A BRIEF DALLAS INTERLUDE: PART 5 OF 12
Episode Title: No More Mister Nice Guy: Part One
Season 04, Episode 01
Written by Arthur Bernard Lewis
Directed by Leonard Katzman
Original Airdate: Friday,
November 7th, 1980
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.com): J.R. is rushed to the hospital, near death. As the police
discover multiple people with motive, the family waits for him to awaken and
hopefully identify the shooter.
Welcome back to A Brief Dallas Interlude, our first one
since the four episodes we watched before the Pilot of KL. Before we get started with season two of KL, we have not one but two Dallas eps in a row featuring
appearances by both Gary and Val (well, Gary is in both, but Val is only in
one). After these two Interludes, we will return to the superior show and our
glorious friends over at Seaview Circle, although we will have one more Interlude during the 1980-1981 season
(it is the episode End of the Road: Part Two, featuring Lucy’s wedding).
Okay, let’s get started, shall we?
This exact moment in television
history is very interesting and important for both Dallas and KL. KL had
finished its small first season ranking at #30 in the ratings while Dallas finished at #6, culminating in
the infamous episode A House Divided,
wherein J.R. Ewing was shot in his office by an unknown assailant. There’s no debate that this is the most
famous cliffhanger in television history, right? We’d seen three seasons of J.R. screwing
anyone and everyone who came into his path, so season three culminated with someone finally giving J.R. a couple of
bullets in the belly, and then TV audiences had to wait eight long months to
find out who did it. Now, the answer to
that question will not be revealed in this episode nor the next; the answer
finally came in the fourth episode of season four, and that will not be
included as part of A Brief Dallas
Interlude because that episode features neither Gary nor Val.
These Interludes are a little
bit tricky, honestly, because for the purposes of this blog, I’m not terribly
interested in writing about Dallas plotlines,
but mostly interested in seeing how the crossovers of Gary and/or Val serve to
further enhance the storylines over on KL,
and I must say, both this episode and the next one are actually quite rich with
little details that maintain a fantastic continuity between the two series and
lead me to encourage anyone watching KL to
make an effort to squeeze in these Brief
Dallas Interludes whenever they pop up (which will become scarcer and
scarcer as we get deeper into the ‘80s).
Anyway, for the purposes of this
discussion, all you need to know is that while Gary was getting drunk and going
on an epic bender, J.R. was working to piss off absolutely everybody in Texas,
and he finally got what was coming to him in the concluding moments of the
season. The reason this was such a
fantastic cliffhanger is that literally anyone
could have done it; J.R. made enemies everywhere he went and pretty much
anyone had motive to shoot him. As we
begin this episode, we have a very
dramatic cleaning woman entering the Ewing Oil offices and screaming in utterly
extreme over-the-top terror as she finds poor J.R. lying on the floor, shot and
bleeding. J.R. is immediately rushed to
the hospital and we spend most of the episode watching the rest of the family
receiving phone calls and information about what has happened to John Ross
Ewing II.
Again, I don’t particularly care
about what’s going on with the Ewings here in Texas; I am really only
interested in what Gary and Val do in their little crossover appearance. So, what do they do? The answer is, well, not a lot. In this particular episode, their appearances
are limited to one little scene, but I did enjoy the scene very much and it
certainly gave me a bit of a KL boner. See, all of the Ewings are gathered at the
hospital (random note: It seemed like pretty much every season premiere of Dallas would involve the family hanging
out at the hospital for one reason or another), and then Miss Ellie is alerted
to a phone call from her beloved Gary over in California. She and Lucy head over to the phone and then
we cut to Gary and Val standing in their kitchen over in California. See, it’s stuff like this that I really like;
not only are we getting a little appearance from television’s greatest couple,
but they’re even standing on a set from KL.
This prompted me to wonder
something: Was this little snippet filmed by the Dallas crew or was it filmed by the KL crew at the request of the Dallas
writers and producers? The scene
lasts maybe, oh, I dunno, two or three minutes at the most, so I imagine it
wouldn’t take too long for the folks over at the KL set to film a quick little scene set in the kitchen between Gary
and Val and then send it out to the folks at Dallas to splice into their episode. I have pretty much no research to back any of
this stuff up, but I’m gonna go ahead and assume that this quick little scene
was filmed by the cast and crew over at KL,
probably while they were getting to work on the second season of the series.
Even though this is a brief
scene, I have plenty of talking points for it.
See, Miss Ellie tells Gary that his brother’s been shot and he’d
probably better come out to Texas to see him.
Gary hangs up and tells Valene what’s up, and then she says something
about how Gary probably shouldn’t go off on his own, and Gary says, “You mean
after my big drunk?” He explains to her
how he “Can’t go through life without having to face a crisis.” Boy, is this nice continuity or what? The two of them are talking about the events of
the very last KL eps we
discussed! Now, to a person who was
watching just Dallas and had no
interest in KL, they might see this
scene and say, “Who are these people and why do I care about them and what are
they talking about?” However, as an
ardent KL fan, I am loving the
linkages between the two series at this point, and it’s kinda cool to see how
comfortably this Gary/Val footage can be squeezed in as part of a Dallas episode.
Also of note in this scene is
that Val displays absolutely no sympathy
for J.R.’s predicament. Now, we rarely
see Val get truly mad or say really hurtful things. So far on KL,
the only instance I can think of is when Lilimae came to visit and Val said,
“Don’t mince words, Gary; hate, I hate her.” That was pretty strong stuff, but what she
says about J.R. is even harsher. She
says, “If J.R. died, I don’t think I could even mourn for him.” At first I was like, “Damn, Valene!” However, after chewing on it for a minute (as
well as pausing for about twenty minutes to talk about this fantastic scene
with My Beloved Grammy), I decided Val is just being brutally honest, and does
she not have reason to feel this way?
After all, J.R. is responsible for running her off of Southfork and
stealing baby Lucy away from her, essentially destroying their relationship as
mother and daughter. Has she no right to
be angry and bitter with him? I’d say
she does.
That’s all we get of Gary and
Val in this episode, and since I don’t really care to go over all the details
of the Dallas storyline, I vote we
move on to our sixth Brief Dallas
Interlude, which offers even more rich little details for us big-time KL fans.
Let us now move on to the Dallas episode
that aired just two days after this one, entitled, naturally, No More Mister Nice Guy: Part Two.
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