Episode Title: Unbroken Bonds
Season 07, Episode 14
Episode 144 of 344
Written by Diana Kopald Marcus
Directed by Roy Campanella II
Original Airdate: Thursday,
January 2nd, 1986
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Peter tells Laura that Greg needs her, so
she invites him to dinner. Gary tells Val that he knows the twins are his. She
tells him that he needs to respect that she, Ben, and the twins are a
family. Gary continues to hang around the twins, so Ben tells Gary it has to
stop. Abby gets mad when Gary sides with Karen on a Lotus Point issue. He says
that he trusts Karen, and doesn't trust Abby, so he will always side with Karen,
and she'd better get used to it. Gary also sleeps with another woman. Jill is
in town and tells Karen the Governor wants to know if she'd be interested in
being on the State Planning Commission. Karen says yes. Jill is very cool
towards Mack, who introduces Gary to Jill. Kenny is arrested for Joshua's
murder. Cathy wants to tell the truth, but Lilimae says they will release him
if they keep quiet. However, Kenny is charged with the murder.
Welcome to Unbroken
Bonds. Fuck, there’s a lot to talk
about this ep, and it’s all good stuff, really good stuff, so let’s just dive
right in and get started with Linda The Waitress and Arthur Fonzarelli. You’ll all remember how Arthur Fonzarelli
brought a six pack over to Linda The Waitress’s apartment and bragged about how
he "was there” when Joshua died and “saw the whole thing,” right? And you all remember how Linda The Waitress
went to see Lilimae and when she said something about Joshua killing himself,
Lilimae got angry and snapped, “He did not;”
you all remember that, right? Then Linda The Waitress took it upon herself
to go to the police and declare that Arthur Fonzarelli killed Joshua, and that
glides us nicely right into the very first scene of this ep, which is her at
the police station.
Things don’t go so well for Arthur Fonzarelli this
week, because Lilimae is holding strong in her resistance against telling
anyone the truth of what happened. Cathy
is really plagued with guilt at this point, wanting to just tell the truth and
then move on with things, but Lilimae keeps saying how they can’t tell people
the truth, especially not at this point when the lie has gone on so long. Now, I’m of course a proponent of honesty,
and this is kinda a prime example of why.
You tell one lie, thinking it’s not a big deal and you’ll be able to
move past it, but it snowballs into a million other lies and eventually other
people start being hurt by your lies. In
this case, I certainly don’t like Arthur
Fonzarelli and I certainly don’t think he’s exactly a great, stand-up kinda
guy, but he didn’t kill Joshua and he
doesn’t deserve to go to jail for his murder.
My notes are kinda loopy on this ep (probably because
I was so gripped), so forgive me if I’m mistaking this ep for the next one, but
I’m fairly certain it is in this ep that Arthur Fonzarelli is sent in for
questioning and a police lineup and Cathy and Lilimae are both asked down to
the station to identify the man. The
police lineup is filled with lots of scary looking dudes, one of whom is Arthur
Fonzarelli, and I’m sorry, but for the life of me I can’t remember if either
Lilimae or Cathy say, “Oh, yeah, it’s that one guy there, the one who looks
like an extra from Grease 2,” or if
they choose to just remain silent about the matter. I’m pretty sure they pick the latter option,
just sorta saying, “Oh, we don’t recognize any of these guys,” or whatever, but
by the conclusion of the ep, for some reason or other, Arthur Fonzarelli has
been charged with Joshua’s murder.
Do I like this storyline? Well, personally, yes, I do, but I’d be
curious to see what other fans think of it.
I know some people seem to have a real problem with season seven and
especially with season seven after Joshua’s had his big rise and fall, but so
far I think the show is powering along just fine, and that includes this
story. They could kill Joshua and just
forget about him, but we all know the show don’t play that way. We saw how they killed Sid and then spent a
whole year dealing with Karen’s grief and working at being a single mom, and I
think the same is true here. It wouldn’t
be good drama to have Joshua fall off the roof and die and then just move on
and pretend he never existed; we need to deal with ramifications and it’s also
not like they invented Arthur Fonzarelli and he’s coming completely out of
nowhere now; he was introduced when
Joshua was still alive and he was hanging around the big building and stuff
right before Joshua took his plunge.
So yeah, I like this story, but it’s actually probably
my least favorite story going on right around now because I find all this other
shit sooooooo compelling. Why don’t we start with the triumphant return
of the one, the only, J.B. (and that’s “Jill Bennett” for those of you who have
already forgotten my abbreviation; it’s not “James Bond”). God, yes, and I’m so glad I didn’t peek ahead
to see when she’d be coming back, because it was so wonderful to be powering
through this disk and then be so delightfully surprised when she
reemerged. You’ll all remember that J.B.
was hanging around at the start of the season, crushing on Mack, dealing with
the stolen baby cases, all that crap, and then she confessed that she had
fallen in love with Mack and she left town, but now she’s back! I think she’s BACK BACK, by the way, that she
doesn’t run off for a series of eps again, not until her glorious time on the
show finally comes to an end around 1989.
Until then, we can soak up all the J.B. a person could possibly need in
their life, and I thank God for that, I truly do.
So what’s J.B. up to right about now? Turns out she’s in town to talk to Karen, but
she also makes some sort of mention about how she’s been coming back to town
frequently throughout the last arc of eps while Joshua was going crazy and
dying. This time she’s interested in
offering Karen a job with the governor’s planning commission, or something like
that. I don’t honestly know what a
“planning commission” even is, but I don’t think it’s particularly
important. Perhaps they plan parties,
perhaps they plan, like, big important government stuff, perhaps they plan
stupid and unnecessary road construction projects that take years and have no actual
purpose except to justify more money being given to construction projects (not
to say that I’m bitter about how the exact road I take to work every day has
been “under construction” for the last 72 years and now that they’ve finally
completed it, all that’s changed is the addition of one stupid new
stoplight). Anyway, Karen is very
excited about this opportunity, but if I recall correctly, it’s not like she’s
handed the job outright; it’s more that the governor is interested in talking
to her, but she’ll still have to have an interview and all that good
stuff. This should build more and more
over the course of the next few eps, so stay tuned.
So Laura and Greg have sure been split up for awhile,
haven’t they? Fortunately, in Unbroken Bonds, Laura finally manages to
get past the gatekeeper known as Peter Hollister and have a private dinner with
Greg, and it’s just lovely to have the two of them back onscreen together, that
sizzling chemistry all fired up and ready to go again. As I sat watching them, I tried to decide who
I like watching more: Richard and Laura or Greg and Laura. God, talk about your Sophie’s Choice decisions (except obviously this decision is much,
much harder); how can one possibly pick?
On the one hand, the Laura/Richard dynamic of seasons one through four
was my favorite thing about those early years and they were the most
fascinating couple on the cul-de-sac throughout those years. Watching their fights and inner turmoil was
just dynamic drama and also superbly realistic and splendidly acted, but now
here we are with Laura and Greg and it’s equally good in a totally different
way. In this case, while Richard and
Laura always felt dysfunctional, Greg and Laura clearly have a deep and special
love for each other and I think the most beautiful thing about their love is
how fantastically unplanned it’s all been.
I can’t remember what ep it was, but it was somewhere in season five
that Greg took it upon himself to get up close to Laura and her mullet and
smell her neck, and then they started shagging, but somewhere along the line,
we viewers started to really see that this wasn’t just a couple having a fun
shag together, but a couple that loved each other. Richard was the most fascinating man on the
show during the first four seasons, but now I’m willing to say that Greg is the
most fascinating man on the show at the moment, and he’s played with such
oozing charisma by Devane that, fuck, I just can’t decide. For now, I’m gonna put that question up on a
shelf and not even bother to compare, because they are both so perfect in their
own ways.
I loved seeing Laura and Greg’s little dinner
together, which takes place outside on Greg’s absolutely fabulous balcony
outside of his absolutely fabulous office in his absolutely fabulous
skyrise. It’s wonderful to see the two
together, but Greg is feeling down right now, seeing his life as an absolute
failure. Laura tries to boost his
spirits by reminding him of all his good qualities and encouraging him to just
dust himself off and try again. We also
have a fabulous exchange where she tries to write off the whole Empire Valley
mess as, “You screwed up; it happens,” and Greg responds with something
brilliant like, “No, ‘screwing up’ is when you accidentally wear black socks
with a brown suit,” and then reminds her how his entire Empire Valley operation
was, you know, blown up completely by
Gary, which is certainly more than one small screw up. So while Greg is currently very sad, I am
currently very happy to see this fabulous and fascinating couple getting back
together and having dinners and chemistry and all that good stuff that makes
the series so very good and so very rich.
As much as I love me some Laura and Greg, I have to
say the most sizzling and dramatic stuff in this ep comes courtesy of pretty
much anything involving Gary, Abs, Val, and Ben. Oh jeez, where to even start? I think I’ll start with a small but
significant scene that I really appreciated, and it takes place at Lotus Point
between Gary, Abs, and Karen. See, Karen
is talking about something or other and Gary says how she’s got his vote and he
trusts her and Bob Loblaw, and then Abs give some speech about how he’s not
considering anything she has to say and Gary gets so fabulously direct with her
and says, “I trust Karen, so she gets my vote every time.” Ugh, yes, this is all so good. I definitely feel like the whole Empire
Valley mess was the last straw for Gary in terms of Abs and her duplicitous
behavior. Since they first got together
officially in 1982, he has put up with a lot of crap from her, probably the
worst of which was all the season five shenanigans involving Wolfbridge and
Apolune. After that happened
(culminating with Abby’s terrifying experience of hanging out on a nice
comfortable yacht for a couple of minutes before Greg came along to shoot Mark
St. Claire), Gary kinda sorta forgave her while also making it clear that he
didn’t trust her. Back then (early
season six), he kinda laughed at her when she talked about trust and said
something amazing like, “Oh Abby, I love you but I don’t trust you,” but he
seemed rather jolly about the whole thing.
Now, after attempting to figure out what the hell was going on at Empire
Valley, after that big speech he gave about morals and ethics that concluded
with, “God, are we different,” I think he’s finally done with her. He might not be ready to get an official
divorce yet, but he’s definitely giving her a mental divorce at this point, and
he’s making it very clear to her that there’s no chance of him ever being able
to trust her again.
We see that Gary is pretty much done with Abs rather
clearly in this ep, because he sleeps with somebody else. My question is: Who does he sleep with? It’s
a Hispanic looking chick, and for a minute I thought it was his loyal
housekeeper, Maria. Am I crazy? I don’t mean to do the white guy thing where
I can’t tell any dark-skinned person apart (I really don’t have that problem; the issue with Maria comes from the fact
that she’s barely ever shown and I think she morphs actresses a few times, as
well), but I’m pretty sure this isn’t Maria, that it’s just some random
chick. In any case, I love the
fabulously KL way that this is shown,
we just have Gary climbing out of bed after shagging this chick, and that’s
about it; we don’t need any big dramatic pounding music to say GARY’S HAVING AN
AFFAIR! I don’t know if I’d even call
this an affair, and not just because it seems to be a one-time shag and nothing
more, but because I’m pretty sure if Abs asked him if he was sleeping with
someone else, he would just be like, “Yeah, so?
I don’t like you or trust you anymore.”
But Gary’s little shag with some chick who might be
Maria and might not be Maria is nothing compared to a very pivotal scene that
takes place early in this ep at Westfork.
See, he’s having Val over for some reason or other; I think she’s
actually taken it upon herself to come see him and ask that he stop sending
gifts to Bobby and Betsy all the time, which is something he’s been doing
rather frequently for awhile. However,
the big scene which occurs and which I had somehow completely forgotten about
(HOW?!) is that when Val asks him to stop doing that, Gary tells her, “I know,”
and when Val tries to act confused about it, he says, “I know those babies are
mine.” Ugh, just watch the look on Val’s
face and the way these two amazing actors are able to play off each other in
the scene. Don’t we all just want
sooooooooo bad for them to get back together?
Can’t we all see that they are each other’s true soulmates and they are
made to be together? And as I’ve blathered
on about before, we are now at a point where we are nearly 150 eps deep and
Gary and Val truly feel like real people and not television characters; Shack
and J.V.A. have been playing these two for so long that it must be like second
nature to them at this point. Val gets
very serious on Gary and says how he can’t keep hanging around, that she and
Ben have their own family now and he needs to respect that. She neither confirms nor denies his
suspicions, but I think we can see that she knows denying would do no good.
Gary just knows they’re his kids, and
it’s not just because they look exactly like him and the timing of the
one-time-only shag between him and Val back in season five lines up for their
birth, but I think he just knows down in his core, in his soul.
Later in the ep, Ben confronts Gary and tells him to
stay away, yet another great scene in an ep littered with great scenes. The genius of KL is often so profound that I don’t think I am smart or deep
enough to even begin to understand it or properly explain it. How can I properly explain how basically
every single character in this situation is relatable and easy to understand,
while the complexities of all this drama also remain exciting and captivating
and strangely realistic? What I mean to
say by that is, it would be so easy for Ben to be a nothing character (the way
he was in my memories, my memories that were completely and 100% wrong because
Ben is fucking great and I’m now
declaring him a highlight of this era of KL),
a guy the writers ship in as merely an obstacle for Gary and Val. He could so easily have just been a bland
“nice guy” meant to fill the role for a little while, but he’s just as complex
as anyone on the show, really. I feel so
sorry for him as he tries to build this life with Val and the twins but
probably knows, deep down, that while Val loves him, she just has a deep and
unbreakable connection with Gary that goes beyond time and space.
But the relationships are so complex that we can’t
even just dismiss this as, “Oh, Val loves Ben, but she loves Gary way
more.” I believe that there are all
sorts of love, that we can love a lot of people throughout our lives, all in different
and special ways. As of this writing, I
have only been in love with one
person, and that was a long time ago, but I also love my parents, My Beloved
Grammy, the kitty I live with (Connie), my friends, teachers that have affected
my life; love is complex and wide-reaching.
Also, the way the writers manage to keep Gary and Val apart for so long
doesn’t feel inorganic or contrived like it would on a bland show like Friends, where the constant obstacles
thrown up in Ross and Rachel’s relationship were just annoying and stupid and
way too drawn out over ten years (why does any
sitcom need to be on the air for ten years; can someone please explain this
to me?). With the Gary/Val stuff, it all
feels real and true. Ugh, it’s just so
good.
What’s Cathy up to this week? Well, like I said, she’s involved in all the
Lilimae/Linda The Waitress/Arthur Fonzarelli drama, but she also gets to sing
not one, but two songs. I don’t really
remember the first one except to say that I wrote in my notes, “Cathy singing a
slower song in a hot black outfit with bra showing.” I’m sure that song was very good and I’m sure
her hot black outfit was very hot,
but I like and remember her second song better, How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?
Real fast, let me talk about the weird track that my brain and My
Beloved Grammy’s brain went on when we heard Cathy sing this song. As it started, we both were listening and
were like, “I know this song; what song is this?” Then we both became convinced that it was
originally an Olivia Newton John song, because it just sounds so Olivia Newton John-ish. Well, then I went and looked
it up and it turns out that it’s a song that’s been sung by, um, everybody, but
the first prominent one was Laura Branigan in 1983. I kinda like Laura Branigan and I am also
kinda underwhelmed with her at the same time, if that makes sense. I think this is due to the fact that my first
Branigan song was Gloria, which is
just the fucking greatest, but then I went and bought a few of her records on
vinyl and, you know, they’re good and all, but they also suffer from that thing
where all the songs sorta sound exactly the same, so I don’t think she gets to
join the ranks of my favorite artists.
By the way, since I know you’ve all been reading the last 143 essays and
wondering, “When, oh when is Brett
going to tell us who his favorite artists are?”, I shall tell you now. They are Carpenters, Blondie, ABBA, Michael Jackson, Olivia Newton John, David Bowie, The Cars, The Pointer Sisters, Bette Midler, and, um, well
I’m sure there are more but I can’t quite remember right now.
In any case, obviously Cathy’s rendition of this song
is brilliant, and I double checked by listening to the Laura Branigan version
and the Michael Bolton version just to confirm that Lisa's is better, and yup,
of course it’s better, because her covers are always better than the originals
(with the exception of Time After Time,
just because that song will always belong to Cyndi). I do wanna try and get deeper and explore
what this song is really saying rather than just compare it to other
versions. Who is Cathy singing
about? Is she singing about Joshua? If that’s the case, it doesn’t really make
much sense, since Joshua spent the last few minutes of his life trying to slice
her throat and throw her off a roof (this coming after he threw her into a pile
of garbage, of course), so I dunno.
Maybe she’s just singing a song cuz it’s a good song from the ‘80s and
maybe it’s not as deep as I’m trying to make it.
Anyway, enough about all that; how was this ep? Well, I thought it was great, and maybe you
guys should just get used to me saying that, cuz so far I think season seven is
pumping along just fine; I continue to fail to see why so many fans act like
there’s something horribly wrong with this year. In the case of this ep, I can immediately
point to several amazing scenes in order to prove my case. Right off the top of my head, you have Cathy
singing a great song, you have that sexy crosscutting early in the ep along
with the sexy birds-eye angle, you have a stunning Gary/Val scene, a great
Ben/Val scene, and a lovely dinner between Greg and Laura. I think those are more than enough reasons to
say that this episode is great and belongs in the pantheon of great television
episodes to live on for all time. So
without futher ado, let’s move on to our next ep, the final ep of the disk My
Beloved Grammy and I watched, the aptly titled Web of Lies.
I swear, Brett. Based on your favorite music and TV shows, you SHOULD be my age (48). It is as if you stuffed 20 extra years of pop culture into your life somehow. Love it!
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Lilimae's reaction to Joshua's death. She annoyed me at the time b/c she cared more about creating a false memory about her son rather than exonerating the innocent Fonz. It wasn't a good color on her.
Julie Harris and Lisa Hartman are getting a little short-changed on story. If I remember, this season and next are more male-character driven, in an attempt to snag more male viewers.
ReplyDeleteI like penises as much as the next guy, but not if it means sacrificing good stories for wonderful characters like Cathy and Lilimae
DeleteWell, they're both going to lose out to race cars, spy stories, assassination attempts, and Miami Vice inspired wardrobe (watch for Ben's rolled-up sports coat sleeves, they're coming).
DeleteAlmost overlooked in this episode is a very tiny, seemingly-innocuous scene where Gary meets Jill. What a crazy rollercoaster ride THAT relationship will turn out to be. No one – not even the writers – know that this “throwaway” scene and the faint beginnings of this storyline will eventually lead to a dramatic end in the trunk of a car.
ReplyDeleteI actually feel sorry for Abby at this point. She’s been fairly tame this year compared to previous seasons and, despite her many machinations, I totally believe that she loves Gary. His giving her the cold shoulder is immature. Surprisingly, it’s the normally cold and calculating Abby who is being mature by wanting to deal with the problems in the marriage. That’s yet another reason to love this show: every character is both good and bad, right and wrong. Even the villains are capable of wisdom and kindness.
I'm not a fan of the Joshua death aftermath storyline. I don't want to see the waitress or Arthur Fonzarelli anymore. They do not interest me and Lilimae is acting ridiculous! Love seeing Jill back on the scene, but dgh64, I think the writers were already hinting at a potential Jill/ Gary pairing in this first scene, no? (I am almost certain the lady Gary shags earlier in ep. is just a call girl. Certainly, not Maria! 😨)
ReplyDeleteOh, and I choose Richard over Greg. Though I will admit Laura hooking up with Greg improved her character over all and gave Constance some really fab dialogue to chew on.