Re-watching the Ewingverse ... alphabetically!

[James from London]

The Dove Hunt (DALLAS, 26 Oct 79) v Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out (1&2) (KNOTS, 18 May 89)

The Dove Hunt is The One Where the Ewing Men Go Hunting. As such, one could almost view it as a prequel to Call of the Wild, the Season 11 episode where JR and Bobby take their sons to Haleyville to shoot some deer. In that ep, JR paints a portrait of Gary as the overly sensitive brother squeamish about killing animals and is worried about John Ross turning out like him. In The Dove Hunt, however, it’s apparent that JR himself is the Ewing out of his comfort zone in the great outdoors — he doesn’t bag any birds, he hangs back when the rest of the men get into a barroom brawl and when they come under attack, he’s a positive liability: first, he gets shot while trying to help the already injured Jock and then falls asleep when he’s meant to be keeping watch, allowing the enemy to overpower them. It is then that Jock is confronted by a long-forgotten face from his past, just like Pam was in Double Wedding. And just as Pam was revealed to have had a secret husband before she married Bobby, Jock confesses to JR that he had a secret wife, Amanda, before marrying Miss Ellie.

I can pinpoint the start of my DALLAS obsession to the final scene of this episode — specifically the shot of Kristin eavesdropping on Jock and JR talking about Amanda on the cardboard patio. That’s when it occurred to me that every Ewing on this insane show has something they’re trying to hide from the rest of the family: Jock’s first wife, Miss Ellie’s cancer fears, JR’s mortgaging of Southfork and his affair with his sister-in-law, the riddle of Little Josh’s paternity, and Pam's genetic disorder. The one exception is Lucy, who talks openly and excitedly about meeting up with her mother and the fact that Val and Gary have reestablished contact: “They could get back together. We could be a family!” Bobby cautions her against getting her hopes up: “Sometimes these second tries don’t make it either.”

 Fast forward nine years to Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out and it turns out Bobby was right — Gary and Val’s second try didn’t make it after all. “You stole Val’s husband,” Karen reminds Abby in their final scene together. “Gary and I, we fell in love,” shrugs Abby, unrepentant to the last. “Nobody could help that, nobody predicted that, nobody could have prevented that and if Val was hurt in the process, I’m sorry. Val’s a nice person — a little dull, but she’s nice.” Too dull to appear in this season finale two-parter it would seen.

Abby’s goodbye to Karen is perfectly pitched — very funny and very poignant without tipping over into sentimentality. She also has a memorable last scene with Paige whom she rates a six on the Abby Scale. This is an improvement on Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate almost exactly two years earlier when she made it clear to Paige that they were nothing alike ("Everything I have, I’ve earned. Everything you have, you’ve been given.") Lest we think she’s softening towards her young adversary, however, Abby makes a point of telling the murderous Ted Melcher that Paige has incriminating evidence against him. She then happily rides off into the Japanese sunset, leaving Paige with a massive target on her back.

Both The Dove Hunt and Down Came the Rain involve characters deciding on a whim to take off on a two-day vacation. On DALLAS, it’s Miss Ellie who encourages Jock and their sons to go hunting in Landowne so she can consult a doctor without his knowledge. On KNOTS, Mack suggests a road trip to Karen as a way of distracting her from the whole Lotus Point/Murakame/Abby saga. Just as JR resents Jock inviting Ray along (“You know how he feels about Ray — like he’s one of the family,” Bobby tells him. “Yeah. Never could figure that one out,” JR mutters), Mack is dismayed to discover Paula has hitched a ride with him and Karen.

Karen’s impromptu Rodgers and Hammerstein road trip singalong with Mack and Paula is everything her and Val’s rendition of 'I’m Henry VIII (I Am)' during Back to the Cul-de-sac isn’t: charming, funny and believable. Whatever the “cooped up in a jeep” equivalent of going stir crazy is, Kevin Dobson captures it perfectly, as Mack goes from refusing to join in with the singing to losing his inhibitions so much the other two can’t shut him up. The whole thing’s just so natural and funny and real.

Thanks to Abby, Paige spends the second part of Down Comes the Rain trying to avoid being killed, much like the Ewing men do in Landsdowne nine years earlier, but whereas The Dove Hunt is set in the woods and has a kind of generic action-adventure vibe about it, Down Came the Rain Pt 2 mostly takes place in shadowy, claustrophobic places: elevators, dimly-lit offices, underground garages and, climactically, during a rainstorm at night that mirrors Paige’s inability to see clearly: who should she believe — Ted or Greg? You’d think the answer would be a simple one, but every time she takes a step towards Greg, something happens to make Ted’s accusations against him seem increasingly plausible.

Each time I watch the Abby-less second half of Down Came the Rain, the more I love it. It’s a such a bold, ingenious psychological game of cat and mouse that I almost end up thinking “Abby who?”

And the winner is … Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out.

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

D.T.R. (DALLAS, 24 Mar 14) v Election (DALLAS, 05 Nov 78)

As cowgirl Heather explains to Christopher, DTR stands for “Define the Relationship” — but it also works as an acronym for the Daughters of the Texas Revolution, the group Governor McConaughey is on his way to address when he is doorstepped by Sue Ellen. From his description of the DTR — “three hundred daughters with three hundred guns in their purses; that’s a group of ladies you don’t keep waiting” — they sound like a larger and more militant version of the DOA (aka Daughters of the Alamo), the charity organisation Sue Ellen was a member of in the early years of ’80s DALLAS.

During Election, Sue Ellen hosts a DOA event where both the Ewing-endorsed senatorial candidate, Martin Cole, and his rival, Cliff Barnes, are guest speakers. She and Cliff take the opportunity to do some illicit flirting. “I didn’t realise you were interested in politics,” he says. “I’m not,” she replies, “but certain politicians interest me a lot.” By 2014, of course, she has not only acquired an interest in politics, but has even run for office, only for her campaign to be scuppered at the last moment when some illegal activity in her past is exposed — which is precisely what happens to Cliff in 1978.

In Election, JR is looking for dirt to use against Cliff; in DTR, Sue Ellen is looking for dirt to use against McConaughey — hence the bottle of JR Ewing bourbon she presents him with that just happens to have a bug in its cork. JR has no need of such high-tech wizardry, not when he has Cliff’s own sister sitting across the dinner table ready to blurt out inconvenient truths.

We learnt about Pam’s secret past in Double Wedding and Jock’s in The Dove Hunt, and in Election, it’s Cliff’s turn. In lieu of an ex-spouse, he has a dead fiancee, Penny. Just as Amanda Ewing’s mental breakdown and Pam’s elopement with Ed Haynes were placed in a real world historical context — the early, dangerous days of wildcatting and the Vietnam draft respectively — Penny’s death was the result of a botched abortion that took place only a few years before such procedures were legalised. Like Vietnam, abortion was also a component of Ginger Ward’s back story in Constant Companion (KNOTS Season 1). Back when these episodes were first broadcast, a woman’s right to choose was a controversial topic. (Still is, come to that.) While KNOTS sidestepped the issue by making it clear that Ginger was forced into an abortion by her mother, DALLAS’s treatment of the subject matter can be read in two different ways. One interpretation is that the show punishes Penny for deciding to end her pregnancy by killing her on the operating table. The other is that her death is depicted as a tragedy that could have been avoided had abortion been legally available just a few years earlier.

“Barnes just broke the cardinal rule of politics: Never get caught in bed with a live man or a dead woman,” JR declares in 1978*. If he were still around in 2014, he might have added, “Never get caught with a hooker in a dog costume or accepting bribes from the railroad commissioner or running your own brothel or profiteering from illegal black ops” — all of which are grist for the blackmail mill in DTR. Bobby and Sue Ellen’s discovery that Governor McConaughey has been in receipt of illegal campaign contributions — the same kind of contributions Cliff indignantly refuses in the opening scene of Election — gives them sufficient leverage to get John Ross’s permit to frack for oil on Southfork rescinded.

Penny’s abortion in 1968 and the explosion that killed Cliff's unborn grandchildren in 2013 are in no way comparable, save for that fact that the abortion is the reason Cliff loses the election in Election while in New DALLAS, he thinks that the explosion is the reason Pamela helped the Ewings frame him for JR’s murder — until he speaks to her in DTR and realises that she genuinely believes he killed JR. He then instructs Elena and Nicolas to find a way to drive a wedge between Pamela and the Ewings in order to get her back on his side. This sets in motion a thrilling chain of dramatic events. (To be fair, pretty much everything that happens in New DALLAS sets in motion a thrilling chain of dramatic events.)

Cliff starts off Election assured and confident and ends it feeling bitter and betrayed by his own family. The same thing happens to John Ross in DTR. He returns from his honeymoon with Pamela ready to claim what’s his: namely, the oil under Southfork. He has no idea what Bobby and Sue Ellen are up to and, throughout the episode, he regards his uncle smugly from a distance. Early on, he spies Bobby on horseback watching him as he inspects the Southfork drill site, and gives him a self-satisfied wave. Later, he’s flirting with his new secretary at Ewing Global when he sees Bobby across the reception area and smiles at him cockily. Later on, however, the smirk is wiped from his face when he sees Bobby announced on TV as the new Texas Railroad Commissioner. Realising he’s been betrayed and outmanoeuvred by those closest to him, John Ross explodes. In Election, Cliff likewise receives a nasty shock from the media when a TV news crew shove a microphone in his face as they inform him that he “has just been implicated in the abortion death of a young woman who was his fiancee.” It takes him a little longer than John Ross to figure out it was his nearest and dearest who let the cat out of the bag, but then he too goes nuts. Both men end up accusing the women closest to them of betrayal. “You live with vipers, you become a viper!” yells Cliff at his sister. “You wanna betray me? Do it to my face!” John Ross shouts at his mother down the phone.

Sue Ellen has great fun in both episodes: she daringly consorts with Cliff in a hall full of prim matrons in Election and outwits her old adversary McConaughey in DTR. “The family that blackmails together stays together,” she quips to Bobby, sounding more like JR than she ever has before or will again. But by the end of each ep, the consequences of her game-playing have caught up with her. In ’78, she watches unhappily as Cliff suffers a bitter defeat at the hands of her husband. “I was just thinkin’ how nice it would have been if JR didn’t get what he wanted for once,” she tells Pam tipsily. Thirty-six years later, she likewise uses alcohol to cushion the blow, reaching for her hip flask after hearing her son’s threatening phone message: “Now I know I got another enemy I gotta look out for — I ain’t gonna forget this!”

During arguments with Pam in ’78 and John Ross in ’14, Bobby gives each of them a lesson in family history. To his wife, he talks about the Ewings (“My daddy built an empire because he was smarter than the next guy and he worked harder and he was luckier, but anybody with the same qualifications can do the same thing”); to his nephew, he talks about the Southworths (“Southfork is my trust from Aaron Southworth, a man who understood the value of preserving this family’s heritage, of protecting it, that was passed down to me by Mama and, I’ll be honest, sometimes I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse”). It’s interesting to compare the certainty of the younger man (“anybody with the same qualifications can do the same thing”) with the ambivalence of his older self (“sometimes I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse”).

While Bobby’s confrontation with John Ross is the end-of-episode climax of DTR, he is also instrumental in healing the rift between Cliff and Pam in the final scene of Election. The see-sawing nature of Bobby and Cliff’s relationship, which began in Double Wedding, escalates here. At one point, he knocks Cliff’s feet off his desk in anger, but they end the scene smiling at each other and shaking hands.

In Digger’s Daughter, Jock warned JR of the dangers of turning competitors into enemies and enemies into fanatics. The final moments of both of these episodes provide examples of this. “If I know my brother, it’s just beginning,” predicts Pam in Election. Cut to Cliff on the phone agreeing to sell his soul to the big corporations he was so disdainful of in the opening scene. “I’ve just become a realist,” he says drily. At the end of DTR, after Christopher tells John Ross he’s even more selfish than his father ever was, John Ross informs Bobby that his and Sue Ellen’s plan to stop him won’t succeed: “If you wanna build a roadblock between me and drilling Southfork, fine — go ahead. If I’m as bad as my father ever was, I’ll blow right past it.”

(*although that saying wouldn’t officially exist in the real world for another five years: http://www.tellytalk.net/threads/ba...in-bed-with-a-live-man-or-a-dead-woman.10019/)

And the winner is ... by a whisker, Election

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Ellie Saves the Day (DALLAS, 30 Nov 79) v Emergency (KNOTS, 09 Dec 82)

Ellie Saves the Day and Emergency each belong to the season of their respective show (DALLAS’s second, KNOTS’ fourth) where the series finally makes the leap from stand alone to fully serialised episodes. Both of these eps, in very different ways, seem to revel in the freedom that come from not having to wrap up all the story threads with a neat forty-five minute bow.

Ellie Saves the Day is an early DALLAS classic. Just as a typhoon hits Ewing Oil’s offshore drilling platforms in South East Asia, Daddy and Mama learn that JR has mortgaged Southfork and it looks like the Ewings will lose everything. Despite the ranch being represented only by the cardboard patio and some obviously inserted stock footage, the episode has a really epic Texan atmosphere, mostly down to the unusually haunting dialogue. (One of the credited writers is a David Michael Jacobs. If that isn’t who it sounds like, it might as well be.) Evocative line follows evocative line: “There’s just no way you could build another Southfork, not in six lifetimes.” “Ewing Oil’s going to be destroyed — not by your brother but by mine.” “He gave his eldest son the biggest toy a father can give — Ewing Oil — and within two short years, he broke it.” “This feels like the end of forty years of sweat and hopes and dreams.” My personal favourite is from Jock: “I trained JR, taught him everything he knows, gave him the fever for big business — but I never taught him when to stop.”

Whereas Ellie Saves the Day feels mostly insular and introspective, with each of the Ewings reflecting on what it would mean to lose both the home and company that define them, Emergency, as its title suggests, has a palpable sense of urgency. My favourite Ewingverse director, Larry Elikann, uses his trademark BIG close-ups and knack for making familiar locations look unfamiliar (I don’t think there’s ever been a scene set on the Wards’ front lawn before this ep) to makes it feel like everything that’s happening is happening NOW.

Ginger’s wistful Season 3 daydreams of becoming a singer are abruptly transformed into a soaptastic tale of thwarted ambition. Her wordless reaction to hearing Ciji “steal” her song is priceless, as is Kenny’s reaction to her reaction. And the subsequent scene where she barges angrily into Ciji’s dressing room is deliciously out of character. If Ginger’s vow of “I’ll get you for this!” is the first harbinger of the whodunnit to come at the end of the season, then Ciji's demise is also foreshadowed visually. A curious Abby makes her way through a crowd of people at the polo field to see what they’re all looking at — only to find her own niece Diana unconscious on the ground; it's the exact same way Gary will discover Ciji’s body on the beach.

Just as KNOTS is on the cusp of bursting into a full-blown supersoap, it is brought sharply down to earth by the semi-realism of Diana’s kidney failure story. There's nothing glossy or romantic about chronic dialysis, and it’s for sure you're never gonna hear about traces of blood in the urine of a Texas Ewing. But as we’re no longer in plot-of-the-week territory where Diana’s plight can be resolved by the end credits, where can this plot be going?

Her final ominous line, “I may never forgive you for this, JR” notwithstanding, Miss Ellie remains impressively stoical throughout … Saves the Day. By contrast, her matriarchal equivalent on KNOTS, Karen, falls fascinatingly apart when faced with the gravity of her daughter’s condition. Michele Lee is probably at her most compelling as an actress when she’s too preoccupied to think about being likeable.

What can save the Ewing empire? What can save Diana? These are problems too big to be solved within a stand alone episode. In each case, however, a possible solution arrives at the eleventh hour and from the least likely person. How ironic that overhearing Sue Ellen tell Little Josh that he’ll “never know the beauty of this ranch” is what spurs Miss Ellie to go against her daddy’s wishes and allow JR to drill for oil on Southfork. Fast forward thirty-three years to Changing of the Guard and it’s Little Josh himself who declares that he is “long past caring about Miss Ellie’s precious little wishes” as he campaigns to drill on the ranch. Meanwhile on Emergency, it slowly emerges that two story strands — Karen’s antagonism towards Abby (blaming her for Diana’s collapse, then coldly snubbing her at the hospital in front of Val) and Abby’s ruthlessness as she prepares to screw Kenny out of Ciji’s record contract — are like trains set on a collision course as Karen realises Abby is the only one who can save her daughter!

And the winner is ... Emergency Saves the Day

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

The Emperor's Clothes (KNOTS, 21 Feb 85) v En Passant (DALLAS, 06 Dec 85)

It’s a “Written by Joel J Feigenbaum” double bill!

Unusually, KNOTS is all about the men: While Val hovers quietly in the background nursing a scratched finger and post-Verna amnesia, Ben interviews the residents of Wesphall about the chemical poisoning Galveston Industries accidentally-on-purpose inflicted on them. While Abby and Karen are surprised to find themselves in agreement over what kind of views the Lotus Point cabins should have, Mack wrings a murder confession out of a Galveston hitman and Gary threatens to halt construction on Empire Valley unless Paul Galveston himself returns from wherever he’s disappeared to. Where he’s actually disappeared to is a private hospital room where he’s hooked up to one of those bleepy machines. His only visitor is a facially obscured mystery woman who marries him on his deathbed. Elsewhere, Laura contemplates marriage to a man who gets involved with shadowy organisations that threaten her children on an annual basis.

Meanwhile, DALLAS, is mostly about the women. Jack goes to Pam for business advice, Angelica Nero accuses her male underling of behaving hysterically and the show takes Sue Ellen’s resolution to put her newly sober life to good use seriously. Over at the Krebbs house, instead of Ray being the depressed one slobbing round the house during a time of crisis, it’s Donna, following her miscarriage. Although the Dream Season has yet to lose its lustre at this point, a slight feeling of preciousness is starting creeping in. “You never loved him … not the way I did,” Ray told JR back in Adoption when he was grieving over Jock. Whereas that felt very touching, Donna similar's insistence that Ray’s pain over the loss of their baby cannot possibly equal hers feels somehow grating and self-righteous. Likewise, Sue Ellen’s response to her mother’s concerns about her social standing as a newly separated woman borders on the pious: “Would you believe, Mother, that I haven’t given any of that a moment’s thought?” It kind of makes you miss the Sue Ellen who thought of nothing but her social standing.

And the winner is ... The Emperor's Clothes

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Encounters (KNOTS, 14 Oct 82) v End of the Road (1/2) (DALLAS, 16/23 Jan 81)

It’s a “Debut of the Strangely Named Songstress” double bill!

Just as Gary is immediately captivated by Ciji when he catches her rehearsing in Encounters, so JR is by Afton when Lucy brings her future in-laws to dinner at Southfork in End of the Road. While Sue Ellen registers her husband’s interest and glares accordingly, it’s Ginger rather than Abby who initially looks most disturbed about her man’s fascination with Ciji. Abby’s jealous too, but about Gary's preoccupation with Val rather than Ciji. Back on DALLAS, Pam wishes she could make Bobby jealous. “Would you mind if I danced with Alex?” she asks him at Lucy’s wedding. When he nods indifferently, she ups the ante: “Would you mind if I went to bed with Alex?” If looks could kill, Bobby wouldn’t be coming back in the shower any time soon.

The 80/81 season of DALLAS is the last to make its alphabetical debut and it just might be the most fascinatingly weird year of the entire series. Partly, this is due to the stock library music the show is obliged to use for the first half of the season which gives even the most innocuous scenes a slow, ominous “shark approaching” kind of vibe. There’s also a strange sense that, following the worldwide Who Shot JR phenomenon, the Ewings’ real world fame has somehow bled into the show’s fictional world. “Ever since Mitch wrote us about the wedding, I’ve been reading up on your family,” Afton tells Lucy. “When you marry a Ewing, you’re very easy to follow in the newspapers,” Clint Ogden tells Sue Ellen. Sue Ellen’s OWN line to JR — “That laugh of yours is positively evil, but I love it” — chimes directly with his real life persona as “TV’s man you love to hate.”

As soon as JR and Afton clap eyes on each other, it’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll end up in bed together. Sue Ellen’s aware of it too. It’s almost as if all three are DALLAS viewers as well as DALLAS characters, and so know exactly where this storyline is going. This could easily be smug and annoying, but instead the predictability adds to the fun. This being the episode where we learn that JR’s been sleeping with his secretary Louella all along, his throwaway line to his father, “Do you suppose Afton can type?” is really funny. “So, the real JR Ewing has finally come home,” Sue Ellen says without a flicker of surprise when she finds his and Afton’s crumpled bedsheets during Lucy and Mitch’s wedding reception. (There’s a direct link between this scene and the one 33 years later at another Southfork wedding, this time between Sue Ellen’s son and Afton’s daughter, when Sue Ellen says to the mother of the bride, “The worst thing JR ever did was you.”)

“Miss Texas to Mrs Southfork — devoted wife and mother, loved by all who know her,” says Clint describing the Sue Ellen he’s read about in the newspapers. Over on KNOTS, Val’s publicist Bess Riker describes the Texas Ewings somewhat differently, as “one of the most notorious families in the country.” Val’s frustration at the idea that the only way to interest the public in her Texas-based novel, Capricorn Crude, is to emphasise its links to her larger-than-life in-laws works as a perfect metaphor for KNOTS’ struggle to cut its ties with DALLAS and be allowed to forge its own identity. Val and Gary’s crossover appearance in End of the Road a year earlier can also be read as KNOTS making a bid for independence, as they use Ray turning out to be Jock’s son as a reason why they need never return to Southfork again. And sure enough, Val won’t be seen in Dallas in DALLAS for another thirty-four years. Mind you, a year later in Encounters, it sounds like she’s had enough of life in Seaview Circle as well. “I don’t wanna be here. I don’t wanna live in this house or coo at their babies or make small talk at the mailbox anymore!” she yells.

At almost the exact same moment that Gary stumbles upon Ciji, Richard stumbles upon his future restaurant (and a whole new vocation). It’s exciting — almost as if KNOTS were being reinvented in front of our eyes.

And the winner is ... Encounters

BONUS BEATS:

 

[Willie Oleson]

It’s a “Debut of the Strangely Named Songstress” double bill!

Whatever happened to the minor trend of the week? Oh, wait, that's another thread.

As soon as JR and Afton clap eyes on each other, it’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll end up in bed together. Sue Ellen’s aware of it too. It’s almost as if all three are DALLAS viewers as well as DALLAS characters, and so know exactly where this storyline is going. This could easily be smug and annoying, but instead the predictability adds to the fun

Alternatively, you could say that the adultery is happening right there and then, just not in the physical sense yet. A dirty public secret.
It's the kind of thing that Sue Ellen knows and fears, but maybe hopes that for whatever miraculous reason it isn't going to happen after all. And then when it does, and it always does, it feels like that extra punch on the nose.
And of course it could have happened without this little introduction, but would that make it less predictable? I kinda like it that their fates are being sealed and they're all aware of it.

 

[James from London]

The Enemy of My Enemy (DALLAS, 11 Jul 12) v Enigma (DALLAS, 17 Oct 86)

In both episodes, the mistress of Southfork — Ann Ewing in 2012, Ellie Farlow in 1986 — is deeply disturbed when a long lost keepsake (or two) associated with a previous spouse resurfaces. A locket sent from ex-husband Harris Ryland reduces Ann to a sobbing mess. The discovery of Jock’s buckle and knife in the possession of Southfork’s new foreman Wes Parmalee sends Miss Ellie into a tailspin. Tellingly, both women choose not to confide this crisis to their current husband, Bobby and Clayton respectively. While we know what’s bothering Ellie (namely, Wes’s claim that Jock’s belongings “are mine — and always have been”), we’re as much in the dark as Bobby as to what’s troubling Ann. Nonetheless, he bursts into Ryland’s office and takes a swing at him anyhow. (At this stage in New DALLAS, Harris and Sue Ellen are the only two characters who even have an office. John Ross seems to be operating out of the Southfork bedroom he time shares with his daddy.)

It’s interesting to chart Bobby and Sue Ellen’s fluctuating morality over the years. In End of the Road (1981), Bobby was so appalled by Jeremy Wendell’s plan to put small independent oil companies out of business that he resigned from Ewing Oil rather than honour a deal with West Star. In Enigma (1986), he cheerfully concludes that if you can’t beat Wendell, you might as well join him, suggesting to JR that they take advantage of the current oil crisis by buying up as many struggling independents as they can. JR readily agrees: “Like Daddy used to say, ‘When things get tough, buy, don’t sell!’” By the time of The Enemy of My Enemy (2012), the Ewing brothers are on opposite sides once again as Bobby and Christopher battle to stop JR and John Ross drilling for oil on Southfork. But when Christopher stoops to blackmailing John Ross over a sex tape of him and Marta Del Sol, Bobby is disappointed. “A lifetime of dealing with JR has put me on both sides of blackmail. It never pays off in the end. It’s not just that it’s wrong, it’s bad business,” he counsels. (“John Ross and Christopher get along so well,” Pam observes contendedly in Enigma. Not anymore they don’t.)

Sue Ellen has also learned, and relearned, from her mistakes over the years. Her plan to discredit JR using a private detective backfired horribly in Divorce Ewing Style (1980) when he made her look like a delusional drunk instead. Seven years later in Enigma, she has learnt to deploy the services of a PI much more subtly. Realising that Sue Ellen’s having them followed, JR tells Mandy they need to keep their relationship on the down low. Frustrated at being a kept (out of sight) woman, Mandy defies his wishes and auditions to become the Valentine Girl. Little do JR and Mandy realise this is what Sue Ellen had planned all along.

Twenty-six years later in New DALLAS, however, Sue Ellen is as reluctant as Bobby to return to her scheming ways. She’s running for governor and is determined not to compromise herself. (“If I start down that road …”) This cuts little ice with John Ross when he asks her to pull some political strings to get Ryland to transport the oil he’s drilling on Southfork. “You’ve been compromising everything with me since I was born!” he snaps at her. Her maternal strings tugged, Sue Ellen does indeed start down that road.

And the winner is ... Enigma

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

The Ewing Blues (DALLAS, 07 Jan 83) v The Ewing Connection (DALLAS, 19 Apr 85)

In The Ewing Connection, Donna, who is separated from Ray, tells Miss Ellie that their main problem is that he can’t deal with her being successful. “The reason that I dropped out of politics was because it made Ray uncomfortable,” she recalls. Rewind two years to The Ewing Blues, however, and Ray is actually talking her into staying in politics when, discouraged at her inability to persuade her fellow committee members to rescind JR’s oil variance, she considers quitting the TEC. “You stay there and you fight!” he urges her.

Both episodes — indeed, both seasons — revolve around an ongoing battle for Ewing Oil. In Ewing Blues, Bobby and JR are fighting each other for control of it; in Ewing Connection, they’re fighting to prevent Cliff and Jamie from claiming two-thirds of it. In each ep, there’s a complicating factor. In ’85, it’s the arrival of Jamie’s long lost brother Jack, who claims to have hard evidence that “the Dallas Ewings own Ewing Oil” — but wants 10% of the company before he’ll tell them what it is. Even more controversial are Ellie's plans in '83 to have Jock declared incompetent so she can break his will and sell 100% of the company. Pam’s support of her mother-in-law brings her into the orbit of one Mark Graison, who foresees stormy times ahead for her and Bobby. “I have a very strong marriage and we’ve survived lots of storms,” she tells him firmly.

Two years later, over an intimate dinner with Bobby, from whom she is now divorced, Pam pinpoints the moment those storms turned fatal: “After JR was shot, nothing was ever the same, was it?” “You and I were on our way to California,” Bobby remembers. “Then the family found us and asked us to come back and I took over control of the company until JR got better.” “And after that, you never got the company out of your blood,” she says, before adding wistfully, “We could have gotten a house of our own … I think things would have worked out differently for us if we’d gotten away from the Ewing family.” Strange then that in Enigma (1986), as she and Bobby are about to remarry, Pam seems perfectly happy to move back to Southfork. “I have some good memories here — well, not all good memories!” she laughs.

While Lucy is still at the insult stage of her pre-courtship with Mickey in ’83 (“Underneath all that cockiness, you’re basically pretty nasty”), she's at the polite conversation stage of her pre-reconciliation with Mitch in ’85. “How’s Afton and your mama doing?” she enquires. “Fine,” Mitch replies, neglecting to mention that Afton must be about to give birth to Julie Gonzalo around about now.

Two years earlier, Afton tries to act cool and hard to get when Cliff invites her round to his new condo — but still ends up eating Chinese takeout while listening to him complain as he watches JR and Sue Ellen being interviewed by Roy Ralston on TV. Cliff makes much more of an effort to celebrate Jamie moving in with him in '85 — serving up cherries flambé, no less — but this time, she's the one preoccupied by a Ewing: Jack.

“Some call him a saint, some call him a sinner,” says Roy Ralston in his talk show introduction to JR, a description reminiscent of the one bestowed on BD Calhoun (“a man one state department spokesman terms a rebel who should be hunted down; a man others have hailed as the spirit of America reborn”) in the PBS documentary JR watches in Enigma.

In Ewing Blues, John Ross scampers round his daddy’s office and seems particularly taken with a model oil rig JR has on his desk. Is this the same model oil rig John Ross hurls across his apartment in anger during The Enemy of My Enemy twenty-nine years later and then later tries to glue back together? I’d sure like to think so.

And the winner is ... The Ewing Blues

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Ewing-Gate (DALLAS, 01 May 81) v Ewing Inferno (DALLAS, 06 May 8)

It’s a season finale double bill!

Miss Ellie only appears in one scene of each finale. In Ewing-Gate, she calls JR from Paris where the writers have despatched her and Jock because of Jim Davis’s illness. In Ewing Inferno, her role is again reduced because of ill health, this time BBG’s own, as Clayton insists on taking her away from all the sturm and drang at Southfork. With the exception of Ray and Donna’s scenes, everything in Ewing-Gate revolves around the senate investigation into Ewing Oil’s involvement in the counterrevolution in South East Asia. Ellie tells JR she will try to keep the news of the investigation away from Jock; two years later, Clayton will be in the same position, trying to keep the news of the Southfork fire away from her.

With Mama and Daddy away, JR’s running the show at Southfork and there’s an undercurrent of instability running through Ewing-Gate. It has that insanely exciting end-of-season vibe where it feels like the entire series is somehow teetering on the edge of a cliff. Two years later in Ewing Inferno, it feels as if the show has already fallen off that cliff. In other words, the worst has already happened: “My wife is incapable of anything … Mama’s so broken up I can’t even face her … If you and Pam ever get back together, it’ll be a miracle.” Even Aunt Lil believes her paralysed and comatose son Mickey “would be better off dead.” Yet the season somehow manages to end on yet another cliffhanging catastrophe. This arises out of the seemingly irrelevant question of “Who was driving the car that hit Sue Ellen and Mickey?”, which initially appears to exist just to give Ray something to obsess over, but which ultimately results in a fight to the death between him and JR, which in turn leads to Southfork going up in flames.

Leslie Stewart is JR’s female opponent in Season 3; in Season 5, it’s Holly Harwood. By Ewing Inferno, JR and Holly have already inflicted all the damage they can on one another. In Ewing-Gate, Leslie has one last betrayal left up her sleeve as she and Jeremy Wendell put their snowy white heads together and join forces against JR. In the Post-Pam’s Dream era, Jeremy is shown to have a deep-seated grudge against the Ewings (“That family has been a thorn in my side for longer than I care to remember”), but when he first appears in Season 3, he and JR are portrayed as friendly business associates. When Leslie asks him in this episode, “Why are you so determined to get JR?”, his answer is interestingly pragmatic: “If JR is prosecuted and found guilty, Ewing Oil will be stripped of its state charter. The biggest independent oil company in the south west will simply cease to exist. It’s less competition for West Star — and the satisfaction of JR’s knowing I helped put him away.” It will take another six seasons, but Jeremy will eventually achieve his aim, only then he will be driven by revenge rather than pragmatism — even though the origin of that revenge will remain unclear.

While JR is in Houston bribing politicians prior to the hearing, Sue Ellen arranges to snatch John Ross from Southfork. She’s moments from escaping her miserable life as a Ewing and making a new one with her son and the man she loves when JR returns home unexpectedly, grabs the kid and has his security guards throw her off the ranch. “I’m gonna to have him!” she screams as she is dragged away from her son. “I’ll kill you first!” he snarls in reply. A year earlier, it was JR’s life that was being threatened by all and sundry, now he gets to return the favour.

Both finales include a great Pam/JR clash where she condemns him for his treatment of Sue Ellen (“Give her her child, she loves him!" she yells in '81. "She should have him just for putting up with you all these years!”; “Sue Ellen wasn’t enough for you so you fell in bed with the first available woman!” she snaps in ’83), only for JR to retaliate by going for the jugular (“No wonder you care so much for Sue Ellen. She’s just like your mother – another drunken slut who ran away!”; “Climb down off your soapbox, honey — what were you doing with Mark Graison in the South of France, holding hands? … Or did you try a few Frenchmen just cos you were there?”) “Stay out of my way, Pamela, or I’ll destroy you!” he warns her in Ewing-Gate. “Damn, I hate that woman,” he mutters after she slaps him in Ewing Inferno.

He also threatens Kristin when she shows up at Ewing Oil, as sexy and greedy as ever but maybe a little more unhinged, and demanding even more money. “I picked up some very expensive habits in California,” she explains. On her way out of JR's office, she slyly asks him to “give my love to Sue Ellen.” Ten years later in The Decline and Fall of the Ewing Empire, Dusty will deliver almost the same line on his way out of JR’s office: “Give my regards to Sue Ellen. Oh that’s right, I forgot — she dumped you.”

The senate hearing in Ewing-Gate sums DALLAS up in a nutshell: it’s simultaneously really dumb and really clever. Most of the witness testimony is pretty flimsy while JR’s defence is smart and witty. Just as he does when defending his cut-rate gas stations on TV in The Ewing Blues, he poses as a progressive on the witness stand, claiming the money he paid to the deposed Asian government was for philanthropic reasons, “to dispel the image of the ugly American”. Cliff, meanwhile, reverts to the same role he had in Digger’s Daughter, that of committee counsel interrogating Ewing Oil associates during a televised court proceeding. Back then, he was merely trying to prove that the Ewings paid for hookers, now the stakes are a lot higher.

Both sides of Cliff and Bobby’s volatile relationship are on display in this ep. After the senate committee rules in JR’s favour, Cliff is angry enough to threaten to file charges against Bobby of showing his brother the evidence the state had on him, yet is still willing to meet him out at Southfork to discuss the matter first — which is how he ends up in the pool holding a mystery dead woman.

So who’s dead in the pool? The prime suspects are, of course, Sue Ellen, Pam and Kristin. But four decades after the fact, another (remote) possibility occurs to me: JR’s secretary Louella, whom he abruptly fires after the hearing for failing to get the prosecution’s chief witness out of the country. She could easily have found her way to the ranch looking for a little payback and ended up taking a fatal dip.

And the winner is ... Ewing Inferno

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

A Ewing is a Ewing (DALLAS, 28 Jan 83) v Ewing Rise (DALLAS, 25 Sep 87)

“I’m a good listener,” Donna Reed’s Ellie told a brooding Donna Krebbs on the cardboard patio in The Ewing Connection. “I’m a good listener,” Barbara Bel Geddes’s Ellie tells a troubled Clayton when they meet by chance in Galveston restaurant in A Ewing is a Ewing. Whereas Donna poured her heart out about her marital woes, Clayton is too discreet to discuss his disappointment at Sue Ellen using their friendship to try to persuade him to refine JR's oil.

For most of A Ewing is a Ewing, JR is on the back foot. His attempts to get the family to celebrate Miss Ellie's failure to get Jock’s will overturned are coolly rebuffed. Then he grovels amusingly to an army colonel who tears a strip off him for advising Harwood Oil to break its contracts with the military. This makes the scene where he lures Holly to his office after hours and rapes her all the more shocking. This is no “their anger turned to passion” or “he kissed her until she liked it” scenario; everything about the assault is premeditated. Fascinatingly, after the rape scene, JR goes back to physically intimidated — first by Clayton when he bursts into his office and threatens to break him in two if he tries to use Sue Ellen against him again, then by Holly when she pulls a gun on him: “You ever touch me again, you’re a dead man.”

In Ewing Rise, the opening episode of Season 10, Ewing Oil has just been shut down by the government. Weirdly, Cliff is more upset about the loss of the company than JR is, even after he is awarded $58,000,000 for the 5% share he inherited from Jamie. It’s hard to grasp what Cliff's problem is exactly, but he seems to feel as if he let Digger down by not being able to hold on to his share for longer. (This is conveyed by a speech he delivers to his dead father. In lieu of a Jock-style painting to talk to, he addresses his monologue to a random point in mid-air in the middle of a restaurant.) JR, meanwhile, puts on a brave face about losing his daddy's empire: “If you thought I was tough before, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

However, the really big news in this ep is that Pam has been horribly burnt in a freak car accident. And because it was an accident, there are no accusations, no threats, no shouting — in fact, no conflict of any kind between the Ewings — which creates something of dramatic vacuum. Instead, we have Bobby looking glum, Ellie blubbing like a baby as soon as she hears Pam’s been hurt (is this the same matriarch who was so stoical when Jock had a heart attack in Bypass?) and Cliff flapping about ineffectually. Jenna, JR and Sue Ellen all look dutifully concerned, but kind of detached. Character-wise, the most revealing moment is Bobby choosing to let his emotional guard down in front of JR rather than Ray.

The one really juicy scene of the ep is Wilson Cryder assuring April that West Star is not yet done with JR: “We feel that JR will make a mighty effort to climb out of the hole which he has dug for himself and when he does, we're going to be there, shovelling dirt right back on top of him.”

And the winner is ... A Ewing is a Ewing

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

The Ewing Touch (DALLAS, 19 Nov 82) v Ewing vs Ewing (DALLAS, 03 Apr 81)

Cliff hits the roof in The Ewing Touch when he finds out he has lost a lucrative oil deal to Bobby because Pam helped charm the McLeish brothers on Bobby's behalf. It's just how he reacted in Election when she accidentally let slip to JR about his dead fiancee. “What you’re saying is unforgivable!” she yelled back then when he accused her of deliberately betraying him to the Ewings. “What you’re accusing me of is totally untrue!” she yells now when he does the same thing. At this point, he and Rebecca are tight and he warns Pam that if she continues to side with her in-laws, she’ll end up out in the cold: “I won’t be the one to lose the family — you will.” Two years earlier in Ewing Vs Ewing, he's already made it clear that he wants nothing to do with their mother so when Rebecca suggests to Pam that “maybe the three of us can be a family,” she's talking about Katherine, not Cliff.

“Do you remember the good old days when you ran the DOA?” Donna asks Ellie in The Ewing Touch. Ellie does. “It was fun!’ she says. It’s also what led to her and Jock to the brink of divorce. When cautioned in Ewing Vs Ewing that a property settlement could jeopardise the future of Ewing Oil, she is unimpressed. “To hell with the empire!” she snaps. Of course, it’s not the last time she’ll initiate court proceedings that could destroy the company. In fact, her sole reason for attempting to break Jock’s will in '83 is to sell it. In both cases, her closest confidante is a daughter-in-law — but whereas Pam is supportive of her challenging the will, Donna is as dismayed at the prospect of her and Jock divorcing as everyone else. Her remaining daughter-in-law, Sue Ellen, is intrigued by the possible loss of the Ewing empire and wonders “what my JR is gonna do without his precious little Ewing Oil toy?” This is the same choice of word she used in Ellie Saves the Day when it was JR himself who had jeopardised the company: “[Jock] gave his eldest son the biggest toy a father can give — Ewing Oil — and within two short years, he broke it.”

In these two episodes, Miss Ellie goes to court a total of three times. In Ewing Vs Ewing, she’s trying to stop Jock developing Takapa; in The Ewing Touch, she bears witness to both Christopher’s adoption and Lucy’s divorce.

Ellie reconciles with Jock at the end of Ewing Vs Ewing after realising that the real issue wasn't Takapa (as if a Ewing’s gonna care that much about the environment), but Gary. “I couldn’t let go of the hope that he’d come back to Southfork,” she admits, adding that it was easier to blame Jock rather than herself when he didn’t. There’s almost an equivalent emotional breakthrough involving Jock, Ellie and Gary in The Ewing Touch, where kindly auto-maintenance man Bud stops by Southfork and gently enquires if Ellie would like him to take Jock’s Lincoln in for servicing. There follows a poignant shot where she watches the car being taken away. There’s no reference to this sequence anywhere else in the ep and my theory is that it was originally intended for inclusion for the earlier episode Aftermath, aka The One After the Reading of Jock’s Will. New Beginnings, the KNOTS crossover ep which runs concurrently with Aftermath, includes this speech from Gary: "I took a taxi out to the ranch. I had the driver drop me off at the fence ... I stood there by it, looking at the property for a long time, remembering how I used to love the ranch but hated being there, hated the way they treated me. All the resentment started boiling up in me again, and as I stood there, somebody drove Daddy's car out, a ranch hand. Daddy always had the biggest model of the biggest car, American of course, and I stood there watching it go down the road away from the ranch, and it was like all of a sudden I realised he was dead and I felt like crying, which surprised me because all I'd been feeling was anger, and as I watched the car go, I felt kinda sad and I realised he was dead, and so were all his thoughts and feelings and opinions, about me included: dead. And it seemed pretty stupid to keep raging against a dead man." So, just as Ellie does in Ewing Vs Ewing, he ends up making peace with Jock without Jock having to do anything.



In spite of his attempts to ride roughshod over Bobby (“I’m not trying to influence you — I’m telling you what I want you to do!”), Jock cuts a vulnerable figure in Ewing vs Ewing, due in large part to Jim Davis’s illness, which makes Miss Ellie’s hostility towards him all the more pronounced. In a way, the sanctification of Jock had already begun.

When Holly Harwood propositions JR in '82, he turns her down. “I’m trying to stay pure for my wedding,” he tells her. He’s a little more eager with Leslie Stewart in '81. “I know how you feel about married men — can’t you bend the rules a little?” he pleads, but this time she’s the one playing hard to get. As usual, it’s all about the chase, as she later explains to former husband/victim Craig: “You know those mechanical rabbits running around the racetrack and all those dogs chasing, chasing, running their little legs off? … Once they catch you, then they lose interest.”

And the winner is ... The Ewing Touch

BONUS BEATS:

 

[James from London]

Ewings Unite! (DALLAS, 18 Mar 13) v Executive Wife (DALLAS, 09 Jan 81)

It’s a 'When Good Ewings Go Bad' double bill!

“Bobby, he’s changed and not for the better,” huffs Jock in 1981. “Welcome to the dark side,” John Ross tells Christopher in 2013. In Executive Wife, Bobby’s determination to prove that you can run an oil company ethically and still turn a profit is severely tested as he’s forced to choose between honouring a gentleman’s agreement with a group of gas station owners and making a super lucrative deal with Jeremy Wendell (making his first appearance on DALLAS). In the end, he chooses the latter.

The first season of New DALLAS saw Bobby firmly back on the moral high ground. In Enemy of My Enemy, he cautioned Christopher against playing dirty: “A lifetime of dealing with JR has put me on both sides of blackmail. It never pays off in the end. It’s not just that it’s wrong, it’s bad business.” In Ewings Unite!, however, he has had a change of heart. “Since JR is dead, we have to find our own inner junkyard dog,” he tells John Ross and Christopher, thereby giving his blessing to a devious scheme that involves John Ross sleeping with someone he shouldn’t, Bum taking photographs of them and Christopher using those photos to blackmail a government official.

Alex Ward also makes his DALLAS debut appearance in Executive Wife. Just like Mark Graison in The Ewing Blues two years later, he is instantly smitten by Pam and just as open in declaring his attraction despite the wedding ring on her finger. In both situations, Pam’s marriage is on shaky ground thanks to Bobby’s preoccupation with Ewing Oil, but whereas she initially kept Mark at arm’s length, she accepts no less than four lunch or dinner invitations from Alex in the space of just this one episode. There’s an angry recklessness about Pam at this point in the series that we don’t really see at any other time. It almost feels like she’s being driven a bit mad by the weirdly ominous score that permeates the first half of this season. Nor she is the only one behaving strangely. While Pam couldn’t care less about Bobby’s wheeling and dealing at the office, Connie, formerly just his meek little secretary, gets increasingly drawn into it and starts to look more and more aroused. She even gets close-ups where she regards Bobby with unbridled lust. This is in contrast to Elena in 2013, who regards Christopher’s new business methods with disappointment. “You’re the most decent man I know and now you’re blackmailing people,” she tells him sadly.

In both of these episodes, Sue Ellen belittles one of her brothers-in-law. In Executive Wife, she’s back under JR’s spell and suggests to Bobby that he doesn’t have what it takes to run Ewing Oil. “It's a game, and you have to love it to play it well," she declares, savouring every word. "JR's a natural born businessman, the best." Bobby asks how he measures up. "You will always be JR's little brother,” she sneers, the sexual innuendo unmistakable. The jab connects: Bobby has never looked smaller or more emasculated. “Poor, sweet Gary,” she says mockingly thirty-two years later, “I was playing you to get Bobby to turn that oil back on … but Bobby’s already done that so I don’t need you anymore.” Here, she’s deliberately trying to drive Gary away so he won’t interfere with her grief-induced drinking. She’s sort of under JR’s spell in this episode too, even though he’s gone. There’s a wonderful moment where she shuts herself away in her office, pours herself a large one and toasts his picture conspiratorially.

While Jeremy and Alex make their DALLAS introductions in Executive Wife, Ewings Unite! marks the final Ewingverse appearances of Gary and Val. Val’s last ever scene is her deliciously soapy “Once a bitch always a bitch” confrontation with Sue Ellen where she gives her the full Jill Bennett treatment for falsely encouraging her to believe that Gary wanted a reconciliation: “You are just as sadistic as JR ever was … what a manipulative monster you are!” Gary’s last scene is also with Sue Ellen. He is still convinced she needs his help because of her drinking (“and, unlike my wife, I help people in trouble”) and she is still trying to get rid of him, but this time she tries a gentler approach. “Valene left you because she knew it was the only way to get you sober again and she was right,” she says. “She left you because she loves you. I know I need help, but I need to do it myself.” Her next words clearly refer to JR’s passing, but they also serve to assuage Gary’s feelings of resentment towards Val: “One day she may be gone and you don’t want to regret the loss of every moment you could have spent with her.” It's a very touching line and Gary is moved. “If you ever need anything, I’m just a phone call away,” he tells her. “I know that,” Sue Ellen assures him gratefully. And so, with Gary and Val back together, the KNOTS saga has come full circle. Sue Ellen Ewing providing KNOTS LANDING with its final moment of closure — who’d have thunk it? (And all so she can carry on drinking.) Conversely in Executive Wife, after Sue Ellen and JR run into Cliff and Donna, she wickedly suggests that he break them up.

Each ep contain a moment of happiness that becomes kind of poignant when watched in hindsight. In Ewings Unite!, Drew Ramos asks Bobby to sell him back his father’s land so he can fulfil his birthright by drilling for oil on it. After Elena assures Bobby that she will also be involved in the project, he agrees. Drew is so excited, he spontaneously grabs Bobby and hugs him for just a little too long. Bobby awkwardly tries to disentangle himself, offsetting his embarrassment by kissing Elena on the cheek. It’s a lovely, sweet scene that’s all the more precious when one remembers how incredibly wrong things are gonna go between these three characters. The equivalent moment in Executive Wife is Lucy’s rose-coloured “all you need is love” optimism about her future with Mitch, which is likewise doomed to failure.

Things start to go incredibly wrong for Drew almost immediately. Cliff Barnes has already assigned Harris Ryland the task of finding someone to plant a bomb on Christopher's rig to coincide with the demonstration he has planned. When Harris discovers Drew is dating his daughter Emma, aka the C21st Lucy, he tells his henchman Roy Vickers to give the job to Drew: “I want him fully compromised.” Drew refuses to comply, until Roy threatens his sister (“Her death would be so tragic”). New DALLAS is nothing if not big on repercussions. Even John Ross inviting Pamela to the demonstration on the Ewing rig as an act of friendship becomes a “Noooo, don’t do it!” moment in retrospect. The final line of the episode — Cliff replying “Just do it” when Vickers asks if he really wants to go through with blowing up the rig even though his own pregnant daughter is onboard — seals the fates of three men (as well as Pamela’s babies): Roy and Drew will be killed while Cliff ends up rotting away in a Mexican prison cell. Really, it’s perfect soap: everything links up, everything pays off..

Back in '81, JR sneakily sets Jock and Bobby on a collision course then sits back and enjoys the resultant “real power is something you take!” showdown at the Cattleman’s Club with quiet relish. It evidently makes quite an impression on him as he’ll quote Jock’s line to John Ross thirty-one years later. The same cannot be said for the two other characters present, Punk Anderson and Pat Powers, who avert their eyes in discomfort. Clearly, by challenging his daddy in a public place, Bobby has crossed some unspoken line. This is not "Ewings Unite" behaviour.

And the winner is ... Ewings Unite!

BONUS BEATS:

 

[J. R.'s Piece]

The Dove Hunt (DALLAS, 26 Oct 79) v Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out (1&2) (KNOTS, 18 May 89)

The Dove Hunt is The One Where the Ewing Men Go Hunting. As such, one could almost view it as a prequel to Call of the Wild, the Season 11 episode where JR and Bobby take their sons to Haleyville to shoot some deer. In that ep, JR paints a portrait of Gary as the overly sensitive brother squeamish about killing animals and is worried about John Ross turning out like him. In The Dove Hunt, however, it’s apparent that JR himself is the Ewing out of his comfort zone in the great outdoors — he doesn’t bag any birds, he hangs back when the rest of the men get into a barroom brawl and when they come under attack, he’s a positive liability: first, he gets shot while trying to help the already injured Jock and then falls asleep when he’s meant to be keeping watch, allowing the enemy to overpower them. It is then that Jock is confronted by a long-forgotten face from his past, just like Pam was in Double Wedding. And just as Pam was revealed to have had a secret husband before she married Bobby, Jock confesses to JR that he had a secret wife, Amanda, before marrying Miss Ellie.

I can pinpoint the start of my DALLAS obsession to the final scene of this episode — specifically the shot of Kristin eavesdropping on Jock and JR talking about Amanda on the cardboard patio. That’s when it occurred to me that every Ewing on this insane show has something they’re trying to hide from the rest of the family: Jock’s first wife, Miss Ellie’s cancer fears, JR’s mortgaging of Southfork and his affair with his sister-in-law, the riddle of Little Josh’s paternity, and Pam's genetic disorder. The one exception is Lucy, who talks openly and excitedly about meeting up with her mother and the fact that Val and Gary have reestablished contact: “They could get back together. We could be a family!” Bobby cautions her against getting her hopes up: “Sometimes these second tries don’t make it either.”

 Fast forward nine years to Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out and it turns out Bobby was right — Gary and Val’s second try didn’t make it after all. “You stole Val’s husband,” Karen reminds Abby in their final scene together. “Gary and I, we fell in love,” shrugs Abby, unrepentant to the last. “Nobody could help that, nobody predicted that, nobody could have prevented that and if Val was hurt in the process, I’m sorry. Val’s a nice person — a little dull, but she’s nice.” Too dull to appear in this season finale two-parter it would seen.

Abby’s goodbye to Karen is perfectly pitched — very funny and very poignant without tipping over into sentimentality. She also has a memorable last scene with Paige whom she rates a six on the Abby Scale. This is an improvement on Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate almost exactly two years earlier when she made it clear to Paige that they were nothing alike ("Everything I have, I’ve earned. Everything you have, you’ve been given.") Lest we think she’s softening towards her young adversary, however, Abby makes a point of telling the murderous Ted Melcher that Paige has incriminating evidence against him. She then happily rides off into the Japanese sunset, leaving Paige with a massive target on her back.

Both The Dove Hunt and Down Came the Rain involve characters deciding on a whim to take off on a two-day vacation. On DALLAS, it’s Miss Ellie who encourages Jock and their sons to go hunting in Landowne so she can consult a doctor without his knowledge. On KNOTS, Mack suggests a road trip to Karen as a way of distracting her from the whole Lotus Point/Murakame/Abby saga. Just as JR resents Jock inviting Ray along (“You know how he feels about Ray — like he’s one of the family,” Bobby tells him. “Yeah. Never could figure that one out,” JR mutters), Mack is dismayed to discover Paula has hitched a ride with him and Karen.

Karen’s impromptu Rodgers and Hammerstein road trip singalong with Mack and Paula is everything her and Val’s rendition of 'I’m Henry VIII (I Am)' during Back to the Cul-de-sac isn’t: charming, funny and believable. Whatever the “cooped up in a jeep” equivalent of going stir crazy is, Kevin Dobson captures it perfectly, as Mack goes from refusing to join in with the singing to losing his inhibitions so much the other two can’t shut him up. The whole thing’s just so natural and funny and real.

Thanks to Abby, Paige spends the second part of Down Comes the Rain trying to avoid being killed, much like the Ewing men do in Landsdowne nine years earlier, but whereas The Dove Hunt is set in the woods and has a kind of generic action-adventure vibe about it, Down Came the Rain Pt 2 mostly takes place in shadowy, claustrophobic places: elevators, dimly-lit offices, underground garages and, climactically, during a rainstorm at night that mirrors Paige’s inability to see clearly: who should she believe — Ted or Greg? You’d think the answer would be a simple one, but every time she takes a step towards Greg, something happens to make Ted’s accusations against him seem increasingly plausible.

Each time I watch the Abby-less second half of Down Came the Rain, the more I love it. It’s a such a bold, ingenious psychological game of cat and mouse that I almost end up thinking “Abby who?”

And the winner is … Down Came the Rain and Washed the Spider Out.

BONUS BEATS:

That turned up on Donna Mills’ official Instagram.

 

[Jimmy Todd]

That turned up on Donna Mills’ official Instagram.
View attachment 29347

This definitely should be the start of a a line of mugs! A Karen "Pollyanna" one, a Valene " I'm Not Poor Val!" one, a Gary "Were Ruining Liiiives!" mug, and, of course, several Laura mugs, each with one of her classic quips. The world needs this more than ever. Can we make it happen?

 

[Willie Oleson]

“A lifetime of dealing with JR has put me on both sides of blackmail. It never pays off in the end. It’s not just that it’s wrong, it’s bad business.”

Poor delusional Bobby thinks he's outgrown the soap opera life.

thereby giving his blessing to a devious scheme that involves John Ross sleeping with someone he shouldn’t,

How very Lucious & Andre.

Sue Ellen Ewing providing KNOTS LANDING with its final moment of closure

That kind of blows Angela Channing's rose-coloured speech out of the water, doesn't it?

seals the fates of three men (as well as Pamela’s babies): Roy and Drew will be killed while Cliff ends up rotting away in a Mexican prison cell

"There will be consequences" would have been a better promotional tag line than "they're back and it's not a dream".