Episode Title: …And Never Brought to Mind
Season 05, Episode 06
Episode 081 of 344
Written by Diana Gould
Directed by Sheldon Larry
Original Airdate: Thursday,
November 3rd, 1983
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Lilimae is arrested for running over Chip. Gary wants to
pay her bail but Val declines and pays instead. Chip is rushed to surgery. He
wakes up, but later goes into a coma. Diana blames Karen for running him over. Laura tells Abby that the apartment her
uncle left her at Lotus Point was left to Sid, too, so Karen owns half. Abby
instructs her to buy Karen out, but Karen won't sell. Abby suggests to Gary
they get married, but he wants to wait. After Lilimae goes to the ranch
looking for Diana, Gary takes her home to Val's. Val's upset, so Gary comforts
her and they sleep together. When he gets home, Abby's leaving. Val tells Mack
she slept with Gary and is happy. Gary tells Laura about it and says how it's
great that they can be friends with no strings. Val has a psychiatrist, Dr.
Bovane, see Lilimae.
I’m so excited to be back
talking about KL, and I must declare
right away that this most recent disk My Beloved Grammy and I powered through,
which spanned this episode in question up through Homecoming, was sooooooo good
that it’s a contender for our best disk ever, five glorious episodes of
excitement and nighttime soap perfection, and I reiterate that, if I was not
doing this writing for this blog, even though it was about 10:00PM by the time
we finished up, I would have turned to My Beloved Grammy and said we should
just watch an entire other disk of five episodes right away. How could viewers in 1983 possibly wait seven agonizing days between eps of KL?
Anyway, let’s go ahead and get started with the episode in question for
today.
When we last left off, we were
watching a riveting and stylish slow motion sequence set to scary-ass horror
movie music in which Lilimae ran Chip over with her car and then simply sat,
motionless, behind the wheel with a look on her face that said to us, “I only did
what needed to be done,” and indeed, that seems to be her little mantra this
week, as she just keeps repeating it over and over again. When we begin …And Never Brought to Mind, we start on a very ER sequence in which a bloody Chip is wheeled through the
hospital corridors while a panicked Diana trails behind him. Will Chip live or die? We’ll have to watch to find out.
Meanwhile, Lilimae is making
absolutely no effort to hide what she’s done or why she’s done it. As she sits in an interrogation room with
Richard Donner’s cousin, she says for the first time, “I only did what needed
to be done.” All the cops surrounding
her are like, “Jesus, lady, stop saying that until you’ve got a lawyer
present,” but Lilimae pays them no mind.
Even though her approach is questionable, I kinda dig what she’s doing
here. I think if I ever kill someone or
try to kill someone (and trust me, I’m just a ticking time bomb), I’ll probably
just be super candid and totally admit to what I did and try to score some
honesty points. I mean, let’s be real,
here. Chip is a piece-of-shit murderer
sociopath who bashed Ciji over the head with a blunt instrument until she was
dead and then tossed her body into the ocean like it was garbage. If I ran him over with my car, I’d be proud of it, and Lilimae does make the
point that he was about to walk free, a murderer walking the streets perfectly
capable of killing again if he so chose.
Anyway, Lilimae’s in a lot of
trouble for what she did, but I think the cops are able to see that she’s
basically a harmless old woman who’s not gonna go around running over everyone
she sees, so she is allowed out on bail.
A real fast tangent here, but I noted the beautiful way that all the
characters continue to be weaved into the ongoing story arc with such fine
skill. For instance, we get scenes of
the other characters hanging out, doing their thing, like for instance Sumner
and Mack are enjoying some hot dogs on the street together when Mack uses
Sumner’s amazing ‘80s car phone to hear from Karen about what has
happened. Just like how I admired the
Ciji murder last season linking everyone in the cast together, I still feel
like everyone is linked here, everyone is still involved in what’s going on and
everyone is effected by what Lilimae has done.
Now, on the subject of bail, I
almost just wrote, “Oh, the cops let Lilimae out or something,” since I didn’t
put in my notes exactly what happens, but then I remembered an important
detail, which is this: Gary rushes to the police station to meet up with Val
and he immediately offers to pay the bail for her. In another example of Val’s continued
declaration of independence, she thanks Gary but says she’ll take care of it
herself. I just love Gary for rushing to
Val’s side to help her at this time and offer this money. After all, he’s got plenty, and I love his
character for not just blowing the money on stupid luxuries, but for trying to
use it to help someone he cares about. I
also love Val for refusing the money when she could easily take it. She continues to be her own woman who takes
care of herself and supports herself.
This is a prime example of the dynamic duo at their absolute finest.
Meanwhile, Chip is lying in the
hospital bed with Diana at his side when he realizes he’s in a nighttime soap
opera and decides to slip into a coma.
Diana and he are exchanging some sort of dialogue together, something
about how they love each other, and then he just sorta drifts away and Diana
starts screaming for a nurse while the music swells dramatically just before we
cut to a commercial. During this scene,
I proposed to My Beloved Grammy my theory that Diana is mentally ill and she
actually said it’s a good theory and that she agrees with me. She then went on to expound on my theory,
pointing out that Diana loved her dad and that he died, which could probably
cause a mental strain that could lead to insanity. Isn’t My Beloved Grammy smart? Great television is so much richer when you
have someone to watch it with and speak to about all the characters and ongoing
plot developments, let me tell you.
Anyway, Chip’s gonna be in the
coma for a little while, but during that time Karen stays at home and continues
to act, well, a little nutty. There’s no
doubt about it at this point; Karen is coming unglued. Her own stresses over the past four years
have finally really gotten to her and she’s starting to become quite a
nut. For instance, we have an early
scene (which is fabulously shot, by
the way, as Karen’s face is really big in the foreground and right side of the
screen as she sits in a chair, and then Laura enters in the background and it
almost looks like some sort of split diopter shot) in which Laura comes to
visit Karen and the two almost, but don’t quite, make up and become friends
again. If you’ll recall, Karen was mad
at Laura for running around and telling anyone who would listen that Richard
killed Ciji. This week, Laura is ready
to admit that she realizes Richard didn’t kill Ciji because he’s not part of
the cast anymore and it’s just bad writing to have the culprit in a whodunit
murder mystery be someone who’s not even on the show anymore. So, she comes to apologize to Karen, says
they should be friends again, the two are right on the edge of making up, and
then Laura brings up some property that Abs and Karen are both sharing and how
Karen should sell her share to Abs. As
soon as Karen hears this, she gets mad again and goes on a speech about how
Laura only came to butter her up for Abs and she asks her to leave.
While we’re on the subject of
this property, allow me to expand a bit.
This is the first ep in which we hear the words “Lotus Point,” and my
ears immediately perked up because I remembered this being a really important
thing that spans several seasons.
However, this is another one of those storylines where I remember it
being important, I remember a lot happening, and I remember it taking up a lot
of time, but I don’t remember precisely what
happens or why it happens and I also recall that I was sorta confused with
the whole thing upon first viewing. This
time, however, I shall try to pay strict attention and really understand what
is going on. Anyway, early in the ep
Laura and Abs have a little sit-down in Abby’s palatial office/apartment/sex
suite and Laura tells her that she looked into the property that uncle of Abs
left her. She says it’s called Lotus
Point and that her uncle also left it to Sid.
Now that Sid is dead, that means half of this belongs to Karen. It’s at this point that Abs tells Laura to
buy Karen out for some huge sum of money, I think to the amount of $100,000.00
or somewhere in that ballpark. This and
the Karen/Laura fight scene are about all we get on Lotus Point this week, but
stay tuned cuz it’s gonna be important and it’s gonna stick with us for seasons
and seasons to come.
One last thing about Karen this
week: It seems she still hasn’t gotten the hint that Diana wants nothing to do
with her, because while Chip takes his soap opera nap, she goes to visit Diana
at the hospital, where she finds her waiting out in the hallways much like
Karen herself way back at the start of season three. She tries to make nice with Diana, but Diana
will have none of it and instead goes on a really long and nasty speech about
how she blames Karen for what has happened.
She even goes so far as to say that she thinks Karen arranged for Chip
to get hit by the car, and she concludes by saying that she’ll never come to
Karen for anything else ever again. I
think this speech finally does the trick, that Karen finally understands just
how much her daughter really hates her at this point and so she gets up and
walks away and, presumably, won’t be bothering Diana anymore.
I’m gonna say something
complimentary about Diana, so get ready.
I have to admit that, upon this rewatch, I’m definitely seeing Claudia Lonow grow as an actress and really start to show off some chops at this point
in the series. Around seasons one and
two era, I think I said she wasn’t a very good actress and I would often make
fun of the heart-to-heart scenes between her and Karen. Well, starting around season four, but really
picking up here in season five, I think Lonow is starting to show some real
dramatic skill, managing to handle a lot of different, conflicting emotions all
at once. We just saw her go from terror
towards Chip with Fugitives to his
Stockholm Syndrome type defender in Nowhere to Run, and now I actually believe that she’s legit heartbroken that he’s
in a coma and may not come out of it.
That’s a lot of different weighty material to handle, and she’s doing a
good job. She’s really grown since
season one and I think the reason I didn’t recognize it upon first viewing was
that the character of Diana is just so inherently reprehensible that I refused
to like anything about her. Well, the
character is still reprehensible, an
awful brat who is defending a murderer and treating her wonderful mother like
shit, but I think that stuff is all intentional on the part of the writers, and
Lonow is actually playing the part very well.
In fact, I’d say she deserves some props for even doing this character, who is nasty and unpleasant in a way that’s
not even fun; Abby is wicked, too, but she’s also fun to watch and of course
unbelievably sexy, so Donna gets to work with all that different stuff while
the character of Diana is just a bitch.
The biggest and most important
story development this week is easily the triangle of Gary, Val, and Abs. Early on, we get a scene between Abs and her
ever-faithful Westmont in which he reminds her that she just has a few short
days to rope Gary into marriage before he gets his inheritance and that the two
must already be married when that
money comes in or else she will have no claim on it. My Beloved Grammy opined that she thinks this
isn’t actually how marriage laws work, but I have no knowledge of the
subject. I don’t really know my marital
laws stuff and I never plan to get married myself, so I don’t particularly
care. In 1983, in California, was this
how marriage worked? Do you need to have
a big flow of money come in after
you’ve married a person in order to get half of it when you divorce? Sounds realistic enough to me, but even if
it’s not, I’m willing to go with it cuz it’s KL and it’s such unbelievably great entertainment. Even if this doesn’t adhere absolutely
strictly to real-life marital laws and isn’t 100% realistic, it’s still more
realistic than bringing a character back from the dead by erasing an entire season
as a dream, wouldn’t you agree? Moving
on.
Abs is in a big hurry to get
Gary, so she has to do some fabulous acting to try and convince him. First, we begin on her painting Olivia’s
nails by the pool and declaring that tonight’s the night she’s gonna propose to
Gary. She ships both Brian and Olivia
off to stay with friends so that she and Gary can have some privacy, then her
big baby blue eyes get all wide and excited and she says in her breathy voice,
“Oh, Gary, let’s get married; let’s get married right away!” Interestingly, Gary doesn’t really wanna
(despite the fact that, in just the previous episode, he introduced Abs to
Sumner as “my fiancé,” but I’m willing to let that slide) and he goes on a bit
of a speech about how they have a good thing going for them now and marriage
will only ruin it. Then, in one of her
greatest moments of lying and manipulating ever,
Abs looks Gary straight in the eyes and tells him that if he’s worried about
the money, money’s not important to her and she’d even be willing to sign a
pre-nup before they get married.
Holy cow! At this point, I said to My Beloved Grammy
that I think Abs is an even better liar than J.R. and she agreed with me, also
adding, “Abs is even more evil than J.R.”
What do you think? I’m not sure I agree with the “evil” part,
but a better liar, for sure. Whenever
J.R. over on Dallas was up to
something no good and needed to lie about it, if he told Bobby or Sue Ellen a
blatant lie, it was always kinda funny and you could tell they were sorta
rolling their eyes and totally not believing him. The brilliance of Abs and the way that Donna
plays her is that she does such a good job at lying that even we, the audience,
kinda wanna believe her, too. It’s a
remarkable bit of acting to have to play someone who is scheming and lying
and manipulating and we know that and
yet, when the time comes for her to really bluff and tell a complete lie, we
still kinda, in the back of our heads, wanna believe that she might be
sincere.
Next up, we get a fabulously
uncomfortable scene in which Gary and Abs have just finished having a nice shag
in the bedroom when Lilimae just comes walking in. Geez, she didn’t even knock or anything;
instead she just let herself into the house and walked right into the bedroom
where naked Gary and Abs lay. This scene
is preceded by one of Lilimae sneaking out of the house in the middle of the
night, clearly up to something. My
Beloved Grammy thought she was going to blow town or something, but it turns
out she’s just looking for Diana, which she says after walking in on Gary and
Abs. I kinda appreciate that, even
though the situation is uncomfortable, Gary doesn’t act too weird about
it. Honestly, if I was caught shagging
Donna Mills, I would just be proud of myself and probably ask whoever caught us
to take some pictures for me to put in my scrapbook. But anyway, Gary acts very mature and adult
and hops out of bed and gets dressed and says that Lilimae is in no condition
to drive, so he’s gonna take her home.
Abs does not like the sound of
this and boldly declares, “Gary, if you leave, I’m not gonna be here when you
come back.” In what might be Gary’s
coolest moment ever, he just turns around and walks away; he doesn’t even think about it, not even for like one
split little microsecond. It was totally
boss and reminds me of how cool Gary
is becoming at this juncture in the series.
Anyway, the two return to Val’s
home and he drops Lilimae off, but then something happens. Now, follow me along here, because as we were
watching this scene, I found myself wondering, “Is this the scene,” because if it is, it’s actually one of the most
important developments in the entire series history. See, while Gary is just about getting ready
to leave, he and Val start to kiss a little, but then “a little” turns into “a
lot” and it becomes this epic make out session just before we go to
commercial. So my question was: Did they
shag or did they just kiss? Well,
according to the plot description I stole from TV.com, the two definitely
shagged, and I think this information is confirmed for us a few eps down the
line. Now, why is it such a big deal
that they shagged? Well, because if I’m
doing my math and my timeline-layout right, then this has to be the big shag
that leads to, wait for it….Val’s pregnancy.
Now, I don’t know if I should put a spoiler alert thing around that or
not, because I kinda feel like every KL fan,
when they think about KL, they
immediately think about Val’s babies and the glorious story arc of season
six. I think most would agree that Val’s
babies during season six is a serious contender for the greatest storyline in KL history and, well, the seed for that
is being quite literally planted right here, before our very eyes, which is
unbelievably exciting. Of course, I’m
gonna pay attention to the outline of the pregnancy and when Val actually gives
birth and I’m pretty sure we’re gonna see
that she’s pregnant for well over a year, but why fret? Pregnancies are always weird in TV land,
mostly because of those mysterious missing summers.
Even so, nobody watching this ep
in 1983 could possibly have any idea of the repercussions of this scene. Taking in this episode as an individual
little snowflake, I think the reason we are meant to be excited is because this
shagging reunion could possibly mean Gary and Val might get back together. After all, he just ran off on Abs after her
little “I’m not gonna be here,” threat, and we all saw the loving way he looked
at Val at the close of The People vs. Gary Ewing, and of course the utterly fabulous
scene of them speaking while Val was sitting in her car back in Marital Privileges, so yeah, all signs
definitely seem to be pointing to them getting back together. But will they?
When Gary returns to Westfork, I
was surprised to see that Abs has packed a bag and is getting ready to
leave. I really thought her comment from
before was mere bluffing, and I also at first thought that maybe her suitcase
was actually empty and that she had just been waiting at the door for Gary to
come back so that she could come dramatically marching out with a suitcase in
hand, creating the illusion that she’s leaving.
But no, Gary tells her to stay and she says nope, that he blew it, and
she gets in her car and drives away.
Even so, I think one could argue that this act is also, in and of
itself, another kind of bluff, because when we get our very final scene of the
ep, Abs is at her office, speaking to Westmont, and he’s starting to get
nervous that things are going to fall apart for Abs. Ever confident, Abs tells Westmont that he
has nothing to worry about and that Gary will return to her very shortly and we
actually get a rare freeze-frame ending on Abby’s smiling face, utterly sure of
herself and her sexual powers over Gary.
From there, our episode concludes.
KL is officially so good at
this point that I feel like basically every episode is just me saying what a
masterpiece it was. …And Never Brought to Mind is no exception, and considering that I
didn’t even particularly remember this episode as we got settled in to watch
it, that makes it more impressive. As we
go through eps, we hit ones that I remember vividly and I’m like, “Oooh, this
is gonna be a good one.” For instance,
our previous ep, One Kind of Justice,
was one of those. After an ep as good as
that one, you’d feel like there would be a sort of comedown effect, a “morning
after” feeling to whatever episode has to follow Lilimae hitting Chip with her
car, but you’d be wrong. Instead, the
show just keeps powering along, just as good as our prior eps. What we are seeing here is really a show at
the top of its game, the peak of its powers, not making a single misstep along
the way. I’ll be curious to see if there
are any eps during season five (or
the towering masterpiece of television known as season six) that I don’t just
plain love; the show is that good at this point.
Also, the wonderful style and
just the way the show is shot continues to be on full display here, and this is
coming from a director, Sheldon Larry (pictured below), who only contributes two KL eps overall (this one right here and Reconcilable Differences a little later
this season), making me wonder who specifically to credit for the fantastic
camera shots and cool mirror motifs going on this week. Do you think the showrunners like David Jacobs and Peter Dunne just basically made a decision that KL would be a great looking show always shot with style and whoever
was brought onboard to direct the eps was told to make them look good? Or do you think they are just picking solid
directors and then giving them the freedom to do what they want with the
camera, like for instance the cool shot of Karen’s head near the start of the
ep?
Last of all, the fact that this is the ep in which Gary and Val
have their shag and knowing all the great stories this is going to lead to, not
just for next season but for several seasons
down the road, also makes this a really important episode in the overall KL story, making this an easy episode to
love and to recommend. So yeah, …And Never Brought to Mind was a fucking great episode and, spoiler
alert, our next episode is going to be a fucking great episode, as well. If we had any doubts about the impending
union of Gary and Abs, we should all take a great big hint from the title of
our next show, Sacred Vows.
I always wondered about this episode. How did Gary or lillimae get home? Lillimae drove to the ranch and Gary drove her home in his car, so what happened to lillimaes car? And why did Abby wait to leave until Gary came back? How far was the ranch from the cul de sac and how long would a proper shag last?
ReplyDeleteYou're too too kind to Lonow. I find her to be just as tedious here as in all previous episodes.
ReplyDeleteWhat's funny is Abby waits for Gary to come home so she can leave ! That was a manipulative move. What did she do with the kids ?
ReplyDeleteIt was my impression that Gary comes home the next morning... a clear sign that he spent the night with Val. Abs leaves first thing that morning. Remember, there is also a scene between Mack and Val where it is made pretty clear she and Gary shagged. I wonder if Lilimae got a good look at Gary's butt in the scene where he hopped out of the bed to escort her home. Geez, he didn't have time to shower between Abs and Val. I wonder if Val could tell???
ReplyDeleteGiven the mega-importance to both their ongoing relationship and the twins storyline, I was surprised at how subtly the show presented Gary and Val's coupling in this episode. Without a post-coital scene to make it obvious, I wasn't certain that they had been intimate because I was grossed out at the idea that Gary had JUST been with Abby -- and that he hadn't even taken a shower!
ReplyDelete