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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 45430" data-attributes="member: 22">"Twelve Mile Limit" A few firsts in this episode: the first glimpse of the Southfork exercise room and, even odder, the first time we see JR working out (which never seemed quite in character to me; he should have just grown fatter and more disgusting as the years went on). There's the first indication as to what Clayton's Big Secret might be: "Are you sayin' he killed his wife for her money?" asks JR. This leads to a great scene in which JR delivers breakfast in bed to an aloof (and queasy) Sue Ellen and manipulates her into revealing a conversation she and Clayton had in Season 4 about his first wife. Linda Gray's great here. You can keep her foaming at the mouth, drunk tank, "Look Ma, I'm Acting!" stuff from Season 8, it's in negotiating the subtle shifts of scenes like this that she really excels. There's also the first mention of Gold Canyon 340, the offshore field that will make Cliff's fortune. As the oil companies ready themselves for the offshore bidding, Weststar Oil is reintroduced as an off-screen presence, even though Jeremy Wendell doesn't reappear for another year. (Curiously, Weststar--the largest oil company in the South West, lest we forget--wasn't referred at all during Season 5 when, thanks to the fight for Ewing Oil, the Dallas oil community as a whole were featured more strongly than at any other time.)The fall-out from Miss Ellie's mastectomy revelation leads to some lovely scenes, as she and Clayton both fret separately about how he will react to seeing her undressed. "Please, Donna!" she cries in frustration during another terrifically acted Bel Geddes/Howard scene. "Forgive me, but you just don't know! Unless you've been through it, you can't." Out on the range, Clayton articulates his fears to Ray. "Dammit, why do I feel the way I do? ... I'm a little scared." Arguably, this conversation, about feelings and love and fear and stuff, is an unrealistic one for two such strong and silent men's men to be having, but the combined talents of Keel, Kanaly and writer David Paulsen manage to make it plausible, without sacrificing the characters' credibility. Of all of the negative repercussions of Donna Reed assuming the role of Ellie, perhaps the discontinuation of this storyline is the most unfortunate. How powerful might a scene (discreetly and sensitively filmed) of Ellie showing herself to Clayton for the first time have been.The detail of the offshore plot means there's lots of fun to be had watching JR and Sly sucker a further $10,000 out of "cheap penny pincher" Cliff in return for the geological surveys of the fields JR is supposedly interested in. ("I can't believe anyone would do what you're doing!" says Edgar Randolph as he hands over the information JR has demanded. The irony is JR isn't doing what Edgar thinks he is. What he is doing is even worse!) At first, Cliff decides he can do without the surveys, but then he and Marilee get down to some post-coital negotiation in Houston. "Sweetheart," she tells him. "Sex is sex, but when it comes to business, I wanna see more than your pretty face ... I wanna examine the geologicals." So Cliff, miffed, has to pay up. Lord knows, Sly could use the money; she's still wearing the other actresses' hand-me-downs--Pam's dress from the Season 4 cast photo, in this instance. There's a pretty scene of Pam and Katherine being all Playmate of the Month-ish, as they recline on Katherine's bed in their lingerie. Pam prattles dreamily on about Bobby, ("I don't think a day goes by that I don't think about him and how it used to be") somehow oblivious to the glowering expression on Katherine's face. One can imagine Katherine donning a strap-on at the end this scene and ... well, maybe that's just me.The writers of Season 6 (all three of them) have a clever juggling act to perform over the next ten episodes by bringing Bobby and Pam to the brink of reconciliation, only to then spin each of them off into a credible engagement to someone else. Accordingly, in this episode, both Charlie (off screen) and Miss Ellie drop hints in Bobby's (and the viewer's) ear about the possibility of him marrying Jenna. Edgar's overdose prompts some great confrontations. First, Donna and Ray banging into JR's office to accuse him of blackmail (the first time Ray and JR have locked horns since the Southfork fire). JR manoeuvres his way out of it, forcing Donna to back down for once. "Just maybe I owe you an apology," she concedes through gritted teeth. Then that terrific final scene in the hospital room with poor Edgar in torment and JR at his most chilling. Edgar: "At least if I had died, they wouldn't know about my past." JR: "Sure they would. I'd break your story to the newspapers before you were even cold in the ground." Edgar: "...You're not a human being, you're scum." JR: "... Oh, and by the way, don't you ever mention my name to Donna Krebbs again, or you'll really regret that you didn't die today.""Where is Poppa?" An interesting aspect of Season 6 is the lack of high drama for much of the year. This isn't one of those seasons where JR is in "the fight of his life", or where there's a huge sense of urgency or melodrama surrounding the Ewing family. Ordinarily, this might cause the show to drag, but thanks to an attention to detail--both visually and in the writing--the characters have arguably never seemed more like real people leading believable lives. (Season 9 has a similar vibe.) That's not to say the season is short on plot--in this episode, JR is quietly scheming against Clayton and Cliff, Katherine is doing the same against Jenna, Mark has proposed to Pam, JR and Sue Ellen are continuing their illicit but low-key relationships with Katherine and Peter, Ray and Donna are nosing about trying to find a connection between JR and Edgar Randolph--but at the same time we get a sense of the characters leading stable, day to day, normal lives (and not "cutesy normal" either, such as in Season 8 when Miss Ellie starts incongruously rearranging the furniture, or Season 10 when she girlishly confesses to od'ing on hot dogs whilst on a "date" with Bobby). So we get Mark surprising Pam with an impromptu lunch in her office, Cliff standing up Sly to take a cranky Afton to dinner upon her return from Mitch Land, and some early morning bickering from JR and Sue Ellen (JR: "I remember when you used to warm your cold feet on my back." Sue Ellen: "I've found an electric blanket works just as well and it saves the wear and tear on my emotions.").Mavis stops by to invite the Ewings to her and Punk's wedding anniversary party, and then admits to Ellie during a nicely acted heart to heart that she felt guilty after Jock died "because I still had my man and you didn't". The Andersons' party (which we never actually see) also impacts the JR/Sue Ellen/Peter/Lucy storyline: Sue Ellen is reluctant to attend the party, ("This marriage of ours depresses me so much I don't think I wanna go to parties") but JR is anxious for them to be seen together as a married couple. "A lot of Daddy's friends are gonna be there," he reminds her. Who these friends are we aren't told, but they appear to be part of a Dallas hierarchy that doesn't exist during any other season.Lucy wants to invite Peter, so Sue Ellen pays him a visit to warn him to stay away. During their conversation, we learn that Peter and Sue Ellen are no longer sexually involved, ("Except for that one wonderful day, you won't let me come close to you," he whines) so it's hard to know exactly what their relationship is at this point. Do they still go ice skating together, or have they graduated to getting their nails done? Sue Ellen stops by Jenna's boutique for a new dress for the party (the chilliness that existed between these two at the Oil Baron's Ball now apparently forgotten) and promptly gets knocked down by car.After being randomly stalked by the lovesick Peedur and now being randomly run over which in turn leads to a random miscarriage, Sue Ellen is in danger of becoming less of a complex, resonant, near-tragic dramatic figure and more of a generic TV character to whom shit has to happen simply because she's in a soap. Katherine, meanwhile, is a lot funnier, and more Southern, than usual: "I don't why you want me to go to bed with you when you know I can't stand you," she pouts after an afternoon in the sack with JR. "My favourite lady of the evening is out of town," he explains charmingly. And I love it when she lies solemnly to Pam--"There's an old friend of my father's who's very sick"--to cover up her trip to LA to track down Jenna's ex."When the Bough Breaks" The story of Sue Ellen's mysterious miscarriage is a strange one. Twelve episodes have passed since her "stud service" scene with JR--if he were the father, she would surely have had some inkling of her condition, yet she is literally the last to know. And her doctor--that weird woman with the Anne Robinson style rictus grin--refuses to tell her how long she had been pregnant. ("Sue Ellen, relax. Does that really matter now?") Then there's Peter, of course, who remains such a bizarre character. His little bedside speech to a sleeping Sue Ellen ("I guess after this, we'll never have a child together ...") is heartfelt but incredibly wet. I can't decide whether Christopher Atkins is really bad, or very good and it's just that his character doesn't belong in the DALLAS world.On the plus side, we get Sue Ellen talking about her and JR's one night stand for the first time ("In the middle of the night, I went back to my room and we became strangers again," she tells Pam) and her and Peter's silly relationship breaks out of the holding pattern it has been for several weeks. In the episode's final scene, where she visits him in his dreary apartment, the various threads of Sue Ellen's personality--the cold, materialistic Sue Ellen of old, and the well-meaning, slightly generic character she has been for much of this season--finally come together. The miscarriage has sent Peter off into fantasies about their unborn child, but for Sue Ellen, it has brought the impossibility of their relationship into sharp focus. "You expect me to leave Southfork, JR for you? To raise a child and live here with you?" she asks him cruelly. "I wouldn't have had that child anyway," she continues, "I would have aborted it. The pregnancy was a mistake, our relationship was a mistake ... Oh, I know the pain you're going through right now cos I've been there. But it passes, it always does. You just stay out of my life." Jenna's involvement in the accident is a clever way for her and Bobby to get onto the subject of their kids (although her total lack of reaction upon learning that Christopher is adopted is very strange; it's as though Bobby were telling her how many Sweetex Pam used to take in her coffee) and the importance that Bobby places on his bond with Charlie. "I think the three of us have something very special, he tells Jenna romantically. "So damn the torpedoes, head full speed ahead."This neatly coincides with Katherine finally tracking down Naldo Marchetta amid some sexy shots of Malibu. Naldo's appearance is nothing if not long awaited (after all, it's 143 episodes since the character was first mentioned), even if the impact is somewhat undermined by the shorts and knee high white socks ensemble he sports in his first scene. "I am Naldo Marchetta," he proclaims. "I'm not surprised," purrs Katherine. Morgan Brittany looks particularly lovely in this episode and plays the role of ... whatever it is that she is (not exactly a bitch, not really a vamp, not yet a psychopath; an obsessed woman in a big hat? yes that'll do) to perfection. "I knew it! I knew if I found you, you'd have the answer!" she exclaims gleefully, striding past the camera lens and leaving the audience none the wiser. Katherine isn't the only one to uncover a secret, as Donna and Ray learn that Edgar Randolph was institutionalised as a young man.There are two lovely scenes with Pam, both in her office, which feel quintessentially Season 6. The first is with Cliff (if Bobby and JR had the most interesting sibling relationship in Season 5, then Pam and Cliff take the prize this season) where he makes a heartfelt plea to her to be his partner in the offshore drilling deal. One of the things that make this story work so well is that, although Cliff is ultimately motivated by greed (just as he was the last time he was suckered by JR back in Season 4) the writers enrich the plot by giving his character flashes of humanity along the way (his reluctance prior to cheating on Afton with Marilee; his sincere appeal to Pam here.) "Why is it so important to you that I invest with you?" Pam asks. "Because you're my sister and it's always been you and me against the world," he replies. "... Well, maybe it's time we showed the Ewings they aren't the only family in town," she half-promises. There is also a small but gorgeous scene between Pam and Mark--she's gorgeous, the lighting's gorgeous, Mark's dashing and handsome, both actors are unaffected and great, Bruce Broughton's score is subtle and unobtrusive. Mark, growing impatient for an answer to his marriage proposal, tells Pam that he's going overseas on business. "I want to marry you," he tells her, "and when I get back, I want an answer and more than anything in my life, I want the answer to be yes." There is a beautiful final shot of Pam looking wistfully at Mark as he leaves. This is the last time she will see him without knowing he is dying ...</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?