James from London
International Treasure
01 Sep 14: DALLAS: Hurt v. 16 Nov 16: EMPIRE: Chimes at Midnight v. 15 Mar 19: DYNASTY: Parisian Legend Has It…
Each of this week’s episodes is very distinctive. ‘Hurt’ is New DALLAS at its darkest and most brilliant. ‘Chimes at Midnight’ plays almost like a stand-alone instalment of EMPIRE until a turns-everything-on-its-head twist in the last scene makes you want to watch the whole thing all over again. ’Parisian Legend Has It …’ is proof that, despite all previous evidence to the contrary, New DYNASTY is more than capable of taking itself seriously long enough to produce a uniquely atmospheric and mysterious hour of drama when it so chooses.
“No more secrets — this ends now!” declares Elena Ramos at the top of this week’s DALLAS, heralding a non-stop thrill ride as one devastating revelation leads to another and then another, and dramatic pay-off follows dramatic pay-off. Revelation #1 comes in the aftermath of Drew’s funeral: “I know the truth,” Elena tells the Ewings. “I’ve read JR’s letter. I know all of you framed Cliff Barnes.” This much everyone in the family already knew, but there’s more. “Your father didn’t kill JR,” Elena tells Pamela. “Bobby’s been lying to all of you — you helped him frame an innocent man.” This comes as a surprise not only to Pamela but to the other Ewing women, Sue Ellen and Ann. “Tell me this isn’t true, Bobby,” Ann asks her husband. “It’s true,” Elena insists. “I wanna hear it from him!” she yells.
Bobby’s response brings us to Revelation #2: “JR was dying,” he explains. “He arranged for his own murder and it was up to me to pin it on Cliff. JR felt that with Cliff behind bars, the family could move forward, put an end to the feud that caused so much pain for both families.” “It had to be done, Pamela,” Christopher chips in. “There was no other way.” “No other way? You end a blood feud by walking away from it!” Ann protests. “Pamela, I know you’re upset —” John Ross begins, only to be interrupted by Sue Ellen. “You knew,” she realises, before turning angrily to Christopher, “and so did you …!” “They both only knew the truth after Cliff was arrested,” Bobby clarifies. “But you continued to lie to us?” Ann asks on behalf of herself and Sue Ellen. “You couldn’t know!” he replies. Elena interrupts this very satisfying game of ‘Who Knew Precisely What and When’ to deliver a taboo-busting speech that made me punch the air the first time I heard it. “JR’s plan wasn’t to end the feud or anything so altruistic,” she argues. “When he died, we rushed to sentimentalise him. We remembered the charm and the fun and the wit, but he was also a thief and a liar. He ruined people’s lives. He got us to write his ending, the ending where JR Ewing isn’t a monster.” Elena might be talking about JR, but her words apply equally to the pedestal Jock was placed on after his death in 1981, not just by the other characters but by DALLAS itself. The new series’ depiction of Jock has been far less rose-coloured, and now, by applying the same clear-eyed view to his son, it feels as if the whole process has finally come full circle. And how incredibly satisfying that, of all people, Elena, aka “that Mexican girl” as JR once referred to her, should be the one to cut him down to size. I’m reminded of the lowly Mrs Scotfield who was responsible for the downfall of Ewing Oil in 1987.
“You wanna line us up in front of a firing squad because we framed an innocent man? There ain’t nothing innocent about Cliff Barnes!” barks John Ross, going on the attack. “Why are you doing this, Elena? How is this even your concern?” adds Christopher, paving the way for Revelation #3. “That’s the deed to my father’s land, the land of my ancestors, the land my family has a rightful claim to, a land rich with oil,” says Elena, handing Bobby an envelope. “JR manipulated the records. He switched the deeds. The land my father bought … was a dry, worthless rock. My father died drilling a rock. My brother went off the deep end drilling a rock. My family is ruined because of JR’s duplicity and greed!” Now it’s Bobby’s turn to be shocked. “I had no idea,” he says.
Even as the Ewings are trying to absorb this news, Christopher cues up Revelation #4 by asking Elena how she found out about the deed switch. “Cliff Barnes told me,” she admits. “You’ve been talking to my father?” asks Pamela in surprise. “He came to me,” she explains. “He wanted to help me … Both of our families have been wronged by the Ewings, Pamela.” Thus far, Nicolas has stayed in the background, watching in silent dismay as the very secrets he murdered Drew to keep buried have been brought to the surface by Elena, but now he chooses to make his presence felt. “What was it you said to me, Bobby — ‘the truth sometimes hurts'?” he asks smugly. This leads to Revelation #5 as Bobby quickly deduces that Nicolas was planted at Ewing Global by Elena. “Nicolas and I are childhood friends, yes,” she acknowledges. “I knew he would help and he has.” “So you’ve been lying to our faces ever since and you squirmed your way to get our trust back? Screw you!” snarls John Ross at the woman he was in bed with the night before.
There are further revelations to come, but now it’s time to Elena to tell Bobby what she wants in return for keeping her mouth shut: “The money you made off my father’s land and a piece of Ewing property. These are my terms. If you’re not happy with them, I’m more than happy to tell the world what you did to Cliff Barnes — what all of you did.” Oh, and there’s also the small question of what happens to the man currently rotting in a Mexican prison cell. “You pardon Cliff, we don’t go to the police with your crime,” adds Nicolas. “That said, I can’t predict what Cliff might do once he’s free.” At this, he permits himself a slight smile which earns him a “You son of a bitch!” and a sock on the jaw from Christopher. Pamela walks out in disgust. Bobby orders Nicolas and Elena to leave as well. John Ross stops Elena on her way out. “You sure got what you wanted last night, didn’t you?” he mutters.
Bobby is then confronted by each of the three women he has deceived. First is Sue Ellen, who takes JR’s love letter, the same one that she read aloud at his funeral and, in a gesture that feels almost as sacrilegious as Elena pushing JR off his posthumous pedestal, screws it up, pronouncing it “garbage! … If he really loved me, why didn’t he tell me he was sick? Why didn’t he give me a chance to say good-bye?” Bobby has no answers for her. She follows this with another question: “So — who really killed JR?” He refuses to tell her. She looks at him with angry contempt. “Hell of a way to be the steward of Southfork,” she snaps. Next, Bobby faces Pamela, who seems more disappointed than angry. “From him, I expect lies,” she says, referring to John Ross. “From you, I expect better.” Lastly, it’s Ann’s turn. “Tell me you were weak,” she pleads, “tell me you were doing it for your brother — but don’t tell me you framed Cliff because you thought it was right.” “It was right,” he replies simply.
Throughout each of these confrontations, Bobby remains unwavering in his insistence that he was doing the right thing for the right reasons (“I wanted to spare you, spare the family,” he tells Sue Ellen. “The less you knew about JR’s plan, the safer you were … No-one can stop me from protecting this family,” he tells Ann.) But then, left alone in his study, he finally comes unglued as ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash plays on the soundtrack — a somewhat obvious song choice, perhaps, but a hugely effective one. Certain lines resonate powerfully. “What have I become, my sweetest friend?” croons Cash as Bobby looks down at a photo of JR, before throwing it angrily against a wall as Cash sings the next line, “Everyone I know goes away in the end.” Bobby sends the contents of his shelves and desk crashing to the floor as Cash growls, “You can have it all, my empire of dirt,” before collapsing wearily into a chair and wearily surveying the damage on “I will let you down, I will make you hurt.”
This instalment of DALLAS feels like a companion piece to JR’s funeral episode. While that ep served as an elegiac farewell to a much-loved character, full of moving eulogies and remembrances, this one examines the flip side of grief, where darker and more painful feelings reside. (They didn’t call it ‘Hurt’ for nothing.) Elena having reminded JR’s family of what a monster he could be, it now falls to Sue Ellen to humanise him again. Despite Bobby’s refusal to tell her, it doesn’t take her long to figure out who did pull the trigger (just as she did the first time JR was shot). “You were JR’s most trusted friend. Once I remembered that it was easy,” she tells Bum, He tells her how sorry he is. “I’m sure you are,” she replies sarcastically. “I’m sure you’re sorry for shooting JR. I am sure you are sorry for robbing me of a good-bye … JR was my husband! He was my love! I should have been the first one to know he was sick — not you! I should have been the one that was there with him — not you!” Then she asks about the moments immediately before his death: “Was he scared? Was he in pain?” “He was brave,” Bum assures her, “and he loved you very much.”
Bobby and Elena have a private meeting where he agrees to her demands. “You could have had your restitution without burning bridges, without causing so much pain for people who had nothing whatsoever to do with what happened to your father,” he says. “That’s where you and I disagree, Bobby,” she replies. “There’s a pattern of lies and deception on Southfork. There’s a poison that seeps into every limb of this family tree. Somebody had to put a stop to it. Too many lives have been ruined.” Some might call it “a pattern of lies and deception … a poison that seeps into every limb of this family tree”; others might simply call it life inside a soap opera. Either way, it’s the thing that prompted Maj Hagman, when she read the original DALLAS pilot script, to exclaim excitedly to her husband, "There's not one redeeming character in the whole show!”
Bobby also hands over Cliff’s “get out of jail free card” — with one proviso. “It’s a pending pardon,” he tells Elena, “depending on what you decide to do … Do you really think Cliff Barnes is gonna let bygones be bygones? He’s gonna come after the Ewings for his own vengeance and I’m gonna stop him any way I have to. Is that what you want, Elena, more bloodshed?” “That’s not my problem,” she shrugs. “I understand you wanting justice for what JR did to your family,” he persists, “but the Barnes/Ewing feud is a whole other beast and it doesn’t involve you. You wanna take that dog for a walk? Fine — but if it bites somebody, it’s because you let it.”
Throughout this episode, people have been lining up to tell Bobby how disappointed in him they are. As Elena turns to leave, it’s his turn. “You broke my heart today,” he tells her. It’s a beautifully poignant moment.
Elena tells Cliff over the phone that he is to be a free man and that their deal is done. “I am far from done,” he tells her. “I’m not stopping until I wipe the Ewings off the face of the earth. And you made it possible. I couldn’t have done it without you.” The call ends with the sound of his mad laughter, which matches JR’s evil laughter at the end of last week’s episode.
“There were times when Pam and I hated each other. Our husbands and Ewing Oil didn’t mix. But there was always one thing that we could share. We understood what it was like to be an outsider: to be a Ewing without being born to it.” So said Sue Ellen back in ’86. There are a couple of variations on this relationship — two opposing women connected by a common experience — in this week’s Soap Land. The first is Pamela and Elena. There have been several areas of conflict between them since the series began (Pamela’s fake brother Tommy sabotaging Elena’s engagement to Christopher, Elena’s real brother Drew rigging the bomb that killed Pamela’s babies, their habit of falling in love with the same men, etc.), yet Elena makes a point of asking Pamela to Southfork to hear her big announcement at the start of the episode (“Your father didn’t kill JR — your father was framed”) and now she visits her at Sue Ellen’s house to tell her which piece of property Bobby agreed to give to her as restitution: “I asked for the land Jock Ewing took from your grandfather.” “Why?” Pamela asks in surprise. “Because I know exactly how you feel, Pamela. The Ewings have hurt both of our families,” Elena explains. (This also means, contrary to what DALLAS told us when it sanctified Jock after his death, that he really did steal Digger out of what was rightfully his — I knew it!)
The second example of feuding women finding common ground takes place on DYNASTY. Even though Alexis caused New New Cristal’s miscarriage (albeit unintentionally: she was actually trying to kill her), she is still able to empathise with her loss. As Blake puts it, “at the end of the day, you’re a mother who’s lost her child. You understand more of what she’s going through than I ever possibly could.” “After Adam, I went to bed and wouldn’t leave,” Alexis recalls. “I closed the blinds, turned off all the lights and locked the door.” “When did it stop?” Cristal asks. “The pain?" she replies. "It didn’t. It just moved behind other things instead of in front of them.”
Elena has another surprise for Pamela. She hands her a document: “It’s your father’s pardon. You can either use it or burn it. If your father gets out, he will go after the Ewings. That shouldn’t be my call. It’s yours.” This gesture recalls Donna Krebbs’ last scene in ’87 when Senator Dowling gave her the final say over whether or not the Ewing brothers should go to jail over their involvement with BD Calhoun.
There are still three bombshells left to go off on DALLAS. First, Harris Ryland, having learned that Emma has been making private deals with the Mendez-Ochoa cartel, decides the time has come to tell her that he’s been secretly working for the CIA all along. “This is bigger than you and me, Emma, and whatever our quarrel of the week is,” he insists. Next, Bum has news for John Ross: “That video of you and Emma, I tracked down who sent it to you: It was Nicolas Treviño.” This leads to the final revelation of the ep when John Ross spitefully spills the beans to Nicolas: “Did Elena tell you how she got JR’s letter? She came to me last night and, well, you’re a smart man, Nicolas. You can put the rest together.”
Like DALLAS, this week’s EMPIRE is dominated by one storyline in which pretty much all the characters are involved. The company is hacked and held to ransom. Exciting! Whodunnit? Various suspects are suggested and quickly discounted: Shyne (“way too complicated for his ass”), Tariq (“too messy”), etc. Eventually, Andre figures out that the real culprit is Gram, a tech-savvy ex-boyfriend of Tiana with whom Hakeem has an ongoing beef. Gram protests his innocence, but “we found everything on your computer, brother,” Andre tells him smoothly. Gram asks if they're gonna call the cops. “That’s what white folks do,” Lucious replies. “We got something better in mind.” Enter Shyne and his boys, who only too happy to rough Gram up (and maybe even worse). And just like that, Shyne and Lucious are back on the same side, at least for now.
There’s an equivalent situation on DYNASTY when Blake finds out who he believes is responsible for firing the gun that killed Mark Jennings and Cristal's unborn baby: a henchman named Mack. Like Gram, Mack denies having anything to do with the crime, but Alexis claims to have seen him in the vicinity just before it happened. Blake doesn’t call the cops either — he just beats Mack to death with his bare hands because this week, Blake’s a cold-blooded murderer, Lucious-style, and what’s more, Cristal and Anders are his accomplices who help him get rid of the body.
What we already know, of course, is that Alexis framed Mack (it’s a little eerie to hear the former Paige Matheson refer to somebody by that name) to cover up her own guilt. But what we won’t discover until the closing scene of EMPIRE is that Gram has also been framed — and you’ll never guess by whom.
Among Empire’s leaked files is a nude selfie of Cookie that she sent to Angelo, which ends up on a giant screen for all to see. So far so New DYNASTY, but here the humour works because it's character-based rather than farcical: Hakeem covering his eyes to avoid the sight of Cookie’s cookies, Lucious hurling a chair at the screen in anger and Cookie herself yelling defiantly, “What the hell y’all looking at? They perky!” It also leads to an unexpectedly tender scene where Cookie, concerned that she is jeopardising Angelo’s political campaign, tells him they should split: “I believe in you, Angelo, and I think you can do some amazing things for this city … but if you stay with me, you’re gonna lose … I think you should go.” It’s an act of self-sacrifice on a par with Sue Ellen breaking up with Dusty because she didn’t want to be a constant reminder of his impotency. Later on, Cookie is watching TV when Angelo, besieged by reporters eager for a quote about her topless photo, suddenly strips off his shirt, “in solidarity alongside Ms Lyon and women everywhere.” Cookie is surprised to find herself saying, “I love you” to the TV screen.
After merely hinting at a potential dependency problem for Jamal two episodes ago, EMPIRE all of a sudden shows him suffering withdrawal symptoms as he attempts to quit his medication before relapsing towards the end of the episode. Not since FALCON CREST took Maggie Channing from casual drinking to fully fledged alcoholism in the space of about three episodes has a Soap Land addiction taken hold so quickly. While Elena is out to expose family secrets on DALLAS, a stoned Jamal wants to celebrate them on EMPIRE. “The secrets, the dirty little secrets,” he rambles to Major D. “I’m talking about the good ones too, these beautiful, beautiful secrets that we hide and if they keep hidden, they just gonna curl up and they gonna die inside, but nah, I’m gonna put it all in the music. I’m gonna set us all free. All of us.”
Speaking of secrets, DYNASTY's Fallon and Sam are concerned about Steven’s strange behaviour and decide to visit him in Paris. This is Soap Land’s first visit to Actual Paris since Bobby and April’s fateful honeymoon in 1990. Now as then, there are establishing shots of the Arc de Triomphe, strolls along the Seine, street artists, swanky balls and an atmosphere thick with European intrigue. Whereas Bobby and April (or more accurately, Sheila Foley pretending to be April) had to make do with slumming it in the honeymoon suite of the George V hotel, the Carringtons have their very own luxury apartment in the middle of the city. In place of Sheila Foley stealing April’s identity, the plot revolves around Fallon and Sam trying to figure out the identity of Steven’s mysterious friend George Emerson, who just happens to have the same name as a character in Steven’s favourite novel, 'A Room With a View'. Is he a grifter, a lover or, as the resurrected Matthew Blaisdel was to Claudia at the end of Season 1, simply a figment of Steven’s muddled imagination? It’s a genuinely intriguing mystery.
By the end of their respective episodes, both of Soap Land’s gay sons, Jamal and Steven, are bedridden, drugged and helpless. When Jamal fails to wake up after a wild night together, Major D fears he’s OD’d and turns to Philip, Jamal’s PTSD sponsor, for help. “He didn’t overdose, he blacked out,” Philip assures him. Meanwhile, a confused Steven checks himself into a clinic in Paris which is where George Emerson finally appears and admits that his name isn’t really George, that he was lying when he told Steven they slept together (“You’re so generous, so trusting … I’m not even gay”) and that he deliberately made it appear to Sam and Fallon “that you’d lost the plot.” As he’s speaking, he injects Steven’s IV with “a little something to help you relax.” This renders Steven unable to do anything but listen to Not George’s story: “All this started as a sort of morbid curiosity,” he tells him, “to see firsthand the life that I had been denied, and you were the easiest way in — this wounded bird, so far from home, away from the Carrington fortress.” As he is speaking, Not George’s accent shifts eerily from English to American. “But the more I got to know you,” he continues, “the more I grew to resent you, how ungrateful you are. You had everything and you walked away from it. And now I’m gonna claim it — everything my father gave you. It’s a real shame you won’t be there to welcome me home, brother … but we’ll always have Paris.” “Adam,” Steven realises. It’s kind of like 'The Talented Mr Ripley' — only rather than insinuate himself into a rich man’s life to assume someone else’s identity, Adam has done it to assume his own.
Like DYNASTY, EMPIRE ends with an eldest son revealing his true self. “Everything went more or less exactly as planned, apart from that part where you leaked a nude selfie of my mama,” Andre tells his accomplice Vaughn as he hands him a bag of money. Yes, Empire’s real hacker was strait-laced Andre! “No matter how much I try and play but the rules, the world’s always gonna see me as a well-dressed thug, the son of a gangster,” he tells girlfriend Nessa. “Rhonda always said the only thing standing in the way of me taking over Empire was I’m the son that’s not musical. But you — you're the embodiment of music, Nessa. I think Rhona would approve … of us, combining our strengths and becoming powerful together … all-powerful.” Nessa seems to like the idea, which makes her and Andre Soap Land’s first scheming couple since, well, Andre and Rhonda. So has Andre simply replaced Rhonda with New Rhonda, the way Blake did New Cristal with New New Cristal? I guess there’s only one way to find out …
And this week’s Top 3 are …
1 (1) DALLAS
2 (2) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY
Each of this week’s episodes is very distinctive. ‘Hurt’ is New DALLAS at its darkest and most brilliant. ‘Chimes at Midnight’ plays almost like a stand-alone instalment of EMPIRE until a turns-everything-on-its-head twist in the last scene makes you want to watch the whole thing all over again. ’Parisian Legend Has It …’ is proof that, despite all previous evidence to the contrary, New DYNASTY is more than capable of taking itself seriously long enough to produce a uniquely atmospheric and mysterious hour of drama when it so chooses.
“No more secrets — this ends now!” declares Elena Ramos at the top of this week’s DALLAS, heralding a non-stop thrill ride as one devastating revelation leads to another and then another, and dramatic pay-off follows dramatic pay-off. Revelation #1 comes in the aftermath of Drew’s funeral: “I know the truth,” Elena tells the Ewings. “I’ve read JR’s letter. I know all of you framed Cliff Barnes.” This much everyone in the family already knew, but there’s more. “Your father didn’t kill JR,” Elena tells Pamela. “Bobby’s been lying to all of you — you helped him frame an innocent man.” This comes as a surprise not only to Pamela but to the other Ewing women, Sue Ellen and Ann. “Tell me this isn’t true, Bobby,” Ann asks her husband. “It’s true,” Elena insists. “I wanna hear it from him!” she yells.
Bobby’s response brings us to Revelation #2: “JR was dying,” he explains. “He arranged for his own murder and it was up to me to pin it on Cliff. JR felt that with Cliff behind bars, the family could move forward, put an end to the feud that caused so much pain for both families.” “It had to be done, Pamela,” Christopher chips in. “There was no other way.” “No other way? You end a blood feud by walking away from it!” Ann protests. “Pamela, I know you’re upset —” John Ross begins, only to be interrupted by Sue Ellen. “You knew,” she realises, before turning angrily to Christopher, “and so did you …!” “They both only knew the truth after Cliff was arrested,” Bobby clarifies. “But you continued to lie to us?” Ann asks on behalf of herself and Sue Ellen. “You couldn’t know!” he replies. Elena interrupts this very satisfying game of ‘Who Knew Precisely What and When’ to deliver a taboo-busting speech that made me punch the air the first time I heard it. “JR’s plan wasn’t to end the feud or anything so altruistic,” she argues. “When he died, we rushed to sentimentalise him. We remembered the charm and the fun and the wit, but he was also a thief and a liar. He ruined people’s lives. He got us to write his ending, the ending where JR Ewing isn’t a monster.” Elena might be talking about JR, but her words apply equally to the pedestal Jock was placed on after his death in 1981, not just by the other characters but by DALLAS itself. The new series’ depiction of Jock has been far less rose-coloured, and now, by applying the same clear-eyed view to his son, it feels as if the whole process has finally come full circle. And how incredibly satisfying that, of all people, Elena, aka “that Mexican girl” as JR once referred to her, should be the one to cut him down to size. I’m reminded of the lowly Mrs Scotfield who was responsible for the downfall of Ewing Oil in 1987.
“You wanna line us up in front of a firing squad because we framed an innocent man? There ain’t nothing innocent about Cliff Barnes!” barks John Ross, going on the attack. “Why are you doing this, Elena? How is this even your concern?” adds Christopher, paving the way for Revelation #3. “That’s the deed to my father’s land, the land of my ancestors, the land my family has a rightful claim to, a land rich with oil,” says Elena, handing Bobby an envelope. “JR manipulated the records. He switched the deeds. The land my father bought … was a dry, worthless rock. My father died drilling a rock. My brother went off the deep end drilling a rock. My family is ruined because of JR’s duplicity and greed!” Now it’s Bobby’s turn to be shocked. “I had no idea,” he says.
Even as the Ewings are trying to absorb this news, Christopher cues up Revelation #4 by asking Elena how she found out about the deed switch. “Cliff Barnes told me,” she admits. “You’ve been talking to my father?” asks Pamela in surprise. “He came to me,” she explains. “He wanted to help me … Both of our families have been wronged by the Ewings, Pamela.” Thus far, Nicolas has stayed in the background, watching in silent dismay as the very secrets he murdered Drew to keep buried have been brought to the surface by Elena, but now he chooses to make his presence felt. “What was it you said to me, Bobby — ‘the truth sometimes hurts'?” he asks smugly. This leads to Revelation #5 as Bobby quickly deduces that Nicolas was planted at Ewing Global by Elena. “Nicolas and I are childhood friends, yes,” she acknowledges. “I knew he would help and he has.” “So you’ve been lying to our faces ever since and you squirmed your way to get our trust back? Screw you!” snarls John Ross at the woman he was in bed with the night before.
There are further revelations to come, but now it’s time to Elena to tell Bobby what she wants in return for keeping her mouth shut: “The money you made off my father’s land and a piece of Ewing property. These are my terms. If you’re not happy with them, I’m more than happy to tell the world what you did to Cliff Barnes — what all of you did.” Oh, and there’s also the small question of what happens to the man currently rotting in a Mexican prison cell. “You pardon Cliff, we don’t go to the police with your crime,” adds Nicolas. “That said, I can’t predict what Cliff might do once he’s free.” At this, he permits himself a slight smile which earns him a “You son of a bitch!” and a sock on the jaw from Christopher. Pamela walks out in disgust. Bobby orders Nicolas and Elena to leave as well. John Ross stops Elena on her way out. “You sure got what you wanted last night, didn’t you?” he mutters.
Bobby is then confronted by each of the three women he has deceived. First is Sue Ellen, who takes JR’s love letter, the same one that she read aloud at his funeral and, in a gesture that feels almost as sacrilegious as Elena pushing JR off his posthumous pedestal, screws it up, pronouncing it “garbage! … If he really loved me, why didn’t he tell me he was sick? Why didn’t he give me a chance to say good-bye?” Bobby has no answers for her. She follows this with another question: “So — who really killed JR?” He refuses to tell her. She looks at him with angry contempt. “Hell of a way to be the steward of Southfork,” she snaps. Next, Bobby faces Pamela, who seems more disappointed than angry. “From him, I expect lies,” she says, referring to John Ross. “From you, I expect better.” Lastly, it’s Ann’s turn. “Tell me you were weak,” she pleads, “tell me you were doing it for your brother — but don’t tell me you framed Cliff because you thought it was right.” “It was right,” he replies simply.
Throughout each of these confrontations, Bobby remains unwavering in his insistence that he was doing the right thing for the right reasons (“I wanted to spare you, spare the family,” he tells Sue Ellen. “The less you knew about JR’s plan, the safer you were … No-one can stop me from protecting this family,” he tells Ann.) But then, left alone in his study, he finally comes unglued as ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash plays on the soundtrack — a somewhat obvious song choice, perhaps, but a hugely effective one. Certain lines resonate powerfully. “What have I become, my sweetest friend?” croons Cash as Bobby looks down at a photo of JR, before throwing it angrily against a wall as Cash sings the next line, “Everyone I know goes away in the end.” Bobby sends the contents of his shelves and desk crashing to the floor as Cash growls, “You can have it all, my empire of dirt,” before collapsing wearily into a chair and wearily surveying the damage on “I will let you down, I will make you hurt.”
This instalment of DALLAS feels like a companion piece to JR’s funeral episode. While that ep served as an elegiac farewell to a much-loved character, full of moving eulogies and remembrances, this one examines the flip side of grief, where darker and more painful feelings reside. (They didn’t call it ‘Hurt’ for nothing.) Elena having reminded JR’s family of what a monster he could be, it now falls to Sue Ellen to humanise him again. Despite Bobby’s refusal to tell her, it doesn’t take her long to figure out who did pull the trigger (just as she did the first time JR was shot). “You were JR’s most trusted friend. Once I remembered that it was easy,” she tells Bum, He tells her how sorry he is. “I’m sure you are,” she replies sarcastically. “I’m sure you’re sorry for shooting JR. I am sure you are sorry for robbing me of a good-bye … JR was my husband! He was my love! I should have been the first one to know he was sick — not you! I should have been the one that was there with him — not you!” Then she asks about the moments immediately before his death: “Was he scared? Was he in pain?” “He was brave,” Bum assures her, “and he loved you very much.”
Bobby and Elena have a private meeting where he agrees to her demands. “You could have had your restitution without burning bridges, without causing so much pain for people who had nothing whatsoever to do with what happened to your father,” he says. “That’s where you and I disagree, Bobby,” she replies. “There’s a pattern of lies and deception on Southfork. There’s a poison that seeps into every limb of this family tree. Somebody had to put a stop to it. Too many lives have been ruined.” Some might call it “a pattern of lies and deception … a poison that seeps into every limb of this family tree”; others might simply call it life inside a soap opera. Either way, it’s the thing that prompted Maj Hagman, when she read the original DALLAS pilot script, to exclaim excitedly to her husband, "There's not one redeeming character in the whole show!”
Bobby also hands over Cliff’s “get out of jail free card” — with one proviso. “It’s a pending pardon,” he tells Elena, “depending on what you decide to do … Do you really think Cliff Barnes is gonna let bygones be bygones? He’s gonna come after the Ewings for his own vengeance and I’m gonna stop him any way I have to. Is that what you want, Elena, more bloodshed?” “That’s not my problem,” she shrugs. “I understand you wanting justice for what JR did to your family,” he persists, “but the Barnes/Ewing feud is a whole other beast and it doesn’t involve you. You wanna take that dog for a walk? Fine — but if it bites somebody, it’s because you let it.”
Throughout this episode, people have been lining up to tell Bobby how disappointed in him they are. As Elena turns to leave, it’s his turn. “You broke my heart today,” he tells her. It’s a beautifully poignant moment.
Elena tells Cliff over the phone that he is to be a free man and that their deal is done. “I am far from done,” he tells her. “I’m not stopping until I wipe the Ewings off the face of the earth. And you made it possible. I couldn’t have done it without you.” The call ends with the sound of his mad laughter, which matches JR’s evil laughter at the end of last week’s episode.
“There were times when Pam and I hated each other. Our husbands and Ewing Oil didn’t mix. But there was always one thing that we could share. We understood what it was like to be an outsider: to be a Ewing without being born to it.” So said Sue Ellen back in ’86. There are a couple of variations on this relationship — two opposing women connected by a common experience — in this week’s Soap Land. The first is Pamela and Elena. There have been several areas of conflict between them since the series began (Pamela’s fake brother Tommy sabotaging Elena’s engagement to Christopher, Elena’s real brother Drew rigging the bomb that killed Pamela’s babies, their habit of falling in love with the same men, etc.), yet Elena makes a point of asking Pamela to Southfork to hear her big announcement at the start of the episode (“Your father didn’t kill JR — your father was framed”) and now she visits her at Sue Ellen’s house to tell her which piece of property Bobby agreed to give to her as restitution: “I asked for the land Jock Ewing took from your grandfather.” “Why?” Pamela asks in surprise. “Because I know exactly how you feel, Pamela. The Ewings have hurt both of our families,” Elena explains. (This also means, contrary to what DALLAS told us when it sanctified Jock after his death, that he really did steal Digger out of what was rightfully his — I knew it!)
The second example of feuding women finding common ground takes place on DYNASTY. Even though Alexis caused New New Cristal’s miscarriage (albeit unintentionally: she was actually trying to kill her), she is still able to empathise with her loss. As Blake puts it, “at the end of the day, you’re a mother who’s lost her child. You understand more of what she’s going through than I ever possibly could.” “After Adam, I went to bed and wouldn’t leave,” Alexis recalls. “I closed the blinds, turned off all the lights and locked the door.” “When did it stop?” Cristal asks. “The pain?" she replies. "It didn’t. It just moved behind other things instead of in front of them.”
Elena has another surprise for Pamela. She hands her a document: “It’s your father’s pardon. You can either use it or burn it. If your father gets out, he will go after the Ewings. That shouldn’t be my call. It’s yours.” This gesture recalls Donna Krebbs’ last scene in ’87 when Senator Dowling gave her the final say over whether or not the Ewing brothers should go to jail over their involvement with BD Calhoun.
There are still three bombshells left to go off on DALLAS. First, Harris Ryland, having learned that Emma has been making private deals with the Mendez-Ochoa cartel, decides the time has come to tell her that he’s been secretly working for the CIA all along. “This is bigger than you and me, Emma, and whatever our quarrel of the week is,” he insists. Next, Bum has news for John Ross: “That video of you and Emma, I tracked down who sent it to you: It was Nicolas Treviño.” This leads to the final revelation of the ep when John Ross spitefully spills the beans to Nicolas: “Did Elena tell you how she got JR’s letter? She came to me last night and, well, you’re a smart man, Nicolas. You can put the rest together.”
Like DALLAS, this week’s EMPIRE is dominated by one storyline in which pretty much all the characters are involved. The company is hacked and held to ransom. Exciting! Whodunnit? Various suspects are suggested and quickly discounted: Shyne (“way too complicated for his ass”), Tariq (“too messy”), etc. Eventually, Andre figures out that the real culprit is Gram, a tech-savvy ex-boyfriend of Tiana with whom Hakeem has an ongoing beef. Gram protests his innocence, but “we found everything on your computer, brother,” Andre tells him smoothly. Gram asks if they're gonna call the cops. “That’s what white folks do,” Lucious replies. “We got something better in mind.” Enter Shyne and his boys, who only too happy to rough Gram up (and maybe even worse). And just like that, Shyne and Lucious are back on the same side, at least for now.
There’s an equivalent situation on DYNASTY when Blake finds out who he believes is responsible for firing the gun that killed Mark Jennings and Cristal's unborn baby: a henchman named Mack. Like Gram, Mack denies having anything to do with the crime, but Alexis claims to have seen him in the vicinity just before it happened. Blake doesn’t call the cops either — he just beats Mack to death with his bare hands because this week, Blake’s a cold-blooded murderer, Lucious-style, and what’s more, Cristal and Anders are his accomplices who help him get rid of the body.
What we already know, of course, is that Alexis framed Mack (it’s a little eerie to hear the former Paige Matheson refer to somebody by that name) to cover up her own guilt. But what we won’t discover until the closing scene of EMPIRE is that Gram has also been framed — and you’ll never guess by whom.
Among Empire’s leaked files is a nude selfie of Cookie that she sent to Angelo, which ends up on a giant screen for all to see. So far so New DYNASTY, but here the humour works because it's character-based rather than farcical: Hakeem covering his eyes to avoid the sight of Cookie’s cookies, Lucious hurling a chair at the screen in anger and Cookie herself yelling defiantly, “What the hell y’all looking at? They perky!” It also leads to an unexpectedly tender scene where Cookie, concerned that she is jeopardising Angelo’s political campaign, tells him they should split: “I believe in you, Angelo, and I think you can do some amazing things for this city … but if you stay with me, you’re gonna lose … I think you should go.” It’s an act of self-sacrifice on a par with Sue Ellen breaking up with Dusty because she didn’t want to be a constant reminder of his impotency. Later on, Cookie is watching TV when Angelo, besieged by reporters eager for a quote about her topless photo, suddenly strips off his shirt, “in solidarity alongside Ms Lyon and women everywhere.” Cookie is surprised to find herself saying, “I love you” to the TV screen.
After merely hinting at a potential dependency problem for Jamal two episodes ago, EMPIRE all of a sudden shows him suffering withdrawal symptoms as he attempts to quit his medication before relapsing towards the end of the episode. Not since FALCON CREST took Maggie Channing from casual drinking to fully fledged alcoholism in the space of about three episodes has a Soap Land addiction taken hold so quickly. While Elena is out to expose family secrets on DALLAS, a stoned Jamal wants to celebrate them on EMPIRE. “The secrets, the dirty little secrets,” he rambles to Major D. “I’m talking about the good ones too, these beautiful, beautiful secrets that we hide and if they keep hidden, they just gonna curl up and they gonna die inside, but nah, I’m gonna put it all in the music. I’m gonna set us all free. All of us.”
Speaking of secrets, DYNASTY's Fallon and Sam are concerned about Steven’s strange behaviour and decide to visit him in Paris. This is Soap Land’s first visit to Actual Paris since Bobby and April’s fateful honeymoon in 1990. Now as then, there are establishing shots of the Arc de Triomphe, strolls along the Seine, street artists, swanky balls and an atmosphere thick with European intrigue. Whereas Bobby and April (or more accurately, Sheila Foley pretending to be April) had to make do with slumming it in the honeymoon suite of the George V hotel, the Carringtons have their very own luxury apartment in the middle of the city. In place of Sheila Foley stealing April’s identity, the plot revolves around Fallon and Sam trying to figure out the identity of Steven’s mysterious friend George Emerson, who just happens to have the same name as a character in Steven’s favourite novel, 'A Room With a View'. Is he a grifter, a lover or, as the resurrected Matthew Blaisdel was to Claudia at the end of Season 1, simply a figment of Steven’s muddled imagination? It’s a genuinely intriguing mystery.
By the end of their respective episodes, both of Soap Land’s gay sons, Jamal and Steven, are bedridden, drugged and helpless. When Jamal fails to wake up after a wild night together, Major D fears he’s OD’d and turns to Philip, Jamal’s PTSD sponsor, for help. “He didn’t overdose, he blacked out,” Philip assures him. Meanwhile, a confused Steven checks himself into a clinic in Paris which is where George Emerson finally appears and admits that his name isn’t really George, that he was lying when he told Steven they slept together (“You’re so generous, so trusting … I’m not even gay”) and that he deliberately made it appear to Sam and Fallon “that you’d lost the plot.” As he’s speaking, he injects Steven’s IV with “a little something to help you relax.” This renders Steven unable to do anything but listen to Not George’s story: “All this started as a sort of morbid curiosity,” he tells him, “to see firsthand the life that I had been denied, and you were the easiest way in — this wounded bird, so far from home, away from the Carrington fortress.” As he is speaking, Not George’s accent shifts eerily from English to American. “But the more I got to know you,” he continues, “the more I grew to resent you, how ungrateful you are. You had everything and you walked away from it. And now I’m gonna claim it — everything my father gave you. It’s a real shame you won’t be there to welcome me home, brother … but we’ll always have Paris.” “Adam,” Steven realises. It’s kind of like 'The Talented Mr Ripley' — only rather than insinuate himself into a rich man’s life to assume someone else’s identity, Adam has done it to assume his own.
Like DYNASTY, EMPIRE ends with an eldest son revealing his true self. “Everything went more or less exactly as planned, apart from that part where you leaked a nude selfie of my mama,” Andre tells his accomplice Vaughn as he hands him a bag of money. Yes, Empire’s real hacker was strait-laced Andre! “No matter how much I try and play but the rules, the world’s always gonna see me as a well-dressed thug, the son of a gangster,” he tells girlfriend Nessa. “Rhonda always said the only thing standing in the way of me taking over Empire was I’m the son that’s not musical. But you — you're the embodiment of music, Nessa. I think Rhona would approve … of us, combining our strengths and becoming powerful together … all-powerful.” Nessa seems to like the idea, which makes her and Andre Soap Land’s first scheming couple since, well, Andre and Rhonda. So has Andre simply replaced Rhonda with New Rhonda, the way Blake did New Cristal with New New Cristal? I guess there’s only one way to find out …
And this week’s Top 3 are …
1 (1) DALLAS
2 (2) EMPIRE
3 (3) DYNASTY
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