Ray and Jenna Season 10

[tommie]

Ray is a madman in season 11 and he and Jenna and Charlie all belong in mental institutions. The way he acts when Brad Pitt shows up. And Charlie: “You we’re just being a good dad.” Do any of these people understand that he’s a stepfather that has way overstepped his boundaries? WTF?!?

Dallas just had very rigid ideas about the family unit - or rather about "the man of the house" always being in charge. It didn't just mean that a teenage Charlie had to deal with Ray acting as her father (despite being well into her teens), but also that Bobby had to step aside so that Ray could raise his son as his own. It's all rather pecuilar to watch - I can appreciate the sentiment that blood ties doesn't always mean everything, but that Bobby would have absolutely no say in his son's upbringing, and that Ray is his father now, all while literally living next door was just weird.

 

[Guzzler’s Frightening Hair]

there’s a scene about a third or halfway into the year, in the period when Ray decided to stop see Jenna under advice of his attorney Paul Morgan while the divorce with Donna was in process. It featured perhaps the finest dramatic dialogue and acting to have made its way to the small screen in that era, perhaps ever.

It begins with an exasperated Jenna burning the eggs for Charlie’s breakfast and builds from there to the crescendo of Jenna’s desperate confession that yes, as Charlie perceptively pointed out, she missed Ray. Oh, she missed him so much!

It was like the “Bobby loved emeralds!” scene from the Dream season but just on another, unprecedented level. Triumphant!