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Re-watching Season 5
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<blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 40024" data-attributes="member: 22"><p><u><em>Requiem</em></u> (continued)</p><p></p><p>The main plot of the episode not directly pertaining to Rebecca's demise is George Hicks's volte-face which leads to JR's variance finally being rescinded. As with all things Season 5, however, the two story-lines are inextricably linked. In fact, put them together and you've got a classic case of dramatic irony, DALLAS style. A brooding Bobby is nursing a Bud (other beers are available) at the kitchen table when the phone rings. It's Donna, calling from the Texas Energy Commission. "There is one bit of good news that I would like to share with you today," she tells him. "George Hicks has changed his vote, Lawrence followed and JR's variance has been rescinded." A mere twenty-four hours earlier, Bobby willingly sacrificed his integrity to bring this event about. Now he no longer cares. "It happened one day too late to save Rebecca," he reflects coldly.</p><p></p><p>"I was the most surprised person of all when Hicks changed his vote," Donna later tells Ray. "I <em>know</em> something happened." Hmm, I wonder how Donna would react if she knew what <em>did</em> happen: that Bobby used sex, drugs and blackmail to get Hicks to change his vote? Would she be as appalled as Pam, or decide pragmatically that the end justifies the means? I suspect the latter - she is a politician after all - unless Ray had been in Bobby's shoes, in which case she'd have hit the roof. </p><p></p><p>Dramatic irony (or plain old bad timing, if you will) also surfaces in Bobby and Pam's relationship. For the past several episodes, Pam has been accusing Bobby of neglect, pleading with him to take more interest in his family. Now when he does so - taking time off work to arrange the funeral, suggesting "a little vacation, just the two of us", even agreeing to move away from Southfork - she is no longer interested. "She wants to see Katherine alone," Miss Ellie tells him firmly when Pam's sister first arrives at the ranch. "She asked me to tell you that." This passive-aggressive gesture is the first indication that Pam does not intend to share her grief with her husband. "She's keepin' it all inside," he worries. "I don't think she's even shed a tear." By refusing to mourn, Pam is also denying Bobby the opportunity to console her. "It must be such a comfort for you to have someone like Bobby," Katherine tells her. "Do I have him?" she reflects dispassionately. "I wonder. I don't really know anymore." Katherine looks at her, quizzical yet enigmatic in that thick-haired way of hers. </p><p></p><p>If Rebecca's death serves to widen the rift between Bobby and Pam, it has the opposite effect on Cliff and Afton's relationship. "The night you slept with Thurman ... it was over then and it is over now," he tells her before she has a chance to tell him about Rebecca. Later in the episode, he does a 180-degree turn. "Afton, please don't go," he pleads. "I'm so alone. Please don't go!" </p><p></p><p>In a particularly sombre episode, it falls to one man to provide the comic relief: JR. Early on in the episode, Sue Ellen listens with concern as he talks on the phone with Mike Hughes in Houston. "Yeah I know, Mike, it's a terrible tragedy, but the deal for the refinery is still set." After hanging up, he tells her gloomily that "Rebecca was probably on her way to see [Hughes] when her plane was hit." "Oh darlin'!" she exclaims. "Don't be so hard on yourself. It wasn't your fault." "<em>Cliff Barnes</em> should have been on that plane, not his mama!" he replies. "Can you imagine what could happen if she dies? ... Barnes could come into that Wentworth fortune ... With that kinda money, nothing would stop that idiot!" Almost as funny as JR's callous insensitivity is Sue Ellen's attempt to blink it out of her consciousness.</p><p></p><p>Rather ingeniously, JR's discovery that he has lost his variance also makes for a very comical scene. He is leaving the office for an appointment at the barbershop (funny in itself) when Sly tells him that various members of the press have been calling to speak to him. "Probably about Rebecca Wentworth. I don't wanna get involved in that," he mutters, before turning on the charm for reporter/photographer double act who have made it past reception. "You can tell us how you feel about the fact that the Texas Energy Commission just rescinded your variance," asks the smiling, eager reporter. This catches JR completely unawares. "They <em>what?!</em>" he exclaims before being near-blinded by the photographer's flashbulb. He then makes a valiant effort to regain his composure and come up with a suitably optimistic sound-bite. "I can tell you this. It's gonna take a lot more than overturning my variance to stop me from bringing the price of gasoline within reach of the average American ... I made a commitment to the people of the State of Texas ... You can tell your people, JR Ewing has not yet begun to fight." His smile and chuckle disappear as soon as the reporter and photographer leave. "Sly, get George Hicks on the phone. Right now!" he barks.</p><p></p><p>That evening, JR paces his office waiting for Hicks to show. The scene is reminiscent of the one two weeks earlier in which he summoned Holly Harwood to his lair after hours, but somehow I don't think he's gonna be rubbing his paws all over George's check jacket. Indeed, Hicks gets off a lot lighter than Holly did. An amusingly phrased insult ("You gutless little chiseler, I oughta toss you outta that window, see if you bounce!") is about as mean as JR gets with him. </p><p></p><p>By contrast, JR has rarely been more offhandedly cruel than he is in his treatment of Mike Hughes later in the episode. He is kicking back in his office, watching coverage of Rebecca's funeral on TV, (she was <em>that</em> famous? Three years earlier, no one in Dallas had ever heard of her) when Hughes bursts through the door. "I've been trying to get you on the phone for days," he tells him frantically. "Oh yeah, what about?" asks JR airily. "JR, we had a deal," Hughes reminds him. "You were supposed to buy my refinery." "Oh, that wasn't definite ... You must have misunderstood ..." "You gave me your word!" "I just don't remember that ... Mike, we didn't have anything on paper and I don't need your refinery now so I'm not gonna buy it. Now if you'd just step aside, just a little bit, I wanna watch the TV." A helpless Hughes leaves, his life in financial tatters. It's appalling behaviour on JR's part, of course, but thanks to what David Paulsen has described as Larry Hagman's "audaciousness", it's also great fun. (Also, the hammy performance of the actor playing Hughes makes it hard to take his dilemma that seriously.) Speaking of audacious, spotting Mark Graison amongst the televised mourners inspires JR to call Mark's office pretending to be Cliff. He leaves a message thanking him for attending the funeral. "My sister Pam was especially appreciative." Out<em>rage</em>ous!</p><p></p><p>The loss of the variance means the end of a storyline for both JR and Donna. "What are you gonna do?" Ray asks his wife. "Oh I don't know," she replies playfully while twiddling a flower. "I thought I might hang around the house, eat bonbons, paint my toenails - pretty much what I always do." Hey, don't knock it. A little more bonbon eating and a little less oil drilling in Season 7 might just have saved your marriage, Donna. "And with JR, my darling," she adds, "there is <em>always</em> a tomorrow." </p><p></p><p>This sentiment is echoed by JR in the very next scene. "In this business, there's always a tomorrow," he assures a chipper looking Holly who, in her first appearance since the rape episode, has stopped by his office to gloat about the variance being rescinded. "Well good," she replies, "because tomorrow you're gonna be so busy shorin' up Ewin' Oil from the loss of those revenues that you're not gonna have time to play those nasty little games with Harwood. I want out of our deal, JR ... I want you out of Harwood for good." He leans in close. "Let me tell you somethin', sweetheart. I didn't like that move you made the other day pullin' your gun on me, but I did get the point. You wanna control the bedroom, that's fine, but I control your company and it's best you don't forget that." "Not as long as I'm Harwood Oil," she replies. "No, you don't understand!" he smiles in mock exasperation. "So I'm gonna spell it out for you real slow like. Holly, <em>you</em> are no longer Harwood Oil. <em>I</em> am." Holly's eyes narrow, the smile effectively wiped off her face.</p><p></p><p>In truth, JR already has another trick up his sleeve and Harwood Oil is a vital part of it. No sooner has he torn a strip off George Hicks than he puts in a call to good old Walt Driscoll. "I think we can get that Caribbean oil deal to work," he tells him before delivering his third "Like my daddy used to say ..." quotation of the season: "You can't get in the front door, just go round the back." (So many cheap gags, so little time.) The two men get together in Seedy Bars R Us to discuss the deal. OK, here comes the science bit - concentrate: "There's a Liberian tanker in Galveston ready to take our oil to ship to Cuba," begins Walt. "The papers will show Puerto Rico as the destination." "... I wanna start small. 50,000 barrels first trip," replies JR. "How can you ship crude?" wonders Walt, "It seems to me all your crude would be going to keep your gas stations open." The same point was made by the reporter JR spoke to earlier: "You're not gonna be able to produce enough to supply your stations." It's ironic that the big question surrounding JR for much of the first half of the season - "What the hell is he gonna do with all that oil he's pumping?" - has now been replaced by "Where the hell is he gonna get the oil he needs from?" The question is answered, in a roundabout way, by Walt himself in a later scene with JR. "They're loaded. Everything went according to plan," he tells him. "There's just one question ... I thought you were shipping Ewing Oil. The crude we got was from Harwood ... I don't get it." "You don't have to get it, Walt. Just ship oil." </p><p></p><p>In an episode full of highlights, there are plenty of candidates for Scene of the Week -- Katherine's outburst at Cliff, Rebecca's death scene, the mourners arriving silently at the funeral. One of the most interesting takes place as the Ewings (plus Clayton and Katherine) congregate in the Southfork living room after the funeral. JR is nowhere in sight, but still, the family are in conflict. Significantly, it's Clayton who first stirs the pot. "At least JR had the decency to stay away from Rebecca's funeral," he declares. Is it possible he is still smarting at Sue Ellen's treatment of him two weeks' ago and this is his way of goading her? "That's very unfair of you, Clayton," she retorts, taking the bait. "There's no one who feels worth about Rebecca's death than JR." "... That's a bit hard to believe, Sue Ellen," Clayton replies mockingly. "Well, it's true," she continues earnestly. (Does <em>she</em> even believe what she's saying?) "He didn't come to the funeral because he thought his presence would be disruptive." Once again, Ellie finds herself in the middle. "It's probably better he did stay away," she says diplomatically. Sat silently in the corner of the room, Pam regards them all contemptuously. In a way, this scene is a companion piece to the one in "The Red Files, Part 1" where she stands up in the same room and announces to the family that "the Ewing empire is built on deceit and downright theft!" before packing her bags and moving out. This time around, she slips out of the room without saying a word. Bobby follows her to the staircase. "I want to go out to Mama's house," she tells him. He offers to drive her, but again she shuts him out: "I want to go there alone." It's also reminiscent of the scene in the first episode of this season where she refuses to let Bobby accompany her to the hospital after Cliff's overdose: "No, Bobby. If JR’s involved, I don’t think Mama will want to see a Ewing at the hospital." </p><p></p><p>The scene of Pam breaking down outside her mother's house is also a memorable one. While big emotional outbursts aren't always VP's strong point as an actress, (one uncharitable critic at the time suggested that Pam's howling was the result of getting her heel stuck in Rebecca's lawn) there remains something touching about it, partly due to Bruce Broughton's scoring and partly because of Pam choosing, much like Miss Ellie did at the end of Season 4, to vent her grief ("You've got a lot of pain all tied up inside ... It's no good to keep it all bottled up," Bobby tells her in an earlier scene) in isolation.</p><p></p><p>"After I left Mama's, I just drove around for a while," she tells Bobby when she eventually returns to the ranch. "I did a lot of thinking. I have to get away from here. I can't live here anymore." "... You wanna leave Southfork? ... All right ... We'll find another place to live," he tells her smilingly. "You don't understand. I want to leave alone." "Without me? Without Christopher?" "With Christopher, but without you. Bobby, I need time to think - away from you, away from Southfork, away from the Ewings, and <em>away from everything the Ewings stand for.</em>" Deceit and downright theft perhaps? </p><p></p><p>The final shot goes to Pam for the second week in a row. It's also the last in a five-week run of Hagman-free freeze frames.</p><p></p><p>And while we're being all anoraky: by my calculations, Priscilla Pointer appeared in 44 episodes as Rebecca, one less than Dack Rambo as Jack and one more than Sasha Mitchell as James.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James from London, post: 40024, member: 22"] [U][I]Requiem[/I][/U] (continued) The main plot of the episode not directly pertaining to Rebecca's demise is George Hicks's volte-face which leads to JR's variance finally being rescinded. As with all things Season 5, however, the two story-lines are inextricably linked. In fact, put them together and you've got a classic case of dramatic irony, DALLAS style. A brooding Bobby is nursing a Bud (other beers are available) at the kitchen table when the phone rings. It's Donna, calling from the Texas Energy Commission. "There is one bit of good news that I would like to share with you today," she tells him. "George Hicks has changed his vote, Lawrence followed and JR's variance has been rescinded." A mere twenty-four hours earlier, Bobby willingly sacrificed his integrity to bring this event about. Now he no longer cares. "It happened one day too late to save Rebecca," he reflects coldly. "I was the most surprised person of all when Hicks changed his vote," Donna later tells Ray. "I [I]know[/I] something happened." Hmm, I wonder how Donna would react if she knew what [I]did[/I] happen: that Bobby used sex, drugs and blackmail to get Hicks to change his vote? Would she be as appalled as Pam, or decide pragmatically that the end justifies the means? I suspect the latter - she is a politician after all - unless Ray had been in Bobby's shoes, in which case she'd have hit the roof. Dramatic irony (or plain old bad timing, if you will) also surfaces in Bobby and Pam's relationship. For the past several episodes, Pam has been accusing Bobby of neglect, pleading with him to take more interest in his family. Now when he does so - taking time off work to arrange the funeral, suggesting "a little vacation, just the two of us", even agreeing to move away from Southfork - she is no longer interested. "She wants to see Katherine alone," Miss Ellie tells him firmly when Pam's sister first arrives at the ranch. "She asked me to tell you that." This passive-aggressive gesture is the first indication that Pam does not intend to share her grief with her husband. "She's keepin' it all inside," he worries. "I don't think she's even shed a tear." By refusing to mourn, Pam is also denying Bobby the opportunity to console her. "It must be such a comfort for you to have someone like Bobby," Katherine tells her. "Do I have him?" she reflects dispassionately. "I wonder. I don't really know anymore." Katherine looks at her, quizzical yet enigmatic in that thick-haired way of hers. If Rebecca's death serves to widen the rift between Bobby and Pam, it has the opposite effect on Cliff and Afton's relationship. "The night you slept with Thurman ... it was over then and it is over now," he tells her before she has a chance to tell him about Rebecca. Later in the episode, he does a 180-degree turn. "Afton, please don't go," he pleads. "I'm so alone. Please don't go!" In a particularly sombre episode, it falls to one man to provide the comic relief: JR. Early on in the episode, Sue Ellen listens with concern as he talks on the phone with Mike Hughes in Houston. "Yeah I know, Mike, it's a terrible tragedy, but the deal for the refinery is still set." After hanging up, he tells her gloomily that "Rebecca was probably on her way to see [Hughes] when her plane was hit." "Oh darlin'!" she exclaims. "Don't be so hard on yourself. It wasn't your fault." "[I]Cliff Barnes[/I] should have been on that plane, not his mama!" he replies. "Can you imagine what could happen if she dies? ... Barnes could come into that Wentworth fortune ... With that kinda money, nothing would stop that idiot!" Almost as funny as JR's callous insensitivity is Sue Ellen's attempt to blink it out of her consciousness. Rather ingeniously, JR's discovery that he has lost his variance also makes for a very comical scene. He is leaving the office for an appointment at the barbershop (funny in itself) when Sly tells him that various members of the press have been calling to speak to him. "Probably about Rebecca Wentworth. I don't wanna get involved in that," he mutters, before turning on the charm for reporter/photographer double act who have made it past reception. "You can tell us how you feel about the fact that the Texas Energy Commission just rescinded your variance," asks the smiling, eager reporter. This catches JR completely unawares. "They [I]what?![/I]" he exclaims before being near-blinded by the photographer's flashbulb. He then makes a valiant effort to regain his composure and come up with a suitably optimistic sound-bite. "I can tell you this. It's gonna take a lot more than overturning my variance to stop me from bringing the price of gasoline within reach of the average American ... I made a commitment to the people of the State of Texas ... You can tell your people, JR Ewing has not yet begun to fight." His smile and chuckle disappear as soon as the reporter and photographer leave. "Sly, get George Hicks on the phone. Right now!" he barks. That evening, JR paces his office waiting for Hicks to show. The scene is reminiscent of the one two weeks earlier in which he summoned Holly Harwood to his lair after hours, but somehow I don't think he's gonna be rubbing his paws all over George's check jacket. Indeed, Hicks gets off a lot lighter than Holly did. An amusingly phrased insult ("You gutless little chiseler, I oughta toss you outta that window, see if you bounce!") is about as mean as JR gets with him. By contrast, JR has rarely been more offhandedly cruel than he is in his treatment of Mike Hughes later in the episode. He is kicking back in his office, watching coverage of Rebecca's funeral on TV, (she was [I]that[/I] famous? Three years earlier, no one in Dallas had ever heard of her) when Hughes bursts through the door. "I've been trying to get you on the phone for days," he tells him frantically. "Oh yeah, what about?" asks JR airily. "JR, we had a deal," Hughes reminds him. "You were supposed to buy my refinery." "Oh, that wasn't definite ... You must have misunderstood ..." "You gave me your word!" "I just don't remember that ... Mike, we didn't have anything on paper and I don't need your refinery now so I'm not gonna buy it. Now if you'd just step aside, just a little bit, I wanna watch the TV." A helpless Hughes leaves, his life in financial tatters. It's appalling behaviour on JR's part, of course, but thanks to what David Paulsen has described as Larry Hagman's "audaciousness", it's also great fun. (Also, the hammy performance of the actor playing Hughes makes it hard to take his dilemma that seriously.) Speaking of audacious, spotting Mark Graison amongst the televised mourners inspires JR to call Mark's office pretending to be Cliff. He leaves a message thanking him for attending the funeral. "My sister Pam was especially appreciative." Out[I]rage[/I]ous! The loss of the variance means the end of a storyline for both JR and Donna. "What are you gonna do?" Ray asks his wife. "Oh I don't know," she replies playfully while twiddling a flower. "I thought I might hang around the house, eat bonbons, paint my toenails - pretty much what I always do." Hey, don't knock it. A little more bonbon eating and a little less oil drilling in Season 7 might just have saved your marriage, Donna. "And with JR, my darling," she adds, "there is [I]always[/I] a tomorrow." This sentiment is echoed by JR in the very next scene. "In this business, there's always a tomorrow," he assures a chipper looking Holly who, in her first appearance since the rape episode, has stopped by his office to gloat about the variance being rescinded. "Well good," she replies, "because tomorrow you're gonna be so busy shorin' up Ewin' Oil from the loss of those revenues that you're not gonna have time to play those nasty little games with Harwood. I want out of our deal, JR ... I want you out of Harwood for good." He leans in close. "Let me tell you somethin', sweetheart. I didn't like that move you made the other day pullin' your gun on me, but I did get the point. You wanna control the bedroom, that's fine, but I control your company and it's best you don't forget that." "Not as long as I'm Harwood Oil," she replies. "No, you don't understand!" he smiles in mock exasperation. "So I'm gonna spell it out for you real slow like. Holly, [I]you[/I] are no longer Harwood Oil. [I]I[/I] am." Holly's eyes narrow, the smile effectively wiped off her face. In truth, JR already has another trick up his sleeve and Harwood Oil is a vital part of it. No sooner has he torn a strip off George Hicks than he puts in a call to good old Walt Driscoll. "I think we can get that Caribbean oil deal to work," he tells him before delivering his third "Like my daddy used to say ..." quotation of the season: "You can't get in the front door, just go round the back." (So many cheap gags, so little time.) The two men get together in Seedy Bars R Us to discuss the deal. OK, here comes the science bit - concentrate: "There's a Liberian tanker in Galveston ready to take our oil to ship to Cuba," begins Walt. "The papers will show Puerto Rico as the destination." "... I wanna start small. 50,000 barrels first trip," replies JR. "How can you ship crude?" wonders Walt, "It seems to me all your crude would be going to keep your gas stations open." The same point was made by the reporter JR spoke to earlier: "You're not gonna be able to produce enough to supply your stations." It's ironic that the big question surrounding JR for much of the first half of the season - "What the hell is he gonna do with all that oil he's pumping?" - has now been replaced by "Where the hell is he gonna get the oil he needs from?" The question is answered, in a roundabout way, by Walt himself in a later scene with JR. "They're loaded. Everything went according to plan," he tells him. "There's just one question ... I thought you were shipping Ewing Oil. The crude we got was from Harwood ... I don't get it." "You don't have to get it, Walt. Just ship oil." In an episode full of highlights, there are plenty of candidates for Scene of the Week -- Katherine's outburst at Cliff, Rebecca's death scene, the mourners arriving silently at the funeral. One of the most interesting takes place as the Ewings (plus Clayton and Katherine) congregate in the Southfork living room after the funeral. JR is nowhere in sight, but still, the family are in conflict. Significantly, it's Clayton who first stirs the pot. "At least JR had the decency to stay away from Rebecca's funeral," he declares. Is it possible he is still smarting at Sue Ellen's treatment of him two weeks' ago and this is his way of goading her? "That's very unfair of you, Clayton," she retorts, taking the bait. "There's no one who feels worth about Rebecca's death than JR." "... That's a bit hard to believe, Sue Ellen," Clayton replies mockingly. "Well, it's true," she continues earnestly. (Does [I]she[/I] even believe what she's saying?) "He didn't come to the funeral because he thought his presence would be disruptive." Once again, Ellie finds herself in the middle. "It's probably better he did stay away," she says diplomatically. Sat silently in the corner of the room, Pam regards them all contemptuously. In a way, this scene is a companion piece to the one in "The Red Files, Part 1" where she stands up in the same room and announces to the family that "the Ewing empire is built on deceit and downright theft!" before packing her bags and moving out. This time around, she slips out of the room without saying a word. Bobby follows her to the staircase. "I want to go out to Mama's house," she tells him. He offers to drive her, but again she shuts him out: "I want to go there alone." It's also reminiscent of the scene in the first episode of this season where she refuses to let Bobby accompany her to the hospital after Cliff's overdose: "No, Bobby. If JR’s involved, I don’t think Mama will want to see a Ewing at the hospital." The scene of Pam breaking down outside her mother's house is also a memorable one. While big emotional outbursts aren't always VP's strong point as an actress, (one uncharitable critic at the time suggested that Pam's howling was the result of getting her heel stuck in Rebecca's lawn) there remains something touching about it, partly due to Bruce Broughton's scoring and partly because of Pam choosing, much like Miss Ellie did at the end of Season 4, to vent her grief ("You've got a lot of pain all tied up inside ... It's no good to keep it all bottled up," Bobby tells her in an earlier scene) in isolation. "After I left Mama's, I just drove around for a while," she tells Bobby when she eventually returns to the ranch. "I did a lot of thinking. I have to get away from here. I can't live here anymore." "... You wanna leave Southfork? ... All right ... We'll find another place to live," he tells her smilingly. "You don't understand. I want to leave alone." "Without me? Without Christopher?" "With Christopher, but without you. Bobby, I need time to think - away from you, away from Southfork, away from the Ewings, and [I]away from everything the Ewings stand for.[/I]" Deceit and downright theft perhaps? The final shot goes to Pam for the second week in a row. It's also the last in a five-week run of Hagman-free freeze frames. And while we're being all anoraky: by my calculations, Priscilla Pointer appeared in 44 episodes as Rebecca, one less than Dack Rambo as Jack and one more than Sasha Mitchell as James. [/QUOTE]
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