Dallas - Season 5, Episode 13

"The Search"
Original airdate: 1/8/1982

Episode summary: JR, Bobby, and Ray travel to South America to join the (fruitless) search for Jock.

---

Recap: JR is on the phone with Punk Anderson, grumbling about how the U.S. army needs to immediately dispatch a team to search for Jock's missing helicopter...then growls about how minuscule a rat's ass he gives about the tense political situation in this fictional region of South America. Punk promises to continue coordinating the search effort...and after JR hangs up, he informs the family that Jock had been flying in a helicopter from "the interior" when it went down...and that the search isn't going so well 'cause apparently it went down in the middle of some very remote, hard terrain. Bobby says he wants to fly down there pronto...and Ray and JR agree that as Ewing men they all need to fly to South America and seize control of the operation. Miss Ellie insists on accompanying them - but after her sons caution her about how dangerous it might be and Lucy pleads with her to not risk her life, she agrees to stay at Southfork and worriedly wring her hands until she hears any news. As Donna finishes booking an early morning flight for the three men, Miss Ellie says she's going to need to call Gary and inform him about what's happened.

While in the kitchen, Miss Ellie gets a call from a reporter to get her comment on the rumors swirling around Jock's alleged demise, and she stubbornly insists that her husband is strong enough to survive a helicopter crash. She then stares sadly into space and has a flashback of when Jock suffered a heart attack and urged her to keep the family together, then lamented what a shit father he's been to his sons. No argument here. 

JR enters his bedroom and finds Sue Ellen snoozing atop his bed with John Ross. Sue Ellen hears the door open, wakes up, and expresses her condolences to JR - but he tells her not to count out his daddy just yet. He then urges her to stay at Southfork, 'cause during a time of crisis it'd mean a lot to him if they were all under the same roof...and she chews on that prospect for a few seconds before agreeing to stay the night.

​Ray is sitting in his living room, staring broodily into the fireplace, when Donna urges him to try to get some sleep before catching his early morning flight. Ray shakes his head all incredulous-like and says he can't believe that they were partying at the barbecue when Jock's chopper went down, then needlessly snarks, "You don't know what he means to me" as he flashes back to when Jock gave him a plot of Southfork land on which Casa Yokel was built.

Pam tells Bobby she's worried about all the strain he's under: 1) dealing with her fragile mental state, and 2) Jock's sudden disappearance. She affectionately recalls the way Jock initially had an issue with his son marrying a Barnes, but then decided it was stupid to keep the Barnes-Ewing feud alive and warmly accepted her into the family. 

Miss Ellie is cleaning out the refrigerator when Bobby goes down to the kitchen to see how she's doing. She tells him he wants him to take charge of the search, much like he did when he ran Ewing Oil after JR was shot. Bobby then flashes back to that moment in time, when Jock had screamed at him in his lunatic, grizzled manner, "Real power is something you take!" and agrees that, sure, he'll take the lead during the search.

The next morning, Miss Ellie asks Sue Ellen if she wouldn't mind remaining at Southfork until the menfolk return home...and Sue Ellen's all, "Actually, I would mind" and reminds her ex-mother-in-law that breaking away from JR was a really really hard thing for her to do. Miss Ellie's like, "Mmm, I really couldn't care less 'bout that" ... and Sue Ellen flashes back to when Jock acted like a total jerkwad towards her when she arrived at the hospital soon after JR was shot. 

"The thought of staying at Southfork, even temporarily, makes every inch of my skin crawl."

"Then it's settled. You'll stay."

While on the plane en route to South America, JR is boozing so hard that Bobby urges him to maybe pace himself, given that they're on an early morning flight. Ray changes the subject to what an expert survivalist Jock is, and that surely he could make it through any wilderness despite serious injury...and the three concur and decide that, nope, there's no way in hell that Jock the Superhero is going to stay lost in tangled wreckage in the middle of a fictional South American jungle.

At a very rustic looking base camp, Punk Anderson informs his men that the plane carrying Jock's sons just landed, and that they'll need three more cots to accommodate them.

Lucy ambles into the living room and tells Miss Ellie, Donna, and Sue Ellen that she's increasingly restless while they wait for word, then admits how skeered she is that her granddaddy really is dead. Donna jumps up to comfort her, and the two end up in a tearful embrace. 

JR, Bobby, and Ray arrive at base camp and learn from Punk that, after two days of scouring the jungle, the search teams have had no luck finding Jock or any sign of wreckage from the chopper he was flying in when he disappeared. JR decrees that they'll join the search at dawn, then uses the communications gear to call Southfork and let Miss Ellie know that they all arrived safely. A few seconds later, Punk gets a report that the men aboard a search plane spotted some wreckage and noticed that there was movement around the area, and the Ewing bros look encouraged by that sighting.

Early the next morning, JR, Bobby, and Ray are ready to head into "the interior" via a jeep. Punk hands them each a rifle and warns, "They got a full blown revolution going on in the country just north of here. You wander over their border accidentally, who knows?" He half-heartedly offers to accompany them on the potentially perilous mission, but JR urges him to stay at base camp and continue coordinating the search. Punk lets out a quiet sigh of relief and tells the men not to get their hopes up too high - but JR argues that, at this point, hope is all they have left.  

"Don't accidentally wander into the neighboring country 'cause they're currently fighting a bloody war."

"No worries. We have our rifles."

Back at Southfork, Miss Ellie is reading The Dallas Press, featuring the headline "Sons Join Jock Ewing Search". That's interesting...I wonder who spilled that personal nugget to the press. Donna enters the kitchen and asks her if there's been any word, but Miss Ellie tells her that all she knows is that JR et. al. arrived safely at the base camp last night. She then says she went through something similar in Season 2 when the small engine plane JR and Bobby were flying aboard crashed near a New Orleans swamp. She recalls that they kept the news from Jock, 'cause he was recovering from surgery around that time, then has a flashback about the dickish way Jock chided her about keeping him in the dark about the potential tragedy. 

JR, Bobby, and Ray are traveling through some fake rough jungle terrain in order to reach the crash site spotted by the search plane.

Lucy, meanwhile, is on the phone with Gary, updating him on his brothers' decision to join the search for any sign of Jock or the missing helicopter.

Eventually, JR, Bobby, and Ray encounter terrain that's undriveable so Ray declares, "Looks like we walk from here."

Sue Ellen grumbles about having to hang out at Southfork and says that the Ewings need to face the harsh reality that Jock may never be found...and Donna's like, "I hear that" and says she worries that her marriage to Ray is going to go completely down the toilet if Jock doesn't return and straighten the dumb yokel out. When Pam says that surely he'd adjust to life without Jock if he had to, Sue Ellen says she doubts seriously that JR could ever adjust to that reality, pointing out, "Everything he does, he does for his daddy." She adds that JR would go to pieces if Jock were dead - just as Lucy enters the room and wails, "Granddaddy is not dead!" Donna explains that they were simply talking about how much Jock means to each of his sons, and that it's natural for them to be recalling the good memories of him they have. Lucy angrily - and somewhat nonsensically - retorts that her daddy doesn't have good memories of his father, crying, "He has nothing! Nothing!" as she runs out of the room.

JR, Bobby, and Ray walk through miles (or feet?) of thick foliage before they reach the crash site and encounter a medic hovering over an old man with grey hair. They look hopeful that the man is Jock - until he turns his head to look in their direction, revealing that he's not Jock, but rather some rando who was doing survey work in the area before his small plane collided with a helicopter. He says that the chopper appeared to crash on the other side of the mountain and saw it "fall like a stone" into a nearby lake. Bobby's all, "Fuuuuuuuuck..", then says they're going to need to find diving equipment asap and start searching that body of water, pronto. 

"This man has miraculously survived a plane crash."

"Since he's not our daddy, we really couldn't give much of a rat's ass."

Lucy tells Miss Ellie that she's feeling very restless and needs a distraction, so she's going to drive into town. She adds that she tried to contact Mitch about Jock's disappearance, and Miss Ellie tells her that she's been keeping Rebecca and Clayton apprised of the situation. 

The underwater search team, which seems to mostly consist of Bobby and Ray stripped down to their underwear and using snorkelling gear, search the lake. Ray manages to recover a small piece of the downed helicopter, and Punk stares at it sadly before declaring, "Well boys, I guess that's it." When Bobby surfaces and learns of the discovery, he insists on going underwater once more - despite his brothers' protests that he's clearly exhausted. 

Pam overhears Sue Ellen calling for a cab and asks whassup with her wanting to leave Southfork, so Sue Ellen explains that she has zero desire to be a source of comfort for JR in the likely event that he returns home without Jock. She then asks Pam to pass along her sentiments to Miss Ellie, 'cause she has zero desire to do that either. 

Bobby manages to recover from the lake the pendant that Jock always used to wear, then bursts into tears. He swims ashore and shows it to JR and Ray and says he can only conclude that Jock disappeared into the lake when his helicopter crashed 'cause "nothing that goes in that lake is coming up again". JR pushes back and refuses to quit searching, arguing, "It can't end here. Not in this stinking mud hole." That it can, JR. That it can.
 
Unable to sleep, Miss Ellie gets out of bed and heads downstairs to sit in the dining room. A few seconds later, JR, Bobby, and Ray enter the house and then stand in the dining room doorway looking despondent, and remove their hats before Bobby breaks the bad news by saying, "Sorry mama." She stares at them in disbelief and asks if they were able to find her beloved, so Ray tells her that the best they could do was pinpoint the general area where Jock and his helicopter crashed and will remain lost forever. 

"Is there even the tiniest glimmer of hope you could give me?"

"Nope."

JR wanders outside and stares at Jock's pendant, which is clutched inside his hand. He then looks up at the sky and shoots his lost daddy a sad smile...and the camera fades out and then a painting of Jim Davis appears on the screen, noting the actor's birth/death dates: 1909-1981.

​RIP, Jim Davis.

​Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying TVofYore's recaps, consider thanking me by buying me a "coffee"!

---