Dallas: Reckoning Recap

 
The Season Two Finale “Reckoning” aired on 4/15/2013 right after E14 “Guilt By Association.” Whether you were happy with the resolutions of various threads or not, you’ve got to admit, the ending was true Dallas-style.

In a meeting with David Gordon and the mystery woman in Zurich, Christopher’s abandonment issues are finally dealt with. Gordon tells Christopher that after being badly burned over 60% of her body in the car crash, Pamela did not want to inflict her hideousness on him. After many plastic surgeries, just when she was going to contact him, they learned she had pancreatic cancer. They were married by this time and he took her to Abu Dhabi for a new treatment. It didn’t work and that’s where she died. The mystery woman is Corinna, Pamela’s ex-nurse. Cliff Barnes supported them all these years to keep their mouths shut about Pam’s death because Pam left her shares to Christopher in her Will, and Cliff has wrongfully controlled the shares for the past 24 years. Corinna gives Christopher his mother’s will and a personal note she wrote to him just before she died. Despite Gordon’s apologies, these two are just as guilty of perpetrating this fraud as Cliff. But that was only one of many plot holes that we’re not even going to deal with.

Harris Ryland meets Cliff in his limo where Ryland is chastised for Roy’s arrest. Cliff doesn’t like sloppy lies and loose ends. After Ryland leaves, Cliff makes a phone call to take care of Roy down at the jail so all their hard work won’t go down the drain. The Ewings go down to see Roy first and Bobby advises him to just tell the truth. When Roy spots Pamela, he is upset. She later visits Roy and begs him to tell her whether Cliff knew she was on the rig platform when the explosion was set off. Pamela wants so badly to believe Cliff didn’t know: “Just tell me it was unintentional and I’ll go,” she says. Roy could have easily lied, but surprisingly, he tells the truth: “Have other children. Forget your father. There was nothing unintentional about it.” After making a phone call to check on his own child and grandchild, Roy is murdered by a posse of inmates.

Pamela and John Ross announce their marital status to the rest of the Ewings. (Bobby already knew.) They are all mighty happy in spite of the Rebecca/Christopher debacle because that means more shares of Barnes Global are in Ewing hands . Christopher reveals that Pam is dead and now they are even more happy because that makes them majority shareholders of Cliff’s company. The talk turns to Cliff’s involvement in J.R.’s demise when Bum arrives. Pamela recognizes the gun that J.R. left with Bum as Cliff’s. John Ross is beside himself once again to learn that Bobby “knew” Cliff killed J.R. the whole time. Bobby explains that J.R. wanted Cliff to think he’d gotten away with it, so the Ewings would have time to plot appropriate revenge.

Christopher talks with Elena and she takes her mother’s advice, contritely apologizing for making the mistake of helping Drew. But Christopher can’t see how he can ever trust her again.

Meanwhile over at the Rylands, Emma is furiously crushing up drugs in a bowl only these aren’t for her. She puts them in her father’s food and when he’s conked out cold, Emma gets that vault open and looks through its contents. She takes a ledger and a suitcase and shows up at Southfork, where she hands the ledger to her mother, Ann. “I couldn’t let Daddy keep pulling all the strings,” she says. The police show up at Ryland’s, who is still a bit groggy from his drug-laced breakfast. Next time you see him, he’s wearing orange, a color that he looks pretty good in.

Pamela volunteers to lure her father to Mexico where he can be arrested for J.R.’s murder because that’s where it happened. She sells Cliff a cock and bull story about having been working on Frank’s casino deal. Now this is a gal who claims not to have her father’s trust and approval but Cliff gives her and does whatever she wants most of the time, not to mention how she can get in his safe deposit box and knows what his gun looks like.

Meantime, they are exhuming J.R.’s body where they extract the two bullets from his chest. (They buried him with the bullets in there for reasons unknown.) Ballistics tests prove they were fired from Cliff’s gun. Before the Mexican police show up to take him into custody, however, the Ewings arrive ensemble to gloat. Cliff struggles to comprehend the flurry of revelations. His daughter is now married to John Ross. He is now a minority shareholder in his own company. But when he is arrested for J.R.’s murder, Cliff insists he was in Cabo, not Nuevo Laredo the night J.R. died. (Our guess is old Rhonda was paid to lie). Cliff thinks J.R. is framing him from the grave and is carted off to jail protesting that he did not kill J.R. over and over. We know, Cliff. Bobby later visits Cliff in jail and tells him that the Barnes-Ewing feud is finally over. He offers to get Cliff back to the States if he will admit that he was behind the oil rig explosion. Cliff will just be exchanging a Mexican jail for an American jail: “I’ve never done anything the Ewings asked me to do, and I’m not gonna start today,” he says. He asks Bobby “Who killed J.R.?” Bobby tells Cliff he will never know.

At J.R.’s grave, Bobby and Bum are joined by Christopher and John Ross. And although Cliff may never find out who killed J.R., we do: It was Bum. Stricken with terminal cancer, J.R. only had a few days to live. He knew that Cliff went to Mexico at a certain time, stole Cliff’s gun and set up this elaborate mercy killing by Bum “the best friend” J.R. “didn’t deserve to have.” From the hop, the plan was to frame the “malignant little troll” Cliff. Now we don’t know what Mexican law has to say about it but they’re never gonna find out and since J.R. was dying anyway and asked Bum to do him in as a personal and business favor, John Ross is cool with it and shakes Bum hands. “The only person who could take J.R. down was J.R.,” he observes, maybe a tie for the dumbest line in the whole episode with the inscription on J.R.’s tombstone: “The only deal he ever lost.”

But as we have observed, all of J.R.’s chicanery has now been elevated to hero status, and in J.R.’s letter to Bobby, he admits that he was less than a stellar brother, framing Bobby at a young age for stealing Jock’s favorite duck-hunting gun. J.R. hopes that Bobby will know that despite all his dirty tricks, he really loved him. They all leave the Ewing cemetery except John Ross who remains to tell his daddy “I love you.”

Emma visits Harris Ryland in the pokey where he unloads his anger and blames the Ewings for her betrayal. “This isn’t my Emma, this isn’t the girl I raised,” he yelps. But Emma coldly smiles and lets him know it is, she’s the female Harris Ryland. “I’m exactly my father’s daughter,” she pronounces and flounces off to let him stew a while. Harris spies Ann and says she must be really happy now but Ann says she’s not because she’s not a sick sadistic prick, like he is. LOL, Ann.

At Southfork, Pamela passes by Christopher as he reads his mother’s letter. He says he is happy for her getting married to John Ross and she says she’s looking forward to putting the past behind them and starting her new life. Pamela knows she’s the last person to give Chris advice, but does anyway. She knows he loves Elena and advises him not to let her go: “Don’t hold on to your anger the way that my father held on to his. Look at the wreckage it left in his wake.”

Of course, Cliff Barnes has no intention of letting the Barnes-Ewing feud die, so he summons Elena to Mexico, sending her copies of deeds that have something to do with her father’s lost legacy. At the Nuevo Laredo jail, Cliff tells Elena that J.R. Ewing pulled a land switch and stole her father’s land the way his father’s land was stolen. Cliff gets mixed up and says it was J.R. who stole Digger’s land but we all know he meant Jock. Cliff offers to make her his proxy for the third of Barnes Global that he still owns. Elena stares at the deed with J.R.’s signature with horror and Cliff will soon have a new ally, even as Ewing Energies becomes Ewing Global with a portrait of J.R. on the wall. John Ross makes a toast to “the shrewdest oil man that ever lived,” and says the portrait will remind people to never go against a Ewing.

Bobby laughs as Ann relates Ryland’s condition in jail: “He looked like someone who could use a hug.” Ann says she hasn’t seen him laugh in a long time, and Bobby says it’s been the stress of acting out of character to carry out J.R.’s master plan. Ann says he’s “still the best man I know,” (what’s a little crime when you’re in love?). “You need to get out more,” Bobby jokes.

At Southfork, Sue Ellen tells John Ross to treat Pamela right: “It’s not easy being a Ewing bride in this family,” she remembers. John Ross replies: “What do you take me for, mama, a scoundrel?” and kisses her cheek. Sue Ellen knows darn well her baby boy is a scoundrel — maybe not first-rate yet, but give him time — and she smiles fondly, then grabs J.R.’s decanter on the way out.

Christopher seeks out Elena, but it’s too late. She’s still in Mexico, crying in her car. Then she drives up to a compound looking place and demands to see Joaquin, a childhood Ramos friend. As they open the gates for her, multiple gunmen appear on the roof and inside but they let her pass in. More criminals, eh?

At the downtown Omni hotel, John Ross picks up some flowers and champagne and you think he’s finally going to have at least a brief honeymoon respite with Pamela. But the hopes of all the hopeless romantics are dashed on the champagne rocks when the woman in the room waiting for him turns out to be Emma Ryland. The black suitcase she swiped from Ryland’s vault is there and she tells John Ross she got him what he wanted. John Ross looks in it and says they’ve hit the mother lode. Emma says he has to pay for it. “Darlin’, trust me, I’m willing to pay the price,” ” John Ross replies, and delivers the punchline: “Just don’t tell my wife.”

Click here to hear the song “Come to Me” by the Mavericks

So while TNT has not yet announced a third season for Dallas, Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewing) has said that he is very hopeful there will be one. And you can see that if there is, it will be Elena against the Ewings and do we really expect Cliff Barnes to rot in a Mexican jail? Pamela will probably take her pretty self and shares back to the Barnes side when she finds out about Emma and John Ross and lord only knows what will happen if Harris Ryland gets out.