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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kenny Coyote" data-source="post: 224728" data-attributes="member: 102">I agree that JR is the more obvious one, if you're looking for change in the characters. They did give JR more personality and Larry Hagman's portrayal of the character was a big factor in that, as Guzzler said. I don't know how much of a factor the scripts and the direction he was given and how much was just Larry Hagman's own ideas as to what would make the character work best. The scripts were a factor, and if you recall, JR and Ray were friends in the beginning. JR was shown to be a closer friend to Ray than Bobby was! Bobby isn't shown as being friends with Ray, per se. They got along but the relationship appeared to be strictly professional. You can se this in the scenes where Bobby tells Ray to drive Lucy to school. Ray has good reasons of his own for delegating the job to a ranch hand. Bobby makes a big display of telling Ray that since Jock asked Ray to do it, that nobody else but Ray driving Lucy to school would do. For such a complex job as that, you can see why. HA!  Later on Bobby asks what's wrong with Ray and Pam says Ray is concerned that Bobby might fire him. Bobby says words to the effect of he doesn't see why just as long as Ray does as he's told. Does that include handing over his dates to Bobby, whenever Bob sees fit? Meanwhile JR and Ray have gone in a trips to Waco together and JR doesn't treat Ray as subserviently as Bobby does. JR gives Ray more room for talking to each other as friends, even though they don't know Ray is their brother yet. Ray is their ranch foreman, but he and JR have clearly gone out on the town of Waco together,just for the fun of it. Their last trip their together has some consequences.Over time, I see a lot more enthusiasm for life in Larry Hagman's portrayal of JR. The Barbecue episode Guzzler mentioned seems to be the turning point. JR becomes to be a man who is loving life, always smiling. It looks to me like this is more Larry's doing than that of the scripts or anything else. Whether the change was all Larry Hagman's idea or a combination of his and other people's ideas, it sure worked and it's damn hard to argue with success.I'm a real Jock fan too. I disagree with one point: that he had Sam Culver's uncle committed to a sanitarium.  As I remember it, Donna finds out while working on a book about Sam that Sam had his uncle committed to a sanitarium and then got a power of attorney of the man's land so that he and his partner could drill for oil on the land. Jock comes into this because he was the man who was going to do the drilling. Jock was Sam's business partner and his expertise was in oil. Sam's role in this was making the land available for drilling by having his uncle committed and getting the power of attorney. Sam did the committing. Jock was not kin to the Culvers and as such, couldn't have been the one to have done it, as it would take a relative or a doctor. I didn't like that storyline much and found it unsettling that Donna would be so eager for fame and fortune that she'd be willing to rape her dead ex-husband's diary for whatever it was worth. It's bad form to speak ill of the dead and this was a man whom Donna had presumably loved.I enjoyed Jock seeing Jock become a better man over time. Characters can become stale without some type of character development. Jock seemed to go through a good deal of character development and this was evident in Dove Hunt. When Tom Owens accused Jock of having stolen his land, Jock said he'd never seen Owens in his life. As a character who only appears in one episode, it's hard to know how credible Owens is. We don't know anything about the man other than what he hear him say and see him do. That he and his friends were willing to try to murder Jock and his sons in cold blood doesn't do wonders for his credibility in my book.What really impressed me was how Jock just looked up the barrel of Owens's rifle and told him that if he was going to shoot him, to go ahead and do it. Jock looked him right in the eye the whole time. Damn! It takes some guts to do that! I'm sure Jock always had guts but what I find telling about Jock's personal growth as a man is what happened after Ray an Bobby returned. They turned the tables on Owens and his men and made them surrender their guns. Jock could have done anything he wanted in retaliation at that point. Keep in mind he'd already been shot! Despite that, Jock chose to give Owens and his men their guns back and let them go. Owens is stunned. Jock isn't even going to press charges. Jock says some words to the effect of how he thinks he owes Owens for what he did to him and that "maybe this business has become too impersonal." Jock tells JR that they're going to go through their books when they get home and get things in order. Jock also wants to make sure that no matter what happens to him, he want to make sure that his ex-wife Amanda is always provided for.  That's very admirable. They say age denotes wisdom and Jock certainly acquired a lot of it as he grew older.</blockquote>

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