Episode Title: Willing Victims
Season 04, Episode 22
Episode 075 of 344
Written by Peter Dunne
Directed by David Jacobs
Original Airdate: Thursday, March
10th, 1983
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): When Laura
realizes that Richard is really gone, she tells the police, and everyone else,
that Richard killed Ciji. Jeff Munson offers Kenny a job and Ginger a contract
in Nashville, so the Wards decide to move. Diana and
Chip decide to go to New York after all. Karen tells her about Chip and Ciji's
affair in an attempt to get her to stay. Gary's preliminary hearing is coming
up, but Gary's spirit is broken and he won't cooperate. Mitch thinks if Gary
would work with them he could get the charges dropped. Abby wants Mitch to
request Gary must go to a sanitarium as a condition of release. Mitch says no,
so Abby fires him and asks Westmont to represent Gary. Val visits Gary, and she
tells him to shape up because while he's playing martyr in jail, the real
killer is on the loose. She also tells him if he respected Ciji, he would do
all he could to find the real murderer. Roland Mackey, a private investigator,
tells Lilimae he is looking for Tony Fenice, and shows her a flyer with Chip's
picture on it. Lilimae shows the flyer to Karen. Karen runs up to Diana's room,
but Diana has already left.
Welcome
to Willing Victims, our season four
finale of KL. As this episode began, I noted with interest
two things about who’s behind the scenes this week. First off, this episode is written by Peter Dunne. I don’t know if I’ve brought him
up yet, but he’s a big deal to KL fanatics
and is generally credited with really kicking the show into high gear during
season four. During my first viewing of
the series, I paid more attention to the actors and the cast roster and how
that changed and evolved over the course of the series, but I didn’t really
tend to notice who was working behind the scenes or as the supervising
producers for certain seasons. Now,
thanks in no small part to the exceptionally knowledgeable posters on the KL SoapChat message board (which
everyone should go off and join right away), I’m becoming more aware of who was
working to shape the show and its stories and characters during certain
junctures of the series.
Okay,
so Peter Dunne serves as the supervising producer starting here in season four,
and he’ll continue that role throughout seasons five and six, as well. Honestly, that says it all. If I had a resume that said I was supervising
producer of KL for seasons four,
five, and six, and it had absolutely nothing else on it besides that, I would
still go to my grave a happy man, very proud of the excellent work I did and
the art I helped to contribute to the world.
However, Dunne has a big resume which includes lots of other credits,
and what’s probably most interesting, something that we’re not going to really
discuss for a couple of seasons, is that during the 1985-1986 season, Dallas and KL swapped producers. Peter Dunne moved over to work on the dreadful dream season of Dallas while David Paulsen (last discussed as the writer of our
tenth Brief Dallas Interlude, Jock’s Will) moved over from his post on
Dallas to be supervising producer on KL for its seventh season. That’s going to be an interesting topic to
discuss when we get there, because we all saw how the ninth season of Dallas turned out, I.E. it sucked really
hard and set the tone for the next five fucking seasons to follow. How could Dunne do such amazing work on KL and then serve as producer for such a
shitty season of Dallas?
In
any case, that’s not really important to the topic at hand. I just bring up Peter Dunne because he’s been
our producer all throughout this fourth season and he serves as the writer of Willing Victims. The other interesting thing to note is that
series creator David Jacobs (the genius pictured below) serves as the man behind the camera and directs
this week’s episode, his first time doing so.
We’ve discussed his scripts several times in the past, starting with our
very first Brief Dallas Interlude (Reunion: Part One) as well as Interludes
two and four (Reunion: Part Two and Return Engagements). In addition, he wrote the KL Pilot that introduced us to this
wonderful world and he wrote Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, the episode that first introduced us to Lilimae and
explored her turbulent relationship with Val.
Now he’s the director and he’s going to end up directing eight eps, with
his last directorial effort being the double whammy of brilliance Noises Everywhere: Part One and Noises Everywhere: Part Two, from season
nine (hardcore KL fans should
immediately remember what those eps
are all about). Anyway,
Willing Victims is his first time
working as the director of an ep, and I immediately noticed that he brought a
lot of energy and style to the proceedings, an energy unique and different from
some of the other directors I’ve admired throughout the course of the last 74
eps. For instance, we begin the show
with Val running. As I watched her run,
I noted that there is a “full circle” feeling to this, because what was the
very first thing we saw as we began season four with A Brand New Day? That’s
right, it was Val going for a run. Now
here we are in the season finale and the ep begins the same way. Yes, I’m well aware that Val goes running in
a ton of eps, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we begin the premiere
of season four and the finale of season four with the same scene. Also, on the topic of stylistic flourishes,
Jacobs makes a cool choice here when Val runs directly into the camera, which
sorta goes blurry and un-focuses before refocusing on poor Gary in his prison
cell. Nice directorial work!
Val
is still coming to Gary’s defense, not believing for a second that he killed
anybody. However, Lilimae has an extra
harsh line early in the ep when she’s talking to Val and she gets real firm and
says, “Gary Ewing kills people!” This has to be the peak of Lilimae’s distaste
for Gary. I know I’m not crazy when I
say that, at some point down the line, Lilimae and Gary become friendly again,
but right here Lilimae really hates him and seems to truly believe he’s a murderer. I have to wonder if there is even any
awkwardness in her future when Lilimae has to be like, “Oooooooooooh, Gary, I’m
sorry I thought you killed Ciji back in season four, ooooooooooooh.”
What
is Gary thinking at this point, by the way?
I’m really not sure if Gary actually truly believes that he killed Ciji
or if he just is punishing himself for being a drunken mess. I kinda think he’s just given up, much like
the Beast in the big fight scene with Gaston from Beauty and the Beast; you know what I’m saying? Like, Gary is just sorta sitting in prison
like a lump, barely talking to anyone, not trying to fight these charges
against him, just sorta accepting this as his fate. I think he’s just feeling like such a loser
for being a hardcore alcoholic and for all the drama that’s gone on throughout
the last year that he’s just sorta resigned to sitting in prison, doing
nothing, figuring that’s where he belongs, but I don’t believe that he truly
thinks he’s the murderer of Ciji.
Late
in the ep, Val pays Gary a visit in that glass wall/telephone room that you
always see in prisons on TV shows. Gary
gets mad and yells and is like, “Get out of my life!” Somehow, Val manages to calm him down and get
him to listen to her, at which point she gives a great big speech about how
she’s seen him in all of his drunken states throughout their time together, and
even though he gets angry and nasty and has a bad temper, he’s never gotten
violent. This is slightly contradictory,
as we saw him have an epic bar fight back in the Bottom of the Bottle eps and he also gave Val a black eye (although
I think that was pretty much an accident, so I’ll cut him a break). Her basic point, which I think she manages to
get through to him, is that he is not a man who would murder another person, no
matter how drunken he was at the time, and that he’s wasting time lying in
prison. The real killer is still wandering around out in the
world, so Gary isn’t helping anyone by taking the blame for Ciji’s death.
Meanwhile,
after Richard blew town last week, Laura has become convinced that he is, in fact, the one true
murderer. While this could come off as a
silly plot contrivance if handled by a less deft pen, this does work for me,
especially when I try to put myself into Laura’s shoes. Even though I have loved Richard throughout
his entire run on the show and I tend to act like Karen and rush to his defense
in many situations, he did hold Laura
and Jason 2 hostage at gunpoint just a little over a year ago, demonstrating
tremendous mental instability. Not only
that, but back in Celebration, when
his jealousy of Laura and Ciji’s muff-diving reached the tipping point, he got
violent on Ciji, grabbed her by the hair, and threw her out of the house. So, yeah, considering that Ciji was dead just a few minutes after that
occurred, I could see why Laura is quick to blame Richard.
I
also wanna note that this episode doesn’t start right off the bat with Laura
knowing that Richard is gone. Instead,
he’s just kinda missing and she is waiting to hear from him or see him turn up
before, at a certain point, she realizes that he has left her and is not coming
back. It’s around this point that she
gets Mack and Karen together for a talk and declares that Richard killed Ciji,
showing lots of examples for why this is so.
She says how he got all his affairs in his order, got his money issues
worked out, tidied up his issues with the restaurant, all before disappearing
from town forever because he was the one who killed Ciji. She declares that she’s going to tell the
police about this and name Richard as the culprit, even though Karen disagrees
with her and tells her not to do so.
Watching
this as a viewer, I have to wonder: How many people would have actually put
money on Richard being the killer? I
remind you that when I first watched this, I didn’t actually know who killed
Ciji, but I also didn’t really think all that much about it, because I thought
it was very obvious that it was Chip.
Chip has the best motive; we’ve seen him get violent on Ciji in private
conversation with her, she was refusing to have an abortion even though he
wanted her to, and he was two-timing her with Diana and was probably starting
to get annoyed with her nagging. To me,
there was never any doubt that Chip was the one, and while I recognized Laura’s
perspective, I never bought into it, especially since I knew upon first
watching that Richard had left the show.
Somehow I didn’t think the writers would have an off-screen revelation
that Richard was the killer or just have him disappear from the show, be
announced as the killer, and then just stay gone from the series; that wouldn’t
be classy or smart the way the writing tends to be.
Laura
gets my favorite scene in this whole ep, which calls back to Gary trashing the
shit out of his bedroom back in The Loudest Word. With Richard gone,
Laura has to go down to Daniel and do a lot of the work herself. The stress of everything going on starts to
get to her and, finally, when she has a moment all by herself in the kitchen,
she just starts going to town and trashing the place. She knocks over a shelf of pots and pans and
then grabs a pan and just starts beating the shit out of everything in the
kitchen with it, throwing stuff across the room and freaking out. This is all done in an unbroken shot, no
fancy editing, so you gotta know what a pain in the ass it must have been to do
multiple takes of this and have to totally redress the set just to have
Constance trash it again. When she’s
finally finished smashing stuff, she just sorta leans up against the wall and
covers her face and starts to cry. Here,
the camera slowly starts to pan away from her, as if this is too intimate and
personal for us to even be voyeurs to.
Another aspect of this scene I dig is the complete lack of music; it’s
total silence until Laura starts going to town on the pots and pans. Finally, I just found this super relatable;
haven’t we all at some point lost it
and had to start breaking stuff in a fit of anger? It doesn’t matter that we logically know it
makes no sense; we just get that pissed off that we start trashing. What a fabulous moment and an episode
highlight.
Meanwhile,
Chip is finally officially going to New York.
This is something he’s been kinda sorta threatening to do ever since
about Loss of Innocence, but now he’s
really going and Diana wants to go with him.
Karen is very opposed to Diana going, but in the first half of the
episode, I think it’s mostly because Karen just plain doesn’t like Chip. I’m not sure anyone at this point is truly
aware of how violent and dangerous Chip really is (the only person who was
aware of it is now lying dead). Karen
just gets an uncomfortable feeling from him; she doesn’t know precisely why,
but she does know that she wants Diana to stay here in California, not run off
to New York with Chip.
Late
in the ep, Lilimae is outside watering the plants or something like that when a
mysterious man with a moustache arrives (but remember it’s 1983 and it was
still against the law for a man to not have a moustache). This man is a private investigator and his
name is Ronald Mackey and he is played by Joe George (pictured below). The guy’s IMDb page is pretty big, but the
only thing I recognize him from is a super early Seinfeld episode, The Stakeout (that’s the one where George first invents Art Vandelay). Anyway, he shows up to have a chat with
Lilimae and asks her if she’s seen a guy named Tony Fenice hanging around, then
he produces a black and white picture of Chip.
Lilimae looks at it and then tells a bit of a fib. Even though the picture is clearly Chip with
sorta different hair and a beard, she tells Mackey that she’s never seen this
guy before.
Meanwhile,
Karen is trying her hardest to dissuade Diana from leaving. I should probably note that, after finishing
this ep, I did a bit of a status update and asked My Beloved Grammy who, at
this point, ranks as her favorite and least favorite character. She said her favorite character is Karen (an
excellent choice) and that her least favorite character is Diana. My Beloved Grammy’s exact quote was, “Diana
could leave the show forever and I would never even think about her,” making me
wonder how she’s going to react to all the Diana-related shenanigans of season
five. Anyway, I bring that up because,
once again, Diana is acting like a whiny little bitch and not listening to what
her mother has to say to her. We also
get a nice little callback to a character I didn’t really care for, Uncle Joe,
when Karen says that if Diana must go to New York, she should stay with Uncle
Joe (it would be a pretty nifty little callback if she mentioned Jessica Walter
from back in Reunion, but she doesn’t
do so). Diana’s having none of it; she
is moving to New York with Chip and that is final.
Minutes
before the episode is about to come to its conclusion, Karen wanders over to
Val’s house and has a chat with Lilimae.
At this point, Lilimae mentions the private investigator who came by
earlier, and how Chip is wanted in Seattle (shout out!) for some prior violent
offense. At this point, we get a rare
moment of bad acting from Michele Lee, I’m sorry to say. Still love you, Michele, but this isn’t your
finest work. See, she gets all scared
and runs across the street, back to her own house. This part is fine, if a little bit
over-the-top, but then she bursts into Diana’s room and realizes her daughter
is gone. She opens her closet and almost
all the clothes are gone from it now, at which point Karen grabs like, a shirt
or something, holds it up to her face, and starts to moan in a very theatrical
matter, “Oh, Diana, oh, Diana!” It’s way
too much and made me cringe a little bit, but I forgive it cuz Michele is
usually brilliant and she has been brilliant in the past and will be brilliant
in the future; this is just a rare misstep.
From
this scene, we dissolve to a bit of a final montage before the episode/season
ends, and I note this montage because it has a cool dissolve that we are going
to see for, I think, something like ninety episodes in a row in the future,
since this shot makes its way into the scrolling squares for the opening
credits of seasons five, six, and seven (and maybe eight, too; I can't remember).
It’s a shot of Abs looking out the window of The Beach House and then a
dissolve to Val sitting in a chair in her living room, looking out her own
window. It’s a nice dissolve, and I
noted it immediately since I recognized it from the opening of the next three
seasons (I always thought it was cool that one of the scrolling squares in the
opening had a dissolve going on it; stylish).
This is our final scene before our “Executive Producers” credit and the
conclusion of the ep.
So
that’s the end of the ep, but there is one last thing I wanna discuss, and I
felt like saving it for the end to show at least some respect for two characters I have been ragging on since the
very beginning of the show, Kenny and Ginger.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is Kenny and Ginger’s final episode and
we never see either of them ever again (aside from a very brief and completely
worthless cameo from Kim Lankford in the 1997 reunion movie, Back to the Cul-De-Sac). Okay, so what are the circumstances which
precipitate their evacuation from the series forever?
Well,
after the shenanigans of the last year and the fact that Kenny and Ginger no
longer feel like they have many friends in Seaview Cicle, the two decide to
move to Nashville after Kenny gets a job offer from Munson (meaning, I suppose,
that things are now cool between the two gentlemen, so that’s nice). Since Kenny has been out of work since about
halfway through the season, there’s good reason to take this job offer, so he
accepts it and we get one final scene between the two of them in bed. Even if these characters generally bored me,
I will say I’m glad they get a legitimate exit and a final scene together; we
don’t just start season five and some character is like, “Kenny and Ginger
moved away,” or something like that.
Instead, the theme song kicks in with a sorta gentle, melodic quality,
playing much slower than it usually does, as the two lie in bed and discuss the
future for themselves and Erin Molly. I
guess it’s pretty nice to see that, after Kenny’s adultery problems throughout
seasons one and two, the couple have managed to make it work out, have had a
baby that they clearly love, have fixed their marriage, and that Kenny has also
finally truly accepted Ginger’s desire to be a singer. Now, instead of stifling it, he’s encouraging
her to use her talent in Nashville.
While this scene is hardly the most exciting portion of the episode, I’m
still glad it’s here to put a little bow on the characters before they move
away forever.
Also,
it’s time for a big revelation of my
own, and that is the fact that I no longer hate
Kenny and Ginger. Way back in my Pilot writeup, I used the word “hate,” and called them the toxic
bores and bad actors and all of that stuff.
However, throughout these four seasons, it wound up being way less
painful to watch their storylines than I remembered it being, and season four
was so good and so well written that the writers actually gave them some story
and materials to work with, which helped to dull my hatred of them. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that I
suddenly like the characters or am
super sad to see them go; I’m just saying that I’ve decided “hate” was a strong
word and they’re not nearly as toxic as I may have remembered.
The
basic problem is that, for most of their run, they didn’t really get a
chance. I think it’s interesting to jump
back to the start of the series and reflect that, while the two were introduced
in Pilot, they then immediately sat
on the bench for episodes two and three, Community Spirit and Let Me Count the Ways,
which pretty much set the tone for how the writers would treat these characters
throughout their time on the series; they always came last in the roster, and I
don’t even have to do any research to know that they sit out more eps than any
other main cast members on the show. In
fact, I’m gonna go ahead and say that, now, I kinda feel sorry for them,
because I’m sure the actors wanted more interesting stuff for their characters
to do (to the point that James Houghton wound up writing the episode Possibilities, which was all about Kenny and Ginger). So my basic point is that while I’m not sad
that they’re leaving and I’ll probably never think about them in the next ten
seasons, they weren’t nearly as bad as I remembered and they did, every now and
then, have their moments, most of them contained within season four, when it
felt like the writers were finally giving them something to do.
The
last thing I’ll say about this ep is that while it ends on a series of
cliffhangers (Diana running off to New York with Chip, Gary awaiting trial for
murdering Ciji, Richard disappearing, and so on), it ends on a more quiet note
than other seasons have or will. I won’t
spoil the finale of season five at this point, except to say that it’s just
PACKED and a ton of shit happens really really fast all within the last five
minutes of that season, whereas this one is more mellow, more gentle. It’s interesting to note that other shows
would probably make Celebration the
season finale, the cliffhanger being the simply fact that Ciji has been
killed. I like how KL has Ciji die and then spends four episodes setting up suspects
and excitement so that there’s just a ton of shit going on as we reach the
final episode of the season.
So
that about does it for Willing Victims
as well as the entire fourth season of KL. This was a great season finale that director
David Jacobs brought a lot of style and class to. It sets up so many things to unfold
throughout season five that, if I was alive in 1983, it would actually
physically hurt me to have to wait
all those long months for a new episode.
What more can you ask for in a season finale?
Coming
up next will be “A Reflection on Season Four,” and after that we’ll get started
with one of the most beloved and most watched seasons of KL with the season premiere episode, The People vs. Gary Ewing.
I won't miss Ginger, but Kenny was at least nice to look at, until he opened his mouth. Then it was over. He had tight pants on a lot, but it ultimately wasn't enough.
ReplyDelete😂😂😂
DeleteI love the shot of Abby at the beach house/Val in her chair. And since it was added to the opening credits for 3 seasons, we get to be reminded of the awesome beach house that left the series much too soon (get ready for Westfork!)
ReplyDeleteAnd the thing I will miss most about Kenny and Ginger leaving is that their house will no longer be used as a set for the remaining 10 seasons. That last shot of them in bed was the last time we get to see inside 16961 Seaview Circle. I am a sucker for a 1970's-style house (I bought one myself), so I wish one of the future cast members would have moved into this house so we could see how it was modernized for the 80's and 90's.
Why couldn't have Chip killed Diana instead of Ciji?
ReplyDelete😲😲😲
DeleteHmmm. I'm gonna say Celebration would have been better season cliffhanger (as long as writers had underlined all the poss. suspects for viewer in advance of murder). The last, what, four episodes sorta all melted together in my opinion with not many revelations, aside from Val confessing (?) and Richard's exit. Excited to see how quickly the storylines switch up in S05 and the direction Laura will take...
ReplyDeleteChip's final scene with Lilimae - presenting that butterfly brooch... What a creep. He is such a habitual schemer.
ReplyDeleteIs this Geoffrey R. Smith's last appearance as Daniel's persnickety maitre'd Phillip? I thought he was subtly hilarious.
ReplyDeleteI thought Jon Cypher/ Jeff Munson was perfect for Val. Strong, kind, loving, and steadily reliable! Too bad she was so hung up on loser Gary to realize it.
ReplyDeleteA great final five minutes: Karen running out of Val’s house – so dramatic. Abby’s sunset shot at the beach – magical. Gary in his cell mulling over Val’s amazing jailhouse speech.