Episode Title: Daniel
Season 04, Episode 02
Episode 055 of 344
Written by John Pleshette
Directed by Joseph B. Wallenstein
Original Airdate: Thursday,
October 7th, 1982
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Joe warns Mack
that Karen is using the court transcripts to try and go after Frank and Roy
herself. Karen asks Wayne to negotiate a parts deal, and he goes to Frank and
Roy, who set him up with their front men
Marshall and Angelo. J.R. has one of his companies buy Val's publishing
company. J.R. also meets with Abby, who will only give him the rest of the book
if he'll tell her about Jock's will. J.R. tells her that Gary's coming into
millions, and it isn't dependent on Val. Laura's water breaks. Richard rushes
her to the hospital, but the car goes off the road and Laura gives birth in the
car. The baby isn't breathing, but Richard saves him by giving him
mouth-to-mouth. They name their new son Daniel.
PLEASE NOTE: I STOLE SOME OF THE PICTURES I'VE PUT INTO THIS WRITEUP FROM THE BRILLIANT BRILLIANT BRILLIANT DALLAS DECODER WEBSITE LOCATED HERE AND I WANT TO MAKE SURE AND GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT'S DUE.
You know, it sure feels like
awhile since we’ve had a crossover from parent series Dallas to KL, doesn’t
it? Season three had two very boring Brief Dallas Interludes in which Gary crossed
over and paid a visit to Texas (The Split
and Five Dollars A Barrel, in
case you had forgotten), but we didn’t have any instances of our Dallas friends coming to visit KL at all during the third season. In fact, our last crossover was near the end
of season two with Designs (airing
March 26th, 1981), and that was episode 030. Now here we are at episode 055, so it’s been
a 25-episode span with no crossing over.
I only note all this and ask you readers/viewers to really cherish this
because it’s one of the last times we are going to see a crossover. A few episodes after this, we will have one
more crossover with J.R. and Bobby both appearing in the episode New Beginnings, and then that’ll be all
she wrote and we’ll never be seeing characters from the parent series crossing
over ever again, so cherish it while you still can!
Indeed, J.R. Ewing was our last
crossover back in Designs and now
here he is again, presumably arriving in town for something to do with Valene’s
impending novel. In fact, our very first
scene of the episode is J.R. riding in the back of a limo, flipping through the
pages of Val’s manuscript and laughing his head off. We get the sense that he’s not annoyed or
angry by this book, but rather amused, as he just keeps giggling to himself,
mumbling things like what a clever writer Val is.
Before getting to what’s going
on with the other characters, I’d like to mainly focus on J.R.’s visit and what
he’s up to this week. See, he arrives on
the cul-de-sac and, thanks to Richard, who comes to say hello (despite putting
all these eps under a microscope, I cannot for the life of me remember if
Richard and J.R. have interacted at all in the previous three eps that J.R.
appeared in; can anyone else help me out here?). Anyway, this was a fun little bit because
Richard clues J.R. in about what’s going on with Gary and Val’s big breakup, which
is information J.R. is not privy to (this actually lead to My Beloved Grammy
making the observation that they almost never talked about the events of KL over on Dallas, aside from a few brief mentions like when J.R. had been
shot and Gary came to visit and discussed his alcoholic bender from the Bottom of the Bottle eps). Naturally, J.R. decides to have a little fun
by paying Val a visit and deliberately making her uncomfortable.
Ah, what a lovely little
scene. I think perhaps what I’ll miss
the most after we lose the Dallas crossovers
is seeing Hagman and J.V.A. acting together, because the tension in the air is
always palpable whenever the two are onscreen together. In this instance, even though J.R. knows
perfectly well that Gary is not living at the house, he’s all like, “Gee Val, where’s
Gary?” and acts hilariously concerned while Val has to awkwardly explain to him
that her and Gary are splitting up. Oh,
how wicked of him; he knows damn well that the couple has split, but he just
forces Valene to say the words out loud to him just to make her nervous and sad
and because he’s J.R. and he’s so very wicked and I love it so.
Not too long after this, J.R.
gives Abs a call and asks when she’d like to get together for a meeting. Since Gary is in the room while Abs talks on
the phone, she makes up a fake name for who she is talking to (I can’t remember
which name she picks, however) before being like, “Oh, lunch tomorrow? Okay, sure, what time?” Next time we see her, she is indeed lunching
with J.R., in his fabulous penthouse hotel suite (that I totally want to live
in, by the way). This is a good,
important scene in which a lot of key information is conveyed, plus it also
provides some of the last bits of linkage between the two series as we see the
events of Dallas will play into the
storylines over here on KL, something
that gets rarer and rarer before disappearing completely as we make our way
deeper into the series.
Okay, so we learn that while Abs
sent J.R. some of Val’s manuscript (which we know, as we witnessed her doing it
last week with A Brand New Day) she
has left out several important chapters as a way of sorta blackmailing J.R. for
information on Jock’s will. She wants to
know if Gary is coming into a lot of money and what, if anything, Valene has to
do with it. Well, after some lovely
interplay between Hagman and Donna Mills (and, again, I remind you of how much
I enjoy watching these two perform together and the sizzling chemistry they
share), J.R. tells her that, yes, Gary is going to be coming into a lot of
money very soon, and that “Val’s got nothing to do with it.”
I wanna talk for a moment about
Abby’s intentions here and the question of whether or not she truly loves
Gary. Now, at least at this exact
juncture in the series, I personally believe that Abs does love Gary. I believe
that as soon as she moved onto the cul-de-sac back in Hitchhike: Part One, she has had her eyes set on Gary. I also believe that her season two affair
with Richard was merely a distraction while she bided her time and waited for
the marriage of Gary and Val to disintegrate.
I don’t think Abs views stealing Gary away from Val as a mere sexual
conquest or some sort of challenge she set for herself; I believe that from her
first day in the neighborhood, that was her long term, big goal, and I believe
that she loves Gary not because he’s a Texas Ewing from a rich oil family, but
because she just loves him.
Therefore, what to make of her
interest in the reading of Jock’s will and the potential for Gary to come into
millions of dollars? Why don’t you tell
me what you think, my lovely
readers? If Gary were to inherit
absolutely nothing from Jock’s will, do you believe Abs would stick around and
stand by him and become his loving wife?
Or, do you believe her interest in Gary stems from the possibility of
him having a ton of money? Leave
comments or write in to tell me what you think!
My personal opinion is that she would want to have Gary with or without
the money, but that she would certainly prefer him with a lot of money, if given the choice. Another real interesting thing
to note about this scene is that J.R. and Abs strike up a bit of a deal
involving Abs promising to “keep Gary out of Dallas.” J.R. says how when Gary was married to Val,
there was no threat because Val would never want to return to live in Dallas,
but now that Gary is single again, he
might be wanting to come back and join the power play over on the parent
series. So, in exchange for Abs
promising to keep Gary away, he gives her the secret information she so desires
about the impending reading of the will (and I suppose you could say Abs makes
good on her promise, since we only have three more Brief Dallas Interludes throughout the course of the entire series).
Oh yes, and one last thing that
I found striking and would like to note: We get a lovely little backstory from
J.R. to Abs about how Gary is just a born loser and can’t ever seem to shake
that quality. I don’t know if this story
is ever reiterated in another KL ep
or even in an ep of Dallas (I’m
pretty sure it isn’t) but I gotta say I loved the story and thought it helped
us to further understand Gary and his backstory. J.R. talks about how when Gary was young, he
really wanted a motorcycle (Hagman pronounces it as “motor-sickle,” which I really
enjoyed), so he busted his butt working hard and saving up money and reading
all the motorcycle magazines and what have you, eventually reaching a point
where his father was very proud of him and decided to buy him a motorcycle, only
for Gary, in all his excitement, to immediately drive it right into the glass
window of the motorcycle ("motor-sickle") dealership.
J.R. uses this story as a way to
illustrate what a joke Gary is, but we viewers can take the story in many other
ways. I think this story shows that,
when Gary sets his mind to it, he really can do anything he wants to. At the same time, it shows us that
sometimes he gets too excited by something and winds up making mistakes because
of that. The excitement of having the
motorcycle leads to him immediately crashing it, much like the excitement of a
torrid romance with Abs has lead to the disintegration of his marriage with
Val. We’ve also seen him get way too
excited way too quickly over, say, a potential methanol deal back in Power Play. While J.R. thinks this story is proof that Gary
is just a loser, I see the story in an even richer way, as an illustration of both his good qualities as well as his
bad ones.
Aside from these scenes, J.R.
only really has one other major sequence in this ep, and it’s near the end,
where he’s again shown riding in his limo, this time talking on a sexy 1982
car-phone. In this scene, we realize
that thanks to a nice big check he wrote, he has now had one of his many
companies buy Val’s publishing company and, presumably, has gained rights to do
whatever he wants with her book. I
predict we will have to wait until his next crossover, New Beginnings, to find out exactly what he’s got up his sleeve,
but watching this episode by itself, my prediction is that he will not simply halt the publication of her
novel. Instead, I think he has bought
the publishing company out so that, when the book is released, he can play it
off like, “Isn’t this a cute bit of fiction?”
After all, if J.R. Ewing himself endorses a book, then that book
couldn’t possibly be an exposé of all the Texas Ewings’ wheelings and dealings,
now could it? My conclusion is that J.R.
is gonna let the book be published but then use his power and clout to enforce
the idea that the book is complete and total fiction.
So that does it for J.R. this week,
but obviously we have a ton of other characters to focus on, as well. I want to note that three of our main cast
members sat out last week’s episode, Kenny and Ginger (no great loss there) as
well as Laura (a great big loss).
Fortunately, Laura is back in the picture this week in a big way
(unfortunately, Kenny and Ginger are also here, but they don’t get a big story
or waste too much of our time by being onscreen all that often, so let’s just
ignore them the same way the series tends to).
Anyway, when we last left off with Laura, she was still very pregnant
(and, in case I forgot to mention it, Constance was indeed pregnant in
real life with her own baby). Well, this
week she’s still pregnant, and when we first catch up to her and Richard, they
are driving home from the hospital, where they went because Laura was convinced
she was having contractions and about to give birth. Richard tells her they were Braxton Hicks
contractions and has to explain what those are to Laura, who hasn’t watched
much E.R since the show still hasn’t
been created yet (I watched a ton of E.R so I knew exactly what Richard was
talking about as soon as he said “Braxton Hicks”). In any case, it’s good to see we are getting
back to some Richard and Laura, that couple I could just watch all day.
This episode officially
establishes that Richard and Laura are back together, even living in the same
house and sleeping in the same bed again.
On the one hand, when you pause to think about it, it should feel ridiculous that we are only
four episodes away from Night, in
which Richard held Laura hostage with a gun for several hours, and now here
they are living together again. Like I
said, it should feel ridiculous that
this only happened a few episodes ago, but it doesn’t. There’s something about the KL writing that is just so good, so
subtle, so understandable, and something about the way these characters are
written and interact with each other that just makes all this play very
well. Again, on any other nighttime soap
opera of the 1980’s, a storyline like this could be and probably would be very campy and silly and
over-the-top, and the speed at which things happen would be part of the campy
fun. Here with KL, I hardly stop to question it because I believe in the
characters and I believe the characters are behaving true to themselves and not
serving as mere functions of the plot the way they so often did over on Dallas.
Another thing to note in this
episode is that Richard has already returned to being that almost unconsciously
controlling man in the way he speaks to Laura and subtly demeans her, probably
without even knowing he’s doing it.
Everything we’ve seen of Richard and Laura thus far has brought us to
very rich questions and thoughts about the behaviors of people. Can people really change or are they just inherently, at their core, designed
and meant to be a certain way? It wasn’t
so long ago that we were watching Best Intentions, in which Richard declared that he was finally hearing the way
he speaks to Laura for the first time and that he was going to stop doing that,
but now here we are with Daniel and
he’s already back to doing it again. A
lot of his degrading comments are expressed through his belief that Laura
should go through natural childbirth and Laura’s staunch refusal to do so. She is going to have an epidural and that’s
all there is to say about that.
Laura’s backstory and life
before the series was created are always left somewhat vague, and I kinda dig
it cuz it gives her some mystery. We
have established that her mother died when she was twelve years old and that
she pretty much had to take care of her father for many years, until Richard came
along, at which point she started to take care of Richard. We saw her father just one time, way back in
season one with Courageous Convictions,
and we heard him on the phone a few eps back (but it sure didn’t sound like the
same guy at all), but that’s it. This
week we get a smidge more of a glimpse into her past, when we learn that she is
terrified of natural childbirth because her mom drilled into her head so much
the horrors or giving birth, that it was God’s punishment to women (Jesus!) and
that it’s a pain so awful nobody can possibly imagine it, and so on and so
forth. A little later in the ep, Karen
and Laura have a pretty nice talk in which Karen assures her that it’s not so
bad, that she had three kids herself and did it the natural way and that she’s
glad she did. Personally, I’m on Team
Laura in this debate, and if I was a woman and was ever unfortunate enough to
become pregnant, you can bet that I would have the epidural and I would most
certainly not endure natural
childbirth (of course, if I was a woman and I got pregnant, I would immediately have an abortion because nothing in the world terrifies me more than small children).
While I’m speaking about Laura,
I do wanna take a moment to mention that this episode unveils our new Jason
Avery, technically our third Jason of the series (he was played by Justin Dana
in Pilot before morphing into Danny Gellis in Community Spirit). Anyway, now Jason is being played by Danny Ponce (that’s how he’s always credited on KL,
but his IMDb names him Luis Daniel Ponce).
Looking over his IMDb, I was immediately surprised to find out he’ll
only be in ten KL eps, but it appears
to be over a span of about three years, as he’ll make his last appearance in
1985 with Until Parted by Death, at
which point, I think, Jason morphs yet again.
I was also surprised when I took a peek at his IMDb and saw him listed
for the last two episodes of Happy Days,
and I am fairly certain that he played the kid who Fonzie wound up adopting at
the end of the show (I’m stating this with absolutely no research conducted, so
if I am wrong, please write in and yell at me).
I also note that he was in the main cast of the TV series Valerie.
I think this guy might actually be the most prolific of all the actors
to play Jason, as he’s definitely got quite a few credits to his name. One thing I have to note is that he looks exactly the same as our previous Jason,
so much so that if I hadn’t known in advance that Jason would be going through
a morph, I would not have even questioned it when we see Jason this week; he
looks precisely the same as predecessor Danny Gellis, so good on the casting
directors for making it a smooth morph.
But enough about Jason, who
remains a non-entity for pretty much the entire time he’s with the show. Val has a little book party late in the
episode, which of course Laura and Richard are nice enough to attend, but it is
during this book party that Laura’s water breaks. This is another very KL moment that I enjoyed, because the breaking of the water is presented
very undramatically. No exciting music
plays or swells, nothing like that, instead Laura is just like, “Richard, we
need to go,” and when Richard says how they can leave in a half hour, she says, “My water just broke.” She certainly says it in a tone like, “Hey,
this is a big deal, let’s go,” but it’s not super duper over-the-top, and it
probably would be over on Dallas.
The same holds true for the
entire birthing sequence, which does not go precisely as planned. Instead of making it safely to the hospital,
Richard and Laura wind up driving down some scary deserted back road and crashing
the car into a fence. Due to being
stranded out in the middle of nowhere with no form of communication (I’m a
little surprised that a former big shot like Richard doesn’t have a car phone,
but whatever), Laura is forced to give birth in the back of the car in a scene
that I sorta half-loved. My memory had
made this scene much stronger than it actually is, and I think that’s because
the acting from Constance and The Plesh is so strong that I allowed my love for
them to overshadow some shortcomings within this actual sequence.
I will pay the scene a big
compliment and say there is legitimate suspense about whether or not this baby
is going to live or die. At first, Laura
sorta drifts off and refuses to push the baby out despite Richard’s insistence
that she do so. Constance plays this
part well, because it doesn’t come off as her being somehow vindictive towards
Richard, but rather that she’s kinda lost in her own head right now. Instead of pushing, she is just sorta staring
off into the distance and talking to herself, verbalizing all the horrible
things her mother told her about childbirth.
However, the baby does eventually come out only for Richard to announce
that it’s not breathing. At this point,
Laura starts to give a prayer to God to not let her baby die, and I really dug this. You don’t really see religious stuff explored
too much on network TV, but this little bit alerts us that Laura is a believer
in God and she even starts to do that, like, prayer thing that’s famous (the
one that starts, “Hail Mary, full of grace;” quick reminder that I am not exactly a big churchgoer so I don’t
really know any of this stuff). In any
case, her prayers pay off because after a few seconds of Richard giving
mouth-to-mouth to the baby, we hear the baby start to cry and we know he’s okay.
Like I said, the acting here is
great, and I did feel legit suspense about the fate of the baby; I think a
first time viewer would certainly believe the baby’s life is at risk
(particularly since night time soap land loved to kill off the babies before
they had a chance to be born or two seconds after they were born), so it works
on that level. What’s my problem with
the scene? Eh, I suppose it’s just that
it’s such a TV birth. When the baby is
finally unveiled, Richard’s already got him draped in a blanket and of course
the blanket is completely white and not, you know, super red and bloody the way
it probably would be if this had just
occurred. Same with Richard’s hands,
which look like he just washed them thoroughly while singing the alphabet to himself
just a few seconds ago. Also, when
Richard is giving mouth-to-mouth, we don’t actually get to see the baby, just
sorta the backside of the obviously fake doll baby that The Plesh is acting
with. I suppose blood and goo and
placental fluid weren’t exactly in style on 1982 network TV, but I kinda expect
KL to keep it a little more realistic
than this, and seeing this birth in the backseat of someone’s car, which should
be really nasty and bloody and messy, portrayed so bloodlessly and in such a
television way sorta irked me.
Best thing about the scene? The entire range of emotions Constance
portrays in her Laura character.
Probably the most telling thing for me is the anger she finally lets out
at Richard while she’s in the throes of her pain, sorta chastising herself and
saying, “I never should have moved back in with you; what was I thinking?” She also throws out a comment about “Guns and
suicide notes” that call back to the events of the ending of season three. We see that Laura is doubting her own choice
to move back in with Richard and that, perhaps, she even believes he
manufactured this little car crash as a way to force her to do natural
childbirth. This calls back to a comment
she made back in Living Dangerously
when she confessed that she sometimes believes Richard has plotted and planned
out everything involving his little mental breakdown right down to the suicide
note she found in the trash. Oh yeah,
and at the end of the scene, the couple agree on the titular name of Daniel for
their new son, so there you go.
I feel like I’m kinda jumping
all over the place this week, because Laura giving birth is actually the final
scene of the episode, and we even run our ending episode credits over a super
cute picture of Constance with her real-life son (who was actually named Daniel
in real life, by the way), but I still haven’t talked about two other important
plots this week, those belonging to Karen and Val. Who to talk about first? Hmmm, I’ll go with Val.
This week, the wheels continue
to spin towards Val’s book going to publication. I feel like people are talking a lot about Capricorn Crude even though it hasn’t even been published yet, but
I suppose it’s the gossip factor regarding it probably being a Ewing tell-all
book. Suddenly Val is finding herself
surrounded by a lot of gossipy people.
In all honesty, the Val’s book story is blurring a bit in my memory
(reminder that My Beloved Grammy always watch one disk of eps per visit, and
there’s usually five eps on a disk, so sometimes they start to blur and I do
apologize for that). The basic gist of
Val’s story this week is that she’s starting to get in over her head regarding
the whole book thing, not knowing how to deal with the gossip and all the
questions people throw at her. Indeed,
at her book party, some old woman asks her, “Tell me the truth; this is about
the Ewings in Texas, isn’t it?” and she has to sorta avoid the question.
Honestly, Val’s stuff isn’t all
that interesting to me this week, so forgive me for seeming blasé about it, but
I’m ready to move on to Karen, who’s storyline involving the mobsters and her
personal investigation into Sid’s death continues to gain steam. This week she is carefully going over the
gigantic court transcripts that Mack gave her in A Brand New Day, building her own personal case against the
mobsters. I note with real interest that
Roy Lance returns this week, and not just that, but it’s actually the same
actor! Season two was a bit of time ago,
and I honestly didn’t recognize Roy this week and assumed that he had been
recast. After all, the last time we saw
him was over a year ago, right? It
wouldn’t have surprised me if the producers had just hired some new guy and not
expected the audience to notice, but when I took a glance at the episode’s IMDb
page, I see that it’s the same actor, Steven Hirsh, who was first featured back
in Chance of a Lifetime and will be
back for his final appearance next week with Svengali. I’m very pleased
that the same actor is here from back in season two, as that shows a surprising
attention to detail that I really wouldn’t have expected.
This week, Karen and Mack have
another one of their super cute arguments, something we will see regularly
throughout the course of the series. I
love Karen and Mack arguments, by the way, because they’re almost always
infused with a nice dose of humor to keep things light; it never feels like the
two are going to claw each other’s eyeballs out, but rather that they are just
two forceful people who want their opinions heard. In this instance, Mack thinks Karen is
getting into dangerous waters and he wants her to give him the court
transcripts back. At first she refuses
and he threatens to arrest her, but even this development plays out in a really
cool way. It’s not like, “I’m gonna
arrest you if you don’t do what I say!”
It’s not like that, it’s more like he is a public defender and he does have a job to do and he will
arrest Karen if she gives him no other choice.
So, about halfway through the episode, Karen gives back the transcripts
and even makes a movie reference that I appreciated, when she tells Mack she
realized that she is a single mother of three kids and “not Michael
Corleone.” This hardly concludes the
storyline, obviously, and we have a few more eps in store for us in which Karen
deals with who’s responsible for her husband’s death.
What other developments this
week? Hmmm, well Abs buys Gary an
apartment, which I suppose is important.
It’s a pretty quaint and modest little place, an apartment I had completely
forgotten ever existed on this show (by the way, at this exact moment I am
waiting to see when Gary and Abs move into their sexy Beach House, which is one
of my favorite KL locations and, if I
recall correctly, only exists within the confines of the fourth season of the
series). She tells him the apartment is
for when he needs to get away from it all, including herself. I don’t know if this is a genuine, thoughtful
gift to Gary, a truthful expression that she knows she can be a lot to handle
sometimes, or if she is just trying to keep their relationship happy now that
she officially knows that Gary will be coming into big money pretty
shortly. Personally, I’ll go for a mix
of the two options, because Abs is a complex character and she is capable of
many different behaviors based upon many different motivations.
Before I completely wrap up my
thoughts for the ep, I wanna take a moment to note that this is the last time
The Plesh ever writes a script for KL,
and so I am a little bittersweet about
that fact. Honestly, I almost wish that
his last two episodes weren’t placed right here at the very start of the
season, that they could have spaced them out a bit so I would have the delight
near the middle and ending of the season of starting an episode and saying, “Oh
yay, The Plesh wrote this one!” Instead,
Daniel puts a bow on his writing
contributions to the series. One thing
that makes this fact easier to take is that The Plesh is not completely finished being a creative force behind the scenes,
as he is going to direct five episodes of the series in the future,
actually at a point where he is no longer a main cast member on the show. His first directorial job will be the 1983
episode Homecoming, and then he
directs three episodes in 1989 (Mrs.
Peacock in the Library with the Lead Pipe; Birds Do It, Bees Do It,;and Twice
Victim) and then one final episode in 1991 (Simmer). So he may be done
writing, but we will still have the opportunity to see him direct in the
future, which is exciting.
Since this is The Plesh’s final
script, I wanna do a bit of a summation of his writing efforts on the
show. From 1980 to 1982, he wrote eight
episodes, starting with Bottom of the Bottle: Part Two and then spanning Chance of a Lifetime, Squeezeplay, The Vigil, Secrets, Night, and A Brand New Day, finishing up here with Daniel.
So which was his best episode?
Looking at the list all laid out like that, it’s hard to decide what his
best ep is, but I finally realized it has to be Night. I believe in my
reflection on season three, I went so far as to say Night was the best episode of the first three seasons, and I stand
by that. This episode also gave The
Plesh the opportunity to dive deep within his own character and really explore
the intricacies and nuances of Richard Avery as he went through a total nervous
breakdown, and I think that episode stands out particularly because of that
fact. In any case, he wrote eight strong
episodes and even though Richard is going to a be a character on the show for
a little while longer (through the end of the season), I am pretty sad that we won’t have any more scripts
penned by The Plesh.
Overall, Daniel takes the ball from A Brand New Day and continues to run with it.
Storylines are being put on the stove and the heat is being turned up,
slowly but surely moving closer to a boiling point. Even with just the first two episodes of
the season, it’s easy to see why this would be the year that the show finally
makes it into the top twenty and can officially be called a hit series. Everyone in the cast is getting material to
work with, everyone has stories going on, and the stories are building and
continuing from week to week, leaving me, of course, eager to watch more. Oh yeah, and last but not least, Hagman is of
course fabulous in his guest spot, though I confess that I thought he was maybe a little more fabulous in his last
three visits to the cul-de-sac; his energy level seemed just a smidge lower
than in those previous eps. However,
it’s still lovely to see him here and he still goes a great job, making me
somewhat bummed that we only have one more crossover episode for the entire
series.
re: Richard and J.R. interacting...I believe they did talk some in "Community Spirit". And then Richard wanted Laura to get "close" to that Chip character (Knots really associated "Chips" to bad guys). That Chip dude was some sort of advisor to J.R., and Richard wanted to get in on the Ewing gravy train!
ReplyDeleteI was always in and out with this show until S4 and I vividly remember this episode and thinking 1.) I had never seen childbirth on television that took place out of a hospital unless it was a sitcom and the mom-to-be was trapped in an elevator or something like that, and 2.) I had never seen a show use a one-time only shot for the end credits, which just wasn't done at the time. And the fact that it was of the actress and her real-life child, well even as a kid myself, I remember thinking that was a very classy touch.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of actors writing for the show, I am currently watching S9 and caught a very nice episode called "Bouncing Babies" written by William Devane, and ending with a very memorable (and very sad) final scene. I look forward to your recap of it here in the future.
Brett...as to the Abs theory...I agree that she loves Gary, but she is also extremely calculating and I think her question to JR is about pinpointing her options and making her next move. I honestly think that her ambition trumps every other emotion and that if Gary wasn't going to be mega-rich then she would sacrifice her growing attraction to move on to someone else in order to reach her goals. Luckily for her, Gary does inherit millions! Just my theory...
ReplyDeleteI don't think Abby really loved Gary. I am sure she was sexually attracted to him -- I mean, with a young Ted Shackelford as his face and body, who wouldn't be? But love? I think Abby's backstory (revealed in season nine) shows that she was burned on love early and she never really recovered a sense of "love."
ReplyDeleteShe and Gary had great chemistry. But Abby only loved the idea of Gary -- Ewing, Texas, money. From the beginning, she kept trying to get him to interact with J.R. because she wanted that connection to the money. Once she had Gary, she did not treat him like a man she loved. She lied to and deceived him over and over. When he fell off the wagon, she was not there for him. She slept with Sumner.
"Once she had Gary, she did not treat him like a man she loved."
DeleteTypical mistress, no longer the always agreeing, ego- masturbating woman once she becomes the wife.
I agree. I don't think Abby loved Gary, at least not at the beginning. She set her eyes on him because he's a Ewing and she knew he came from money. I really don't think she would have stayed with him if he didn't get his inheritance, she would have set her eyes on Sumner or someone else with money.
DeleteI believe that Richard and JR had a moment in "Community Spirit"-- I actually think there's even a cute little moment where Richard was talking, and JR turns and says to him "What's your name, again?" in that condescending and fun way that only Hagman can pull off.
ReplyDeleteABBY! Oh god, she is so infuriating and wonderful to me just because I don't think she is ever written in a way where you can 100% know what her motivations are. Do I think she loves Gary? Yes. Because he's a Ewing? Even more yes. Is that why she set her sights on him? Maybe. It's why I love this show-- There is just such a complexity with the characters.
One of Abby's famous quotes sums it all up..."If I have to choose between love and money, money is going to win every time."
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