Episode Title: A Family Matter
Season 02, Episode 09
Episode 022 of 344
Written by David Paulsen
Directed by Edward Parone
Original Airdate: Thursday,
January 22nd, 1981
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com):. J.R. Ewing is in town for an oil convention. When Gary refuses to ask
him for the money, Abby goes to J.R. for it and sleeps with him. J.R. says he
knows that Abby has designs
on Gary and that he'll only give Gary the money if he asks for it himself, so
Abby keeps trying to persuade Gary. Val asks Gary not to get in any deals with
J.R., and she and J.R. have a nasty confrontation. Roy and Frank continue to
pressure Gary, so he finally goes to J.R., who gives him the $50,000.00. Kenny
breaks up with Sylvie and wants to get back with Ginger, but she says no.
A Family Matter marks the fifth out of nine crossovers from Dallas to KL and it marks the second time that Larry Hagman has guest starred
as J.R. Ewing on the spinoff series; we last saw him (aside from our Brief Dallas Interludes) in just the second
episode of KL, Community Spirit, when he came to town and caused trouble and
shenanigans. Well, now he’s back, twenty
episodes and just about one year later, to wreak more havoc. I
must say that crossovers featuring J.R. are among my favorite treats in the
first couple of seasons of KL. A quick reminder that we have our final
crossover episode in season four and then the crossovers stop completely, which
is both good and bad. On one hand, it’s
important for the spinoff to be able to stand on its own two feet, but on the
other hand, I sure did enjoy seeing J.R. and would have loved to see him
continue to come to California and visit, perhaps even butting heads with
William Devane as Greg Sumner; wouldn’t that be something?
We begin A Family Matter with the lovely ladies of Seaview Circle all
driving somewhere together (well, it might not be all of them; I feel like maybe Ginger was missing but I didn’t
bother to write it down in my notes), speaking about J.R.’s impending
visit. Karen reminds us of how much she
kicked ass back in Community Spirit and
got the best out of J.R., and Abby says how she’s excited to meet him. Well, I’m excited, too, because I absolutely love the sizzling energy whenever Larry Hagman and Donna Mills are onscreen together, and I really really wish Abs
could have crossed over a time or two and made appearances on Dallas but I guess it wasn’t meant to
be.
The two of them have instant
chemistry, by the way, and I did some research and learned that they actually
played a husband and wife in some short-lived series back in 1971 called The Good Life. Well, it’s easy to see that because both of
them strike up a special relationship right off the bat and I just love
watching them interact. In their first
scene together, Abs shows up at J.R.’s hotel room and the two of them sip
brandy together and talk about life.
See, if you’ll flash back to our previous episode, Scapegoats, you’ll remember that Gary is in some dire financial
trouble because of those pesky mobsters and he needs $50,000.00 real fast. Abs thinks he should just ask J.R. for it,
but Gary refuses. Hence, Abs pays J.R. a
visit herself and starts to work her magic on him. She says how Gary needs the money but he’s
too proud to ask for it, and she really appeals to him in a special way when
she thinks up a lie and she thinks it up quick involving Valene and Gary
splitting up. Basically, Abs doesn’t
come right out and say that Gary
wants to divorce Val, but she heavily implies it, and she makes it sound like
this $50,000.00 is all he needs to proceed with divorcing her. She also works up a lie to make it sound like
Val is one step away from moving to Texas and living there forever, and that is
most certainly not what J.R. wants to
hear. We all remember how much J.R.
hates Val (and vice versa), so we can sense that this little lie might work.
J.R. may be in town bringing his
star power over from the #1 show on television, but we still have a whole cast
of beloved (and maybe some not so beloved) KL
characters to discuss in this episode.
What else is going on? Well, to
get the boring stuff out of the way, Kenny finally up and leaves Sylvie. I did some checking just to make sure, and
yes, this marks the official last appearance of Louise Vallance as Sylvie, who made her first appearance in Home is For Healing and appears in a total of seven episodes. Yikes, only seven? It’s funny how it can seem like someone is in
A TON of episodes but then when you look
it up, it’s really not that many. In any
case, we start with her and Kenny together in her bedroom or whatever and he
pretty much just dumps her right there, saying how he has the chance to get
back with Ginger and he’s not gonna miss that.
It’s a real quick little scene, especially considering how long these
two have been carrying on their little affair, and it ends rather
un-dramatically with him just leaving her alone and her sort of accepting this.
I’m fine with this
development. Sylvie never interested me,
and she even failed to be a good, interesting bitch. Psychotic female characters can be and should be great fun (I am thinking of
both Kristin Shepherd and Katherine Wentworth over on Dallas, and we obviously have the magnificent Jill Bennett coming
to KL several seasons down the line),
but Sylvie never was. She was just a
generic stock bitch and she brought nothing more to her character; mostly she
was just irritating to watch. Therefore,
I will not miss her at all and I’m really quite pleased that this ep marks the
last time I’ll have to look at this character.
A quick note: It is interesting that Kenny just dumps her and that’s the
end of it. I’m wondering how this story
would be handled just a few seasons later, when the show had become a full-on
nighttime soap? Perhaps in that case,
Sylvie would go crazy and pull a Fatal Attraction and start boiling, oh I dunno, maybe one of those kids from
Ginger’s kindergarten class. Here, in
the more quiet and down-to-earth early seasons, she gets dumped, she accepts
it, and we don’t see her again.
Meanwhile, over at the Fairgate
house, I am shocked to note that Michael’s A.D.H.D. is still being discussed! Now
make no mistake; I am still quite certain that this development recedes into
the background and is completely forgotten about over the next twelve years.
However, in my memory his A.D.H.D. was never mentioned after the Scapegoats episode at all, so I am
pleased to see it coming up here. In
this instance, Diana discovers that Michael has used her yearbook as part of some
art project. Basically, he snuck into
her bedroom, stole her yearbook, and started cutting all the pictures out of
it. This is one time where I’ll actually
defend Diana and disagree with Karen, by the way, because when Karen hears what
he has done, she’s all like, “Oh, it’s no big deal, and he didn’t even cut out
any of the pictures you like.” I don’t
think that’s the issue; I think the issue is that he went into his sister’s
room and took something that belonged to her and destroyed it, and I’d be pissed
off, too. I guess Karen is still trying
to be patient with him and, because of that, she can perhaps be a little too
lenient with her discipline.
Meanwhile, we shift our focus
over to my vote for most fascinating couple on the cul-de-sac (specifically at
this exact juncture of the series): Richard and Laura. Things are really evolving (or perhaps even
devolving) in their relationship. As we
dive deeper into season two, we see that Laura is no longer that wimpy, crying,
mistreated woman that she was in season one.
Again, I’m surprised to see that my memories are not accurate, because
in my brain, I thought she was wimpy and weak for four seasons and didn’t start
to toughen up and become independent until the fifth season of the series. Well, turns out it’s much faster than I
remembered, because now that she has a job of her own and Richard is
unemployed, there seems to have been a power shift, and Laura is changing and
becoming a woman who is unafraid to talk back to her husband.
I’d say that Laura as a
character is evolving while her husband is the one devolving. Poor Richard has just not been having a good last couple of months. If we care to review, we’ll remember that he
lost his job back in Chance of a Lifetime
and, since then, has mostly been lazing around the house, carrying on in
his affair with Abby and drinking a lot. See, that’s another thing I’d totally
forgotten, but we’re now in a period of episodes where Richard seems to
constantly have an alcoholic drink in his hand and either be drunk or on his
way to drunk. Clearly he was drinking
too much in Breach of Faith, where he
couldn’t resist groping Abby at the neighborhood barbecue even in front of
everybody, but here he is still pounding back that brown liquor whenever we see
him. Subtlety is something that’s done
so well on KL, and this is a prime
example: The writers don’t go out of their way to say, “Look, Richard’s
drinking too much,” and to my memory (which could be inaccurate), they don’t
use this to set up some big “Richard the alcoholic” storyline; instead, it’s
just a subtle little character detail we notice if we’re paying attention.
I feel like Richard’s affair
with Abs is on its last legs, anyway.
Around Breach of Faith time,
it sure started to seem like she was becoming tired of him, and that feeling is
growing now. She clearly has the hots
for J.R., but he’s also only in town for a few days; the Ewing that Abby
truly has her eyes set on is Gary. This
has been obvious since she arrived back in Hitchhike: Part One and I get the feeling that she was only sleeping with Richard as a
quick little sub-affair to hold her attention until she can get her claws into
Gary, her true gold metal. I believe we
have a few more eps of Richard and Abby continuing their affair, but I think
it’s going to come to a conclusion very shortly. We’ll have to just wait and see.
Abs invites J.R. over to her
house for a dinner party, and then she invites pretty much everyone else on the
block. Well, not everyone, but the dinner party does include Abs (obviously), J.R.,
Val, Gary, Karen, and Sid. Obviously Val
is vehemently opposed to showing up for this dinner, but she eventually caves,
and I’m glad she does because we get a fabulous scene that put a big old grin
on my face. Not only that, but we also
get some nice linkage back to Dallas. For a quick bit of context, I’ll go ahead and
say that our next episode up for discussion after A Family Matter is not a KL ep, but rather another Brief Dallas Interlude. So basically, you have this episode, which
aired on Thursday, January 22nd, 1981, and has J.R. crossing over
from parent series to spinoff series.
Well, the very next night, Friday, January 23rd, 1981, we had
Lucy’s wedding on Dallas and both
Gary and Val show up to see their daughter get married. I like the idea that is still going strong at
this point in the series that the two shows are firmly linked and what’s going
on within one series can be mentioned on the other series, and I also like the
idea that you could see two crossovers from show to show within the same week;
if I was a viewer of both series back in 1981, I think all that stuff would get
me rather excited (nerd alert, I know).
What I was just saying about the
two shows still being able to reference each other is exemplified perfectly in
this scene. J.R. gives a toast to the
gathered table and announces the impending nuptials of Lucy Ewing to Mitch
Cooper, a storyline that was going on at the exact same time over on Dallas.
Continuity within character behavior and motivation is also done well
from show to show, as J.R. talks some smack about Mitch, implying that he’s not
a very good doctor and that he’s not good enough for Lucy, and that’s all very
much in line with what was happening on Dallas. I love these small details, and at this point
in both series, it really does seem to me like the writers and producers want
you to be watching both shows
simultaneously and they are rewarding the viewers who are doing so by
maintaining a great continuity from show to show. Kudos to the writers, at least at this point
(just wait until 1985 and The Bobby of Two Universes because I will have a lot to say about that development). Oh yeah, and now might be a good time to mention that this ep is written by David Paulsen, who served as the big cheese supervising producer over on Dallas during its best seasons (or was he just a big writer for that show and not necessarily a producer?) before moving over to KL for the 1985-1986 season (at which point KL supervising producer Peter Dunne moved over to Dallas, somehow managing to go from running three of KL's most brilliant seasons in a row to running one of the absolute turds of the entire Dallas run). I just note this because I wonder if Paulsen was specifically shipped in from the parent series this week to write this ep because of high J.R. content. Any thoughts?
The scene escalates when J.R.
says how he’s basically just going to give Lucy and Mitch a big wad of dough or
something, and this makes Val angry.
There’s obviously always anger bubbling under the surface for Val
whenever J.R. is around, but she gets very upset and says how he’s just going
to ruin Lucy’s life the way he ruined her
life. In all honesty, I’m not quite sure
what J.R. is planning to do that is so upsetting for Val; isn’t it standard for
the bride and groom to get a lot of money from their rich family members? Oh well, in any case Val gets angry with
J.R., which I always enjoy watching. In
fact, Val actually gets the BIG LINE of this episode, something I always
remember fondly. When she goes to
confront J.R. at his hotel room, she exits the scene with this classic line: “I
don’t blame whoever it was that shot you; I just wish I’d done it myself.” Oh, delicious, just utterly delicious, and
Hagman has a fabulous little delivery right before we fade to commercial where
he just sorta looks off into the distance and quietly says, “I don’t need this.” Hilarious, just hilarious (and also doubly funny when you think that just a few weeks back, Val was allowing the very person who shot J.R. to stay in her house for awhile).
By the way, what exactly is
going on with Gary and the mobsters? I’m
glad you asked, because that storyline pseudo-culminates (for the time being;
it will return in a big way at the end of the season and then yet again at the
start of season four) with quite possibly the lamest fight ever committed to
celluloid. It takes place at Knots
Landing Motors, where the two mobsters show up to presumably beat up Gary. For whatever reason, there is absolutely nobody here aside from Gary and Abby,
despite the fact that it’s a weekday afternoon.
Where is Sid? Oh well, it doesn’t
matter, as it makes it easier for Gary to have this lame fight. See, one of the mobsters sneaks in through
the back door to find Gary, but Gary is prepared and starts beating him
up. Meanwhile, the other mobster is
trying to get in through the front door, but it’s locked. Finally, we also have Abby watching from a
short distance, seeing Gary’s epic lame fight.
Why is the fight so lame? I dunno, maybe because Gary is battling a
ridiculous mobster stereotype who has positively no game whatsoever, or maybe
it’s because the entire scene is done without any sort of music or background
soundtrack, it’s just the sounds of two guys having this lame fight. Now, if you take any of my words for a harsh
criticism, that’s not how I intend it. I
am saying this is a lame fight with love in my heart, and the occasional corny
and lame sequence is just another part of the magic that is KL, and I got a good laugh out of
watching this long and decidedly unexciting fight sequence.
The mobsters pretty much run
away in terror at this point, but that doesn’t change the fact that Gary still
needs his money. Now, I will admit to
spotting some storyline logical holes within this particular ep. We’re watching the show, we’re enjoying it,
but My Beloved Grammy made the point of: Why doesn’t Gary just call up his mama
for a loan? Miss Ellie probably keeps
$50,000.00 in her fucking shoe and
would not mind giving it away to her favorite son. I wonder if the fact that she just bought
Gary and Val a house only about one year ago has anything to do with Gary’s
reticence; perhaps he doesn’t wish to feel entirely dependent on his mother, or
perhaps he’s just embarrassed by having to ask for so much money. My point is that there’s no scene of Gary
calling Miss Ellie or even mentioning the idea of Miss Ellie giving him a loan
to anyone, and it seems like a bit of an oversight to me. Even a quick bit where Abs says something
like, “Why not call your mother?” and Gary getting upset about the suggestion
would have suited me just fine.
But in any case, this ep
culminates with Gary obtaining a check from J.R. and J.R. giving him a bit of a
lecture about what this transaction means for their familial relationship. I also love seeing Gary and J.R. interact; I
feel like Gary always makes it pretty clear that he doesn’t like his brother
much, and you can tell that it actually physically hurts him to take this money from J.R., but he’s in a desperate
situation and needs to take care of it.
As J.R. sees Gary out, he delivers the fabulous line, “See, doing
business with the family ain’t so bad,” and we close out our episode for the
week.
I must say I was very enthused
about this particular episode. Of the
entire disk we watched during our last visit together, this is very likely my
favorite episode we saw (although perhaps I’ll give the edge to Breach of Faith, which I also positively
and 100% enjoyed). Also, after seeing
the writers try a crossover episode and simply fail with Kristin, it’s nice to see an ep that is both a great crossover
episode as well as just a great episode all around. To go back to a subject I discussed in Kristin, if I was a loyal Dallas viewer and only tuned into this
one episode of KL because I wanted to
see Larry Hagman’s appearance, I would probably be sold on the show based on
the merits of this particular ep; it really represents the show coming along
nicely and it’s a wonderfully entertaining 48 minutes.
And one last note, something
which I’ll probably bring up again whenever J.R. comes to California, but I
really love that Larry Hagman so clearly loves playing this character and gives
it his all in absolutely every way. I
could see a lot of other actors being reluctant to appear on a spinoff of their
own popular series, or perhaps showing up but not really putting any effort
into it, viewing their guest appearance as just a quick paycheck. Not Hagman, however. He bites into the character of J.R. Ewing
with just as much gusto as he had in any episode of Dallas, and there’s that wicked glint in his eye that shows us how
much he truly relished playing this character, whether within Dallas or its spinoff.
I’ll conclude by saying that
this is also, at least up to this point, my favorite crossover ep. We had a visit from Bobby back in Pilot, then J.R. in Community Spirit, then Lucy in Home is For Healing, and then Kristin in, um, Kristin. This is my favorite
one because it works as both a great ep of KL
and a natural and seamless crossover from one series to the next. We get some material for every character and
we also get this fabulous guest spot from Larry Hagman.
Our next KL episode is Choices,
but before we get to that, we need to stop quickly off in Texas for the
nuptials of Lucy and Mitch. Coming up next
is our seventh out of twelve Brief Dallas
Interludes with the Dallas ep
entitled End of the Road: Part Two.
Speaking of David Paulsen, he also produced the 9th season of Dynasty, which IMO was one of its best. He actually was able to get Emma Samms to act!
ReplyDeleteAnother fine episode that moved the Gary and Abby story along nicely. You have to ask yourself why is Gary so upset about Abby getting involved with j.r, is it because he knows how J.R is in business or is it more personal and Gary wants his women far away from J.R's predatory and seductive manner. He doesn't have to worry about Val falling for J.Rs charm but Abby is a different story. He is clearly jealous.
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