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Photo: Zade Rosenthal / TNT |
The Ewing family, friends, a few enemies, and fans old and new said goodbye to J.R. last night in a poignant episode of DALLAS on TNT. The script, written by Cynthia Cidre, was excellent and you could
feel the history without any flashbacks being used. I will probably watch the entire episode again at some point and notice many things I didn't pick up on at first viewing, but here are some things I really enjoyed most.
The
special opening sequence created for Larry Hagman was perfect.
Ken Kercheval (Cliff), Steve Kanaly (Ray), Deborah Shelton (Mandy), Cathy Podewell (Cally), Charlene Tilton (Lucy) and Ted Shackelford (Gary) guest-starred and each one had some type of "moment" in the show, a big improvement over the blink-and-you-miss-it cameos by Ray and Lucy in Season 1. Gary and Ray were naturally conflicted over how to feel about their brother's death. Lucy was reflective and seemed to have at least some appreciation for her Uncle J.R.'s dirty dealings at this point in her live. Mandy and Cally reminded us of what a playboy J.R. was and that he was hard to get over. Surprisingly, the least satisfying of all these appearances was Cliff barging in. For some reason, Cliff had continued to be written as a one-note villain on the new DALLAS.