‘Dallas’ season finale: We find out who killed J.R., and John Ross takes on his late daddy’s mantle as a first-rate schemer and seducer

By Joy Tipping/Staff Writer, Guide Live

Photo: Did someone in this picture kill J.R. Ewing? Well, sort of. (ALL PHOTOS: TNT)

So who killed J.R. Ewing?

As his son John Ross (Josh Henderson) put it on Monday’s two-part season finale of TNT’s Dallas, “The only person that could take down J.R. was J.R.”

J.R. confessed in a letter that he had cancer – like his real-life portrayer, Larry Hagman, who died in November – and had only days to live, so he took advantage of that to frame Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval) for his murder. J.R.’s loyal henchman Bum actually pulled the trigger, on his boss’ orders. Fittingly, Bum is played by a real-life Dallas actor, Kevin Page. (Michael Granberry talked with him after the show aired; read his interview here.)

Now, let’s move on to the nitty-gritty.

Episode 14 of Season Two: “Guilt By Association”

We open on John Ross and new bride Pamela (Julie Gonzalo) returning from their quickie Vegas wedding on the Barnes Global private jet. Pamela sports a huge, gaudy fake-stone ring: “I always dreamed that my wedding ring would come from a gumball machine.” John Ross laments his family’s financial situation. Meanwhile, at Ewing Energies, Cliff (Ken Kercheval) is tossing all of the Ewings’ brick-a-brac out to the curb.

On the plane, John Ross reads the flight log and realizes that on the night his father was killed in Nuevo Laredo, Cliff Barnes was also there. He calls Bobby (Patrick Duffy): “It was Cliff, Uncle Bobby! It was Cliff who killed J.R.!!” Pamela furrows her brow-scar as she listens. Bobby tells Bum it’s “time to put the plan in motion.”

Back at Southfork, Bobby, John Ross, Pamela and Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) gather to discuss this development. Pamela protests that she doesn’t believe her father is a cold-blooded killer, to which John Ross replies that he killed her babies with the oil-rig explosion. She still believes that Cliff didn’t know she was on the rig at the time of the explosion.

Meanwhile, Elena (Jordana Brewster) and Christopher (Jesse Metcalfe) arrive in Zurich, which is depicted with a really, really bad fake backdrop (“generic European-looking city”) seen through a hotel window. Then we cut to Drew (Kuno Becker), who is spraying something onto the fake couture shoes that Ryland (Mitch Pileggi) has been moving across the Mexico-Texas border. Christopher says he’s off to find his mom, the original Pamela Barnes Ewing. Her Zurich bank account is registered to David Gordon (Sam Anderson), an American who wasPam’s plastic surgeon after the car accident that left her burned and disfigured 24 years ago.

Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) confronts Ken Richards (Lee Majors) in the Cayman Islands.

In the Cayman Islands, Sue Ellen confronts Ken Richards (Lee Majors, who was totally wasted as the bland Richards in this guest arc). She threatens to take him down if he doesn’t give her proof that Cliff and Ryland were involved in the rig explosion. “If you don’t give me proof, I will expose you myself. Just a little something I learned from J.R.: If you can’t count on someone to do the right thing, don’t give them the choice.” The J.R. legacy lives!

At the Gordon residence, Christopher’s mother is nowhere to be seen, just David Gordon and a mysterious blonde woman who might be a housekeeper or cook. Gordon says that Cliff asked Pamela to come back to Dallas after her accident, but that she refused. Christopher is heartbroken, and furrows his magnificent brow. Meanwhile, back at Southfork, Ann (Brenda Strong) gets word from the Dallas County Jail detox unit that Emma has agreed to rehab. In Zurich, Chris tells Elena about his mother’s abandonment. She vows that they won’t leave Switzerland till they’ve confronted her.

Pamela and Bobby show Rhonda (Emily Kosloski, Patrick Duffy’s real-life daughter-in-law), the woman who met J.R. in a Nuevo Laredo bar, a picture of Cliff and she confirms that he was in the bar that night, staring at them. John Ross explodes: “Is that enough proof for you, Uncle Bobby?” Bobby urges caution; they still need stronger evidence to put Cliff in jail. John Ross: “If I can’t put him in jail, I’ll put him in the ground.”

Meanwhile, back in Zurich, Chris accidentally finds Elena’s secret phone, with which she’s been communicating with Drew. He calls the number on it and gets Drew. He confronts Elena, furious that she protected the man who killed his and Pamela’s unborn twins (by setting the bomb at Cliff’s command), no matter that he’s Elena’s brother and the bad guys had threatened to kill her if he didn’t cooperate. He tells her to be gone when he gets back from trying, again, to find his mother.

Meanwhile, back at Southfork, Ann does what she does most (in addition to riding horseback and shooting people): She cooks breakfast. She gives Emma her prescribed pills and tells her she’ll start rehab on Monday.

Sue Ellen visits the governor (Steven Weber) at the Texas State Capitol and threatens that if he doesn’t correct the report on the rig to indicate that it was, indeed, sabotage, she has something on him that he won’t like. She pours a drink, tells him it’s for him, not her, and settles into a leather seat. “Now, let’s discuss eminent domain,” she purrs (that’s the process by which the state swooped under Ewing Energies and swiped the Henderson land’s oil).

Emma visits her dad, telling him she wants to come home, simpering and blinking her big baby blues at him, and he of course, agrees. At Southfork, Bobby and Bum gaze at J.R.’s giant gold belt buckle. Pamela and John Ross talk. Pamela: “I’m just thinking how screwed up everything is. I married you, I love you, and now I worry that every time you look at me you’re connecting me to what my father did.” He tells her nothing can change the way he feels about her (a hint of what’s to come at the end of the finale — he doesn’t say how he feels about her). Bobby tells John Ross about the buckle; John Ross says he thought it had been stolen in Nuevo Laredo. They tell him it’s a copy, and key to proving Cliff killed J.R. — they want Pamela to plant it on Cliff.

Cliff’s henchman Roy (Alex Fernandez) shows up at Drew’s hotel, but Drew leaves just in time and breaks into Roy’s pickup truck. Drew’s motorcycle zooms off, followed by Roy, at super-high speed, which of course draws the cops. They find that the person on the motorcycle is not, in fact, Drew, and that the pink shoe that Drew was spraying something onto earlier is now in Roy’s pickup. And it seems to be dissolving into something suspiciously drug-like. (This section looked like it took place in Deep Ellum, but I don’t know the exact location.)

In Zurich, Chris is passed out after having imbibed quite a bit of the local booze. Elena’s back at Southfork, whimpering to her mom (Marlene Forte) about losing Christopher because of Drew. She’s also upset that she’s not able to do anything about her father’s legacy; his land has turned up dry (or at least, not drillable for oil).

John Ross (Josh Henderson) and Pamela (Julie Gonzalo) find an interesting document in Cliff’s safety-deposit box.

John Ross and Pamela plant the gold buckle in Cliff’s safety deposit box (how does Pamela have a key to that, anyway?). Cut to Emma at Ryland’s computer and vault, searching for something. Cut to Chris in Zurich, about to close in on his mother, who’s clearing out her bank account at that very moment. Cut to Emma, who finds the key to Ryland’s vault — only it isn’t — and he walks in on her. In Zurich, in sloooooow mooootiooooon … Chris grabs the woman who’s with David Gordon at the bank, and it turns out to be … the blonde woman who was maybe the maid or housekeeper back at his house. Christopher: “Who are you? Where’s my mother?” Cut to Pamela and John Ross in the bank vault, Pamela holding a document: “Oh my god. It’s Pam Ewing’s death certificate,” dated 7-14-1989. “Christopher’s mother is dead.” So, alas, no surprise visit from Victoria Principal or any other actress playing Pam.

Episode 15 of Season Two, “Reckoning”

We open on Emma telling Ryland that she was just searching for pills. He gets her pills out of the vault for her, then has to leave for a phone call. She gazes at the vault. In Zurich, Gordon admits to Chris that his mother did indeed die in 1989, and that the woman he’s with, Corinna, is Pamela’s ex-nurse (and apparently now his wife or girlfriend). They had played along with Cliff’s desire to keep Pamela “alive” so that he could control her shares in the company. In return, Cliff supported the couple in Zurich. Gordon comforts Christopher with the revelation that his mother really did want to return to Dallas, but that after moving to Zurich for treatment of pancreatic cancer, she died. Corinna gives Christopher his mother’s will, leaving him one-third of Barnes Global, and also a note that she wrote a few days before her death. (Thank heavens for notes from dead people! There would be so much left unresolved otherwise!)

At the police station, Bobby urges Roy to tell the truth as Pamela looks on. She later visits Roy in the jail, begging him to tell her if her father knew that she (and her unborn babies) was on the rig platform when he ordered the explosion detonated. Pamela: “Just tell me it was unintentional and I’ll go.” Roy: “Have other children. Forget your father. There was nothing unintentional about it.” Later, Roy is killed by other inmates at the jail — Cliff and Ryland’s way of tying up loose ends.

Pamela and John Ross tell the Ewings that they’re married, which means that with Christopher’s shares, they now have two-thirds control over Barnes Global. Bum arrives, looking Bummish, and discussions about revenge on Cliff continue. Bobby weaves a (patently false) story about the gun that J.R. left with Bum, the drug cartel and all sorts of other machinations, with the final revelation being that Cliff killed J.R., but J.R. wanted him to think he’d gotten away with it, so the Ewings would have time to plot appropriate revenge.

Christopher and Elena confer in a room with, significantly, a portrait of Jock and Miss Ellie Ewing looming over them (ancestral honor and all that). Pamela gets her father to cross the border into Mexico with her, after planting the gun in his car. Emma drugs her father and grabs ledgers and a suitcase from his vault, then high-tails it to Southfork. “I couldn’t let Daddy keep pulling all the strings,” she tells Ann. Ryland gets arrested, howling.

JR is exhumed (his gravestone reads “The only deal he ever lost”) and they pull the bullets out of his chest (just wondering why they didn’t do that BEFORE they buried him?). The ballistics prove they were fired from Cliff’s guns, and he’s arrested in Nuevo Laredo — but not before being gleefully confronted by the Ewing cadre of Bobby, Sue Ellen, Christopher and John Ross. Pamela: “You are now the minority shareholder in your own company.” Oh, and here come the federales for your skeezy butt. Cliff swears that he was, in fact, in Mexico when J.R. died, but that he was in Cabo, not Nuevo Laredo (so who was that Cliff-looking guy that Rhonda saw?). Cliff: ”Somebody moved my plane! They’re trying to frame me! NO, he’s trying to frame me from the grave.” Then, a litany of “I didn’t kill J.R.,” over and over and over as he’s dragged away. Later, in the jail, Bobby offers to help Cliff — at least get him moved back to the United States — if Cliff will admit killing J.R. Cliff: “I have never done anything the Ewings asked me to do, and I’m not gonna start today. … Who killed J.R.?” Bobby: “You’ll never know, Cliff.” Ah-hah! It was a frame job, after all!

Bobby and Bum visit J.R.’s grave, followed soon by Christopher and John Ross. There, the big revelation comes: J.R. was sick with terminal cancer and chose to use that to finally exact revenge on Cliff Barnes, by framing Cliff for his murder. In a note (!!), J.R. calls Cliff a “malignant little troll” (I can just hear Larry Hagman saying those words) and says Bum is the “final and most important piece of the puzzle, and the best friend I didn’t deserve to have.” There’s a memory of when little J.R. framed little Bobby for stealing his daddy’s favorite duck-hunting gun, and how J.R.’s using those skills now. John Ross admits that he’s confused. “Who shot my father, Uncle Bobby?” Bum’s admission: “I shot your father, John Ross. … he said that’s the way it had to be. Please believe J.R.’s last act was an act of love for his family, for you.” John Ross: “The only person that could take down J.R. was J.R.” They shake hands; all is forgiven. (And let me just say, in all humility, that I predicted months ago that J.R. had orchestrated his own death. I did not, however, see the Bum connection coming!)

Carmen urges Elena to let go of her anger over her father’s lost legacy. But then Elena gets a message from Cliff’s lawyer saying Cliff wants to see her in Nuevo Laredo. Meanwhile, Emma visits her father (Ryland’s turn to wear the ever-available Dallas orange jail jumpsuit). He insists that the Ewings have “gotten inside her head.” Harris: “This isn’t my Emma, this isn’t the girl I raised.” Emma, smiling smugly (her specialty): “It is. Because I’m exactly my father’s daughter.”

Meanwhile, back at Southfork, Christopher reads his mother’s last letter to him, and Pamela happens by. She tells him not to give up on Elena, that he loves her. “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.”

In the Nuevo Laredo jail, Cliff tells Elena that J.R. Ewing stole land from her father and reaped the millions of dollars from the fraud. Cliff invites her to “be my proxy for the third of Barnes Global that I still own.” At the newly christened Ewing Global offices, a very bad portrait of J.R. is put on the wall, with John Ross toasting “the shrewdest oil man that ever lived. … Remember that you never go against a Ewing.”

Ann tells Bobby about her and Emma’s visit to Harris Ryland in jail. “I think Emma’s gonna be OK. Harris, he looked like someone who could use a hug.” Ann and Bobby verbally canoodle, with her telling him he’s “still the best man I know.” Bobby: “You need to get out more.”

Meanwhile, back at Southfork, Sue Ellen advises her son, John Ross: “Now you be nice to that bride of yours. Treat her right, it’s not easy being a Ewing bride in this family.” John Ross: “What do you take me for, mama, a scoundrel?” Sue Ellen grabs J.R.’s whiskey decanter as they leave the room.

Christopher tries to find Elena, who’s already gone to Mexico, to tell her he still loves her. At the downtown Omni hotel, John Ross buys flowers and champagne and goes up to a room. Somewhere near Nuevo Laredo, Elena hooks up with the mysterious Joaquin, whom she and Drew grew up with in Mexico. Wait — I thought the story up to now was that they grew up at Southfork. Anyway, judging from the firepower on display at Joaquin’s place, he may have something to do with that drug cartel, and Elena’s hooking up with him cannot be good for the Ewings.

Back at the Omni with John Ross — Pamela’s at Southfork, so who’s in that room he’s approaching? — of course, it’s Emma waiting there, clad in black lace and demanding “payment” for the goods she got on her dad.

“Darlin’, trust me.,”  John Ross drawls in perfect J.R. tones. “I’m willing to pay the price. Just don’t tell my wife.” And … blackout.

TNT has given no indication of whether the series will be renewed; its ratings have been down this season, but are still plenty respectable for basic cable. We say, please, please, please let the games continue.