What struck me in this Patrick Duffy-directed episode was how so many characters appeared in isolation from one another. Mandy is only seen on the phone. Eddie and Betty conspire against Lucy who doesn't appear alongside her subplot castmates but only in a single scene with Ray, who reported earlier eating his breakfast alone.
Alone on another level would include most of the cast. In very nicely played parallelism, both JR and Cliff are rejected by the same two women in their lives. Mandy hangs up on JR's pathetically pleading call. Cliff, sensing trouble at home, seizes the opportunity to try and rekindle the flame with Sue Ellen, but she turns him down flat. Adding insult to injury, after that stinging rebuke to his ego, he calls Mandy but only gets her machine.
Jenna has Bobby but is facing alone the prospect of prison for Naldo's murder. And as a single mother she's alone in feeling the pain she's unavoidably causing her daughter to suffer. Moving Charlie to a different school to escape bullying, however, struck me as not only a privileged move but a short-term solution to a long-term problem. And as someone who changed schools in the middle of a school year, I know Jenna will only be inflicting greater suffering and loneliness upon her child. Charlie was oft spoken of but never seen this week.
Fools rush in, and there was Clayton leading the charge when he ripped and kicked the boys when they were down. His hotheaded harangue of the brothers left him hanging out to dry, at least until Miss Ellie went all Patsy Cline in the end. (Finally! Donna Reed got something more dramatic to do than simply sit in a chair looking pinched and pained!)
Lucy doesn't yet know just how alone she really is. Never my favorite character (I can't forget how loathsome she was in the first couple seasons), I nonetheless felt awful for her being set up for such an undeserved fall.
Is Donna alone? She may end up that way, skipping out and not providing Ray his requisite OJ, coffee, and kiss. A pretty harsh punishment for Ray's meeting fire with fire in the contretemps with Clayton. Me, I think Donna has always been alone to a degree. This sophisticated lady and her cowpoke husband have always been a city mouse and country mouse mismatch.
Jamie was left warming the bench this week, getting only that single scene playing the wet blanket over Cliff's celebration of Al Brindle's batting a homerun for the opposing team. Cliff getting his mercenary mitts on Digger's copy of the three-way-split agreement was indeed cause for a champagne celebration. But what's this? Jamie's less interested in owning a third of Ewing Oil and more worried about her father's reputation being sullied in court.
My first thought, besides how sentimentally short-sighted and just plain stupid Jamie is, was who today would know or care the slightest about Jason Ewing? Heck, even JR forgot all about this long-lost uncle. Seriously, Jamie, your forgotten father has no reputation. He's ancient history, so the papers won't report what a drunken lout he and Digger were, and the people wouldn't read it if they did. And you need to own the fact Jason was a "blackhearted" SOB, as Brindle bluntly told it to your face. Don't let your Daddy issues destine you to leaving big money on the table.
Yeah, I'm annoyed with Jamie (and Pam) for being a pair of party-poopers and raining on Cliff's parade. But I'm a big fan of Jenilee Harrison, so her relative absence was disappointing, especially with Mandy's literally phoning it in only compounding this episode's glamour deficit.
I'm curious how this Ewing Wives on the Road to Hong Kong subplot will play out. I'm hoping they inject a little lighthearted Laverne and Shirley-style humor and hijinks, but that won't happen. Pam's been screaming a lot lately and Sue Ellen is sardonic when not seething. I felt Bobby's frustration with Pam's quixotic tilting at every Mark sighting, real or imagined. I hope their Oriental escapade brings closure and pulls Pam back from the brink of a very real relapse into insanity.
You know, I thought with Peter off her mid-life-crisis-addled mind, Sue Ellen would redirect her energies into being a good Mom. Nope. Here she is hounding John Ross to finish his orange juice because they're late leaving for school. Mom's failure to plan shouldn't be the kid's emergency. I noticed he left a full plate of breakfast and over half his OJ behind. Do you know how many starving kids in... oh, never mind. John Ross lives a very different life than many of us did. And I definitely don't envy the kid.
When this show's end credits rolled to the rousing theme music, two thirds of this 30-episode eighth season were behind us. What developments and disasters are looming and threatening to befall our beloved cast of characters over the remaining ten shows? I mean, Ewing Oil is hovering between life and death, Jenna looking at life in the lock-up, Lucy is going to learn of Eddie's treachery, and other events even more tragic events promise to unfold before they call it a wrap. In real life, a couple cast members were getting pink slipped while a third was tendering a rapidly regretted resignation.
And speaking of disasters, seeing John Ross playing on the bed with that space shuttle toy brought to mind how the January 1986 Challenger disaster was less than a year away from when this episode was broadcast in February 1985. That tragedy and this series spotlighting sad people in troubled relationships are sobering reminders that the '80s weren't totally awesome for everybody.
