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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 205326" data-attributes="member: 22">Bedtime Stories (DALLAS, 20 Nov 87) v Bells Are Ringing (DALLAS, 14 Nov 86)Ray’s bombshell about Jenna’s pregnancy at the end of the previous ep means that Bobby and Pam’s long-awaited, never-thought-it-would-happen, happy-ever-after remarriage in Bells Are Ringing is laced with melancholy from the very start. The pregnancy storyline is an unusual one in that there’s nothing Bobby and Pam can do about it — it just hangs over them as a tangible reminder of the time they spent apart. (“It’s one thing you knowing I was with Jenna, it’s another thing knowing there’s a baby on the way.”) The unborn child and the complicated emotions it summons up — jealousy, insecurity, resentment — underline the fact that, however much they might want to be, Bobby and Pam are not the same dewy-eyed, idealistic lovers they were when they wed the first time around. There’s simply been too much water under the bridge. This is neatly illustrated by the black and white flashback to their original wedding (which I’ve always loved). It’s set in ’78 but clearly filmed with two actors who are nine years older than they were then. Not even screen beauties like Duffy and Principal can turn back the clock, just as Bobby and Pam can't be the carefree young parents-to-be they were in Barbecue now that a different woman is carrying his baby.“Bobby, you’re not going to lose me,” Pam insists just before the wedding. However, by the time of Bedtime Stories, just a year and a week later, Bobby has lost her. And so have we. In fact, it’s the very first episode of the series where Pam's name is not mentioned. So Bobby has a one-night stand with an old college friend instead — just two lonely thirty-something divorcees attempting to stave off their mutual loneliness.In Bells Are Ringing, JR hatches the plan with BD Calhoun that will eventually cause him to lose Ewing Oil to West Star. In Bedtime Stories, he begins the affair with Kimberly Cryder (great fun) that he hopes will help him win Ewing Oil back from West Star.Elsewhere in the same ep, Nicholas Pearce’s bouffant looms large. Nick’s an odd mixture. He and April share a scene which mostly consists of them exchanging the same kind of crappy puns that would later become a staple of April’s relationship with Bobby. And he ends a business meeting with Sue Ellen by cheesily proclaiming that “like the man says, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” However, he also has a mano-a-mano confrontation with JR which is really good, and there’s a touching scene where we see him on the phone to his father whom it is clear he has not seen for a long time. “Yes, my hair is still long,” he says, chuckling, and then just a few seconds later, his eyes start to mist up. I have a theory that one-sided phone calls, especially ones with as much subtext as this one, are a real test for an actor — they have to convincingly convey two sides of a conversation — and Jack Scalia does a really good job here.Also in Bedtime Stories, there are two contrasting cultural references between Bobby and Christopher. In the first instance, Christopher surprises his daddy by reciting a line from 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', the same poem by Lewis Carroll that Cliff and Sue Ellen playfully quoted nine years earlier in Act of Love. In the second, they return home after seeing 'Spaceman Strikes Back' at the movies. Bobby is as loftily dismissive of it as Peter Richards was of the sci-fi flick he and Lucy went to see in Barbecue Four. Guess someone in the DALLAS office likes Lewis Carroll more than they do space movies.And the winner is ... Bells Are RingingBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]3v4UwjXI4Q0[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

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