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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 213167" data-attributes="member: 22">Brother, Can You Spare a Child? (DALLAS, 11 Dec 87) v Brotherly Love (DALLAS, 05 Feb 88)Two instalments from Season 10, five episodes apart.Brother, Can You Spare a Child? opens with the tail end of the final Ewing barbecue of 20th-century DALLAS. Given that the first barbecue in '78 centred around a failed attempt at a reconciliation between Jock and Digger (unless you count the 1951 barbecue in DALLAS: The Early Years where Digger tried to kill Jock), there is a pleasing sense of closure about this ep. Following Dandy Dandridge (aka Digger redux)’s botched attempt to kill him at the barbecue due to a business misunderstanding, Cliff has an epiphany and meets with Miss Ellie to tell her that he and Digger have misjudged the Ewings all along. And so they reconcile, ten years too late, and without Jock, Digger or Pam there to witness it. It’s a somewhat bizarre turnaround but a very nice scene. (And it’s satisfying to know at that the next Ewing barbecue, in twenty-five-years time, the feud will start all over again between his daughter and Bobby’s son.)This episode also sees the last appearance of Punk Anderson. His final line is a warning for Clayton: “If you keep doing nothing with your days, I promise you that old rocking chair ain’t too far away.” Ironically, Clayton gives pretty much the same advice to Miss Ellie in Brotherly Love, as he chides her for being more invested in her sons’ lives than her own. In the past, I’ve found Clayton’s pomposity a bit tiresome during this period, but there’s actually something quite touching about his I’m Not in Love doth-protest-too-much crush on Laurel Ellis, who’s kind of perfect as the young and lovely, but not quite real object of his affections.The highlight of both episodes is Sue Ellen. In the absence of Pam and Donna, she is the last remaining Ewing wife at Southfork and so by default has assumed the mantle of the show’s female lead. She does a great job, smouldering and scheming as she plots some as yet unspecified revenge on her husband. "Because of her, I learned to play the game just as well as JR," she tells Nicholas, referring to a sexy picture of Mandy.  In Spare a Child, she has fun playing the doting wife, insisting on hosting a dinner for Kimberly Cryder and her husband, and then making them squirm as she gushes sweet nothings at JR. In Brotherly Love, she drops the facade. “You are dirt, JR!” she declares.  Meanwhile, Kimberly is proving a demanding mistress. (She and JR are really fun when they’re thoroughly pissed off with each other.)The worst scenes of both eps are very similar. In the first, April blubbers like a six-year-old cos no-one invited her to the barbecue and in the second, Cliff sulks like a seven-year-old cos no-one showed up to his party except his secretary and his accountant. Moral of both stories: being rich don’t buy ya happiness — as if ten years of watching DALLAS hadn’t already taught us that. It’s a bit pathetic.However, both eps redeem themselves by ending with JR on tip-top villainous form. In Spare a Child, he smilingly reveals that he is behind Lisa Alden’s attempt to take Christopher away from Bobby. In Brotherly Love, he smirkingly blackmails April into buying more West Star stock on his behalf — or else he’ll tell Bobby that she’s his sloppy seconds.And the winner is ... Brotherly LoveBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]Ij3ba71gtrU[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?