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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 235684" data-attributes="member: 22">Changing of the Guard (DALLAS, 13 Jun 12) v Charade (DALLAS, 09 Nov 90)While Changing of the Guard (1982) is the episode of original DALLAS I’ve seen the most due to it being the first one I taped on video, Changing of the Guard (2012) is my most watched ep of C21st DALLAS on account of it being the first of the new series.In both Charade and Changing of the Guard, JR is a patient in a psychiatric institution. The sanatarium scenes in Charade are simplistic, even childlike. (Given that the BBC broadcast this season on Sunday afternoons, this felt unintentionally appropriate.) The main action has JR and his timid band of followers (the other patients) setting a trap for hospital bully Morrissey (the future Harris Ryland) whereby they secretly film him as he brags about pretending to be insane after he killed a man so he’d be sent to “a cushy little co-ed hospital with broads down the corridor” rather than a proper prison. And he’d have gotten away with too if it hadn’t have been for these meddling middle-aged men in dressing gowns!Whereas these scenes are a tad dull, the ones in Changing of the Guard where first Bobby and then John Ross visit the clinically depressed JR are totally gripping. Even as JR himself remains totally uncommunicative, the two men unburden themselves in emotional monologues. A mournful Bobby weeps quietly while a desperate John Ross come closes to breaking down completely. It's a long way from the Scooby-Doo style sanatarium antics of 1990; rather, the atmosphere is that of a confessional.Only after John Ross tells him that Bobby plans to sell Southfork in order to finance Christopher’s alternate energy project does JR slowly return to life, almost like a monster stirring after a long hibernation. “Bobby was always a fool,” he murmurs, eyes still closed, “stubborn as a mule, and particularly harebrained about that foundling, Christopher, not even a Ewing.” On these last words, he finally opens his eyes and looks at his son. “On what grounds are you contesting my mama’s will?” he asks him. “Mental incompetence,” John Ross replies nervously. There’s a long pause while he (and we) waits for JR’s response. Eventually, a faint smile crosses his lips. “The fried chicken ain’t bad here,” he says cheerfully, before asking John Ross to fetch him some jello. As John Ross obediently gets to his feet, JR suddenly grabs him by the wrist. “I forgive you for not visiting,” he tells him — managing to sound magnanimous and threatening both at the same time.Back in the old series, the gag of putting JR in alien surroundings — a mental hospital or a penal farm or a stuck elevator or even an alternate timeline where he was never born — was that he remained resolutely the same JR we had become so familiar with over the years. The version of JR that is reawakened in 2012 is far less predictable. Indeed, he's more mysterious, and therefore far more potentially dangerous, than he has ever been before.And the winner is ... Changing of the GuardBONUS BEATS:[MEDIA=youtube]abl4RwinR0c[/MEDIA]</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?