Episode Title: Neighborly Conduct
Season 08, Episode 24
Episode 184 of 344
Written by Lynn Marie Latham
Directed by Lawrence Kasha
Original Airdate: Thursday, March 12th,
1987
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Ben is upset that Greg sent Jean to Paraguay instead of
pressing charges. He is ultra paranoid and thinks he sees Jean everywhere. Greg
fires Ben. Jill questions Gary about whether she comes first in his life.
Olivia joins Peter's Youth Commission against drugs. She admits to Paige she
has a huge crush on Peter. Abby and Paige vie for Peter's affection. To win his
affection, Paige tells Peter that Sylvia gave Olivia a letter, and that he can
use Olivia's crush on him to get the letter back. Peter sends Olivia flowers,
thanking her for her help. Anne rents Laura's house, and hangs out at the
MacKenzie's. Karen doesn't like this, and tells Anne to stop coming on to Mack
because she doesn't stand a chance. Anne sends herself a package, but has is
delivered to the MacKenzies. When Mack brings it over, she tells him she wants
him to stay and get reacquainted.
Hello, all, I hope my lovely
readers are still with me even after having to suffer through the 48 minute
toxic fart that was Nightmare. I also apologize for missing the last few weeks, but I'm seriously considering turning the blog into a biweekly thing because I am now a busy boy with a part time and a full time job and about 60 hours of work per week, so I'm tired. Anyway, I have officially declared Nightmare the worst KL ep up to this point, but the good
news is that I think we’re beginning an upswing in quality now, or at least I
hope so. Neighborly Conduct is far from a perfect KL ep, but at least it’s returning to characters I care about and
at least it’s starting to feel a little more like that classic KL I know and love. Let me explain.
I’ll get the stupid stuff out of
the way first, and that of course is the stuff involving Hackney. Rest assured, for all intents and purposes,
this character has been retired after last week’s abomination. She got arrested and taken away and that was
pretty much the end of her story. The
only reason that “actress” Wendy Fulton is still credited with appearing in
this ep and our next one is that we have a couple of microscopic flashes of her
face while Ben suffers from an explosion of paranoia. What I mean by that is that we get several
scenes where Ben looks at a woman and briefly thinks the woman might be
Hackney, and then the camera will cut to reveal that it’s actually just some
other white chick and that Ben is going crazy.
The reason this is stupid is
because of the sloppy writing and exposition delivery. Our almost first scene is Mack and Ben going
for a nice California jog, talking about Hackney. Ben says something about how he’s having
nightmares about her coming to kill his family, and then he says, “I know she’s
dead and all that,” but then Mack interrupts him to say that Hackney is not
dead, but rather she was shipped off to Paraguay. This is dumb because it asks us to believe that,
in the gap between the last ep and this one, Ben never bothered to confirm with
Mack whether Hackney was killed or not.
Hackney has been making Ben’s life and the viewer’s lives miserable
since the very first ep of the season, and after 23 arduous eps involving her
and her ridiculous schemes, you’re gonna tell me they haul her off in handcuffs
and Ben is just like, “Well, good work, guys!” and doesn’t bother to double
check that they killed her? Ugh.
Ben also gets fired by Sumner in
this ep because, you know, he tried to kill him. Generally, I’d say it’s a bad
idea to try and shoot your boss to death, mostly because if your boss lives,
you can kiss any chances of promotion goodbye.
This is a small scene taking place on Greg’s ranch and occurring between
just the two characters. Really, the
only reason I bring it up is because Sumner lights a cigar at the end of it, so
we can now induct Cigar #27 into the Sumner Cigar Counter. Boy, does Sumner like those cigars. I enjoy cigars as much as the next guy, but I
do think Sumner is consuming too much; maybe just one per month or something in
that ballpark would be no big deal, but he’s having them every day now, and I’m
worried he’s gonna gum and/or lip cancer, or that his teeth will turn brown and
Laura won’t want to kiss him.
Also, before Ben arrives on the
scene, we get a little bit of Greg and Laura talking to (get out your pillow
and your nightcap) Peter, scolding him for a statement he gave to the press
while Greg was “dead.” I bring up Peter because,
a little later in the ep, the character of Sylvia is finally mentioned again
(remember her?). What happens is that
Olivia and Paige are hanging out, talking about how much Olivia wants to blow
Peter (I do not understand this universe where every single woman wants to
immediately shag Peter, who is not an attractive man by any stretch of the
imagination) and then she brings up how Sylvia gave her a letter way back in
the middle of the season somewhere. She
tells Paige she didn’t open it because it’s private and personal and it’s only
supposed to be opened in the event of her death. This is a major red flag to me that the
writers are going to kill Sylvia offscreen, and I say blah to that. What the hell kind of storytelling is
this? This is, like, Dallas lazy writing. It reminds me of the
exact season that was going on concurrently this year (it would be season ten
of Dallas) and how they spend fucking
forever building up this mystery of whether Steve Forrest is actually Jock
Ewing back from the dead, and they drag it on and on and on and on, and then
it’s all resolved offscreen when Miss Ellie is like, “He told me he’s not
really Jock,” and that’s the end of it.
In this case, we’ve had major buildup with Sylvia as an important
character since the halfway point of season seven, and then she was figuring
heavily into the stories at the start of this season what with Peter trying to
poison her and all that, and now I can tell they are going to just kill her
offscreen and then somehow have this letter business come into the forefront. Did Ruth Roman take a walk and they had to
scramble to finish this up? Or did they
just not want to hire her on to do the whole year? This is really sloppy and I don’t understand
how the writers could let it pass.
But I am actually greatly fond
of the main storyline of this ep, so let’s switch over to that so I can say
some positive things. I don’t know what
the general fan consensus is on Michelle Phillips as Anne or her flirtations
with Mack and this building “Will they have an affair?” storyline, but I do
know that I like it. I am an Anne fan
and think Michelle Phillips brings something special to this character and I
just love watching her. Also, even if
maybe the writers flirting with another “Will Mack cheat on Karen?” storyline
is kinda lazy (after all, it was only last season that he was nearly cheating
with J.B.), at least it feels like KL to
me and at least it’s moving the focus back into the cul-de-sac and the domestic
environment that’s at the heart of the show.
Anne’s been living in California
for a few eps now, and in Neighborly
Conduct, she decides to rent out Laura’s house and live literally right
next door to Karen and Mack. Karen
doesn’t like this and phones Laura to yell at her and ask how she could have
sold the house to Anne, but Laura reminds her that she turned the house over to
a rental agency and has no involvement in who decides to live there. This is a cool little scene because Karen has
some bad timing, saying something like, “I don’t even like seeing her
occasionally and now she’s right next door!” just as Anne comes walking into
the room from behind. Whoops. The scene plays in an interesting way,
because even though there’s a sense of awkwardness in the air, it’s not
entirely clear whether Anne actually heard Karen or not. Anyway, Anne says how she wants to have Mack
and Karen over for dinner to show off the house, and even though Karen doesn’t
wanna go, Mack talks her into it.
I like this part a lot, because,
again, it’s reminding me of classic KL,
and when I say classic KL, I mean really classic KL, like the first three seasons when we barely ever ventured off
the cul-de-sac. I’m just glad that we’re
hanging around the cul-de-sac more and having those classic neighborly tensions
and dramas that were the foundation of the series all the way from the very
first ep. Also, I just find the scene
funny. Karen wears a very strange outfit
that looks like it came out of Prince’s wardrobe. It looks like an ugly brownish reddish bath towel and it
happens to have gaudy gold, like, bracelets?
It has to be seen to be believed, and it’s as ugly as any of the outfits
throughout this ugly, ugly season of clothing.
Also, I greatly enjoyed a little part where they enter the house and are
looking at these framed black and white nudes that Anne has hung up all over
the house, and then Anne says how she did those photos, and at first Karen is
like, “Oh, you’re a photographer?” and Anne is like, “No, I’m the subject!” and
brags about how some super famous photographer took these nudes. I liked this cuz it reminded me of myself,
actually. A few years back, after I lost
all my weight and got emaciated and as skinny as I will ever be and I was so unbelievably thin and beautiful, I went and posed for
nudes myself, and I had a great time. I
met up with this gay accountant photographer who wanted to take nudes just for
practice and we took hundreds. Since I
am a huge narcissist and obsessed with my own appearance, I was totally pleased
with the way this photographer managed to make me look so good in glorious
black and white, with all sorts of cool arty lighting and shadows and
compositions. It was a total blast and I
saved all the nudes to one day show off to my children and my children’s
children and say, “Look at how fucking beautiful I used to be way back in my
‘20s!” Honestly, if I ever am rich
enough to have my own super nice house, I wouldn’t be above hanging up my nudes
on the walls, just like Anne does here.
The human body is beautiful and we all have the same basic bits and
pieces; why be shy?
You can sense Karen’s sphincter
unclenching after there’s a knock at the door and some boring ‘80s white guy
comes in and Anne declares him to be her date.
Oh yay! No need to be worried
about Anne going after Mack if she’s got this boring ‘80s white guy to shag her
instead, right? Also, I really honestly
think that Anne’s intentions here might be pure, that she really might just
want to have Karen and Mack over as her friends and she got this boring ‘80s
white guy as a way of showing peace between her and Karen, of helping Karen to
relax. I could be way off on this, but I
think she might be being truthful, and it’s only after something happens a
little later that she decides to change her game plan. For the moment, though, she and Karen go off
to talk about girl stuff and Mack is forced to interact with the date (his name
is Al) and talk about what all white people in the ‘80s liked to talk about,
which is their stocks and how much money they have. I’m with Mack in this scene, because I can’t
imagine being trapped in a conversation this boring and having to listen to
this block of wood talk about his portfolio or whatever nonsense and verbal
diarrhea he has spewing out of his mouth.
Okay, so for a brief period of
time, it looks like there might be peace between Anne and Karen, but what could
happen to possibly shatter that? What
happens is that Karen gets pretty directly confrontational with Anne after Anne
stops in for some coffee in the early morning in the kitchen. This caused me flashbacks to season one’s Civil Wives, in which Karen sat down in
the kitchen with Sid’s ex-wife and talked directly to her and essentially said
to take a hike. It worked in that ep, so
I wonder if that’s why Karen does the same thing here, although it backfires in
this instance. She basically tells Anne
that she knows what she’s doing and she knows that she’s going after Mack, and
the scene concludes with a bold declaration from Karen: “You don’t stand a
chance with my husband.”
Well, the very next scene is
Anne cooking up a plot that would make both Abs and J.R. smile, ordering
herself a package and intentionally having it delivered to Karen and Mack’s
place. She knows that Mack will come
home and find the package and be forced to bring it over to her, ooooh, how
devious. The fact that Anne enacts this
plan directly after our previous scene adds weight to my theory that she was
ready to be nice with Karen and was pushed over the edge by Karen’s
comments. I respect Karen for being
candid and direct, as she always is, but I think she made a mistake here. By saying what she said, she has opened up a
challenge for Anne, and now Anne is thinking, “Oh yeah? I don’t stand a chance? We’ll see about
that.” Anyway, Mack comes home to find
the package and, right on schedule, takes it over to Anne’s. She answers the door and immediately turns
extra flirty, reminding him that his wife won’t be home for hours, that he
could sneak on inside her house and hang out for awhile and that she’d never
tell Karen about it. I feel like you
could substitute the word “house” for “vagina” and still have the same basic
outcome. She is telling Mack that
whatever they may do together, she’ll keep it a secret between the two of
them. Hmmmm, how interesting.
That about does it for Karen,
Mack, and Anne, but we do get some pretty big stuff involving Gary, Val, and
J.B. in Neighborly Conduct. I’m very glad to see J.B. going in a
direction that I approve of this ep, because my God has she been underutilized
this season. When she first showed up on
the scene in very late season six, I immediately came in my pants and was so
excited to see this beautiful and wonderful character be brought to life so splendidly
by Teri Austin. I loved her all
throughout season seven and thought she was a highlight, but she’s been rather
wasted in season eight and it’s a shame.
I’ve gone on about it enough, but having her fall off a cliff and slip
into a coma for a few eps and then just snap out of it? Really?
Clearly the writers are struggling this year with what to do with J.B.,
but I feel like she’s now beginning a path that will lead us into the J.B. we
truly love through seasons nine and ten.
I’ve kinda been neglecting
what’s going on with Gary and J.B., so let’s do a quick recap. Basically, the two got engaged a few eps
back, somewhere around the time J.B. woke up from her Plot Contrivance Coma,
and then they were supposed to get married in Tahoe last ep, but those plans
were delayed when Gary had to go and heroically stop Val from blowing away an
innocent cleaning woman. The fact that
J.B. was neglected so that Gary could go and help out his nutty ex-wife is
clearly irking her, and it forms the basis for her material this week. I’d also
say that Abby’s immortal line about “The first Mrs. Ewing doesn’t go away,” is
eating at J.B., because she tells Gary this ep, “I’m not so sure I want to join
the ranks of Mrs. Ewings.” Later, she
pays Val a private visit and gets very direct, asking Val if she’s still in
love with Gary. Of course we all know
Val is in love with Gary and we all know Gary is in love with Val because they
are soul mates and they are meant to be together, but Val deflects and says, “I
love Gary as a friend and that’s all.” She
also deflects when J.B. repeats the question of, “Are you in love with Gary?”,
because she just answers, “I am married to a wonderful man.” Note how she doesn’t directly deny loving Gary; she just brings up Ben
and kinda moves on. J.B. doesn’t care
for this, pointing out that Gary seems closer to Val than to anyone and that
he’s always eager to rush out and help her when she’s in a jam, like when she
goes crazy and steals his gun to go and almost murder cleaning women. Val gets mad and tells J.B. to leave, and I’m
pretty excited about this whole scene.
Hmmm, how to get into it without being too obvious or full of
spoilers? Let’s just say that the season
nine finale of KL has possibly my
favorite cliffhanger ever, and let’s just say that I feel like the seeds for
that season nine cliffhangers are being planted right here in this scene in
this ep.
That’s all I got for this ep.
You know, I liked it. I bitched about
some bad writing in some aspects, but I was able to get on board with
Karen/Mack/Anne and Gary/Val/J.B. I
liked all that stuff and I do feel like we are getting back to what KL should be. In a way, I’m reminded of the dream season of
Dallas, which I feel hits its rock
bottom at around episode 24 or so (the one with the ridiculous masked ball that
J.R. and boring-as-fuck Jack Ewing attend with goofy, vamping Angelica Nero)
and then it actually sorta seems to correct itself in the last six or seven eps
of the season and start returning to what Dallas
is meant to be about. In a very
similar fashion, season eight of KL has
been polluted by a terrible central storyline that ruined everything in its
path, but now that the storyline is finishing up, I feel we’re getting back to
what I want to see, which is the characters being interesting and dealing with
domestic problems and potential affairs and who’s in love with who and all that
good, soapy drama.
Next up is the last ep of this
particular disk, entitled Deadly
Combination.