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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 208477" data-attributes="member: 22">Black Tide (DALLAS, 10 Nov 89) v Blackmail (DALLAS, 19 Mar 82)Before starting to watch DALLAS alphabetically, I hadn’t realised quite how often the Ewings hearken back to a golden age when the family all sat down to dinner together each evening at 6 o’clock sharp. Such recollections are invariably rose-tinted with nary a mention of the arguments or fights these gatherings often descended into (and which made them such fun to watch). One of the few late series examples of such a gathering is already in mid-flow at the start of Black Tide — only instead of Southfork, this family dinner takes place in the middle of the Oil Baron’s Club: a private occasion in a public arena, with everyone turning on everyone else and Cliff and Michelle heckling from the sidelines. As opening scenes on DALLAS go, this must rank as one of the best ever, with dramatic fireworks going off right, left and centre.As everyone reels from James’s shock announcement that he’s JR’s bastard son, a humiliated Cally turns on Vanessa, Lucy delivers a zinger of a one-liner to JR reminding him of the years he spent taunting Ray for being a half-breed, and April slaps Cliff after he points out that she too was once in JR’s “stable”. Then Carter McKay storms in, flanked by reporters and TV cameras, and things escalate even further. “My supertanker, completely filled with heavy crude, was rammed dead-on by a Ewing Oil tanker!” he bellows. “Oil is leaking out all over the Gulf!” Bobby refutes this, confidently asserting that the Ewings don’t even own a tanker, but then he sees the expression on JR’s face and the terrible truth dawns on him …“After all these years, you must have knocked up half the women in Dallas!” Cliff jeers at JR at one point in this scene. As to prove his point, Blackmail also opens with JR just having learned that he has fathered an illegitimate child. “I won't say a word about Christopher to anyone as long as I know you'll vote your twenty shares of Ewing Oil my way, anytime I want,” he tells Bobby. Eight seasons later, he is less willing to let his newly acquired son go so easily. He ignores Cally’s suggestion that he “just say goodbye to James and exchange Christmas cards” and insists on moving him into Southfork so they can make up for lost time.In both episodes, JR provides a moment of gasp out loud coldness. When Bobby tries to call his bluff in Blackmail, he tells him that if John Ross cannot be his son and heir, “Christopher will do just fine” — the implication being that his sons are both replaceable and interchangeable. In Black Tide, he orders his fall guy, Al “the Pal” Halliday, to save the Ewing tanker, “even if it means dumping more oil into the Gulf”, thereby demonstrating a contempt for the environment that might be considered Trumpian.In the event, Al the Pal sells out to West Star, providing McKay with information that is seriously damaging to the Ewings’ credibility. Cliff also defects to McKay’s camp during a televised press conference where he announces his plans for an investigation into the collision that looks certain to nail the Ewings. He withdraws his funding from Ewing Oil at the same time, leaving them cash-poor. With customers threatening to boycott their business, the family reputation is at an all-time low — so low, in fact, that “the average man on the street” is angry enough to break into Southfork and vandalise the cardboard patio. I'm not sure things have ever looked quite this bleak for the family — not even during Blackmail where Bobby finds himself faced with not only JR’s coercion but also Jeff Faraday’s murder, Lucy’s disappearance and the reality of Jock’s death finally dawning on Miss Ellie. (Bobby finds her in her bedroom, brooding over pictures of Jock in a family album — possibly the same album he and Pam gave them for their wedding anniversary in Black Market Baby.)Elsewhere in Blackmail, JR does his best to persuade Sue Ellen to return to him. “You belong at Southfork,” he insists. By the time of Black Tide, he has changed his tune. “I should have married you and not Sue Ellen,” he tells Vanessa, as he likewise pleads with her to remain in Dallas.And the winner is ... BlackmailBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]PoT2IEJXFKw[/MEDIA]Yeah, it's that tension, that atmosphere of denial. You feel it a lot during Jock's era, where everyone's on their best behaviour and doing their best to please him — until they just can't anymore.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?