Episode Title: High Ideals
Season 05, Episode 20
Episode 095 of 344
Written by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman
Directed by Robert Becker
Original Airdate: Thursday,
February 16th, 1984
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Gary freezes the
assets of Gary Ewing Enterprises and seals the office. When Val is overcome by
pain from her pregnancy, her doctor forbids her to accompany Ben to El
Salvador. After Abby orders Cathy off the ranch, Gary
tells Cathy that she may stay as long as she wishes. When Gary says that he
intends to file for divorce, Abby says she doesn't want a divorce. Later, Gary
and Cathy consummate their relationship. When Mack resumes his job on the crime
commission upon a request from the governor, Sumner becomes suspicious of
Mack's intentions.
Last time, with …So Shall You Reap, we watched Abby’s
entire life turn into pure solid human waste.
Now here we are with High Ideals,
ready to see how she deals with this turn of events in her life and, of course,
ready to find out what’s going on with everybody else on the series, as well. Why don’t we just start with
Abs, shall we? This week, we get to see
once again that Gary wasn’t kidding when he ordered her off the ranch and out
of his life. If Abs thought Gary was
just getting a little heated and he would calm down after some time alone, she
was sorely mistaken. This week, Gary is
hard at work with getting the divorce proceedings rolling along, and anytime he
happens to see Abs, you can actually see the smoke starting to come out of his
ears. See, early on near the start of
the ep, Gary returns to Westfork and is not pleased to see Abby’s car parked
out front. He wastes no time in finding
her and demanding to know what she’s doing here and why she hasn’t gotten the
hell out already. Well, Abby’s here to
visit the kids (Olivia, who is present and accounted for, and Brian, who
continues to be absent and constantly off-screen and I doubt any viewers
actually care). Okay, so she’s checking
up on her kids, which is reasonable, but she’s still on Westfork property and
that is completely unacceptable for Gary, so he orders her to leave.
Okay, I’m gonna get into some
minor spoiler territory, so either bear with me or just skip ahead by a
paragraph or two. In the back of my
mind, I’m quite sure that Gary and Abs get back together again, and I don’t think
we even have to wait that long to see it.
I’m pretty sure that, by the opening eps of season six, they are a
couple again. The thing that I simply
can’t remember at all is how this
turn of events occurs. Remember I was
drinking a lot more the first time I watched these (I loved my vodka on the
rocks with a squeeze of lime, mmmmm) and also it was several years ago, so I’ve
forgotten lots of the details of the series and how events unfold. But anyway, watching this current juncture of
eps, it’s really hard to imagine Gary forgiving Abs, because he is so damn mad,
and justifiably so. He hasn’t cooled
down at all from last week; he still wants her off the ranch, he still wants to
be divorced from her, and he still can barely even stand to look at her. When will this change? And how?
I’m curious to pay strict attention and find out for myself, because
right now it’s hard to believe Gary could ever
forgive Abs.
The betrayal Gary has
experienced from Abs (and, by extension, also by Laura and Cathy, who were both
telling him lies because of Abby’s manipulations) have turned him into a bit of
a bitter, cynical man this ep. See, we
get an early scene of him and Cathy walking along the ranch, going up a big
hill or something, kinda pacing real fast, and Gary is just so damn mad. He’s kinda berating Cathy for something she
did (something work related) and she’s like, “Boy, you’re in a mood,” or
whatever, and at one point she says how Gary’s gonna have to trust her, and
Gary has a really great action-movie-hero line in which he declares, “I don’t trust
anybody.” A moment later, Mack stops by
for a visit and Gary is super short and grumpy with him, not too terribly
helpful at all. See, Mack wants to look at,
like, all the files from Gary Ewing Enterprises that could possibly relate to
the Wolfbridge group somehow, and Gary just says how he has all the files
locked up and doesn’t want to touch them now.
We also learn that he has frozen all assets, meaning Abs will have no
money to throw around at this point in time.
If she wants to present herself as the head of the company and a big
shot, it’s gonna be kinda difficult since she has no money and, um, no phone
(yeah, we learn that the phone has been disconnected this week and there’s a
humorous scene in which Abs meets with the evil St. Claire and has to act like
everything’s cool and St. Claire is all sly and like, “Why don’t you call me
when your phones are hooked up again?”).
I wanna talk about Gary and
Cathy, by the way, because with High
Ideals we’ve reached another one of those blackouts in my memory, an
episode I hardly remember watching and one particular development that I had
completely forgotten. Before I got
started with this blog and decided to examine, in exquisite and painful detail,
all 344 eps of KL, if you had come up
to me and asked, “Do Cathy and Gary ever sleep together?” I would have
answered, “No.” In my memory, they came
real close to sleeping together on that ranch a few eps back, they didn’t do
it, and that was the end of it. However,
shocker of all shockers, the two do indeed shag, and right here in this
particular episode, to boot. How does
this come about?
While Gary is having a hard time
forgiving Abs for her betrayal, he’s making peace with both Cathy and Laura
(the Laura one is off-screen, much to my disappointment; it’s just that we get
a later comment from Abs in which she says, “You forgave Cathy and Laura; why
can’t you forgive me?”), and here we see that forgiveness of Cathy in
action. For instance, she’s still
allowed to stay at the ranch as both a worker and a friend. I think the reason Gary is cool with her is
because he knows her betrayal was mostly a manipulation of Abby’s. He know that Cathy’s had a hard life, is
not a rich woman, and that whatever money Abs offered her to keep him good and
distracted must have been a fortune to this nice, mixed-up young girl. In case I haven’t mentioned it yet (I
probably have, but there are a lot of damn episodes), I’m just so glad that Lisa Hartman is back on the series, and I’m not even bothered by the inherent
ridiculous of Ciji being reincarnated a handful of eps later as this completely
new character. Yeah, it’s ridiculous,
but somehow it doesn’t seem ridiculous
when you’re watching it, you know? Also,
there’s just such a warmth to Lisa as either Ciji or Cathy. Even if Cathy has had a messed up life, she
just seems like a sweet, genuine, nice person, and if I was Gary, I would like
having her around, as well. I also feel
like she seems to come out of the real world; she seems like a real person that
I would meet in my daily life, even though at the same time she gets to rock
the best of the ‘80s fashions.
Okay, anyway, let’s get to that
shag that I had completely forgotten about.
The scene starts out wonderfully with Cathy slipping into Ciji’s alien
dress (we last saw her rocking the alien dress back in Homecoming) and putting Ciji’s album onto the old record
player. As a proud owner of Lisa’s Letterock album on vinyl, it definitely
made me smile that this record Cathy holds is clearly the exact same record from real life, with a very simple
“Ciji” sticker plastered up on the corner to hide Lisa’s real name. However, when Cathy puts the needle down, we
get to hear a song that does not exist on the real-life Letterock album, or indeed on any real life home media, that fabulous
cover of Open Arms. Oh how I wish there was some version of this
song I could just listen to in my daily life, because I would argue that Lisa’s
cover of it is superior to the actual original Journey version. Anyway,
that’s the song Cathy starts listening to, she’s rocking the alien dress, she’s
looking like Ciji, she stands in front of the mirror and admires herself, and
I’m wondering what exactly is going on here.
At first My Beloved Grammy
theorized that this was part of Ray’s wicked plan, that he sent her back to the
ranch to become Ciji or whatever, to continue to mess with Gary’s mind. I’m not sure what the exact benefit of this
behavior could be, how it would relate to getting any of Gary’s money or
whatever, but in any case that’s not what’s actually going on in this
scene. Rather, Cathy has become
convinced that Gary only really loves/loved Ciji and that, to get his love, she
needs to embrace that and just become Ciji.
However, Gary comes into the room and he’s mad about this, asking her to
take off the ridiculous H.R. Giger dress and stop acting like Ciji. He screams, “I hate Journey covers!” and takes the record off the player and then Cathy
starts to say how she thought this is what he wanted, that he wanted Ciji back
from the dead. The music starts to swell
as the two get all close together and Gary says no, it’s not that at all, that
at first it was about that, but then it turned into him simply wanting Cathy,
Cathy just as she is because that’s the person he cares about. The two start very passionately making out (I
think Gary actually gets on top of her and rolls around and stuff) before we
cut to a commercial. When we return from commercial,
my mind is absolutely blown because Gary and Cathy are now lying naked in bed
together post-shag. Like I said,
absolutely all of this had disappeared from my mind, so I found myself
wondering both how I could have forgotten such an important plot detail and
also how long this could last. Again,
here’s a minor spoiler alert, but next season we are gonna get Alec Baldwin
added to the cast as Joshua and he pretty much immediately serves as Cathy’s
romantic interest; so when does this Gary thing end? It must be either near the end of this season
or the very start of the next one. I
just find it shocking that I totally forgot about all this happening but,
again, there are 344 episodes and a lot of
stuff happens in that big batch of eps, so I guess I can cut myself a break.
So what’s going on back at the
cul-de-sac with Val and Ben? Well, as we
begin the episode, things are still in order for the two of them to head to El
Salvador together, and Val is enquiring about all the things that will be
different there from over here. She
wants to know if they’ll have plumbing, running water, electricity, stuff like
that. Ben gives a kinda nice speech this
week about how he finds it humbling to go to third world countries (I guess
this is when we still used that term before we moved on to the allegedly more
P.C. term that I think actually sounds way more condescending and snooty,
“Developing countries”) and “Get away from the gadgets and gizmos” and sorta
see how other people in the world live.
I’m with Ben here; if I had the money and the resources (I have neither
and I’m so poor that I ate my shoes this morning), I would like to go to lots
of different countries and see how things are, get away from all the stupid
technology that has overrun our world and that we really don’t need all that
much. Again, I stress how much my
appreciation of Ben is growing; this character could be such a dud, or such a
non-character; he could easily just be a repeat of the dreadfully boring Jeff
Munson from last season (I can actually hear all of you as you furrow your
brows and say, “Jeff who?”), but instead the writers make him a real
character. I believe he has a past back story
and I believe that it’s what has lead him to being the person we see before us
today.
There’s one little secret Val’s
keeping, however, and that’s the fact that she’s experiencing some mysterious
chest pains. Will she have a
miscarriage? Well, um, no, and I barely
even feel that’s a spoiler because I think any
KL fan inherently knows what we have coming on the horizons next season,
arguably the greatest storyline in the entire fourteen season run of KL, Val’s babies. Yes, for all KL fans, those two words, “Val’s babies,” are enough to immediately
know what is being discussed, what it means, why it’s so amazing and great and
brilliant. However, if I wasn’t
convinced before, I am convinced now that My Beloved Grammy either never
watched this series or has simply forgotten everything or never made it all the
way to the sheer masterpiece that is season six, because she really seems to
believe that Val’s going to have a miscarriage.
Kinda trying to wash my brain out and pretend I don’t know what stuff is
coming, I could see why someone would predict that’s going to happen. After all, don’t these ‘80s nighttime soaps
just love to introduce a complicated pregnancy and then kill it off before the
baby can actually be born? Indeed, we’ve
already seen KL do this to Karen way
earlier in the run (you all remember Small Surprises?), so it’s a sensible prediction to make.
Val tries to keep these chest
pains on the D.L., but it gets a little harder to do that when she’s seeing Ben
off in his car and then she immediately collapses in the middle of the
street. Both Lilimae and Ben come rushing
over to see what is wrong, and Val tries to dismiss it as nothing, just simple
pregnancy pains, no big deal, but of course they are concerned and call the
doctor over. I do think it’s worth
discussing Val’s age as a character as well as J.V.A’s age in real life,
because that’s one aspect of this pregnancy that nobody seems to discuss. J.V.A. was born in (allegedly) 1943, which would put her
at around 40 or 41 at this point; isn’t it generally kinda considered a risky
thing for women over 40 to have babies?
Am I being old-fashioned in that question? Do I not know what I’m talking about? Also, is the real-life age of J.V.A.
reflected in the character of Valene? We
all know that she had baby Lucy when she was real young, about fifteen, and if
we were to track Lucy’s age from over on Dallas,
I believe she would be around 23 or so, does that sound accurate? And if that’s the age of Lucy, that would put
Valene at around 38, right? Am I way off
in my math? Somebody help me, please!
In any case, the lady doctor
comes by to see Val (and I took a look at the IMDb of this actress, Nancy Jeris, pictured both above and below, and am pleased to see that she’ll be back as the same doctor character
for two more upcoming episodes not too far into the future) and then declares
that she can absolutely not go to El Salvador.
Hmmm, I’m not so sure I’d need the doctor to come by and tell me that,
but I’m glad she does. Ben gets straight
with the doctor and asks directly if Val is going to have a miscarriage, and
the doctor says, “Probably not.” Okay,
so that’s good news, mostly, but that use of the word ‘probably’ is also
disconcerting. Certainly we get the
sense that Val needs to relax and take it easy for awhile, or she could be
putting her pregnancy at risk. Thusly,
no El Salvador for her, although Ben is still going to have to go.
Let’s talk Mack and Karen for a
minute, because I fear I’ve been neglecting them. Karen is now nicely clean and sober for five
episodes straight, having finished melting the drugs out of her system back in Reconcilable Differences. Now she’s back to being the Karen we love: sharp, smart, quick-witted, and always ready for a healthy confrontation. This week, Mack gets himself a new job,
working for the governor this time, and Karen is deeply unsettled by this and
fears that he will be reigniting his vendetta against the Wolfbridge
group. We get another fantastic Sid
callback in which Karen says, “I already lost one husband because of his
ideals, and I’m not gonna lose another one.”
Yes, this is fantastic, for let us not forget that Sid Fairgate’s entire
death was predicated on his belief in doing the right thing, in not letting
those pesky mobsters escape from justice.
Now here’s Mack, equally obsessed with the idea of justice, that bad
people need to pay for their crimes. Of
course Karen is upset; can you imagine if she managed to find a second husband
who is equally as amazing as the first (or, I would argue, even better, not to
besmirch the fine legacy of Sid) only to have him die because of the same kinds
of principles that killed that first husband?
It would be awful, and so I fully understand why Mack chooses to tell a
fib and inform Karen that he’s done with Wolfbridge; he’s dropped his
investigation. At first I was like, “Oh,
he has?” but then the two hug and we see the look in Mack’s eyes as he has his
head over Karen’s shoulder. He is not
telling her the truth and this could lead to some very bad consequences in the
near future.
The last major plot point I wish
to discuss for the week involves Olivia running away from Westfork. Early in the ep, we see her going through the
motions of leaving for another routine day of school, but then she hides behind
a big bush when the bus comes pulling up.
The bus driver who probably hates his life and wants to kill himself
(especially since he’s driving one of those buses that seem to only exist in
movies or television shows in which absolutely all the children on the bus are
complete monsters fighting and throwing paper airplanes and carrying on like
social deviants; I can recall that none of my daily school bus rides were so
exciting or action packed), just honks his horn once or twice and then proceeds
onwards, and Olivia begins the long walk all the way to Val’s house.
The thing is, however, that we
don’t know she’s going to Val’s house.
Olivia’s walk really takes up a lot of time this ep, as we keep cutting
back to her moving through the mean streets of California, walking through
shady corners and back alleys and avoiding creepy characters.
At one point, some guy pulls over and offers her a ride and we fear that
she might get in, but she tells him no and continues walking. The fact that it takes her so damn long to
reach Val’s house also serves to remind us of how isolated Gary has managed to
make himself from all the cul-de-sac shenanigans. Westfork really is a huge block of land kinda
placed into the middle of nowhere, away from the city and the suburbs
both. It’s easy to forget that wide
divide at this point, because in my brain I kinda just assume that Westfork and
Seaview Circle are right down the street from each other, but it takes Olivia
all day to walk from the former to the latter, so we get a reminder that they
are quite far apart.
Okay, so she gets to Val’s and
of course Val is glad to see her. Much
like Gary’s special relationship with Olivia, I would say Val has the same
thing. She took an immediate liking to
her when they first met at the start of season two, and they still get along
famously. Sometimes I find myself wondering
if Olivia would be happier living in a world in which Gary and Val are her
parents and Abs just sorta, you know, goes away. What do you think, my gentle readers? In any case, Lilimae calls up Abs to tell her
where her daughter is, in a fabulously fast and funny scene that made me laugh
aloud. See, we just begin the scene with
Lilimae already on the phone to Abs and in the middle of berating her for being
a horrible person. It’s a fantastically
nasty speech, with such memorable comments as “Hussies like you don’t deserve
to have children.” I think what makes
this scene so funny is that when we cut to shots of Abs on the phone, she’s not
even saying anything, just sorta standing there and listening to Lilimae rather
expressionlessly. All in all, very
humorous.
Abs and Gary both show up at the
house to get Olivia, which zooms us into our concluding scene and it’s a
fantastic one, as I’m obviously getting used to at this point. At this point in the saga, the chemistry
whenever you put Gary and Val onscreen together is absolutely palpable. There’s no doubt in any viewer's mind that
Gary and Val love each other and are meant to be together, and in this
instance, she’s lying in her bed on pregnancy bed-arrest, and when she and Gary
speak, she just smiles so wide, clearly so happy to see him. Of course, things turn awkward due to the
fact that both Abs and Ben are also in the house at the same time. When Abs goes to pick up Olivia and her and
Gary both leave at the same time, our final image is Val just beaming from the
staircase as Gary goes away, staring at him with all the love in her heart
clearly plastered onto her face, and then we get a closeup shot of poor Ben,
standing off to the side, just staring at that face, recognizing the look of
love in Val’s eyes, and realizing that, deep down, he’s never gonna rank in her
heart the same way that Gary does.
It’s really a rather sad final image to go out on, and my heart went out
to Ben. The poor guy is so decent and
kind and he’s been good to Val all season, but now it’s become clear who Val
truly loves and wants, and it’s of course Gary.
Oh boy, that was an action
packed disk, wasn’t it? As usual for
when we power through a solid disk of five eps, I find myself reflecting on how
damn much happens in the course of those five eps. The show has officially become so dense and
so rich and so layered that the changes from one episode to the next can often
feel very substantial, yet everything still continues to unfold in such an
organic way that it never feels rushed, never feels like the writers are just
trying to keep the drama flying at us as fast as possible. We are now 20 episodes deep into a season of
25 altogether, meaning that our next disk shall tidily finish up the season and
leave us on a gripping cliffhanger. I
shall return very shortly with the beginning of that disk, the episode entitled No Trumpets, No Drums.
According to the "Valene Ewing" page on Wikipedia (btw...I love that she has her own page), Val married Gary in 1961 when Gary was 17 and Val was 15. That would mean Val was born in 1946 or thereabouts. "High Ideals" aired on February 16th, 1984. So that would make Val 37 or 38 in this episode. Yes, I am a geek about dates and years and math and stuff.
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