INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - NIGHT
A dimly lit hospital room. ELLIE, frail and weak, lies in a hospital bed. J.R. EWING, looking older and weary, sits beside her, holding her hand. BOBBY, GARY, SUE ELLEN, LUCY, JAMES, JOHN ROSS and CHRISTOPHER surround them.
J.R.
Mama, everything's gonna be alright.
ELLIE
(Weakly)
J.R. I've always admired your... self-belief.
A long pause. Ellie closes her eyes, then opens them slowly.
ELLIE (CONT’D)
There's something you should know. Something I've kept hidden for a long time.
J.R.
What is it, Mama?
ELLIE
Digger Barnes... he was not just your father's rival. He's... he's your father.
J.R. stares at her, stunned. His jaw drops slightly.
J.R.
(Whispering)
What?
ELLIE
(Nods, a small, sad smile)
Jock was a great man but a difficult man... Digger was so caring... we had an affair, before I married your father.
J.R. is speechless. His mind races, trying to process the shocking revelation.
ELLIE (CONT’D)
It's a secret I've carried for years. I'm sorry, J.R.
Ellie closes her eyes, her breathing shallow. The monitor flatlines. J.R. stares at her, his mind racing. The room is filled with tension and disbelief.
[SCENE END]
Yes, yes, yes! It's been discussed here that something like that should happen (to much controversy from those who didn't want JR's parentage questioned -- or Ellie's fidelity!)
Obviously, it would send JR into a tailspin, his becoming more vindictive than ever (a remedy for his increasing softness up until then). I pine to hear a drunken JR call his own mama "a slut!" in the living room followed by physical attacks from Bobby and Clayton.
Cliff would taunt "my brother!" in the middle of the Oil Baron's Club in the sky, all made worse by the eleventh-hour revelation that Pam
might be dead and that she
might have died from complications of neurofibromatosis (meaning her own slutty mama may have lied that Hutch McKinney was the baby-daddy!) and thus JR and Pam might be brother-and-sister!
I mean, can you even imagine??
I picture Ellie making this deathbed confession to Clayton, circa 1990, after she succumbs to an on-air cocaine overdose, the substance placed in her stage make-up by the chauffeur, during a broadcast of her daytime chat show after JR says to the driver that he'd "do just about anything to shut my mama up" (she with her liberal ideas reviled by her son and the entire cartel) and JR is taken quite seriously by the gofer who takes action in order to curry favor with the oil magnate. (David Jacobs once said he'd have Miss Ellie have her own local talk show if a DALLAS movie was ever made, and Larry said he wanted Miss Ellie to get hooked on cocaine and have an affair with her driver -- so, never one to throw anything out, I cribbed both ideas from Jacobs and Hagman). Inebriated, Clayton later spills the beans back at home.
And maybe, say, Miss Ellie winds up living unexpectedly, having to suffer JR hurling abuse at her for a year -- before confessing on the Texas prairie, having been thrown from her horse (probably bitchy Blazer) when she takes the family out to Section 40 in order to show them what's been buried out there for 45 years (hint:
somethin' somethin' nazi treasure).
"I was a whore, JR -- but Jock loved me anyway!"
Constance Colby reveals that Philip is her illegitimate son, not her brother - the result of a one-night stand with King Galen when he agreed to bed her in exchange for a significant discount on a major weapons deal with a shady subsidairy of Colby Enterprises (I mean, go all the way with your confessions).
Dear Connie, confused in her dying process, thinks she's confessing this to Jason but in reality it's Miles who can't wait to give his mother a full report of aunt Connie's sordid past (Sable is the only one who knows how to turn it into a storyline).
Oh, very, very good... I've often written that I want Stanwyck's video will shown to both families, with Connie (the name "Connie" is
still too PP for my taste) calling Alexis, her sister Caress, and her cousin Sable, "
You whores, you whores, you filthy, filthy whores!!," the image then freezeframed by the will's executor, shocking all... But to have that moment
preceded by the revelation that Philip was in fact her son and not her brother would, obviously, make it all even more powerful.
Clearly, if only Sable knows -- for a while -- then that secret has a different kind of narrative resonance. (Especially if Connie dies as the result of Sable running over her!)
Additionally, Stanwyck's confession that she'd funded the massacre in Moldavia as revenge on a neglectful Galen and "to keep that slut Alexis off the throne!" seem like no-brainers.
Let Colleen McCullough sue --
what do we care??
But I do
love delving into (and writing) the layered, scandalous backstories for these shows -- it's one of my favorite things and it keeps the contemporary narrative of romantic triangles, jealousy, cheap affairs, and sloppy catfights grounded and relevant.
