JR Ewing
Sniffle.
Hotel Colon
So, basically, it's either very punny that JR punctuated his life at the Hotel Colon, or terribly sad because they made him die in Mexico's bowel.
El Morgue
There's some malarkey about how nobody believed JR died, and the police told them they think it's a random mugger. Bobby insists on ID'ing the body -- which they previously assumed was JR because his wallet was under the bed -- and the cops are all, "Oh, right," as if nobody ever thought of that. So they go to a creepy blood-spattered morgue where all the bodies are kept in, like, oversize laundry bags. And sure enough, which WE already knew, the body is JR's.
John Ross
John Ross gives this heartbroken look like, "Aw, shitballs, this is the worst day ever."
John Ross
And then he goes all Freak Eyes on Bobby, because they can't get the body out of Mexico/they have to Find The Killer/whenever he gets stressed out his eyeballs swell to 150 percent of their regular size. But remember Marta del Sol? The girl who crazy Leonor Varela impersonated to infiltrate the Ewings, and then she ended up dead? Well, Real Marta's father shows up and says he'll take care of everything and never leave Dead JR's side (that is taking it a bit far) and that he'll personally escort JR's corpse back to Dallas.
Wangmobile
It will not surprise you to know that Harris Ryland drives a penismobile whose doors open upward.
Emma
Emma is saddened to learn of her father's predictability in the vehicular symbolism department. He beseeches her to come home; she bristles at his controlling language about "letting" her see Ann. Then Ann comes out and tells him to leave, he won't, yada yada yada, Elena's brother comes out with a gun in his pocket and defends Ann's honor and then two other cowboys with rifles escort Harris back to his sportspenis, and Emma continues to have feelings.
Sue Ellen
John Ross is rifling through JR's room to find out who wants him dead. Sue Ellen has a good line about how half the phonebook would've jumped at the chance, except she illustrates it by picking UP a phonebook that was randomly sitting on the bed. As if Southfork is a motel and not JR's childhood home.,
John Ross
John Ross then gets wiggyfaced on Sue Ellen, because Sue Ellen -- with amazing tactlessness -- decides they should move on with their big business plan, which includes her seducing Gary. I rarely say this, but: John Ross is RIGHT. It's coming from a place of grief, but seriously, be quiet, Sue Ellen.
Best barware ever
Of COURSE J.R. Ewing has his own personalized decanter and glasses. I feel like I need this in my life. Except with his name, not mine.
Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban
At the wake, Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys) shows up with Mark Cuban, who owns the Mavericks. And the look on Mark's face is as if Jerry just said, "I've never had a face lift in my LIFE."
Ann
And WHAT has possessed Ann's head? The spirit of every anchorwoman in all of Texas?
Memories
Aw, you guys, look at these. They are the best, and this is the worst.
Cally and Mandy
Cooing over the pictures are Cally, JR's other ex-wife, and his old mistress Mandy Winger. I love that Mandy is wearing a giant cross and then Cally is wearing blue, as if this is a political luncheon.
Sue Ellen
I feel like it's taking all of Sue Ellen's strength not to suggest that Cally go home and PUT ON SOME DAMN GRIEF.
John Ross
Just in case you wondered whether John Ross's engorged eyeballs had gone down...
Emma
John Ross catches Emma hiding in a wine cellar looking slow-eyed and strangely sultry. She's got an open bottle of Klonopin -- well, TECHNICALLY it was generic Clonazepam -- and she's looking at him like the brandy that would wash it down a treat.
John Ross
John Ross's response is to pop one and then leave; Emma's answer to THAT is to eat one super suggestively, a wasted gesture considering she is now alone in the room. I guess we're supposed to think Harris's visit earlier sent her into an anxiety panic, and now she's getting super high. Which... okay? Sure.
Sue Ellen
And Sue Ellen starts to get all clingy with Gary. Lady, GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF.
Cliff Barnes
Old Cliffie storms the funeral and makes wild threats about taking over everything and winning, and whatnot. Pamela escorts him out, but then some other yokel announces that JR got what he deserved: cut down by a mugger in a slum of a hotel. John Ross goes to punch him, but Christopher cuts in and says, "I got this," and acts all calm, and then BOOM. Fisticuffs everywhere.
The cousins
Christopher and John Ross bond over the big brawl that erupted, and Christopher promises that they'll find out who shot JR and then make that person rue the day. And then they swap notes about how their hands feel. It's like Cosmo for estranged males.
Carlos del Sol
And then Creepy Carlos shows up and delivers a totally unconvincing assessment that JR was, indeed, shot in a random act of violence -- "wrong place, wrong time," is what they keep saying. John Ross snorts at this and says that JR mastered place and time, so this is bogus. In sum, Mexico has tapped out of this one.
Emma and Elena
"Hey, Elena, thanks for loaning me your hairstyle, but I'm super high so I'm going to sneak out."
Glug
Indeed, Emma follows a depressed John Ross out to the fence, which is where all important things happen. "You're high," he says. "You're low," she slurs. Then she chugs. And then...
John Ross and Emma
... she bangs.
Bobby and Ann
Ann's hair has calmed down significantly from its earlier electrical accident. She tries to make emotionless Bobby open up, so he does -- but not in the way she planned. He RAILS on her for keeping her old life a secret, and for making him learn about her through an attempted-murder trial and not from her own lips. He's so enraged that Ann melts and all that's left of her is a massive hairball. It's actually a very good scene. Patrick Duffy is very underappreciated.
Sue Ellen
Oh, Sue Ellen. She sneaks into JR's room to read the letter he wrote for her before he died -- just as we knew she would -- and starts chugging all his booze, again, just as we knew she would. Linda Grey is terrific here, too. You can feel how much she love-hates the liquor and how she wants to be strong enough to resist it, but doesn't know how to find the strength for this without it.
Wedding photo
SNIFFLE, Y'ALL. ARE YOU CRYING YET?
The funeral
Ray Krebbs speaks first at the funeral and says, "When I found out JR was my half-brother, I didn't know whether to celebrate, or shoot myself." Awesome. And then Lucy pops up and says she looks back on all his dastardly deeds and, with hindsight, thinks they were all just acts of honesty. This is very charitable, considering she earlier recounted JR telling her, when she married a plastic surgeon, that he could perhaps give her a new face -- "one without a mouth." JR, you will be missed. EVERYBODY loved writing for that man.
Sue Ellen
Sue Ellen gets up there and cracks that JR was the most infuriating, charming bastard she'd ever met -- "enough to drive a girl to drink." Then she admits to getting hammered the night before, and maybe still being a little drunk right this second, and reads JR's letter aloud. He apparently decided he wanted to give it another go -- which... I'll allow it because they had to do something -- and invited her to dinner when he got back to Dallas. Sue Ellen then sobs and touches his coffin and says he was the love of her life, and Bobby has to go help her back to her seat. Again -- it's great.
Bobby
But Duffy gets more credit because I feel like a lot of these actors were able to channel legit grief -- Hagman probably WAS a love of Linda Grey's life, on some level -- and Patrick Duffy is feeling all that sadness, too, but he has to bottle it up because Bobby is bottling it all up, and I bet that was harder.
John Ross
John Ross can't bring himself to say anything -- Christopher and Elena both did, but John Ross passed, just sitting there looking beaten up and sad. When the funeral ends, he silently rejects an overture from Christopher and walks up to JR's flower-laden mound of earth, and then they're interrupted.
PI
I totally forget what this guy's name is but I keep wanting to call him Bum. Why is that? [Note: I just looked it up; apparently it IS his name.] Anyway, Bum the PI shows up and says he has a big fat package from JR that contains Lots Of Answers. Man, JR Ewing was so thoughtful, even in suspicious death.
The Letter
Okay, you guys, I am very upset by this. Look at that first sentence. JR Ewing would NEVER have used "your" when he meant "you're." Second, I can't decide if it's great or terrible that there are some cross-outs. JR wouldn't have Wite-Out, it's true, and he wouldn't use those damn fool erasable pens. (However, I pegged him as a fountain pen man. HMM.) I feel like that man would redraft rather than try and fix a mistake and hope nobody saw it. He was JR. He was precise.
And third, why are so many words randomly capitalized? Is this something where John Ross is going to look at all the capitals and unscramble them to decode a message? Because seriously, JR ALSO would not have capitalized the word "He" in a sentence about Cliff Barnes, because JR believed Cliff Barnes was Satan's bunion, not a divine being. And third
Pow
JR also included a gun. And the note said, basically, that they had to save Ewing Energies from Cliff Barnes and Harris Ryland -- whom JR was in Mexico trying to ruin, on Bobby's behalf. JR also was hunting down Pam. Yes, the original Pam. [WAIT: Bum said "Christopher's mother," and it was BOBBY who said, "Pam?!?" Bum never said anything. So maybe it IS Chris's real mother, Kristen, a.k.a. Sue Ellen's sister, a.k.a. the woman who shot JR the first time. THAT would be something, and indeed, I said last week I was hoping she would shoot him again.] So JR was super busy and he has to deliver all this exposition from the Great Beyond.
Dun-dun-DUNNN
Bum tells them that JR did die at the hands of muggers, but gives Bobby a piece of paper. Bobby keeps it quiet, and then hisses at Bum later that he should pay off whomever he needs to keep up this ruse that JR died in a random crime. So, JR WAS murdered, and Bobby knows something, and we have no idea when he'll share with us. Oh, Bobby. SECRETS KILL. Then again, they also make for good ratings.
Oh MAN
Now, I don't remember this being in the room when Sue Ellen went up there, but Bobby heads to JR's chamber, and there is his hat, hanging on the corner of the chair. This totally got me, y'all. HIS EMPTY HAT. That sucker was the lid on so many schemes. I want it to become like the Hogwarts Sorting Hat, where people put it on and then either achieve wisdom about themselves, or get to pull a sword out of it, or maybe just get to hear a song before being told which Southfork guest room to occupy.
Bobby
Bobby is undone. He pours himself what's left of the booze and sniffles that he always knew JR would have one more up his sleeve. "And it's a good one," he tells JR/us, before he finally breaks down into tears and drinks through his sobbing. It's so awful. You know he's going to go get in the shower in ten minutes just in the hope that when he comes out everything will have gone back to normal. In fact I might try that too.