Episode Title: All’s Well
Season 07, Episode 12
Episode 142 of 344
Original Airdate: Thursday,
December 19th, 1985
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Ben lets Cathy move into his beach house.
Lilimae blames Ben for Joshua's death, and decides to move in with Cathy.
Kenny, Linda's boyfriend, tells her that he was there when Joshua died. Gary
tells Greg he'll sell Empire Valley, and to call off the hit man. He says
if anything happens to him, he's left Empire Valley to Mack. Greg tells Coblenz
that Gary will sell, but Coblenz tells the hit man to kill them anyway. Gary
sends the kids away, and makes Abby dress in coveralls and help him to carry
things into the buildings at Empire Valley. Gary has the security guard call
Greg. Greg rushes to Empire Valley, and so do Mack and Karen. The hit man is
about to shoot Gary, but just then everyone drives up and yells to Gary to
watch out. Gary activates a remote control, and all of the structures in Empire
Valley blow up. Greg and Abby are furious, but Gary whoops with joy!
Welcome back to the
fantastically fabulous and wonderful world of KL, the world I love so much that I wish I could pull a Pleasantville and climb right into the
television and just live in this world forever, having lots and lots of sex
with Sexy Michael on an eternal loop for all eternity, preferably on some sort
of California nude beach. Anyway, when
we last left off, Gary had entered “1-3” into the top secret door-opener thing
and the top-secret door had opened to reveal the top-secret room with lots of
top-secret people doing lots of top-secret things and staring at lots of
top-secret television screens and top-secret computer counsels. Well, All’s
Well picks up right away where he left off, with Gary still standing in the
lair and staring at everything. I guess
nobody got the memo that Gary is supposed to be kept in the dark about all
these proceedings, because if I’m remembering correctly, one random white guy
comes up to Gary and is like, “Oh hey, Mr. Ewing, wanna see all the top-secret
stuff we’re doing down here?” Gary is like, “Uh, yeah, sure, I have no idea
what the hell is going on down here,” and then the other guy is like, “Neither
do the viewers.”
Anyway, Gary gets away from
Empire Valley and shows up at Val’s house at the same time that the funeral
procession is arriving. The funeral is
over and I guess Jonathan has immediately gone home, since he’s nowhere to be
seen now. Again, I appreciate the flow
of continuity here, that everything is just proceeding along in one continuous,
big, epic story. You don’t feel that you
have ended one ep and begun a new one, but rather that it’s just this gigantic,
30-hour ep that happens to be interrupted every 48 minutes for some stunning
opening title sequences. Honestly, it
makes the series feel so ahead of its
time because it just works perfectly for binge watching, the type of television
watching that is so popular nowadays thanks to the fall of network TV and the
rise of cable TV and streaming services.
Whenever My Beloved Grammy and I gather to watch our disk of eps, it
always feels like one big movie, not separate little TV eps. I also wanna reiterate how wonderfully
enjoyable it is to know that days of the standalones, of utter crap like Land of the Free or Man of the Hour or Silver Shadows, are now long in our past with no threat of ever returning.
Gary comes to Val’s house and
quickly apologizes for missing the funeral, but then he immediately yoinks Mack
away from proceedings and takes him outside so they can speak in private. He whips out some blueprints and he and Mack
start to go over them together, discussing what exactly is going on at Empire
Valley and all the top-secret stuff he discovered. Also, we get some fabulous KL Rapid Cutting throughout this
sequence, because we keep crosscutting from Gary and Mack to Sumner speaking
with some lackey in his office, and it’s not even just that we crosscut, but we
also have this amazing effect where Gary or Mack will say something and then we
will cut to Greg and he’ll, like, finish the sentence for them, if that makes
sense. It keeps hopping back and forth
and it’s great. Another show might be
like, “Let’s show the Gary and Mack scene and then we’ll finish that scene up
and cut over to Greg and the lackey,” but KL
keeps it interesting, cinematic, and visually stimulating. Oh hey, and while we’re on the
subject of Greg Sumner sitting in his office and talking to lackeys, we also
have a cigar to add to the Sumner Cigar Counter, bringing us up to Cigar
#8. He smokes this one while talking to
Cheesy British Guy about something or other, I think about how he’s working
hard to get Gary to sell Empire Valley and he believes that he will do so. Even so, Cheesy British Guy is not convinced
and does not call off his hit man. By
the way, cool sexy tough Gary that I’ve been so in love with for the last two
years and some months is really sizzling this ep. For instance, he marches his cool sexy tough
ass into Greg’s office and announces that he has changed his will so that, if
he dies, all of Empire Valley will go to Mack, which is bad news for Greg.
We’ve all seen how committed Mack gets whenever he sets his sight on
investigating something, so what could happen to Greg if Gary dies and Mack
officially becomes the landlord of Empire Valley?
Meanwhile, over at Val’s house,
Cathy is dealing with a lot of grief and weird mixed emotions and she needs
some time alone. Because of this, Ben
offers her up The Plant House, which he still owns even though he doesn’t really
live there anymore (if I owned a place as amazing as The Plant House, I would
never give it up, either). Sounds
lovely, right? Cathy says she’ll hop
right on over there and stay at The Plant House for awhile, but of course
Lilimae shows up two seconds later with her suitcase all packed up and ready to
go, cheerfully announcing that she shall also be staying at The Plant House to
keep Cathy company. Never mind the fact
that Cathy said she needed some time alone;
that’s clearly not important. Now, we
can all see what’s going on here, and that is the fact that Lilimae is afraid
of Cathy running at the mouth and telling someone the truth about what happened
up there on the rooftop. What would
happen if Cathy was all alone at The Plant House and then, say, Laura came over
for a visit, perhaps wanting to reignite her lesbianism from back in the days
of Ciji, and then after a few glasses of wine, Cathy started talking to her
about the whole, “You have become a monster” speech Lilimae gave to Joshua just
before he fell off the roof?
I have learned to accept the
fact that Cathy’s character can often be sorta passive, that she does sorta
allow herself to get walked on. We saw
this demonstrated via her relationship with Joshua and how long it took her to finally
stand up for herself and tell him his treatment of her was unacceptable, and we
see it again here. If I were Cathy, I
would say to Lilimae, “Leave me alone, I came here to The Plant House to be by
myself and away from you, I won’t blab about Joshua, just leave me the fuck
alone,” but instead Cathy just sorta allows Lilimae to intrude. When Lilimae is like, “Oh hey, hi, I’m here,
too! Can I stay?”, Cathy just looks
sorta annoyed and then is like, “Yeah, sure, it’s fine, you can stay.” Lilimae is definitely annoying
at this point in the saga, but she’s not annoying me, if that makes sense.
What I mean is that I recognize that, in the universe of the series, her
behavior is annoying to the other characters around her, but I’m not personally
annoyed watching her the way that, say, I was consistently annoyed for four
years by having to stare at the toxic bores known as Kenny and Ginger.
See, I recognize what Lilimae’s going through, I can sorta understand
the complexities of her feelings and her emotions, so it keeps me from being
annoyed with her. She must feel like a
complete and utter failure because of the way everything has gone with Joshua,
all the way from his birth to his death, and she doesn’t want his memory soiled
by people knowing the truth about what a piece of psychotic shit he was. I think admitting to what he had become by
the end of his life would basically be the same as admitting that she is, in
fact, the worst mother of all time.
We cut away from Cathy and
Lilimae and all that stuff and get reacquainted with Linda The Waitress and her
boyfriend, Arthur Fonzarelli. When we
first catch up with Linda The Waitress, she’s alone in her little apartment,
but then there’s a knock at the door and it’s Arthur Fonzarelli with a six-pack
of shitty piss beer (at first I assumed all six were for him, but then he hands
her one and says how maybe it’ll make her feel better). This is an important scene because the two
characters start to talk about the death of Joshua and the circumstances
surrounding it and Arthur Fonzarelli lets it out that he was there and he saw
what really happened and that Joshua did not kill himself. He doesn’t say anything like, “He didn’t kill
himself because I killed him,” but we
can see wheels spinning in Linda The Waitress’ head. By the way, this whole business about Arthur
Fonzarelli being there to see the whole thing is kinda new information; I am
almost 100% certain that we didn’t actually see
him witnessing the events back in Rise and Fall, but I have no problem believing that he was there. Earlier in that ep, we established that he
was sorta hanging around that area with his buddies, Richie and Potsie and
Ralph and the whole gang, so I can buy that he was hanging around the big tall
building in the concluding moments of that ep.
I guess maybe it’s a plot contrivance, but it doesn’t bother me.
Things escalate over in the
Gary/Empire Valley storyline when Gary takes a drive and discovers that his
brakes have been cut, Sid-style. During
the scene, he is being chased by Cheesy British Guy’s hit-man, who proves
himself a far more competent assassin than pretty much anyone in any James Bond
movie, since he actually watches and checks to see if Gary dies rather than
just cutting his brakes and assuming everything will go according to plan. So yeah, the hitman follows after Gary and
sees that Gary gets out of the situation okay, although it is still an exciting
sequence watching Gary’s vehicle go flying down a big hill with no brakes. Anyway, this is pretty much the last final
straw for Gary, who then spends the rest of the ep in full-on spy mode,
hell-bent on stopping whatever is going on at Empire Valley at all costs. First up, Gary sends Olivia and
Brian off. Now might be a good time to
mention that we haven’t seen Brian in, um, awhile (and by “awhile,” I mean we
haven’t seen him since Finishing Touches in
season five, and that was March 8th of 1984). Where the hell is Brian? They keep mentioning him and then throwing in
lines like, “He’s in the other room,” or “He’s asleep,” but it’s been nearly
two years and he’s totally M.I.A. Did
something happen with the kid from Tremors? Was he a hellion on the set or something? Next season Brian is gonna morph into BAG,
but I didn’t remember this humongous gap of two seasons where Brian is mentioned
and never seen. In any case, it doesn’t
particularly bother me because nobody cares about Brian; Olivia is the much
more interesting child.
Olivia is blossoming nicely into
quite the young actress. Tonya Crowe
would be fourteen years old at this point, and I notice that the writers are
starting to give her more material to work with, and this ep has some good
stuff. See, as Gary sends Olivia (and,
presumably, Brian) off with Maria, the Transmorpher Mexican maid (remember that all rich
white people in the ‘80s had to have a Mexican maid, as this was, in fact, the
law), he gets very serious on her and says, “I love you,” and Olivia confesses
that he’s scaring her by acting so serious.
Then Abs comes walking out and Gary is like, “Tell your mother you love
her,” which she does, and then they go speeding off to, I think, Mexico. Gary doesn’t tell anyone, not even Abs, where
he’s sending the kids. Everything must
be very secretive for their protection, you see.
Gary and Abs head to Empire
Valley, where they quickly switch cars with some guy, a nice clever diversion
to hopefully confuse and distract whoever might be chasing after them. Once they arrive within the Empire Valley
land, Gary adorns his black spy gear and hands a similar outfit over to
Abs. See, at this moment Abs is dressed
in bright red and Gary points out that bright red is generally not the greatest
color to wear when sneaking around at night being worried that someone might
shoot you. I love the way that, even as KL is threatening to descend into
goofiness by turning into a James Bond movie, they keep the humor there, all
mixed in with the strange sense of realism, creating this fabulous cocktail of
entertaining genius. If this was Dallas, all these shenanigans would be
played as DEADLY SERIOUS without a hint of irony or humor, but here the
ingredients are just right.
They infiltrate the base with
relative ease and Gary ties up some random security guard that’s hanging
around, you know, guarding. He keeps the
guy tied up for awhile while he does some stuff we aren’t privy to (spoiler
alert: He’s planting bombs). While the
security guard stays tied up and shouts vague threats to Gary about what’s
gonna happen to him, Gary gets his reassurance that nobody else is on the
premises. See, even in the height of all
this secret spy stuff, Gary still doesn’t want to hurt a human being, even a
potentially evil one who’s mixed up in all this Empire Valley confusion. Gary’s planning to blow the entire operation
up, but he doesn’t want to do so unless he has assurance that there’s nobody
on the premises.
Meanwhile, throughout all this
excitement, the hitman is still hanging around, and now he’s ready to go with a
sniper rifle. As soon as Gary emerges,
he’ll blow him away and that will be the end of it for Mr. Gary Ewing,
right? Wrong. Instead, Gary calls Sumner up to come on over
to Empire Valley, at pretty much the precise moment that Karen and Mack are
also heading over (they’ve realized this is where Gary must be and they’re
rushing out to find him). Gary, Abs, and
Greg all meet up far away from the buildings, and Gary is looking all cool and
confident, holding some sort of sexy remote control thing. Greg is all like, “What the hell’s going on?”
and all that good stuff, and then Gary holds up the remote and clicks the
button and BOOM, a big explosion goes off like the one that kicks off the
opening credits of seasons thirteen and fourteen of Dallas (except obviously much, much better). But it doesn’t stop there, and Gary’s
coolness only increases evermore as he clicks the button again and another explosion goes off, but wait,
there’s more! Gary clicks the remote a third time and there’s one final
explosion. Yikes, that’s a lot of
explosions, right? The best part of the
scene is the very ending, which is also the very ending of the ep, and that’s
just Gary grinning at Greg and Abs, giving them a face like, “Yeah, what are
you gonna do about it?” The episode ends
right there and, honestly, I loved it, and so did My Beloved Grammy, who
cheered and said, “Way to go, Gary.”
Okay, so Empire Valley is blown
up, right? I know lots of fans really
hate this whole storyline start to finish, but I don’t see the problem, aside
from it being kinda confusing. Also, I’m
willing to admit that, yeah, maybe Gary blowing the whole thing up is the
writers saying, “Okay, yeah, this was getting too convoluted, let’s just blow
it up,” but it still doesn’t bother me.
Is this a problem with me? Am I just being too kind to the show cuz I
love it so much? Honestly, I can’t quite
figure myself out; I feel that if something really stupid happened on KL or if a storyline I really hated
popped up, I would know so and I would explain why I hate it, but this isn’t
one of them. In fact, I thought this
whole episode was terrifically exciting and very entertaining to watch. If the writers are wanting to flush something
out of the series, isn’t having Gary blow it up way better than having him,
say, wake up and find Greg Sumner in the shower saying, “Oh, that Empire Valley
stuff? That was a dream; none of that
happened”? Anyway, even if the other fans
hate it, I kinda loved this episode and I’m not ashamed to admit it. It was full of action and excitement and
humor and I thought Shack was in rare form as Gary went into spy mode and kicked
ass and took numbers. If you disagree
with me, go ahead and tell me so, because I’d really like to know why all this
stuff is so detested by so many fans.
Next up, we’ll discuss the
ramifications of the three big explosions and the death of Empire Valley with Tremors 2: Aftershocks, erm, I’m sorry,
I meant to just say Aftershocks. Talk to you then!
I thought the Empire Valley story line was o.k. It kinda dragged in the middle. But I didn't hate it at all. And the ending was great, because on the first watch, I was starting to get tired of it at this point. And just as it was becoming tedious...boom...it was gone!
ReplyDeletePretty sure the maid is on THE VIEW now.
ReplyDeleteThe most fun about this episode is how out of her element Abby is.
ReplyDeleteEmpire Valley was fine until they ruined it by shipping in a set from The Bionic Woman.
ReplyDeleteI think Lilimae's becoming about as irrational as Joshua was. The big blow up after the funeral really showcased just how unglued she really was.
ReplyDeletelol - The Bionic Woman. So true. Bring on the Fembots. And yes, after the sleazy way she did Elliot, I'm glad Abby is so off kilter in this episode. She's always playing with fire and doesn't realize how weak she is until it's almost too late. Both Gary and Greg have had to rescue her from her life-and-death encounters.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but there are elements of this episode that were just plain embarrassing. The blowing up of Empire Valley was just silly. Abby with dirt on her face holding a gun on a security guard? What??? Too silly. The last act of this episode was difficult for me to watch. Glad the explosion signals the end to this underwhelming storyline.
ReplyDelete