Recap: Bobby arrives at Pam's new aerobic gym to give his wife a lift home, and gets a pleasing eyeful of the women finishing up their exercise class, decked out in their '80s leotard bodysuits - skimpy wear that really looks quite uncomfortable to be sweating in. Pam greets Bobby and says she'll be ready to head home after she gets changed and retrieves Christopher from the nursery...and Bobby heads over to the nearest phone to call Sue Ellen and ask her if they can get together for a tête-à-tête sometime next week, and she tells him that that could definitely be arranged. JR drops by Sue Ellen's house clutching a single yellow rose he says is in need of water, and she looks visibly charmed by the romantic gesture and invites him in. He snoops around her kitchen to see if there's any evidence of her cooking a meal, then invites her to join him and the rest of the Ewing clan for dinner at Southfork. He schmaltzily adds that the memories the video of her beauty pageant they watched during the previous episode have inspired him to want to start "a new friendship" between them, and Sue Ellen mulls that over for a few seconds and decides 'what could possibly go wrong with having dinner at Southfork?' Pam climbs into the passenger seat of Bobby's convertible with Christopher (sans baby seat - but did anyone use one in 1982?) ... and Jeff Farraday is watching from inside his car, parked a few feet away. Miss Ellie drops by Casa Yokel and finds a despondent looking Donna sitting on the couch, holding a piece of a plate she just smashed in a fit of rage. She laments to Miss Ellie that Ray is clearly doing everything he can to get her to walk out on him...which kinda begs the question: why in the name of all that is holy have you not fled Casa Yokel and filed for divorce from the hillbilly philanderer??!! When Miss Ellie seats herself on the couch to further lend a sympathetic ear, Donna tells her she caught Ray in bed with another woman...then came home, lost control, and smashed a plate. She wails, "I hurt!" and says she gets the strong sense that Ray wanted her to catch him in the sack with Bonnie. Miss Ellie argues that that kind of cold-hearted fuckery takes a very hateful man and she can't bring herself to believe that Ray has that kind of hatred in his heart for her, and Donna clarifies, "Ray doesn't hate me. Ray hates himself." Roger calls Lucy to ask her whaddup with her sneaking out of the studio after their [blechy] doinkfest, and she apologizes and tells him she just has a lot of shit to do. He snarlingly tells her they need to talk, and she breezily says, "We will" and abruptly ends the call while wincing at the ridiculously bad judgement she demonstrated in going to bed with the freak. Roger, meanwhile, is so peeved about her casualness towards their hookup that he throws a glass of red wine at his bedroom wall - staining a couple of large photographs of Lucy...and when the camera pans out a bit, we see that the entire length of the wall is decorated with giant photographs of Lucy's portfolio pics. Oh dear. Miss Ellie and her maid Teresa are cooking a mammoth turkey in the Southfork kitchen when JR returns home with John Ross and Sue Ellen in tow. Miss Ellie gushes at Sue Ellen about how super thrilled she is about her being here, and happily gabbles that the rest of the Ewing clan is due home any minute for the turkey feast. During pre-dinner drinks, Sue Ellen asks Donna how Ray is doing, and Donna says that his entire world has crumbled ever since Jock died...and that, needless to say, he won't be joining them for dinner 'cause he's probably drowning himself in a bottle over at the Longview Bar. Bobby and Pam enter the room and look visibly stunned to see Sue Ellen at Southfork...and as everyone files over to the dining room, JR cackles about how tonight's dinner is going to be just like the old days. Cliff is meeting with an investigator, who assures him that Olco Industries is a solid company with impressive assets, and describes Wally Hampton as a shrewd man who isn't prone to making mistakes. Cliff thanks him for his investigative work and grins with satisfaction. After an enjoyable turkey dinner, Sue Ellen pulls Bobby aside and asks him what he wanted to talk to her about, and he looks around uneasily and says it can wait until another time. JR calls Sheriff Fenton Washburn to tell him he's worried about Ray 'cause he's been taking Jock's death very hard. He instructs Fenton to have his officers pick up Ray from the Longview Bar and then hold him in a jail cell until he gets there...and the sheriff decides he has no problem locking up an innocent civilian just 'cause JR told him to. Ray is huddled in a cell at the Braddock sheriff's station when JR saunters in. He tells his half-bro that Donna didn't look very happy at dinner and is clearly fed up with his boorish behavior, and that Jock would never have given him ten Ewing Oil voting shares if he could see the disheveled lush he's turned into. He stonily says, "You don't deserve them" ... and when Ray growls, "I don't want the damn votes!", JR perks up and hands him papers to sign that effectively transfer the votes to his control. Ray signs the papers without bothering to read what he's signing, then slips them through the bars and onto the floor. JR bends down to scoop them up and tells the officer on duty he can release Ray first thing in the morning...and decrees this as though he's the governing authority of the Braddock law enforcement - which, I guess by virtue of being a powerful Ewing who can order the sheriff to do his bidding, he kind of is. The next morning at Southfork, JR hears Lucy coming down the stairs, so he hastily picks up the phone and has a pretend conversation with someone about a faux charitable donation. After he hangs up, he tells Lucy that Ewing Oil is planning to make a contribution to the burn unit of Frank Waring's hospital, then outright tells Lucy that if she doesn't hand over her Ewing Oil voting shares to be under his control, he might arrange to have Mitch thrown out of his hospital internship. Lucy firmly tells her uncle that she's keeping her ten voting shares, snaps, "JR, you stink", then gets up from the table and flounces off. Ray returns home, surprised to find Donna sitting by the fireplace, fiddling with wood sticks. He gets himself a beer and says he figured she'd have packed up and moved out by now [as did I], and Donna asks him if that's what he wants, and also if a low-rent floozy like Bonnie is what he wants. Ray replies, "Bonnie is my kind of people", meaning that she doesn't have a fancy background, money, or an important last name. He then whines about how he's had "a bellyful of the high and mighty", is no longer going to pretend he's something he's not, and is going to officially cut his ties with the Ewings. Donna reminds him that she only ever wanted him to be the dumb yokelly cowboy she knew he was, and he grunts, "You married a loser" and says if she were smart, she'd be long gone. Donna asks him if he wants a divorce...and when he says he does, she tells him that he's going to have to be the one who files, 'cause for whatever God-only-knows-why reason, she's not ready to give up on their mismatched coupling. Cliff tells Rebecca that after a lot of in-depth research, he learned that Ewing Oil and Olco Industries have been doing a lot of business together lately...and, not coincidentally, JR and Wally Hampton went to the same university and were members of the same fraternity. He says it did seem like kind of a red flag when Wally wanted to recruit him as Chief Operating Officer when he already has a competent person in the role, and can only assume that the offer was a set up engineered by JR. Rebecca asks him why JR would do such a thing, so Cliff says he's now in a position to be a threat to him...and when Rebecca wearily remarks on how much she hates the tedious Ewing-Barnes feud that the Dallas writers seem stubbornly unwilling to ever let go of, Cliff tells her it's their reality, and that she's going to have to choose which side she's on...which seemed like a strange ultimatum, given that Rebecca has never given the impression that she was anything other than Team Cliff. Charles Eccles reads aloud to Bobby the newspaper ad he plans to run in a weak effort to locate Christopher's bio dad. He says he'll run it in a Dallas newspaper and the L.A. Journal, since that's where the baby was born. He then reminds Bobby that he still needs the affidavit signed by Sue Ellen, and Bobby promises to have it for him tomorrow. Jeff Farraday is in the District Clerk's office, searching for any record of Christopher being adopted by the Ewings, but isn't able to find anything on file. Pam shows Sue Ellen her new aerobics studio, then says she was very surprised to see her at Southfork for dinner the other night. Sue Ellen says that she and JR have been getting along really well lately, and that she's chosen to believe he's magically turned into a nicer, more considerate person ever since Jock died. Pam rolls her eyes in dismay and reminds her that JR can be very unpredictable, and Sue Ellen assures her that she's going to take the re-friending slow, but then admits that JR has a way of getting to her, even after all of the horrible dysfunction that went on in their toxic-to-the-point-of-untenable cesspool of a marriage. Donna returns home and finds Ray passed out on the bed. She covers him with a blanket, then suddenly gets a peeved expression on her face. She opens the closet, puts on an expensive looking fur coat, grabs a wad of cash, and heads out. Cliff drops by Ewing Oil headquarters to smugly tell JR that it didn't take him long to figure out that he plotted with Wally Hampton to get him to take a phony job at Olco Industries. JR admits that, yeah, he assumed he'd take the bait without looking into the company too carefully, adding, "Like the greedy frog to the juicy fly, I thought that you'd snatch it right up." [LOL...I cannot describe enough how much I enjoy watching Larry Hagman deliver these fun zingers.] Cliff chucklingly says there's nothing he can do to keep him from seeing Sue Ellen...and when and JR retorts, "I wouldn't count on that", Cliff says he intends to marry her. JR snaps back that he'd have to step over his dead body to do that, and Cliff shrugs as he replies, "Whatever it takes" before casually sashaying out of the room. Donna enters the Longview Bar and silently confronts Bonnie, who cheekily asks if she's here slummin' it. Donna tells her she wanted to see what her competition looked like with her clothes on (hee!), calls Ray "a very special man" who's worth more than hanging out in these kinds of dumps [an assertion I can only describe as crazy talk], and orders Bonnie to get out of their lives. When Bonnie tells her there's no chance of that, Donna offers her varying amounts of cash to entice her move: 5K to move to Houston, and up to 15K to move out of state. Bonnie mulls that over and says she'd do it for 15K, but then gets mad when Donna implies that she's a whore for accepting a sale price and throws a drink at her. Donna responds by punching her in the face, then throws some cash at the bartender while nonsensically muttering, "Drinks are on Bonnie", and storms out. Sue Ellen is admiring the beautiful sculpture JR just purchased for her, but then tells him she's concerned that the romance they're trying to rekindle is moving too fast. JR assures her he doesn't want to do anything she's not ready for, says the sculpture is a plea for forgiveness, and declares, "I love you" - something, he confesses, he should have said a long time ago. Sue Ellen looks moved by his love declaration...and a few seconds after he heads out, she gets a call from Bobby, asking if he can come over for a private chat. Cliff is having drinks with Jordan Lee and Marilee Stone, trying to get them interested in convincing the cartel to do a deal with Wentworth Tool & Die. Jordan says it's a no go, 'cause right now they're wheelin' and dealin' with Ewing Oil, but Marilee throws Cliff a bone when she says that maybe one day in the not-so-foreseeable future they might possibly do business together. Bobby comes right out and tells Sue Ellen that Kristin is Christopher's bio mom, and Sue Ellen pales and murmurs, "It was true, then. She did have a baby." She tells Bobby she knew that Kristin was pregnant...and that she assumed JR was the father, which explains why Kristin was never charged or prosecuted for shooting him. Bobby says he would never do anything to hurt or embarrass her - but really really needs her to sign an affidavit, stating that 1) she has no desire to adopt her sister's spawn, and 2) has no idea who the father could be. Sue Ellen points out that signing an affidavit swearing to the second thing would be lying, then laments being reminded of what a cheating shitbag JR was to her while they were married - just when she was starting to like him again. She tells Bobby she won't ruin his/Pam's life by depriving them of being parents to Christopher, 'cause she knows they'll give the tot a loving home...then blurts out, "Bobby! How I hate that man!" and tears up. Roger is photographing a swimsuit model named Tanya when Lucy drops by the studio. She makes it clear to Roger that their hook-up was just a one time thing she has zero desire to carry on with - but Roger retorts, "We're just getting started!" and insists that their relationship is very very creepily important to him and implores her to give them a chance. Lucy tries to explain that she merely wants a professional relationship with him - just as Blair Sullivan enters the studio, tells Lucy he saw her portfolio, and invites her to lunch so that they can discuss her modelling options. She's like, "Kewl!" and hastily heads out with him...and Roger gets so incensed that he yells at poor Tanya to get dressed and get the hell out of his studio. Adoption hearing! Charles Eccles submits to the judge the affidavit Sue Ellen signed, and adds that he's also making a feeble effort to search for Christopher's bio dad. The judge looks over the paperwork and says that, barring any issue with Southfork being a safe residence for a child, he has no problem granting temporary conservatorship to Pam and Bobby. As an elated Bobby leaves the courthouse with Charles, the camera pans over to Jeff Farraday, who's lurking in the lobby, watching. He slips into the courtroom and pretends to the court reporter that he's a friend of the Ewing family who's curious about the outcome of the hearing, and she happily reports that his "friends" just adopted a baby. Donna tells Ray she's off to Austin to do more research for her new book, and Ray tells her he got a call from Bonnie and asks whassup with punching her in the face...then says she should have punched him [which...no shit]. Donna says she wants him in one piece and has decided that she'll take him any way she can have him - a sentiment I can only describe as utter lunacy from a woman who could do far, far better in the husband department. She heads out, and Ray puts his bottle of booze back on the nightstand, looking happy with his wife's refusal to kick him to the curb like he richly deserves. Bobby races over to Pam's aerobic studio to tell her the good news about the judge's ruling, emphasizing that their tot can officially be called Christopher Ewing. When Pam asks him why he didn't let her know when the hearing had been scheduled so that she too could attend, he tells her he was afraid that something would go wrong at the last minute and didn't want her to experience immediate heartbreak. Pam says she's OK with his need to shield her from the slightest level of discomfort, but that from now on they need to go through this kind of stuff together. JR drops by Sue Ellen's house to shower her with his latest gift: a very sparkly diamond necklace. Sue Ellen carelessly pulls it out of the velvet box and caustically says it reminds her of their marriage: a very expensive joke (!). She then complains that every time she starts to believe in him, she's reminded that he's nothing more than a two-faced snake. As JR scrunches his face confusedly, she rails about how "sick sick sick" their relationship is, throws the necklace at him, and races upstairs to her bedroom. Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying TVofYore's recaps, consider thanking me by buying me a "coffee"!
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