Original airdate: February 9, 1979
We are 18 episodes into the second season and Dallas is really pushing the "Bobby beefcake cam" at every opportunity! Whether he's getting dressed or undressed or simply "being casual," he's wearing his shirt unbuttoned an awful lot these days. Oh la la, scandale!
He's been real mad at his family since Pam left, to the point where he's (GASP) not joining the others for breakfast. Jock thinks this is what his son deserves for marrying a Barnes girl, but Miss Ellie can't comprehend why Bobby says he would "resign from the Ewing family if he could." Bobby tells her the family will do anything and hurt anyone in their desire for money and power, and yes, apparently it has only just occurred to him that they're like this. Miss Ellie blows off his concerns, particularly when it comes to the Barneses; Digger would have ended up a drunk even if Jock didn't cheat him out of money and oil rights! J.R. probably didn't frame Cliff for Julie's murder, that's just Cliff looking for a scapegoat! "Don't let your problem with Pam turn you against your own family," she tells him, and it seems that Miss Ellie has finally ascended into her "Mafia Don" final form. I wonder how people felt about her back in 1979. You know, regular weekly viewers. Did they actually like this woman and her husband? The very notion boggles my mind.
Pam is holed up in a hotel. Well, "holed up" makes it sound as if she's done something wrong, and we all know that she's so not wrong, no one's ever been righter. Or something. The point is, Bobby calls to tell her that The Store wants her to take a leave of absence until this whole "Cliff is a murderer" business blows over. Poor Pam! Her brother framed. Temporarily losing her job. And when she tells her husband that she needs time and space, he says he'll see he later that day and he hangs up. I'm pretty sure Pam and I had the same facial expression through all of this. Just swap out the fancy pink satin bathrobe with my shameful Covid-19 ensemble and this could be a photo of me. Honest!
Bobby isn't the only steamed ham person under the Southfork roof, nor is he the only person who skipped the family breakfast. Sue Ellen is mad about J.R.'s treachery toward Cliff, and she is lounging in bed telling him so.
Sue Ellen is sassin' him real good and givin' him what for with all kinds of "oh, you think you're so big" and the such. I mean, just look at her, also in pink satin! (I wonder if she and Pam got a BOGO deal à la Payless Shoes?) She pushes her luck too far, though, when she plays the "UR just jealous" card, as if that's why J.R. is going through all of this trouble to land Cliff in jail. I'm sure that Sue Ellen's affair with Cliff hurt J.R.'s ego in some way, but it's certainly not because he's so in love with Sue Ellen. And he tells her as much: "Don't flatter yourself, sugar," he says, and goes on to compare her to an oil lease. She's just another disposable Ewing asset. Sue Ellen never gets the last word / sick burn when sparring with her husband, but I sure hope she keeps trying because I live for it.
J.R. also gets into it with Bobby, repeating what he said at the end of the previous episode: Pam's leaving Southfork is no big loss. Bobby is immediately overcome with his patented Eyes of Madness, and I'm shocked no punches were thrown.
Bobby finally meets up with Pam, who tells him that she's not ready to go back to Southfork yet. First of all, she's only been gone for like ten minutes. Second, her brother is sitting in jail, accused of murder because of someone else who lives at Southfork. And then there are all the other shitty people at Southfork, like Jock, who barely tolerates her. It's a den of snakes! Who can blame her for leaving and staying away? Her husband, that's who, who says she's just looking for excuses. He's there, after all. Isn't that enough reason to come back?
I will point this out now...I have pointed this out in the past...I will point this out again in the future and, I'm sure, later in this very recap: they could just move. They could just move out of Southfork! Bobby could visit his family as often as he pleases, Pam could never see them again unless maybe she felt like being nice at the holidays or something, and they would have the actual freedom to, oh, I don't know, eat fucking breakfast or dinner whenever and wherever they wanted without two crotchety old bastards being all "where were you???? We had breakfast and you weren't there! HOW DARE YOU! Make sure you're here for dinner promptly at six o'clock. Well, for cocktails first and then for drinks." I'm sorry, I'll simply never get over this, even though it's one of the foundations of the show. The only reasonable way for Dallas to end, in my opinion, is with a mushroom cloud to appear over Southfork when Pam (or Sue Ellen or Lucy) has finally had enough. I can't wait!
Bobby (this is a very Bobby-centric episode, much to my chagrin) visits Cliff in the clink and asks how he can help because he's really into the idea of having a friendship with Cliff lately, I guess. Cliff refuses a Ewing lawyer and Ewing money; the only help he'll accept from the family that set him up is them finding out who really killed Julie Grey.
And if it's gonna happen, it'd better happen fast, because we're already in the "examining trial" phase of this saga! I had no idea what that was or if it was real, so I looked it up. It's very real, and it seems to be a Texas thing. Bravo, writers! In the examining trial, witnesses and evidence are presented to a judge, who determines if there was probable cause for the arrest, and whether the case should move before a grand jury.
District Attorney Sloan--played by Charles Siebert, whom you will recognize immediately because he's been in a million TV shows but you won't be able to recall any of them specifically--gets a doctor to reveal on the stand that Julie had bruises on her arms and her face, as if she'd been grabbed and hit before she died.
Everyone in the peanut gallery looks very sad and uncomfortable about this, especially Sue Ellen, who wants to leave. She can't, though, because J.R. is going to testify and he needs her to play the doting wife. "Look on it as a wonderful lesson in civics," he says with a smirk. "You can help Lucy with her government class." And Sue Ellen and Lucy...
Those two shots are my highlight of the episode, honestly. There have been several instances of Sue Ellen looking at J.R. and others like that and I hope that by the end of this series I have a gallery of them that numbers in the thousands.
J.R.'s testimony sure is incriminating. Julie resigned from Ewing Oil after she had an affair with Cliff and gave him confidential documents that she stole--confidential documents that contained incriminating information on Cliff himself! I feel like that last bit is a lie, but what even is the truth anymore? The tapestry of backstabbings and double-crossings and deceptions and fakeries is never-ending. And so beautiful.
Cliff's best friend Bobby retrieves Cliff's mail from his apartment and oh ho HO, what's this in Cliff's letter pile? Why, it's that envelope that Julie mailed in "The Red File: Part One"!
I love that the props folks put very little effort into the other envelopes. Look at the next letter in the pile! That is a truly half-assed attempt at an address.
Our poor Julie may have been a fool for love, but she was not a fool for intrigue! Or something. Anyway, she mailed him a pawn shop ticket and a key to an attaché case. Bobby heads out to retrieve whatever it is while Pam prepares to testify.
Also, can we just talk about the fact that Julie was only in her new apartment for what, a month at most? And already she has either ordered and received personalized stationery OR she got a personalized rubber stamp. Either way, she was truly a glamorous angel and we didn't deserve her. Gone too soon but in our hearts forever, or at least until the next episode.
Bobby has opened up his shirt again (beefcake alert) for his big pawn shop visit. It turns out that the attaché contains--yes, you guessed it--photocopies of the contents of the titular Red File. Bobby gets a load of the fake will J.R. made for their daddy and heads to Ewing HQ to confront his brother.
J.R. clarifies in J.R. fashion that it's not a forgery, it's a business maneuver! This doesn't make it okay for Bobby, who asks J.R. flat out if he murdered Julie. "I've never killed anybody in my life," J.R. replies. "Not even in the war!" and...whoa. Whoa, right?? J.R. is a war veteran? What in the Private Benjamin hell?? I want my "J.R. shows up to boot camp in an ascot" prequel now, please. I wonder if this is the first and last we'll hear of this.
Anyway, J.R. finally tells Bobby about the man in the van, who told him about the message on Cliff's answering machine. But it's also apparent that the man in the van told someone else about the message on Cliff's answering machine. Bobby heads to the man in the van's office to find out about the mystery person(s), and if you assumed that Bobby threatened violence two seconds into the conversation, well, then you've been watching Dallas!
He finds out that the van man was also working for J.R.'s oil cartel cronies, so he heads to their office to punch talk sense into them. Here we meet another one of Dallas's great bit players, whom I shall call Great Value Jessica Lange. She's the secretary for the cronies, and let me tell you, the actress goes all in and makes the most of her one scene. She is practically eating Bobby with her eyes! And after she tells him that the cronies are heading to the airport to catch a plane to Alaska, he gives her a Benjamin and tells her to buy some more of that perfume she's wearing...and she practically eats that money with her mouth!
Meanwhile, Pam is on the stand. She has obviously tried to camouflage herself by matching the brown tones of the wood paneled courtroom in the hopes that the district attorney wouldn't find her, but alas. She reluctantly testifies about Cliff's affairs and how he didn't help her when she was blamed for stealing the documents that Julie took from Ewing Oil.
We see you, girl
It's not looking great for Cliff; the wire tap on his phone may have been illegal, but it seems that the answering machine tape will be entered into evidence regardless. But! Super Bobby called a pal of his who is head of airport security and got him to delay the oil cronies. Bobby confronts them with evidence from the Red File: they've been paying off politicians and doing crooked deals. They tell him that Julie's death was an accident, and Bobby tells them they need to turn themselves in. With a simple confession, they'll get manslaughter. With the Red File evidence, it'd be Murder One, baby! And yes, Bobby has conveniently omitted all the evidence that implicates his own brother in any wrongdoing.
Dumb and Dumber
The cronies confess, Cliff is free to go, and Bobby won't tell him or Pam what he did or what he found at the pawn shop. In fact, he demands J.R.'s copy of the fake will and he burns them both. "For the first time in my life, I know exactly what you're all about," he tells J.R. Say what? This is the first time? Apparently Bobby has not been watching Dallas.
Pam and Bobby meet up, and Bobby still won't tell her about the Red File. It's fine if they have secrets from each other, so long as they love each other. That's enough, right? I mean, I agree with Bobby here. Everybody knows that the #1 relationship advice is "keep secrets from each other." Keep as many secrets as possible, I say! Are you a werewolf? A vampire? A chupacabra? Don't tell your spouse! Let it be your secret. Just love them, and that will be enough.
I thought Pam would end up back at Southfork for sure, but I never should have doubted my queen. Even though Cliff is free, she's not ready to live under the same roof as J.R. She shouldn't be expected to! Again: they could just move. They don't have to live at Southfork for fuck's sake! But Bobby doesn't understand this at all, and any doubts he had about his family at the beginning of the episode have been totally erased, even though J.R. has been proven to be a slimeball criminal. "I was a Ewing when you married me and I'll be a Ewing until I die," he says. Pam can either get on board with that or not! And reader, he turns around and walks away. He walks away! And leaves Pam there to cry. In that coat!
This terrible ending is even terribler after the dizzying high of the ending of last week's episode. Now we have to see her feeling bad when she absolutely should not feel bad, and next week she'll come crawling back I'm sure. This is an indignity. I knew I should have stopped watching after she peeled out of that driveway!
