THE JOURNAL-REGISTER Medina, New York, Wednesday, February 10,1982
Rustling leaves, dark secrets, creepy music By David Handler
ABC's "King's Crossing" is something of a breakthrough in prime time soapdom. Unlike "Dallas," unlike "Dynasty," unlike "Flamingo Road," "King's Crossing" isn't steamy, adult trash. Rather, it is blushing, romantic trash, the dreamy schoolgirl sort of thing you'd associate with a Harlequin paperback. The look and sound of "King's Crossing" are different, too. The other soaps are sunny and bright. They have jazzy, upbeat scores.
Kings Crossing is dark and sinister. Leaves rustle against the windows. The music is creepy, reminiscent of "Dark Shadows." This is as it should be, since "King's Crossing" practically gorges itself on mystery. Everyone has a deep, dark secret. Yes, "King's Crossing" is something new. It's also something of a hoot.
Meet the Hollisters, Paul (Bradford Dillman) and Nan (Mary Frann). They've just fled Chicago for King's Crossing, the small California ranching town where Nan grew up. Paul lost yet another teaching job. He drinks, you see. Beaucoup. Paul is what is known in the trade as a failed playwright. So the Hollisters are broke and must fall back on Nan's inheritance. Her pop left her no money but he did leave a drafty, old house. He was a distinguished town pastor and big-time crud, or so Nan thinks. She didn't even go to his funeral. She hates being back in his house. The place gives her a severe case of the heebiejeebies.She especially doesn't like her father's sister, the sinister Aunt Louisa (Beatrice Straight), who lives on a sinister ranch in a sinister house that's a dead ringer for the Bates manse in "Psycho." She greets her long-lost niece with a warm, "I always knew you'd come back begging."
The Hollisters have two daughters — and here is where the Harlequin stuff comes in. Carey (Marilyn Jones) is a tomboyish high schooler. She just loves horses — talks to them and stuff - and thus meets and gets her very first ever kiss from Billy (Daniel Zippi), her aunt's muscular, impertinent stable boy. Meanwhile, Lauren (Linda Hamilton), Carey's older sister, goes to college and longs to be a concert pianist She is a snob. She also has full lips, bedroom eyes and wears tight sweaters. For pocket cash, Lauren gives piano lessons to the daughter of a world famous conductor, Jonathan Hadary (Michael Zaslow), who is tall, dark, handsome, married and wears open shirts. He listens to Lauren play, helps her to gain entry to a regional piano competition. "Now you can stop pretending to find me irresistible," .he says, "That part wasn't pretending," she breathes, heart aflutter.
In order to get by Nan takes a job in a shoe store. Paul teaches English in Carey's high school — in fact, in her very class. This gets to be a problem when he shows up drunk one morning and begins to sob in front of her new friends. The principal happens to be there, too. Fortunately, Paul doesn't seem to lose his job, though this is never explained. Little in "King's Crossing" is explained. This is part of the fun.
In the pilot episode, for instance, Billy informs Carey that Aunt Louisa keeps a child chained in a third-floor bedroom, a child who never comes out in the daylight. "You got some loony relative up there," he advises her. Carey becomes obsessed with finding out who the relative is. She sneaks upstairs (in a sequence worthy of the better Nancy Drew) and discovers her beautiful long-lost cousin Jillian (Doran Clark), who wears this hideous Dickensian leg-brace and hasn't been allowed out since her "illness," which, once Jillian emerges into the flow of the show, is never accounted. Another week, we finally do learn why Nan hates her father's memory so — he wouldn't let her keep the illegitimate child she bore as a teen. You might be asking yourself why we couldn't have just been told this tidbit from peg one, since it accounts for why she behaves like she does, but believe me — you wouldn't want it any other way. If the writing made any sense, "King's Crossing would be just another bad show, instead of a deliciously silly one.
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Paul Raven ·
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