They were hunting. The boys had a good time and learned a lot. They ate what they killed too.
I loved it when they outsmarted Wendell and finally got him. It was one of the highlights of Dallas to me. He was a smart guy and a worthy competitor but he was still human and fallible. Sooner or later either the Ewings would have beaten Wendell or he would have beaten them. Still, William Smithers had a nice long run on Dallas. He played his part perfectly!
"The Sting" in which the Ewings finally got Wendell was the last really great episode of Dallas for me.
I'm not sure what you meant by this: "And then look, McKay is a good guy because we got George Kennedy to play him"
Is it that you don't think George Kennedy is a good actor, or something else?
BTW, From what I heard, Kennedy usually played bad guys.
A) The hunting: The way that part of the episode is depicted, it´s as if John Ross really MUST kill a deer to become a real man. Otherwise, he will be like "weak Uncle Gary who read poetry (oh yeah, in an alternate "Knots" universe...)". That was outdated and sexist (and probably even subtly homophobic) before it was aired, and much more now. "The Dove Hunt" doesn´t show a JR keen on hunting, but quite scared of any kind of violence or killing. That to me is a betrayal to the essence of the show. Katzman was trying that season to appeal the male audiences who had left their wives alone at the sofa when Bobby appeared in the shower or VP disappeared in flames. Again, a sexist, chauvinistic POV that ended up destroying "Dallas" slowly but relentlessly (see subsequent seasons to confirm that).
B) I loved both Smithers and Kennedy, and played their roles very well, but Wendell was a pale shadow of himself when he returned to WestStar: he was just a pawn to the awful range war, and even a precedent of the Cider House logics of things (let´s twist and turn and twist again). I´m rewatching that season, and when Wendell is arrested, McKay suddenly becomes the most honest man on Earth. Come on, he had been dealing with mercenaries and corrupt businessmen until 5 minutes ago, and now the guy is good "just because"? This has nothing to do with the actors, but with Katzman´s sloppy and very lame writing for that season. Oh and again they contradicted themselves about McKay: he also would deal with abstract OPEC and would reveal he had been working for mobs like Johnny Dancer. Odd he wasn´t the one who sold the drugs to his son Tommy (Cider House would have loved this "delicious" twist!).
And very especially, but very briefly, I´ll mention the tongue-in-cheek Hagman&Duffy Hour routine acting of everyone involved in that episode you like so much. They aren´t playing it straight as usual on "Dallas", they are cracking up because they know they are in for the bucks and the script just sucks. Oh those cynical times of the show... Just my opinion anyway.
This I´d have liked to see instead:
Wendell is outed by the Ewings who have pics of him in a gay panto.
Then he gives up and gets ready for the jailhouse action.
