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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 15134" data-attributes="member: 23">THE GANG'S ALL THEREMore Petrie goodness in this episode, with Mark moving up a grade and celebrating by buying an engagement ring for Claudia (he couldn't afford one when they actually got engaged). There was a sign of the times when Mary Beth made a comment about it being odd to buy the mother of his children an engagement ring which was more novel thirty years ago than it is now. Chris seizing the opportunity to get everyone to go out that evening was a great excuse to reflect the character dynamics, in particular Chris's free and easy spontaneity versus Mary Beth's sense of responsibility to her family. It was refreshing to see the group away from the office. The armed robbery played out well. The powerlessness of these characters in that situation came across well. I really appreciated the lack of kickass, which was completely realistic given the situation, and fuelled the anger that they felt afterwards. Again, the responses were in character with Chris wanting revenge and Mary Beth wanting justice on the surface. Then it got turned on its head with Mary Beth admitting her vengeful feelings to Harv and Chris feeling bad about running on ego when capturing the robbers. The latter was moment that played out like a stereotypical wisecracking cop. It's typical of this show to have emotional resonance from that scene, with Chris feeling less professional for behaving that way. It was good, too, to see a little more of LaGuardia with his concern that he's past it. The sub-plot with the grandparents' kidnap of their late son's child played out well too. I found the grandparents far more sympathetic than the child's mother, so it's good to see a story with shades of grey. The only moment that I found a little too in your face was Mary Beth happening to find her son's PBJ sandwich which she'd packed by mistake. This was immediately following a relatively subtle scene where the grandparents (who claimed not to have seen their grandson) had peanut butter, jam and milk on the table. I was completely accepting of Mary Beth working it out afterwards, but her happening to have the same sandwich filling was just far too contrived. Surely the penny would still have dropped if she'd had a ham sandwich. Having Chris and Mary Beth involved in both plots continued to show off their differences nicely. Mary Beth unable to think about anything but the missing child while Chris wanted Mary Beth to use their driving time to go through files to find the armed robbers. I enjoyed Chris's inability to see Mary Beth's point of view ("We're driving out to see the grandparents, for God's sake. What more can we do?"). There were a couple of nice one liners in the episode too. Such as Chris talking about a date: "Did you see his teeth? They were longer than his nose."**I'm pretty sure that line was from this episode, but I watched it back-to-back with A Cry For Help, so I may be an episode out. </blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?