Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Dallas Episode 9 - The Dragon's Eyebrows


Per Wikipedia … “nine is considered a good number in Chinese culture. It’s strongly associated with the Chinese dragon, a symbol of magic and power. The dragon often symbolizes the Emperor.”

Does that sound like JR or what?  I would have titled this episode something like “Enter the Dragons” or “Family Dragons” or something. The writers in their infinite wisdom called it “Family Business.” I am NOT second-guessing them, just saying.

The channel guide description:
John chooses between family and business; another illness strikes the Ewings.

Another illness strikes the Ewings? Maybe friend of the blog (FOTB) ARF is right when she predicts Rebecca won’t ever actually give birth …

But enough about the channel guide description, let’s start the show!!

Second to last episode, lots of ground to cover.

First of all, cutesy wutesy kissing and stuff between John Ross and Elena. Elena blames JR for getting John Ross into this mess and for him having to ‘be near’ FMarta. John Ross says ‘it’s complicated.’ Elena tells him that Bobby was willing to drill for oil on SF if it meant saving John Ross.

John Ross looks intrigued at the prospect.

Would Rebecca already have a baby bump at 8 or 9 weeks? Lame baby talk, etc. Christopher says something about them creating their own family now, they buy stuffed monkeys. Yawn.

Someone has knitted covers for the tree trunks in Dallas. You expect that kind of thing in Austin, but not Dallas forgodssake.

Fbrother is waiting for Rebecca in the loft. She says, ‘how did you get in, I changed the locks?” FINALLY someone had the sense to change those damn locks.

He demands key cards to access plans to C’s rig. Offers to cut R in, threatens her. She scratches him but is clearly afraid of him. Fbrother says help him or he puts a bullet into her little fairy tale. But who would he shoot – Christopher? Rebecca? The fetuses (feti)?

PS – DNA under the fingernails anyone?

Snakey Harris shows up at Sue Ellen’s office with a gift, a bottle of wine. For an alcoholic. Looked like a bottle of Louis Jadot btw.

He knows about her bribe offer to the medical examiner. In return for keeping her secret, he says he needs to borrow her PAC to launder some money. Ballsy. She throws him out yadda yadda.

Hmm this is interesting. Fbrother’s buyer for the methane rig plans is Barnes’s lackey, 7-Up dude. Didn’t predict that!

Working for himself or Barnes? Fbrother demands more money.

John Ross and Elena cleverly come up with a way to get the oil under SF without actually drilling the ranch … slant or horizontal drilling. (Simpsons did it.)

Cue a medical emergency. Bobby starts stroking out or something. You’d think SF would have their own ambulance or medical staff on site.

Doctors diagnose a “brain seizure.” Is that a real thing?

Elena and Christopher look sort of longingly at each other. Elena admits to John Ross that B has the cancer, and no one told him because everyone assumed he and JR would have used the knowledge to gain the upper hand. John Ross gets a look on his face like he suddenly realizes what a d-bag everyone thinks he is … or does he?

Does John Ross have a conscience? Discuss.

Either way, he summons the elusive Bum the PI and demands that he find JR. Says “I’ve never kicked an old man’s ass, but today’s as good a day as any.” He tells Bum to tell JR that his brother is dying.

Bobby had an aneurysm. Needs to get his blood pressure down so he can have surgery.  So he stubbornly insists on leaving the hospital. Ha! He said they should get an ambulance to be on stand by. Told you.

For some reason, Rebecca shows up at the ranch. Hmm, Ann called and told her about Bobby … NOT Christopher. Some reconciliation.

Awkward, at that moment Elena walks in with 2 cups of coffee …

The family has hired Nurse Ratchett.

On her way out, Rebecca considers stealing Christopher’s key card but doesn’t.

JR is back!

Ann yells at him. Calls him a sociopath. Kicks him out and threatens to shoot him in the ding ding.

Bobby says he regrets selling SF. The man is a world-class waffler. No wonder he was dead for an entire season and then suddenly came back.

Christopher says he won’t fight John Ross on the slant-drilling, but he wants the deed back for SF. Wants peace of mind for Bobby.

C lays it on thick, playing the Cuzzin family loyalty card. Says Bobby has always been there for John Ross, even when his own father JR wasn’t … tells him the old John Ross he used to know would do anything to get SF back. It’s like he’s Darth Vader and they are still trying to find the one little bit of Annikin goodness in him … like a creamy moral center.

John Ross tries a direct tactic, asking JR for the deed back. He refuses. John Ross says Uncle Bobby helped him out when he was attacked – JR says “I came as soon as I heard!” LIAR.

JR says “what’s gotten into you anyway?” John Ross says “a little bit of decency.”

FINALLY someone, John Ross, says he’s tired of hearing about THE BIRTHRIGHT.

Enough with the gd birthright already.

JR promptly kicks John Ross out of his room where John Ross has been staying. Doesn’t SF have another guest room?

John Ross walks out with his luggage, encounters Sue Ellen and Elena. John Ross says JR is back but refuses to sign the deed back over, even tho he can now have the oil, which ostensibly is what he wanted. John Ross says of JR, “He’s being pig-headed and selfish.” “That’s so unlike JR,” says Sue Ellen sarcastically and stomps off.

John Ross appears to be having a moment of reckoning. He’s coming to terms with the fact that he’s been craving and seeking the approval of a ginormous jerk bag who would claw over his own family to get his way. John Ross says he loves his father, but he’s so lost in his own anger and bitterness that there’s no room for anybody else.

Parental dynamics can be complicated.  

Sue Ellen gives an awesome impassioned speech to JR. how he leaves a path of destruction in everyone’s lives, and that she and Bobby are used to it but he should stop screwing his own son over. She alludes to depression being the reason he ended up in the nursing home b/c he realized he had nothing, and he still has nothing. He says “I’m going to be back on top!” in a delusional manner.

SE tells Ann that Snakey Harris is blackmailing her. I kind of like this pairing of SE and Ann. They should figure out a way to screw Harris over. Hard. But in the meantime, they are already talking about SE’s gubernatorial bid in the past sense. Shame. Governor Ewing has a nice ring to it.

JR and his eyebrows sit down at Bobby’s desk. He spies a photo of him and Bobby together.

Carmen the housekeeper summons him to see “Mr Bobby.” It’s safe b/c Ann is gone. Nurse Ratchett allows him to enter.

JR says “I have lapses every now and then when I do wrong.” HA.

Bobby says he loves him.

It’s a short meeting.

Elena, Christopher and John Ross are drinking Shiner Bock in the SF kitchen. I appreciate the Texas-y touches. They ponder what Ewing oil would have been like had JR and Bobby been allies instead of enemies.

Christopher proposes he and John Ross team up to create Ewing Energies. With Elena as a partner. THREESOME!!

It’s kind of sexy when they talk oil talk and drilling technology and gas hydrates. Cuzzins!

Oh wait, Bobby is an equal partner too. Foursome? Ewwwww.

JR still owns the mineral rights to the oil under SF so he’ll still get the profits of that oil, or at least a part of it.

How cute, the kids are opening a lemonade stand.

JR is drinking brown liquor and staring at the deed. And a photo of his dead momma. He signs it. What does that mean?

Why can’t all documents be sepia toned and important looking?

JR leaves the document on Bobby’s bed (with Nurse Ratchett’s tacit approval.)

I guess he did sign the deed back over, I’ll be damned. But he points out if Bobby dies, it all goes back to him anyway. I guess this is about as warm and fuzzy as JR gets. Maybe he’ll spike Bobby’s meds and try and off him sooner.

BTW I HATE and I mean HATE the Walmart commercials that feature real customers. Painful.

Nice product placement of vehicles in Dallas. Corvette, Chevy, Tesla.

Tommy calls Rebecca and is furious that she doesn’t have the key card. He says “you owe me.” For what, exactly?

He wants to know where she is. She hangs up on him.

She then goes to a safety deposit box (bank lady comments on the fact that it’s been a while since she’s been there) that contains wads of cash and what looks like credit cards or credit card blanks … and a handgun.

Nice Johnny Cash song playing as she pulls the gun out of the deposit box and puts it in her ostrich purse.  

Cut to Tommy nervously waiting in a bar for Barnes’s sidekick, who tells him, ‘your services are no longer needed.’ Tommy looks pisssssed.

Lou (who is Lou – investigator? Lawyer? Fed?) calls Bobby and says they have a lead on FMarta – she had cloud storage of documents, video, etc. (did you say viddddeeeoooo?) He seems confident that they’ll find evidence that will nail the Venezuelans and get the BIRTHRIGHT back. But Lou brings up a good point – if they find evidence that implicates JR, does Bobby want to know?

Just when JR has done something nice (or so it seems) and perhaps they could start to think about reconciliation …

Cue another seizure for Bobby.

More Johnny Cash. Tommy barges into Rebecca’s loft and attacks her. To rape her? To kill her? Just rough her up? He talks about how the whole “oil” scam was her idea in the first place, and she engineered the whole Christopher set up. How exactly did her background check come back clean?

She fights back.

She’s fighting for them babies!

She grabs the gun. They struggle.

Gun shot – blood spatter on the stuffed monkeys – WHO WAS SHOT DAMMIT?
Just memorize this line, Rebecca: “It was self defense.”

If I were a betting woman, I’d bet that Tommy is the one shot. However, if Rebecca gets shot (and killed) then that clears the path for Christopher and Elena to finally be together.

Tantalizing scenes shown from THE FINAL EPISODE NEXT WEEK. No Cliff Barnes this week (DRAT!) but I have it on good authority (@kenkercheval) that he will be on the season finale! 

Chill … ‘til the next episode. 

8 comments:

  1. I liked Bobby correcting JR that he has lapses when he does right! Yes, Sue Ellen threatening to shoot JR in the "ding ding" was priceless. Not surprised at the violence from fBrother. Do you think they're going to kill off Bobby? I guess they could leave him in a coma for all of next season and he wouldn't be missed too much!
    BTW I had plenty of Shiner Bock this past week :-) Sorry you'll miss my parents and that their birthday celebration got messed up - boo hiss.
    Marce

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    1. Yeah I'm bummed the trip dates didn't end up working out, but glad you had a good time and drank lots of Shiner! You know, the Bobby out of the picture for an entire season worked for them once, maybe it could work again ...

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  2. and one more thing - since when is it pronounced yay-hoos? I thought it was ya-hoos? (hence the spelling?)

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    1. I consulted with my resident Texan, and he said that depending on who you talk to and where in the state they are from (and probably how old they are), Yay-hoos and ya-hoos are both accepted pronunciations.

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  3. I also laughed at "YAY-hoos." I guess that's how they talk down at South Fork.

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    1. I laughed too, and didn't include it in the blog post because I wasn't sure how to spell yay-hoo.

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  4. Jeff was taken aback when Bobby had another “brain seizure” (I explained to him that the brain aneurysm is a tried and true soap emergency – they come and go without apparently cause); I told him that if you have an ambulance on standby, someone has to use it by the end of the episode.

    I think both Rebecca and her Fbrother got shot – they were struggling with the gun (she should have shot him right away, not threatened him; what kind of con is she?). Maybe some kind of a through and through situation. Great heavy-handed symbolism with the blood splatter on the stupid monkeys. And, cue her inevitable miscarriage…

    If John Ross goes soft, who will be the villain? Not the Venezuelans. They don’t live a South Fork. Not that I know of, anyway. JR is too old to do much damage and all he cares about is Cliff Barnes, anyway. CB makes him hilariously angry, by the way. Nothing surprises JR, nothing ruffles his feathers…except the mention of CB. Then he flips out! Sociopath – ha!

    Ann: I usually ff through commercials, but I accidentally saw one of her Rise to Power ads (that games viewers can play to vote for which Ewing will come out on top). I recommend the end in particular, which implies that good old Sue Ellen may have just ahead and guzzled that bottle of wine creepy X Files dude gave her:
    http://www.dallastnt.com/series/dallas/thecharacters/?id=ch6&oid=314456&character=ann-ewing

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    1. I am warming up to Ann, and saw her commercial. I like the curly hair. and yeah is she foreshadowing that SE isn't really done with the bottle? that could prove interesting during her governor's race. For all we know, the Venezuelans are living somewhere on SF, tho there only appears to be one guest room. Good call on both the "brain seizure" and the ambulance on call.

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