Episode Title: Love to Take You Home
Season 06, Episode 07
Episode 107 of 344
Written by Peter Dunne
Directed by Larry Elikann
Original Airdate: Thursday,
November 22nd, 1984
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Mack is served
with divorce papers. Karen says she wants to explain, but she will need time.
Mack finds out that Gary Loader has been killed. Val and Gary feel responsible
for the MacKenzies' divorce. Abby and Scott
Easton watch them talking from her office. Joshua's father, Jonathan, comes to
Knots Landing determined to bring Joshua home with him. Joshua tells Cathy how
confused he is and they make love. Afterwards, Joshua feels dirty and
disgusted, and is horrified that Cathy doesn't feel ashamed, too. Joshua goes to
see Reverend Kathryn, who has a religious show on the station, for advice.
Joshua decides to stay and talks with his father. Scott Easton has lunch with
Mitch Ackerman. Val goes to see her obstetrician, but she has been called away
to a conference, and there is a new doctor - Mitch Ackerman. After Val's
appointment, Ackerman calls Easton and tells him that he gave Val the pills,
and that it will be two or three days at the most.
Oh God yes. In our last ep, which I still thought was
very very good, I said how I don’t think Robert Becker is quite up there with
“the big guys” when it comes to our KL
directors, and so it’s with great pleasure that I note television auteur Larry Elikann is back in the director’s chair this week to give us a little masterpiece
of television with Love to Take You Home,
and he’s obviously aided immeasurably by the fact that this ep is written by
the genius Peter Dunne, my new favorite person in the entire world (even though he never responded to my E-mail asking for an interview, sniff, cry). Right away this ep is more visually dynamic
and stimulating than our last one, as we open up on a preacher guy giving a little
sermon to TV cameras for some religious show that Pacific World Whatever
plays. I like how this is shot by
beginning in a tight closeup of the guy talking and then sorta pulling out to
reveal that we are seeing him through the camera monitor. Then Joshua comes walking by to deliver
coffee (I think we’re still in the era where people pretty much just drank
regular old coffee, and the main thing was asking whether they wanted cream and
sugar or not; the era of the super snooty and entitled Starbucks customers who
drink lattes and stuff feels like it’s about, erm, maybe ten years into the
future). When he sees this guy
sermonizing, he pauses to look on with interest; obviously this is something that
feels nice and comfortable to him, like if I was walking down a hallway and
then saw they were filming a nighttime soap or a gay porno, I would probably feel right at
home and pause to watch them continue.
I’m noticing how, even in the
super soap era of the series that we are now cozily nestled into, with long
ongoing story arcs and all that stuff, individual eps will still manage to have
their own flavor, their own themes running through. The theme of this one is religion and
religious oppression, so I appreciate how it begins right here in our very
first scene. This is not to say that
this preacher is into oppression, by the way.
I actually think this preacher guy is pretty cool, kinda having a more
modern and open minded aura about him than some religious people can have. I also wanna note with surprise that this
character (Reverend Kathryn, who will wind up being in six eps altogether) is
played by Sandy Kenyon, who I was surprised to see was the voice of Jon
Arbuckle in the first ever Garfield
special, the absolutely soul-crushing Here Comes Garfield.
You know what, let’s take a
moment to go on a wild tangent about Here Comes Garfield and it’s dominance in my life and the fact that even thinking about it can make me cry. This is a thirty minute short that is mostly
fun and shenanigans with Garfield and Odie until the main plot kicks in, which
is that Odie gets sent to the pound and then Garfield finds out he’s about to
get put down. From there, we have an
agonizing scene in which this super sad song called So Long, Old Friend plays while Garfield flashes back to all the
fun times he’s had with Odie. I first
saw this emotional rape when I was about eleven years old and was spending the
night at a friend’s house. We went
wandering to the grocery store and found this VHS tape (back when those were
still common; you kids today probably don't know what those are) of the special and we bought it for a buck or whatever and went
home to watch it. Little eleven year old
Brett wasn’t quite as comfortable with his emotions and feelings back then as
he is now (probably also cuz I was still wrestling with my sexuality and all
that stuff), and when we hit that scene with the song and the montage, I
started to cry uncontrollably, but I was embarrassed and didn’t want my friend
to see me, so I spent most of the time hiding my face and letting the tears
fall silently down my face. I was
convinced that if my friend saw me cry, he would make fun of me for crying at a
thirty minute children’s cartoon, but when the special concluded, I finally
turned to face my friend only to see that he was also crying uncontrollably and had tears just streaming down his
face. At that point, I was a little less
embarrassed, though I still retired to the bathroom to sit in the bathtub for a
few minutes and sob quietly to myself until I felt a bit better. For years I never watched the special again,
simply remembering how much it made me cry and how awful it made me feel, until
I rediscovered it in college and decided to face my demons and watch it again
and, of course, I cried like a little baby when I watched it again in college,
and I probably haven’t watched it since then because it simply makes me feel so
awful. Now, make no mistake, the special
ends with Garfield and Odie escaping the pound and living happily ever after,
but it’s one of those instances where nothing can take away the pain of what we
have seen or the emotions of that beautiful song that plays.
Anyway, that was an unrelated
tangent, but I felt like sharing, and, like I said, it very slightly relates because it appears this guy provided the voice of
Jon in that special, although I don’t think he did the voice for the Garfield and Friends TV show that I used
to watch which was, generally, much less emotionally rapey to sit through. As for the character, I like him, although I might
be getting ahead of myself and thinking of stuff he does in upcoming eps and
not this one. I’m not a big religious
guy and I’m generally afraid of priests and don't respect them, but this guy seems like one of those cool
priests who actually believes in love and understanding and all that crap.
This is in stark contrast to
Joshua’s father, who we finally meet this week.
Before I move on to the character and what he does and all that, let’s
talk about the actor, Transmorphers, and the fact that I think IMDb is
wrong. Okay, first off, Jonathan J. Rush
is played by Albert Salmi (pictured above), a character actor who follows me around and always
seems to be popping up in the things I watch.
I was just watching a James at 15 ep
and there he was as James’ sleazy uncle.
Now, what’s funny about this guy is that he looks distinctly different
to me based on whether he has a goatee or not.
Sometimes he’s got a goatee, and I’m like, “Oh, it’s that guy,” and
sometimes he doesn’t and I usually don’t even recognize him without it (like
for instance he’s in Caddyshack and I
never realized it until I just looked it up).
As for Transmorphing, well, he played the super sleazy and rapey Gil
Thurman (probably one of my favorite made-up names ever) over on Dallas during the 1982-1983 season. This is the guy that J.R. sent to, like have
a meeting at Sue Ellen’s little condo and then purposefully showed up real late
so that Gil could get, erm, a little bit Trumpy with Sue Ellen. God, he was a sleazeball on that show, but
once you take away the goatee and have him morph into Jonathan, he no longer
feels sleazy but, instead, frightening.
The reason I think IMDb is wrong is because they have him credited for
three eps of KL; there’s this one, Tomorrow Never Knows, and To Sing His Praise. Well, I’m not sure about To Sing His Praise because we haven’t gotten to that episode yet,
but I’m almost 100% certain he’s not in Tomororow Never Knows, because we did watch
that one and I have no memory of seeing him. Was he cut out but still credited? Is this a case where my copies are missing
scenes? In any case, I’ve been noticing
lots of flaws and problems within IMDb’s cast crediting for eps of KL, so this is probably just another
example.
Fuck me, there’s so much style
dripping from this episode. One of the
first scenes we see is Lilimae standing behind the gate of her house (I guess
technically Val’s house, but you all get my meaning) and peering out through
the bars, looking super sad and scared.
It’s framed in such a way that her face is center stage and the bars are
around her, making it look like she’s in prison. It’s a beautiful shot but also moves the story,
telling us that Lilimae is scared about seeing this man from her past again. When Gil Thurman (sorry, I meant Jonathan J.
Rush) arrives at the house, Elikann shoots him from below to make him look
tall, imposing, authoritative, and frightening.
The man immediately kills any fun that has the potential to grow in a
room, because Joshua and Cathy enter the house in a happy, laughing mood, but
as soon as Joshua sees his father, it’s very silent and spooky and Lilimae is
just sitting in a chair looking all pale, like she’s going to be sick. So I loved how Jonathan was shot
from below, and then I loved the very next scene even more, in which this
incredibly awkward pseudo-family dinner is shot from above, actually making it
look like some sort of religious painting.
The sense of tension in the air is palpable, and you know that Jonathan
is just not going to approve of anything, starting with this girl his son is
running around with. When he finds out
that Cathy is a singer, he asks, “Do you sing religious hymns?” and Cathy kinda
smiles and is like, “No, I don’t think Isadora would like that too much.” Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and say people who
are smoking and drinking in a bar probably don’t want to hear a bunch of
crappy religious songs, but hey, that’s just a guess.
After that, Jonathan moves on to Val, asking her about the babies and where
the father is. Right away we establish
that we have a night club singer at the table along with a
pregnant-out-of-wedlock woman; it’s a table full of sin!
Jonathan is not just here for a
friendly visit; he wants to take Joshua back to wherever they come from (they
say it ten thousand times, I’m sure, and I’m just too dumb to pay attention or
I’m too busy focusing more on the way some microscopic beam of light in the
background exemplifies all the genius of television filmmaking). He tells Joshua how it’s time to come back
home and return to the church and continue his life of not having sex and not
dancing and not singing and basically not having any kind of fun at all. As appealing as that sounds, Joshua gets angry
and declares he’s staying here with Lilimae and Val and then he runs off, Cathy
hot on his heels. Cathy finds Joshua up in some
cliff area overlooking the water, all upset.
The music starts to swell as Joshua gives this big speech about how his
whole life has been filled with shame and nothing was ever good enough for his
father, and then the two start to make out and then roll around on top of each
other and, well, we cut to a commercial, but I think we can all infer what
happened, especially since when we return to the scene Joshua is gazing off
into the distance and refusing to look at Cathy while she cries and asks why he
thinks their making love is shameful (breaking CNN news alert: I am officially over my
problem with the term “making love” and now I actually kinda like saying it, especially if a boy is special to me). She says how Joshua is making her feel dirty,
and he says, “What we just did is a violation of everything,” and Cathy says,
“It’s the foundation of everything.”
Well, I’m definitely with her. We
are all sexual beings and sex is the
very foundation of all life and existence and without it, we wouldn’t even be
here; sorry to offend the delicate ears (or I should say “eyes”) of any
potential religious fanatic readers I may have (I’m pretty sure I don’t have
any). While I could understand the
temptation to be annoyed with Joshua and be like, “Get the fuck over your
issues, dude,” I feel bad for him.
Decades of nicely ingrained shame every single day is a hard thing to
shake off. Obviously Joshua was a virgin
until five minutes ago, so he’s probably quite certain he’s on the highway to Hell now
and there’s no going back, which could probably ruin anybody’s day.
Meanwhile, back at the house,
Lilimae is much more forward and direct with Jonathan as soon as they have a
private moment, which I think is interesting.
She looked like she was going to poop her pants at the dinner table
scene and hardly spoke a word, but now that they are sitting alone, she gets
rather authoritative and picks up his Bible and says, “I ought to beat you over
the head with your good book.” Then she
gives a nice speech about how the foundation of religion is supposed to be love
and she says how he doesn’t have any time for love even though, “You read about
it and you preach about it; why can’t you feel it?” What makes this scene extra interesting is
that Jonathan just sits quietly and listens to her; this tells me that their
relationship is much more complex than it appeared upon first glance. I think it shows that he still has feelings
of love for Lilimae; even though he condemns her as a sinner and says how she
abandoned them, I think he still kinda likes being around her and listening to
her talk. He probably likes the fact
that she is so direct with him, really.
God, KL is so good. I’ve said
this before and I’m gonna say it again, so deal with it, but this Jonathan
character could have been nothing; he could have easily just been this
one-episode guy that is shipped in to create a conflict and then is shipped out
unceremoniously, but even he winds up
being fascinating to watch, and seeing how Lilimae interacts with him is
fascinating to watch, and you know what, I’m calling it right now: If ever
there was a season to give Julie Harris her Emmy, it’s this one. She says so much
with her eyes, even when she’s not speaking and you can just see how her eyes
are kinda filling up with tears, so very expressive, and I feel like we’ve
reached some new level of maturity and high art by this juncture in the series
that is exemplified by just how fucking good her incredible acting is. The way this portion of the ep
ends could also have been a write-off, but it works brilliantly for me. See, Jonathan agrees to let Joshua stay here,
and then we get a fabulous final scene between him and Lilimae outside the
front door as he’s about to leave, donning a cool fedora and actually looking
rather boss. He turns to her and says,
“I forgot what a spitfire you were,” and it’s this moment of rather naked
emotion that I found very enjoyable to watch.
Finally, when he turns to walk away, you can see that Lilimae is getting
a little misty and she sorta whispers, “Goodbye, Jonathan,” to which My
Beloved Grammy declared that she thinks Lilimae still loves Jonathan, and you
know what? I think I agree. It’s not a love like, “Let’s get immediately
back together so I can be part of your church choir again and you can make us
all feel really bad all the time,” but a more complex thing, that there was something that attracted these two
to each other in the first place and that it’s still there in some small way
over twenty years later.
Okay, I’ve gone on way too long
about just this one particular facet of the ep, so let’s move on to our other
beautiful and wonderful and fascinating characters, starting with Gary and
Val. I forgot to mention it last ep, but
Val has asked Mack to be her Lamaze coach and he has agreed cuz he’s so awesome
and cool and fabulous and a good friend.
Also, and this is an easy thing to forget since it happened so long ago,
but he’s one of the only people that knows the truth about Val’s babies. If you’ll flashback to somewhere in season
five (can’t remember the exact one, please forgive me), you’ll recall that Val
visited Mack at his office and pretty much immediately told him the truth, and
Mack has kept that secret very well all the way up to this point. So, for the purposes of keeping score, let’s
go down the list of who knows the truth.
We’ve got Val, of course, as well as Ben, Mack, and, most recently Abs
and, by extension, the wicked and creepy Scott Easton.
Anyway, when Val arrives at
Lamaze, she’s surprised to see Gary there, but it turns out he’s not really
there to see her (although he expressed his desire to be her coach last week),
but rather to talk to Mack and tell him the truth about what’s going on. What an amusing little scene, and what utter
cuteness it is to watch Gary and Val frantically try to explain to a confused
Mack what’s going on, how they were trying to hatch a plan to get him and Karen
back together, but it’s now backfired since Karen has officially filed for
divorce from him. Ah, such a sordid
state of affairs. The beautiful thing is
that Mack has this knowing and rather amused look on his face, and when they’re
done explaining things to him, he’s like, “Oh, so you guys think me and Karen should be together, huh?” To that, Gary and Val both get these really
funny expressions on their face and kinda look at each other, suddenly
realizing the elephant in the room, which is of course that anyone on the
cul-de-sac or near the cul-de-sac or living in the state of California or
inhabiting the planet Earth can see that Gary and Val are soul mates who love
each other deeply and are meant to be together.
This whole thing is playing
brilliantly for me, by the way, how Gary and Val are really and truly just
spending so much time together because they’re hatching a plan, not because
they are gonna get back together.
However, we can understand Abby’s growing paranoia as everywhere she
looks, she sees Gary and Val talking and looking rather happy together. There is a tremendous visual scene in which
Abs is pacing her office with Scott Easton standing behind her, the shadows
from the venetian blinds splashed across the dark backdrop of the wall to make
the scene look creepy and secretive. She
goes over to the window and peers out and is able to see Gary and Val talking
over in Gary’s office, and the shadows illuminate her face and accentuate her
baby blue eyes. Stunning, simply
stunning, this is how you shoot an
episode of television.
The ever creepy 80s Rapist Beard
looms in shadow behind Abs as she looks through the window, spending most of
the episode reassuring her that “her bonus” should be arriving shortly. In case it’s not clear, I’m talking about
Scott Easton, who is making his penultimate appearance on the series in this
episode. Now might be a good time to
sorta re-explain what’s going on with this guy and how it all relates to Val’s
babies. In truth, there are some aspects
of this that I’m still having a bit of trouble completely figuring out, so
forgive me any lapses, but basically Abs needs to make sure Lotus Point has a
water supply and there was some reason or other that they were at risk to not
be allowed any of the water, but she hired Easton to figure it out for her and
so that’s what he’s doing. So his main job is supposed to be figuring out
the whole water thing, but “the bonus” that he keeps mentioning presumably has
something to do with Val’s babies. I’m
not trying to create the impression that I don’t know where this storyline is
leading; of course I know because I’ve seen this before and it’s probably the
best storyline in the whole series history, but I am trying to explain it the
way it’s occurring onscreen, the way this would play to a first time viewer in
1984, who would probably be as confused as Abs is every time Easton cryptically
says, “Your bonus should be arriving any time, Mrs. Ewing.”
What are Laura and Sumner up to
this week, by the way? We get a little
less of them than usual, and I think it might even be as little as one scene, a
rather lovely moment of intimacy between them at a hotel in….somewhere. Clearly I don’t know my geography well and I
don’t really pay attention to the dialogue when people say they’re going
somewhere, but it’s really not all that important. It’s enough to just say they are out of town,
staying in a hotel. Laura’s telling some
story about her youth and a friend of hers that married a super sexy lifeguard
and then the lifeguard died and left her with a bunch of money or
something. I love how this story has
absolutely nothing to do with the plot; it makes it feel more like real people
hanging out and talking. Also, the way
they are interacting definitely tells me that they are starting to feel love
for each other, and we also get the sense that even if Greg was mad at Jane for
asking for a divorce last ep, his heart is starting to belong to Laura. My Beloved Grammy also noticed that and said
how at first she thought Sumner just wanted another notch on his bedpost with
Laura, but now she thinks he’s really falling for her. The only thing I don’t love about this scene
is that Greg is rubbing Laura’s feet.
Ick. I know it feels good to get
a foot massage and all that, but I’m not into feet and I’m not one of those
foot fetish people (not naming any names here, Quentin Tarantino).
I don’t judge since I don’t believe in judging peoples’ fetishes and
kinks, but it just ain’t for me and I could have lived without seeing him rub
Laura’s foot.
I feel like I glossed over Karen
last ep, so let’s focus on her a bit.
Near the start of the ep, we have a heated argument between her and
Eric, who is mad at her for seeking a divorce from Mack and doesn’t understand
why she is doing this. I like the way
this scene plays, with them talking out on the driveway while he frantically
tries to start a car that won’t work properly.
He gets all pissed and is like, “I hate this car!” and has to get out
and open the hood and ask Sexy Michael to try revving the engine. Then he angrily sorta grabs Sexy Michael out of
the car and shoves him aside, which I did not approve of. Look, I know you’re all angry, Eric, but it’s
simply not okay to be rude or violent with one of God’s most beautiful and
sublime creatures like your brother, Sexy Michael, a brother who is soooooooo unbelievably sexy that I
think, in this instance, it would actually be okay to commit incest, and I
think if he was my brother, I would simply have to do it; I would have no other
choice. Sexy Michael even gets the last
line of the scene, cuz after Eric speeds off, Karen asks him if he’s equally
mad, and he says, “No, but I am mad,”
and then he gets real serious and asks, “How can you not love Mack?” Yes, I understand his question, which is
almost a rhetorical one, kinda like asking, “How could you not fuck the shit out of Sexy Michael as soon as you saw
him?”
There are many benefits to
watching the show for a second time with some idea of how future events are
going to proceed, and I noticed one instance here in this ep. See, we are at a lovely looking restaurant
with Val, but when the scene actually starts, we don’t begin on Val, but on a
table occupied by the wicked Easton and the even more wicked Dr. Ackerman. Now, we haven’t actually been introduced to
Dr. Ackerman yet, so upon first viewing, when watching this, all you see is
Easton sitting with some old white guy, but watching it this time, I was like,
“There’s Ackerman!” Like I said, we
start on the two, then the camera pans over to Val’s table, and then Easton
comes over to be creepy with Val and say, “Would you think me immodest if I
said congratulations?” He leers at her
pregnant belly for awhile and then he leaves the restaurant, but not before
turning around and giving Ackerman a look while Ackerman evilly sips a glass of white
wine.
I do wanna talk about the actor
playing Ackerman real fast, mostly because he’s a Transmorpher. His name is Laurence Haddon (pictured both above and below) and I got a big
surprise when I peeked at his IMDb because I thought he was only in one episode of Dallas from around 1986 or 1987.
Turns out he’s in seventeen, going as far back as 1980 with Nightmare and spanning all the way to
1986 with The Fire Next Time. Apparently he’s even in the most famous
episode of all time, Who Done It? He played Franklin Horner on the show, and I
honestly remember nothing about the character except that he was, like, an oil
guy who worked with J.R. or something (there was a lot of oil on that show; it
all blurs). I’m not gonna bother listing
his credits because they are myriad; he looks to be one of those people who’s
in every TV show ever made. What
surprises me is that he’s only in six eps of KL; in my mind it was way more.
Anyway, he’s here now and I’m excited/nervous to see him.
Last scene of the ep involves
Ackerman, cuz we see Val having a meeting with a doctor, but we can’t see the
doctor’s face right away. There’s an
exchange of dialogue that nicely covers the bases from prior eps by
establishing that her lady doctor is out of town for the month for some
reason. The still-faceless doctor gives
Val some pills and tells her to take them however many times a day. Then Val leaves and the camera pans up to
reveal the face of Ackerman, who evilly picks up a phone and evilly dials the
numbers and then evilly says, “Shouldn’t be long now; two, three days at the
most,” and that’s how we end the episode. What a spooky ending, and if I
was watching this on original airing, I would be legit frightened at what’s
about to happen, much like I could tell My Beloved Grammy was legit frightened. Like I said before, she was utterly convinced
that Easton and Ackerman were just going to flat out kill the babies, and she
believed these pills were going to force Val into a miscarriage or kill the
babies while they’re inside of her or something like that. If I was watching this week to week in the
‘80s, I would probably think the same thing, and I would be scared. Stuff like this gives me a boner, though (obvious not a literal boner, you understand), and
I think it might be from watching Rosemary’s Baby a lot as a kid. I’m a big fan
of the idea of evil doctors or people we are meant to trust as authority
figures who are actually duplicitous and lying to us and causing us harm. It’s such a frightening idea, and it always
works well to severely creep me out, and it’s working well here.
In fact, I’ll just conclude and
say everything about this ep is working well.
In my notes where I do the little “Overall Review” part before we move
on to the next ep, I simply wrote, “Oh God Elikann,” and I think that says it
all. Elikann may be elevating into my
top director, actually, because his eps are always so damn good and so stylish
and distinctive; I’m starting to want to watch all his television work to see
if he was actually some sort of television auteur that nobody except me is
talking about. The lighting and shadows
and compositions throughout this ep were just great, but beyond all that arty
farty stuff that I care about, the story is inherently gripping. No fucking wonder this is the season that
leapt to #9 in the ratings (the only year
in KL history to hit the top ten,
which hurts me deeply); if you were watching this in 1984-1985, could you
possibly stop watching it? I would be cancelling all my potential
Thursday night plans for the entire year just to make sure I’d be home to watch
this, and I can’t believe there could be anything better on television that
year (this happens to be the year that Miami Vice started, actually, but I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: That
show sucks). So fuck yeah, this was
clearly a work of genius and I suggest we proceed to the next work of genius,
which is entitled Tomorrow Never Knows.
Bug-eyed Ackerman is one of the best minor villains with a major villain rep in all of tv history.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree about Ackerman! The fact that he made such an impression in just 6 episodes proves that. And his last episode and final scene was one of the best moments of drama on any nighttime soap IMO.
ReplyDeleteThe reason "Ackerman" leaves an indelible impression is because his scenes are played during every reunion incarnation.
DeleteThere was an interesting moment in this scene. A shot we've seen before is used to establish night time at Ben's beach house. It's a shot of a wave crashing from within a rock formation. This shot has been used before to denote the same thing... but it was first used during "Celebration" around the time Ciji's dead body is revealed.
ReplyDeleteOkay, whatevs... but the reason I bring it up is that also in this episode there is a nighttime scene at the beach with Joshua - and Cathy. The shot starts with waves crashing on rocks, then pans down past Cathy with her head tilted back ... visually recalling the moment Ciji's death was revealed. If it was a coincidence, then it was darn spooky. Who directed "Celebration?"