Episode Title: Phoenix Rising
Season 07, Episode 24
Episode 154 of 344
Written by Bernard Lechowick
Directed by Nicholas Sgarro
Original Airdate: Thursday, March
27th, 1986
The Plot (Courtesy of
TV.Com): Abby
doesn't want a divorce, and tells Gary that if he doesn't give her the rest of
Empire Valley, she will drag out their divorce, and involve Val and the twins.
Gary gives it to her. Abby tricks Sylvia into telling her that Peter is
not really her son. Abby has Peter escort her to a fundraiser. Gary is there
with Jill, so Abby says if Peter doesn't distract her, she will stop paying his
attorney. Peter says he'll tell about the twins. Then Greg threatens Abby with
the twins. Abby, tired of everyone holding this over her, declares in front of
everyone that she knew about the twins. She knew the twins were alive all
along, but didn't want to say anything until she had proof, and as soon as she
got it, she was the one who brought Val to the babies. Then Ben steps in and
tells everyone it's none of their business. Cathy tells Ben she's been offered
a tour. Abby brings Olivia home. Eric gets sick and is taken to Intensive Care.
When we last left off, we were in the concluding moments of Distant Rumblings, with Gary declaring
to Abs that he wanted a divorce, something that shouldn’t come as a surprise to
anyone who’s been watching the series for the last several years. Fittingly, we pick up in the opening moments
of Phoenix Rising with Abs sitting
quietly and passively as her divorce attorney explains all the different
aspects of the split, who’s gonna be entitled to what, how they’re gonna split
stuff, and so on and so forth. Through
the whole scene, Abs just sits, not speaking, looking stoned, reminding me of
some Gary behavior from way back in season four. I can’t remember the exact ep or any of that
stuff, but it was when he was hitting rock bottom big time with the alcohol and
he was sitting with Abs and, I think,
Westmont, and they were droning on and on about something while he looked
fidgety and uncomfortable being there.
In this instance, it’s not that Abs looks fidgety or uncomfortable, but
that she instead looks completely broken.
I liked everything about this starting scene and I
feel like I have a million things to say about it. Right off the bat, if we are just talking in
terms of style and camera moves, I really liked how we never see the face of
her lawyer, but only hear her voice rattling on and on, and then I liked how
the camera did a slow circle around Abs as she sits in the chair and then how
it starts to go in for a close up when the lawyer finally starts to realize
that Abs is acting weird. Abs looks
totally out of it, not hearing a word this lady is saying, and then she just
abruptly gets up and says, “I’ll call you.”
Ugh, so much to say about this. I
find myself wondering what precisely is going on in Abby’s brain right
now. What thoughts are going through her
head? How is she feeling? What is she thinking about?
I’ll go ahead and say that I truly believe Abs is
heartbroken, and this goes back to my theory I originally presented way back in
season two that Abs does truly love Gary.
It’s a different kind of love than the kind Gary and Val have for each
other, which is the kind of true love that dates all the way back to Romeo and
Juliet and continues up through Jack and Rose.
Gary and Val are soulmates and are simply meant by the alignment of the
stars in the sky to be together, but the relationship of Abs and Gary is a
little trickier. I think Abs loves Gary
without even necessarily understanding her own feelings, like I think she has
built up such a wall after her divorce and has to always seem strong and confident,
so it’s impossible for her to be completely genuine and give her heart to
someone; everything she does ends up being done in a duplicitous, deceitful
way, but I think that’s perhaps because it’s the only way Abs knows to operate,
you know? So yes, I think she loves Gary
and I think she’s feeling deep sadness about losing him as her husband, but I
also wonder if she’s thinking back on her choices throughout their marriage and
wondering if she could have behaved differently. Do you think Abs recognizes the reasons for
why Gary is divorcing her? Or do you
think she truly believes she’s right and that Gary just can’t understand her
reasons for doing things the way she does them? Honestly, I have no answers for any of these questions right now, but
they’re certainly interesting ones to chew on.
Conversely, Gary is handling the divorce with a far
greater amount of joy. When we first
catch up with him this ep, he’s checking into some super expensive suite at
some super expensive hotel, peering around the place and then nodding and
saying, “This will do.” I enjoyed this
very much and it made me flash to the George Lazenby James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (my
favorite Bond film and one of my top ten favorite movies of all time) checking
into a similarly fancy hotel and saying, “This’ll do; this’ll do me
nicely.” By moving into a hotel, at
least for the time being, Gary gets to share a kinship with Greg, who spent
pretty much all of season six living in a hotel. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but this
is a type of lifestyle I relish and would love to have one day. The idea of just living in a hotel is unbelievably romantic to me and I feel I would
be so happy living there that I would just never check out and, instead of
paying rent, would end up paying some exorbitant hotel fee after living out the
remainder of my life as a guest of that hotel.
Gary is probably excited to have J.B. over as soon
as possible for a nice I’m-officially-getting-a-divorce shag, but he’s not
nearly as excited to receive a visit from his soon-to-be-ex-wife. He asks her how she got in and she says how
“the room clerk didn’t see anything wrong with giving Mr. Ewing’s key to Mrs.
Ewing,” to which Gary gives one of his classic sighs and says, “I’ll educate
the desk clerk.” Yup, I think we can all
see that Abs has officially crossed the line and there’s no getting back on
Gary’s good graces. I wonder if Abs has
realized this yet, if perhaps she was having that realization in the first
scene of the ep, or if she still thinks that she can manipulate Gary into
taking her back. It’s worked before,
right? Maybe she thinks she can just
pull the same tricks that she did after the fallout from Wolfbridge, since Gary
was sure pissed at her about that, yet he wound up taking her back.
Anyway, Gary and Abs wind up talking, and even
though at first Gary says how she can talk to his lawyer about anything she
needs to, he sorta caves in a few seconds later, setting the stage for a pretty
dynamite little scene. We get a good
sense of the perspectives of both characters in this scene, because we start
with Gary saying, “Instead of a partner, I got an adversary, someone who takes
advantage of me at every turn, someone who lies to me at every turn,” and Abs
responds with, “For God’s sake; what would have happened if I hadn’t looked
after your interests?” Gary starts to
talk about how their divorce is gonna go, saying how they’ll split everything
exactly equal right down the middle, but of course that’s not what Abs is
interested in, oh no. She tells Gary
that what she really wants is Empire Valley and that if he gives it to her,
they’ll have the nicest divorce ever, but if he refuses, it won’t be so
pleasant. She says how she is “very good
on the witness stand,” and will drag his name through the mud and call up every
woman he has been with during their marriage.
Finally she brings out the big guns by saying that she will drag Val and
her babies into it, humiliating Gary as well as both Val and Ben. This is classic Abs and, as always, rather
delightful to watch. Again, it’s a
testament to the power and magic of KL
that I find both Gary and Abs so fascinating to watch and so complicated that I
can enjoy all the different angles of this scene. I support Gary and his decision for divorce
and I want it to be nice and painless for him, yet I still get a giddy joy out
of watching Abs work her magic with threats and blackmail.
This whole ep is set against the backdrop of some
sort of fundraiser or something, a good excuse to get the entire cast dressed
up in nice Travilla outfits and have them mingle. Even though we have seen fundraisers and
gatherings and big balls (meaning large ceremonies, not large testicles) on the
series before, this one gave me a distinctive whiff of all those oil baron’s
balls over on Dallas, another little
hint of the Dallas flavor sorta
seeping into KL, although I don’t
necessarily mean that as a criticism, just an observation. Actually, I really liked this big gathering
and all of the costumes the cast gets to wear, not to mention the fabulous
hair. In fact, I’m gonna pause talking
about the plot to take a huge detour and write several hundred pages on Donna Mills’ hair. Seriously, does she have
the best hair ever or what? Have I
mentioned her hair even once in the
past? I really don’t think I have, and for that, shame on me, because she has
legendary hair. Donna’s hair is so
amazing because it’s the kind of hair that you can do anything to and style in
any way and it’s always going to look good.
While my all time favorite look for her will always be the short haircut
at the start of season six (pictured below), I also really love whenever she straightens it, as
she does for this party. Arguably even
better than her hair is her fabulous outfit, which isn’t quite as sexy as I’ve
come to expect from Abs, but has a terrifically wicked aura all its own. I fail at being a complete homosexual
stereotype because, unlike lots of gay guys, I’m not very good at spotting
outfits and knowing what they are made out of or who the designer was or any of
that stuff, but I’ll best describe Abby’s outfit by saying it’s a sorta gold
color and she wears these long black gloves that sorta cover her whole
arm. It’s a sleek look and it makes her
look rather evil.
As for the rest of the cast, the men are all mostly
dressed up in tuxedos, all looking the same, and Karen’s outfit is ugly and not
worth talking about (the most notable thing about it is, of course, the
shoulder pads, which make it look more like Karen’s on her way to be the
quarterback in a football game), but Cathy’s outfit is a scream. With Cathy getting so little to do at this
point as well as being about five minutes away from leaving the series forever,
I take solace in the fact that I can at least appreciate/mock/love this bizarre
outfit she chooses to wear to this fundraiser.
Yes, I remind you that this is a fundraiser
and not a wild beach party, so the fact that Cathy appears to have chosen
to wear a bathing suit to the fundraiser is a tad vexing. Cathy’s outfit is a purple colored, um,
thing, and it barely covers up any of her body.
If she was going to high school and she showed up in this outfit, she
would be sent home, as the outfit really only covers her boobs and her lower
half (the half where the vagina is, or so I've read), with her shoulders and her entire belly
button region completely exposed. This
is definitely one of the strangest outfits Lisa has ever worn on the series,
even stranger than Ciji’s Alien dress from season four, because at least the
Alien outfit wouldn’t get her arrested for indecent exposure. The thing I loved most especially about this
outfit was how absolutely nobody comments on the fact that it’s strange. If we’re speaking about Dallas stuff sorta oozing over into KL, this is definitely another good example because this is the
same season that Dallas had Angelica
Nero and Travilla was dressing her up in the most ridiculous and lavish outfits
you’ve ever seen. KL generally operates a little differently, with characters often
observing and vocally pointing out some of the absurdities around them (think
about when Abs first moved into her palace office in season five and Gary
looked at the weirdo light fixture and said, “What is that, a waffle iron?”),
so I would kinda expect one of the characters to walk up to Cathy and make some
sort of comment on her outfit (I can imagine a pissed off Abs saddling up next
to her and making a comment like, “Not leaving much to the imagination, are
we?”), but nobody does, and in a way, it makes me like the outfit even more. Ben just saddles up to Cathy and starts
making conversation, all while she’s dressed in this swim suit thing, and the
conversation continues just as normal as can be, nobody finding anything odd
about her wardrobe choices. In a way,
this made the whole thing even more amusing to me. Finally, in doing a little online research looking for pictures, I discovered several photos of Lisa and Paul Stanley together and she is wearing the exact same outfit! This tells me that Lisa wanted to wear this, or was being paid to wear it, or something similar. Everyone look at the photo below to get a sense of her swimsuit attire.
This fundraiser climaxes with a scene of
unbelievable excitement and drama, a scene that had somehow completely slipped
my mind. I’m gonna go ahead and confess
something real fast, and that is the fact that I can’t really remember the exact
layout of how things go down with Val’s babies and the issue of their true
father. When I say this, I’m talking
about years and years away from this, like when we reach the final season and
the show is starting to wrap up. I
cannot remember if, by that point, everyone knows who the babies belong to and
how they were conceived and Bob Loblaw.
Because the story of the babies spans so many years and unfolds at such
a gloriously slow burn pace, it’s hard to remember all the exact details, so
perhaps that’s how this wild scene fell out of my memories. See, basically, we start up with Abs and Greg
chatting and Greg once again throws out the threat about how he knows about
Val’s babies and could tell everyone about it.
Now that Abs is dealing with threats of exposure from not just Greg, but
also her own rebellious daughter, she has finally had enough and decides to lay
it all out on the table. She grabs Gary
and takes him over to Greg and says, “Here he is, Greg; tell him.” When Greg plays coy, Abs goes ahead and tells
everyone at the gathering the truth. She
looks Gary straight in the eyes and says, “I knew about Val’s babies all along,
Gary; I knew about the kidnapping.” Then
we go to a commercial and, when we come back from commercial, we hear that line
again, followed by Gary’s fabulous response, which is a sarcastic, “Why am I
not surprised?” Ugh, I love this, because you could easily
understand the temptation of the writers to have Gary get all wide eyed and
freak out and be like, “How could you?!”
Instead, they know he has dealt with years of this kind of deceit, so
when he finally hears this news, he’s not shocked at all. Abs continues with the story, saying how she knew
the truth, but she didn’t tell anyone because it would be irresponsible to
raise Val’s hopes before getting some kind of proof. This must all seem fairly shocking enough,
but then Greg adds, “What about the paternity of the babies?” Everybody’s eyes
widen and Ben gets all pissed and says, “Excuse me, but my kids are none of your
damn business.” My sphincter tightens up
as Abs says, “Of course; everybody knows who the father is,” and we have
several agonizing seconds before she motions to Ben and then says to Greg, “I
don’t understand the accusation you’re making.”
Then she puts a little bow on her speech by saying how she did a good
thing and reunited a mother and her children and, “I just don’t understand why
you hold that against me.” The mood in
the air after all of this is hard to describe.
I’d say it’s like everyone is breathing a temporary sigh of relief, but
they are also realizing what a close call this could have been.
Clearly I loved this development, and I’d say a lot
of my love comes from not remembering it happening, so I felt fairly shocked
when it did happen. I simply didn’t
expect Abs to just tell everyone all of this right in the middle of the party,
so when it happened, I was surprised. I
also like the downplayed reactions from everyone, keeping things true to the
more grounded spirit of KL. If this was a Dallas oil baron’s ball, you can bet Cliff Barnes and J.R. would
get into some big fistfight and someone else would get strangled and someone
would have a cake thrown in their face or, you know, whatever, something like
that. On KL, this doesn’t all devolve into some big, goofy fight, but
instead sorta peters out the way such an event would really occur in real
life.
Following the party, Abs decides to stop by Sylvia’s
house for a visit in a scene that’s, well, a little strange. First of all, Abs shows up with her fabulous
hair and makeup and earrings and her evil-looking outfit and claims to be,
like, a lawyer, or something. Actually,
that’s not accurate, what happens is that she says how she was supposed to meet
Peter here, and when Sylvia asks if she’s from the lawyer’s office, Abs
answers, “No, I’m the one who pays for the lawyers.” I’m not really sure what that means, but it
works well enough that Sylvia lets her in and is suddenly quite happy to speak
with her. Abs pulls out a manila folder
with a bunch of blank sheets of paper in it and then pretends like the papers
actually have something written on them, a move that Trump must have seen
because it inspired him to pull the same trick at one of his press
conferences, when he pretended he was divesting from his business interests before becoming president and wasn't merely using the presidency to profit off the American people. Abs is taking a real gamble
here, because all she does is open up the folder and say how there’s one little
bit of evidence that the lawyers think won’t hold up in court. At this point, she basically starts
improvising, flipping through the blank sheets and saying, “Let’s see here, elementary
school transcript,” flashing a quick look at Sylvia to see if this means
anything to her, which it does not. Next, she goes through vaccination records
and birth certificate before finally landing on medical history. Suddenly, Sylvia is happy as a clam to tell
Abs everything, saying, “I told Peter that he didn’t match my son’s medical
history. He doesn’t have the right scars
or the right birthmarks or the right anything, but then he went ahead with this
anyhow.”
Hmmm, well this is sure some awfully incriminating
information, isn’t it? The big plot
twist we are to understand now is that Peter is, in fact, not related to Sylvia
Lean at all, but then how did all of this get cooked up in the first
place? What happened to her real
son? How did she meet Peter? These are all things to be further explored
as we move along, and I appreciate the slow way different plot twists are being
unveiled, although I also confess to some confusion about one aspect of this
scene. See, after Abs leaves, Sylvia
shuts the door and locks it and we hold on her face for several seconds before
cutting to a new scene, and I honestly can’t quite figure out what this face
means. She looks concerned, she looks upset, and she looks like she’s thinking
really hard about something. At first, I
was tempted to say that she was lying to Abs with the whole “Peter doesn’t
match my son’s records” rhetoric, but I’m not so sure. Is she suspicious of this super glamorous
lady dressed in a fabulous outfit randomly arriving one night with a folder
full of blank papers? I suppose that
could also be it, but then why immediately volunteer the information about
Peter? Lots of questions to be asked
here.
The last thing I wanna discuss about this ep is a
small detail that adds to the richness of the KL world and characters. We
catch up with Olivia and Gary hanging together on a bench outside of, I think,
Olivia’s high school. Gary starts the
scene by saying how Olivia is fifteen years old and telling her, “I was
fourteen years old the first time I got drunk.”
My antenna immediately went up right away, because I saw that now we
were going to get some backstory and context for how Gary first discovered
alcohol. Gary tells Olivia how, one
Saturday night, he sat down with three sixteen ounce cans of beer and drank
them all and got sick and then, the next Saturday, he did it again. Gary’s speech is a fabulous example of how to
talk to a person who needs help for addictions, because he shows Olivia he can
relate to her, only with alcohol instead of weed, and he shares personal
details of his own life to help her feel trusting, and then he concludes with,
“No matter what happens, I love you,” which is precisely what she needs to hear
at this time. I loved this scene for
that reason, but I loved it more for filling us in on Gary’s past some more,
showing that even at episode 154, we can still learn new things about
characters we’ve been watching since episode one. While we have always known that Gary’s an
alcoholic, actually having him talk about his first time drinking adds even
more richness to his character, and this is only one example of KL managing to do this very consistently
with nearly all of their characters over the course of all fourteen
seasons.
After rewatching this particular block of five eps
to prepare for these essays, I confirmed what I had already suspected, which is
that this was my favorite one on the disk.
I wouldn’t call this a KL classic,
but it was a good ep with lots of aspects I appreciated. I most especially enjoyed the fundraiser
because I like seeing my characters all dressed up and looking good,
socializing and being super interesting, and I of course enjoyed the big
revelation from Abs to everyone at the party about how she knew about Val’s
babies. That scene is probably the
highlight of the ep for me, followed by Gary’s speech to Olivia. All in all, a solid 48 minutes.
Next up, we shall discuss The Legacy.
I don't think Abby ever truly loved a man after what she went through with Charles in her younger years. That hurt her in such a way that she developed a steel guard around her heart. She could have feelings for men, most definitely. By feelings, I mean she could care about them, as she did for Jeff and Gary, but she was not ever committed wholly to them, the way those in love are. She could, if necessary, sleep with other men while married to a man -- often, she was motivated by what it could get her or her man, rather than on the sexual aspects. She's the type to sleep with her man's boss if it meant a promotion for him.
ReplyDeleteI'm that first scene, I imagined Abby's wheels were still spinning... trying to figure out a way to keep Gary by her side, or figure out best way for divorce to work in her favor. And by end of ep., she has won. Gary tells her she can have what's left of Empire Valley.
DeleteThose dresses were out of control. Abby had a giant gold cape. Lisa Hartman borrowed her get-up from a pole-dancing Munchkin.
ReplyDeleteAbby always won in the end. And I was always happy that she did.
ReplyDeleteA knockout of an episode. I was wondering if Abby's secret was ever going to be exposed and BOOM! -- like a sudden, unexpected thunderclap -- it was. And she managed to put enough of her own spin on it that she came out smelling like a rose. A phoenix indeed.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm... I'd say Greg could still use his inside knowledge against Abby. She definite knew how to spin the story, but Greg knew she was jussssst trying to cover her tracks during the majority of those first months she has a hint the babies were still alive/ stolen.
DeleteYes Greg could still have used his inside knowledge against Abby but if he did Abby could reveal that he knew where the babies were.Plus Greg probably knew he would get something else on Abby in due time.
DeleteI think the photo you used to demonstrate Cathy's ridiculous dress does not show the one in the episode, but I knew I'd seen it before. Lisa Hartman wears it in the S7 cast photos.
ReplyDelete