September 1 Dallas Episode Recap: Hurt
Has Elena burned her bridges at Southfork?
Robert James Ewing has a VERY bad day in the wake of Drew Ramos’ burial, which serves as the powder keg that sets off Elena’s showdown with the Ewings over their part in J.R.’s master plan to frame Cliff Barnes for his death. Unable to contain her fury at the Ewings any longer, Elena reveals that she has J.R.’s letter admitting his plot — which, as viewers know, she stole from John Ross’ wallet after distracting him with a night a passion. Bobby admits that Elena’s accusations are true and refuses to apologize for his — or J.R.’s — actions. Sue Ellen and Ann are aghast at the deception. When Christopher presses Elena for an explanation of why she’s dredging up the Ewings’ dirty laundry, she produces the deed to the worthless land J.R. tricked her father into buying and drilling on for years, leading him to financial ruin and an early grave. It’s time for retribution, she demands. She outlines her terms — profits from the Ewings’ company, some of their land and a pardon for Cliff — and gives them a deadline of 8 p.m. the following night. John Ross is bugged that their encounter was just Elena’s ruse to get the letter. Wait until she takes the inevitable home pregnancy test (but perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself!).
John Ross and his bruised ego are dead set against letting Elena get her way so she has Bum look into her past. It turns out that while Miss Ramos may be steaming like a teapot kettle for revenge, she’s otherwise clean as a Girl Scout. What Bum does discover is that the video of John Ross with Emma sent to Pamela came from Nicolas Trevino’s mobile phone. Bobby takes a very steep fall from his pedestal in the eyes of the family when the smoke clears from the confrontation. Pamela can’t believe her former father-in-law would stoop to lies, Sue Ellen tells him Miss Ellie would be ashamed of him and Ann calls him a hypocrite for raking her over the coals for her fibs when he’s been hiding a whopper of a lie for so long. Left alone in his office, he trashes it, along with a photo of his troublemaking older brother. Ann has family problems of her own to contend with. Emma recovers enough from getting dumped by John Ross to pay the head of the cartel a visit, hair slicked back and wearing a leather dress in a ridiculous attempt to ape her grandmother’s Mafia Mother act. She talks tough, but the cartel boss isn’t buying. Worse yet, the CIA agent Harris put on Emma’s tail informs Daddy Dearest that his precious little girl is in cahoots with the enemy. Emma’s confronted with the news that her dad’s the world’s unlikeliest CIA operative when she gets home. She tells him about her meeting with the cartel boss, conveniently leaving out the part where she asked him to have Harris tossed back in the clink for good.
Although Sue Ellen fails to get Bobby to divulge the identity of J.R.’s killer, she pays Bum a visit, having pieced together the puzzle of who would conduct a mercy killing for her ex-husband. Bum apologizes and explains how J.R. didn’t want to subject her to the pain of witnessing his deterioration from cancer. After spotting sketches of J.R.’s portrait hanging in Southfork, Sue Ellen realizes Bum painted it and comes to a bittersweet peace about why J.R. did what he did. J.R. certainly paved his own way in life and how he approached his death would be no different.
Will Pamela let her evil father off the hook?
While Christopher looks through his archive of memories with Elena to figure out a way to deal with his vengeful former love, Bobby meets with Ms. Ramos to surrender to her terms. She gets the money, the land and even a written pardon for Cliff but he warns her that setting Cliff free will reignite the Barnes-Ewing feud with even more ferocity. “You broke my heart today,” Bobby tells a visibly shaken Elena. When she later gives Cliff the good news over the phone, Mr. Barnes immediately starts plotting his counterattack against the Ewings and tells her she was responsible for giving him a second chance at revenge. Elena turns over Cliff’s pardon to Pamela. It’s up to her whether her father leaves his Mexican jail cell now. Elena may have won this round with the Ewings, but she’s not getting away free and clear. John Ross takes great pleasure in telling Nicolas that he knows he was the one who sent Pamela the footage of him with Emma. He also hints at the juicy particulars of how Elena got her hands on J.R.’s letter. Nicolas, who’s too close to the Ewing Global IPO to lose his cool, contains his fury. He tells Elena she obviously had to degrade herself to secure the evidence she needed against the Ewings. Elena begs him to leave Dallas with her so they can start fresh somewhere else. He agrees. Back at Southfork, Christopher tells Bobby his old letters from Elena led him to discover that Nicolas is probably her childhood relative Joaquin and he’s convinced “Joaquin” is just using her and Cliff to advance his own agenda. Did Christopher’s discovery come too late to save Elena?
So in one year that they’ve just wiped out “J.R.’s Masterpiece”. They’ve undone everything it was supposed to wrap up.
Yes, it looks like the Dallas team wants to put cranky old Cliff Barnes back into the action.