Ep 10 - The Dallas Season Finale Cometh

AKA “The Ewings come together in order to help one of their own overcome an illness.”

What happens tonight will blow you away, promiseth TNT. And they delivered!

PS doesn’t it bother anyone that Christopher hasn’t at any point wondered where Rebecca’s expensive engagement and wedding rings have gone?

Hell of an opener – the body of FTommy, seemingly dead. Falling to the floor. Rebecca standing there, shaking, with the gun. She places a call, tells the person on the other side that she’s in trouble.

Immediately unidentified men show up to remove the body. Who the hell are these people? Rebecca is furiously scrubbing the floor of the loft .. as if she’s done this before. The clean-up crew’s cart said “J Beall.” Hints of something to come in the future? Efficient clean-up tho.

Cut to hospital waiting room. Bobby is out of emergency surgery from the seizure triggered at the end of the last episode. He’s alive but they are not sure if he has brain damage, he’s unconscious. JR rushes to his unconscious side. God, soap operas love that tableau of a person lying helplessly with furrowed brow in a hospital bed (always a private room), blankets perfectly folded, with breathing tubes snaking over to ominous looking medical equipment.

JR exhorts him to wake up and tells him he loves him. 

John Ross, Christopher, Elena in waiting room. Elena looks longingly at the back of Christopher’s head. John Ross gets a phone call, goes outside to take call. It’s the Venezuelan. He’s down on the Gulf checking out Christopher’s methane rig. It’s actual equipment with real workers doing stuff. Venezuelans want to know when the rig will be operational.

Rebecca shows up at hospital waiting room, with obvious bruises. Rebecca tells Christopher that she got into a fight with FTommy, but he’s gone now, “for good.” She notes that Christopher has his ring back on, he says he wants to make their marriage work, and that she should put her rings back on … haaa I told you so. She is clearly flustered by this and makes an excuse to leave. Christopher tells John Ross that he wants his PI Bum to find FTommy. Ooopsie.  Law of unintended soap opera consequences even with good intentionedness.

See sometimes it’s useful to have people like JR and John Ross around.

Rebecca opens the door to a seedy motel room where FTommy has been evidently staying. She starts pawing through stuff looking for the wedding rings. She wisely put gloves on, but only after she entered the room. In her search, she finds photos of her and FTommy embracing. She tears them up but doesn’t burn or flush them. Classic mistake.

She can’t find the rings, so she calls the body snatchers and asks where FTommy’s body is because she needs to find something. Ewwww.

So does anyone think she really loves Christopher? Or is this still part of the long con. Or self preservation.

Lone Star beer six-pack in the seedy hotel room, nice Texas-y touch of the day.

Bobby wakes up, Ann and Christopher are in the room, sleeping. He seems fine, no brain damage. My husband predicts that the stroke/seizure will have killed his empathy and he’s now like JR. that would be interesting.

Rebecca goes to the body dump site, or rather a van parked in a hangar. ? She searches FTommy’s body and finds a pawn ticket for her flawless 2 carat engagement ring and diamond encrusted wedding band …

John Ross takes Elena to an office construction site, the intended home of Ewing Energies, which was the previous home of Ewing Oil. The birthright! John Ross wants to sit where JR’s office once was. Let the daddy complex go, John Ross. This whole family needs therapy.

While there, John Ross proposes to Elena! Didn’t see that coming. She says yes. He tells her she reminds him of oil reflecting off light. Okaaaayy ... Gives her a ring with a brown stone.

Christopher approves of the office space choice. Doesn’t necessarily not so much uh uh approve of John Ross and Elena’s engagement.  Awkward glances between Elena and Christopher.

Rebecca goes to the pawn shop only to be told her flawless rings were sold yesterday. She bribes the pawn shop owner to find out who bought them, he says he’ll call her.

Christopher shows up with conciliatory Chinese food for Rebecca at their loft. He asks why she’s not wearing the rings, she says her fingers are too swollen from being pregnant to wear the rings. Good cover. She’s clearly a very experienced con.

What will her fortune cookie say?

Lou is at the hospital visiting Bobby, JR shows up. Ah, Lou is a lawyer. JR says ‘you know you hit a low when even a lawyer won’t take the time to insult you.’

Bobby says he’s a medical miracle, can go home tomorrow, and anyway he can’t die because he has unfinished business with JR. JR claims again he wasn’t part of the FMarta fraud. Bobby reveals that they found her cloud storage drive and found a video of JR conspiring with her against Bobby. Bobby says “I’ve got you dead to rights, brother.” He manages to come across as imperious even in a bathrobe. He tells JR it’s time to stop the double dealings, but he doesn’t say if he will send JR to jail. Maybe he hasn’t decided yet.

Bobby is on his way home from the hospital, Sue Ellen shows up with a nice plant. She tells Ann that she’s scheduled a press conference and is bowing out of the governor’s race. She won’t launder Ryland’s money and she regrets crossing a line. Says she’s done too much wrong in her past to deserve to be governor. Well that’s probably true.

Oh so the ring is a ‘chocolate’ diamond, the color of oil. Elena’s mother is coming around to the idea of her marrying John Ross.

Lou shows up with JR at the ranch where John Ross and Christopher had been having a friendly cuzzin basketball game. Lou tells John Ross they have evidence against him of trying to commit fraud. Christopher is there, tells John Ross he can’t lie his way out of video evidence. John Ross says he will confess to conspiring with FMarta with the Venezuelans but only if they seal his confession and Elena won’t find out.

Of course Elena is there listening in the hallway (no doors, no locks, no privacy) and storms in and confronts him. He’s trying to rationalize that now he’s trying to do the right thing and that sure he set things in motion but he’s a changed man now and needs her by his side.

John Ross tells her to be at the Ewing Energy office tomorrow for “a new beginning.” She rushes off.

A tarted up Ann shows up at Ryland’s office to tell him he’s won. Wants to know what he wants, assumes all his blackmail is to get to her, his ex-wife. He says it’s about laundering money but as long as she’s there how about an awkward, essentially forced romp in the hay? She starts to undress and he stares at her creepily.

In an awesome move, she unbuttons her shirt and reveals that she’s wearing a wire! On her underwire! She now has him on tape admitting to extortion, blackmail and conspiring to launder money or somesuch.  She tells him if he doesn’t leave her, her family and Sue Ellen alone, he’ll be hugging the business end of her shotgun. She sure does like to threaten to shoot people. Foreshadowing or potential flashback?

Anyway, now again we are reminded again of Ann’s turn as the character Sue Ellen Mischke in Seinfeld, the woman who walked down the street wearing only a bra. Here she is wearing only a bra, helping a woman named Sue Ellen. Coincidence or fate?

Cut to another excellent plot twist – Vicente the Venezuelan is sitting down with Cliff Barnes’ lackey, 7-Up guy. Apparently Cliff has been arranging to buy the methane technology rights AND acquire the lien to SF. Well played, Cliff! You haven’t been on in several episodes, but this whole time you were quietly conspiring in the background… starting with working the FTommy angle.

But just (literally) as Vicente is about to sign the papers, Feds show up at his door. The look on 7-Up’s face is priceless.

Ann is at the park again watching the playground. But this time she's smiling. She asked SE to meet her there. She gives SE the recording and tells her not to drop out of the Gov’s race.

Vicente is arrested, and confronted by Bobby, JR and Christopher. I guess when you’re buds with the state AG you can get this sort of private meeting. Vicente is going to be charged with fraud and the murder of FMarta. Whatever deal JR/John Ross have made will make the Venezuelan’s dealings null and void.

V says he’s going to take John Ross down with him. However, the J’s got immunity for their confessions. Sweetheart deal!

JR threatens Vicente, saying he never should have harmed his son, and that life is cheap in prison. Vicente threatens him back. 

Bobby tells JR he has a copy of the video that implicates him and that if he tries and screw him again he’s got evidence against him. JR tips his hat and leaves.

Bobby, Christopher, John Ross chat. Christopher is understandably ticked at John Ross. Bobby seems to feel that maybe John Ross has learned his lesson. He urges the cuzzins to still go into business together. Why would a father want his son to go into business with someone who was clearly a criminal, a cheat and a liar? Oh right, because there must be a season two!!

Bum calls, says he found FTommy’s hotel room. Christopher and Bum go into the room. The room has been cleaned, of course FTommy is not there. I thought they might find the scraps of photos that showed FTommy and Rebecca kissing. But even better, fortuitously at that moment the phone in the hotel room rings. It’s Ftommy’s sister, his REAL sister Rebecca.

So that’s why Rebecca’s background check came back clean, because FRebecca stole the identity of FTommy’s real sister!

Christopher goes to the loft and tells FRebecca  that he knows she’s not Rebecca Sutter. Who are you? He demands. She says I’m your wife. She says she knows what she feels for him, and she throws the Elena thing in his face. Says he’s still in love with her.

He vows to find out who she really is, and when he does, he’ll send her to prison and ensure the babies never know her. Why wouldn’t he have already contacted the police, maybe even brought them with him to the loft?

Cut to Elena, who has car keys in hand and the oil engagement ring in its box … you have to assume that she is on her way to Ewing Energies to give John Ross the ring back. Cue to Christopher showing up to pour his heart out to her.

I don’t want to waste another minute without you, he tells her. He says that he is over with Rebecca, forever. Somehow he still had the original Elena engagement ring and hands it to her.

Cut to SE at a lectern (not a podium) giving an impassioned speech. While she talks, the action cuts to John Ross at the office building waiting for Elena. But who shows up instead, her mother, who wordlessly hands John Ross the ring box. Who sends her mother to end an engagement? Lame.

While SE is still speaking as the voice over, cut to Bobby and Ann overlooking SF contentendtedly. SE says she wants to fight for the future of Texas. She closes her speech by saying “For all those people who want to tear me down, I have 3 little words: I am Texas.”

And who is FRebecca, you ask? CLIFF BARNES’S DAUGHTER.

HOLY CRAP!!

FRebecca is in the hangar again, looking suddenly patrician. 7-Up guy is there, and you’re wondering what the hell is going on. Suddenly it dawns on you that this whole long con has been orchestrated by Cliff Barnes all along, and FRebbeca is his progeny. Holy crap.

She recruited “the Sutter boy” in the con even tho he was ‘a loose cannon.’ A dead cannon now, and 7-Up and his henchmen are off to dispose of the body. That’s tidy. Daddy Barnes shows up and chides his daughter (real name still unknown), telling her she lost focus and got caught up in the Ewings. He even managed to buy the damn wedding rings from the damn pawn shop so that she couldn’t put them back on … she says that she knows she screwed up and she will not lose focus now, since Christopher threatened to take her babies.  She claims her allegiance to daddy.  He says he will give her a second chance, and he wants her to get a piece of Ewing energy. This is good writing dammit. 

He tells 7-Up to protect FRebecca, because there is a Ewing firestorm a-brewing. So what’s our first move, Miss Barnes, 7-Up asks her. I was hoping they might smooch. 

John Ross is sadly staring out the window of the office space. You really almost feel sorry for the bastard. But you know that in these moments, he is becoming hardened against the world, against love, against everything.

Meanwhile, Elena and Christopher have wasted no time, checking into a hotel room and getting busy.

Johnny Cash playing again.

Well, at least John Ross has his daddy. JR is at the office space with him, mixes him a drink.

Forget teaching me the oil business, says John Ross to JR. Teach me every dirty trick you know. (I thought that was the oil business?)

John Ross vows to take the company from Christopher and Elena (the company which they just started about 30 seconds ago, have they already drawn up paperwork?) and cut JR in. BUT, if JR screws him again, he’ll make sure JR goes back to “the home” for good and never sees a dime of the oil money from SF.

JR seems pleased, says “now that’s my son, from tip to tail.” Devil’s tail.

TO BE CONTINUED …

Arrrrggghgh I have to wait until January to find out what happens. Don’t know how I will make it. But TNT, you did blow me away. You blew me away.