a
bit closer to divorcing Gary, the true love of her life. Before
moving on to the other characters, I want to take a moment to say that in my
notes I wrote, “Val is sorta getting the shaft at this juncture in the series,”
and I want to expand a bit on why I wrote that.
While it’s true that she’s getting material, and she’s certainly keeping
busy this week in particular, I can’t help but feel that her material is a bit
lacking when compared to what else is going down with her friends and
neighbors. While the act of her signing
the divorce papers is fairly compelling, the rest of her footage this week was
somewhat underwhelming. Is it because
she’s been paired with a stiff as a romantic interest? That could be it, but I’m not so sure.
On
our last disk of eps, My Beloved Grammy actually surprised me a bit by asking
if Val’s character was being phased out of the show and I told her that no, Val
is pretty much on the show from start to finish, more or less (she does sit out
the final year, but that’s a shorter year and she’s still in thirteen of the
fourteen seasons). After My Beloved
Grammy asked that, I did start to notice that Val feels like she’s not getting
as much attention paid to her, at least not at this point. The other storylines are sizzling with
excitement and even the dreaded Kenny and Ginger are starting to be parts of
the plot and actively involved in the events, but the Val stuff feels
secondary, kinda like the writers are thinking, “Well, we gotta give her something to do, so let’s, um, ship her
to New York this week.” We are about two
years away from Val’s babies and that’s easily the greatest storyline in all
of KL history, so I think this is
just a short lived little phase in which Val’s material is just not as exciting
as what else is going on around her, you know?
In
case you don’t believe me, let’s just take a peek at what’s going on with
everyone else on the cul-de-sac (or at The Beach House) to see how exciting
this week’s events are. There’s a lot of
lying and scheming going on via Abs towards Kenny, who she doesn’t want to be
the producer of Ciji’s album. Early in
the ep, Abs sells Ciji’s contract to Munson, but she wants Kenny to have no
part of it. Honestly, as I’ve mentioned
ad nauseum time and time again, business dealings and contracts and stuff like
that tend to fly right over my head; I just have a hard time keeping track. What confuses me in this instance is the
legality or possible illegality of what Abs is doing. Okay, so early in the season, Gary discovered
Ciji, right? There she was, singing Open Arms, and we all saw Gary get very
excited. Next up, he rushed over to
Kenny to tell him all about this hot new singer he just discovered. Then, in, I think, New Beginnings, Kenny tried to get his own boss excited about Ciji
and it didn’t work out, or something like that.
So, Kenny and Gary decided to go into business together with all that
money that Jock left Gary when he died (from our Brief Dallas Interlude called Jock’s Will).
Okay,
my point is this: Can Abs just cut Kenny out of the deal at this point? Would he not be, like, an investor in
Ciji? Couldn’t he sue Abs for what she’s
doing to him? It just seems to me like
Abs doesn’t have a hard time getting rid of Kenny at all; this all happens
rather quickly, and nobody mentions anything about the law. Did Kenny have any money invested or was he
just going along with Gary while Gary provided the dough? A lot of my confusion stems from being
stupid, but then a lot of it also stems from these plot points spanning whole
seasons. At this point, I try to flash
back and remember which things occurred early in the season, but it’s already
starting to blur a bit. We
know that Abs is duplicitous not just because we’ve seen her behavior since the
start of season two but also because Munson appears to have no problem working
with Kenny. He’s fine with it, yet Abs
is the one who wants him to have no part in it.
Later in the ep, Gary and Abs have Kenny and Ginger over to The Beach
House, where they pour champagne for Seaview Circle’s power couple and gently
begin to explain that Kenny is cut out of this deal. Kenny and Ginger both get mad and stomp off,
which is understandable.
Let’s
try to examine exactly why Abs feels
the need to give Kenny the shaft in this way.
Is it simply because she has watched the last three seasons and sees how
useless these characters are? Does she
just dislike Kenny? Is she only doing
this because she can and because it helps her to express her power? My own theory is that she doesn’t want any
outside influences affecting Gary; I think she wants to build their own little
world of Gary and Abs in which they are isolated from others and she has all
the power over him, but I again must ask why.
Honestly, Abs is such a complex character that, watching the show, I
often find myself at a loss for what to write about her. See, it would be so easy to merely say that
she’s wicked and, therefore, does wicked things. I feel that’s how her character would be
handled on other nighttime soaps, but the KL
writing and acting is so good that Donna Mills really gets to bring Abs to
life as this fully rounded, three dimensional human. She’s not 100% wicked all the time, and we’ve
already seen moments of humanity a few times from her (most notably Abby’s Choice in the scene where she
confessed to Gary that she’s not a hero and that she has no courage). Since neither Kenny nor Ginger have ever burned
or hurt Abs in any way, it’s hard for me to figure out exactly why she’s so
hell-bent on keeping Kenny out of the Ciji business, but she is. Anyone have any ideas on this one?
Gary’s
really starting to fall apart here, although this is nothing compared to where
he’ll be a few eps down the line. He is
still a very weak man at this point, the Gary Ewing who I had kinda forgotten
all about. Like I’ve said before,
whenever I think of Gary, I tend to flash to later seasons Gary who is way more
grounded and self-actualized, not this early Gary who’s super weak and easily
manipulated. This Gary certainly does
the majority of his thinking with his penis, for instance, whereas the Gary
from, oh, let’s say seasons seven and beyond, that Gary actually uses his brain to make smart decisions. Abs is able to manipulate him pretty easily
just by parading her body around. In
this ep, we have a fabulous scene in which Abs is lounging in a gigantic bubble
bath, one of those kinds that’s just built right into the floor, Scarface style (and, by the way, a
close-up shot of her face surrounded by all those bubbles is going to make it
into the scrolling credits, I believe, next season). Gary comes in all frustrated about something
and all Abs has to do is sit in her bath, all naked and wet, and use her sexy
body to get Gary to go along with what she’s saying. “Come on, Gary, you know that Kenny’s a loser
and we need to get rid of him.” After
that, she appeals to Gary’s foot fetish by sticking a soaking wet food in his
face and asking him to massage it. This
I didn’t love, mostly because I’m not one of those guys who has a foot fetish
(not naming names, Quentin Tarantino), but whatever, to each his own.
The
source of all this drama, Ciji, also has an exciting new plot development this
week when she receives a phone call from her doctor announcing that she is
pregnant. Ciji hangs up her rotary dial
phone and, at first, looks sorta upset, but then her face relaxes and we can see
that she’s sorta digging the idea. She
acts a bit like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby by whispering to herself, “You’re pregnant,” letting the words sink
in. The next step is telling Chip, but I
think we all know he’s not gonna be too happy about this news.
Speaking
of Chip, he very easily manages to
get out of trouble with Diana. Let’s
flash back a week to The Block Party when
Diana peeked out the window and saw Chip planting a kiss on Ciji. If you thought this signaled the end of their
relationship, you would be wrong, because when Diana mentions what she saw and
asks him what’s going on, he becomes rather, um, gay, and calls her a “silly
goose” for some reason (a little later he also mentions being “tickled pink,”
and it was the first time I started to notice how bizarrely gay Chip seems to
act so much of the time). Then he thinks
up a lie right and quick and tells Diana how Ciji was having a little panic
attack about having to perform, so he talked to her and gave her a kiss to make
her feel better. That’s all it takes for
Diana to be cool with Chip again. Too
easy? At first I thought so, but then I
thought of how many stupid teenage girls have been lied to by their boyfriends
and easily accepted these lies, and then it seemed more real to me.
This
is a big episode for Chip and he keeps busy for all 48 minutes. Up to this point, we’ve seen that Chip is bad
news, but I don’t think we know quite how
bad he is. He’s been lying to people
and doing weird little manipulations and he’s definitely a con artist, but this
is the first episode where we truly see that he might be psychotic. I’ll start with how he steals Val’s
manuscript. Again, this little portion
of the ep kinda confused me, but My Beloved Grammy helped me understand it a
bit (it’s so much more enjoyable to watch these with a partner to help you
out!). See, Chip gets offered this job
with some guy named Thornwall, played by Michael McGuire (the guy who was
supposed to marry Diane in the first episode of Cheers and instead ditched her at the bar). Thornwall wants to handle Val’s account, as
she’s now a rising star and the talk of Seaview Circle. Next up, Chip is suddenly stealing two
chapters to the manuscript of Val’s new book.
This
is the part that confused me. I had a
hard time figuring out how stealing two chapters somehow helped Chip get
whatever it is he wants from Thornwall, but I guess it’s basically his way of
saying, “Hey, look, Val’s trusting me with her new manuscript, so now you know
just how close we really are!” Also, this
plot point is a planted seed for a few eps down the line (To Have and to Hold, which we shall come to very shortly). So while nothing all that big or dramatic
happens with this storyline this week,
hold tight because it’ll pay off shortly.
More
significantly, in my opinion, we get our first real hint of Chip being
violent. When he arrives at Ciji’s
apartment and she tells him that she’s pregnant (after she celebrates her
pregnancy with a nice big glass of wine, of course), let’s just say he doesn’t
react well. Instead of being happy and
saying, “Oh, that’s great, honey,” he tries the less popular method of grabbing
Ciji by the hair and shouting, “Nothing is going to interfere with what I have
planned for us!” This is big stuff,
folks, because since we first met Chip back in Svengali, we’ve seen him lie and manipulate people, but he’s come
off more like a simple sleaze, just a “creep,” as Mack would say; now we see
that he may be legitimately dangerous and perhaps psychotic.
After
things started to get lesbianic with Ciji and Laura in Abby’s Choice, that story seemed to go on the back burner for The Block Party, but now it’s back and
I’m relishing it. I notice a running
theme going on in which Ciji and Laura hold their most private conversations in
the bedroom. They seem to enjoy gathering
in the bedroom of Richard and Laura and just hanging out on the bed, above the
covers, sorta relaxing, sometimes with the baby and sometimes without him. Now, that’s certainly a subtext that a person
can either choose to see or not see, depending on the person, and I’m certainly
a person who sees gay in everything in every place I go every day of my
life. However, you can’t tell me that
the next scene I wanna talk about
does not make it very clear that something is going on between the two women.
It’s
late at night and Richard is in a friendly mood and he wants to snuggle up with
Laura. He starts turning on the charm a
bit and telling her about how the kids are out of the house and Bob Loblaw. This whole scene, while Richard is lying on
the bed, Laura has her back turned to him and is just sorta looking straight
ahead. It’s all very quiet and intimate,
but the gist of the scene is that Laura doesn’t want to do it with
Richard. Why doesn’t she want to do it
with Richard? The answer, of course, is
because she wants to do it with Ciji.
She wants to be one with her womanhood by lezzing out and doing some
serious muff diving on this hot singer; that’s what she wants. Now, I suppose you could argue that she just
doesn’t want to sleep with Richard because their marriage is remaining on shaky
grounds, the way it’s pretty much been since Pilot, but I believe that’s only one small fraction of the reason
for her frigidity this week. The real
reason is that Richard does not turn her on and Ciji does.
You
know, I think that’s gonna just about do it for my thoughts on Cutting the Ties That Bind. In my notes, it looks like I scribbled,
“Karen is rocking the Annie Hall look,” and I do remember her getting dressed
up in a lovely masculine outfit, a sorta suit and a tie, and I remember
appreciating how she could look so good, but I don’t really remember her doing
much in this ep. Did she really have a
significant story and it’s just slipping my mind? Pretty sure she’s on the sidelines for the
majority of this ep, although she’s still around.
My
concluding thoughts are that Cutting the
Ties That Bind is a tremendous step up from Emergency, Abby’s Choice,
and The Block Party. If those three episodes (particularly the
latter two) represent a minor mid-season slump, then I feel this episode is
where things start to pick up a lot as we are now officially in the second half
of the season, with an ending now in sight.
Aside from a bit of a lag in Karen stories, all the characters are well
represented this week and have a lot going on and there’s a lot to focus on,
with stories building and growing and evolving.
We’re
gonna get plenty of material next week when Karen receives a visit from Teddy
Becker again (although he looks bizarrely different and much more lecherous
than he looked back in One of a Kind)
in the episode entitled And Teddy Makes Three.
Loved the Luigi character. If I remember right, he is the only character (at least at that time) that didn't have the famous Springfield overbite.
ReplyDeleteEnough with the faggy "My Beloved Grammy" crap. You are playing into every gay stereotype with that crap. Man up.
ReplyDeleteGary has the money and Kenny has the know-how. But Jeff has more know-how and can make them all millions. He's connected. Kenny is small potatoes. So yea, Abby can cut him out of the deal because he's got no dough invested in it. And she hates Kenny because he's boring and a hot head and can't introduce her to anyone cool.
ReplyDelete🤣🤣🤣
DeleteI'm not really sure why the "My Beloved Grammy" stuff has become a target of ridicule or how it's linked into some form of gay stereotype. For me personally, I love when he talks about her and her viewpoints because she is a new viewer and it is fun to read about how she responds to the plot lines.
ReplyDeleteMy partner and I watched KLS4 and, too, thought Chip was bit, uh, sweet in the shorts. 😉
ReplyDeleteRemember when Val and Lilimae remodeled the living room in the first couple of episodes of S4? Looks like they already repainted. The walls are now sorta a light plum? That was fast.
ReplyDelete