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Bobby decides to throw one last barbecue before he hands Southfork over to the fake conservancy. Things are moving along pretty quickly, with Bobby and Ann already packing up things for their new condo. You know what else is moving at breakneck pace? Marta's love for John Ross. Suddenly she's acting like they're omigodsoulmates4eva! even though John Ross can barely stand to be in the same room with her. Also, everybody keeps calling her Marta even after they find out her real name. J.R. hires a guy named Bum (I love you, Texas) to dig up some dirt on her. Turns out she has a history of stalking her boyfriends. Bum snaps some pictures of John Ross getting cozy with Elena, which J.R. uses to send Marta into a jealous rage. She and J.R. make a new deal that cuts John Ross completely out of Southfork.
Meanwhile, John Ross is oblivious to the extent of his daddy's scheme and keeps working in both their interests. To blackmail Mitch Lobell's son, he blackmails Rebecca into seducing the poor sap. He wants pictures of Lobell doing drugs or he'll tell Christopher about that damnable email. At first she agrees, but has a change of heart when her intended victim turns out to be a decent guy. Well, sort of decent, anyway. When John Ross tells Marta about the failed plan, she happily volunteers to get the job done – and succeeds. Once she finds out John Ross has been lying to her about their Epic Love, she hands the incriminating photos to J.R., who uses them to get Mitch Lobell off his back.
Somewhere along the way, Bobby and Christopher help a cow give birth. She dies in the process, providing a strained metaphor about adoption and love triangles. Christopher decides to end things with Elena for good by being kind of a jerk to her. He recommits himself (again) to his wife, who starts to confess to him about the whole email thing just as the episode ends. Stay tuned for the full weecap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Dallas: Bobby sold Southfork to a fake conservancy. Mitch Lobell, the family lawyer, helped J.R. and John Ross with the fakery, but at a price. The young'uns were all in a tizzy over the mysterious email that put a halt to Christopher and Elena's marriage plans. Cliff Barnes brought his brand of brimstone and crazy back to town. John Ross had a fling with a woman who isn't really Marta Del Sol. Christopher and Elena got cozy. Rebecca found out, but decided she loves Christopher anyway.
Christopher dreams about hopping into the sack with Elena, then wakes with a start to his wife. They must be late sleepers, because John Ross and J.R. are already halfway through their tenth scheme of the day. John Ross gets a call from Marta (she's still in his phone as Marta Del Sol for some reason) and ignores it. He and his daddy talk about how to get Mitch Lobell off their backs. They decide to set up Lobell's son for a felony drug possession, which would be his third and a doozy under the "three strikes" law. Knowing Lobell's weakness for the ladies, J.R. suggests they get Marta to help out, but John Ross says she's getting too clingy. Asking her to help set someone up on drug charges would practically be like asking her to marry him. John Ross decides to call Rebecca instead. Even though this is just moments since the last time we saw Rebecca, she's wearing totally different lingerie and sitting in a totally different bed in a totally different bedroom. John Ross says he wants to meet up with her to discuss the mystery email. Maybe they can also figure out the weird lack of bedroom continuity. Cue the opening credits.
J.R. meets up with an investigator named Bum who tells him that Marta's real name is Veronica Martinez. This is of little importance, since everybody keeps calling her Marta. She also suffers from bipolar disorder and has been arrested twice for stalking ex-boyfriends, one of whom she went after with a skinning knife. J.R. is delighted and sends Bum off on his assignment.
Southfork. Everybody's packing up the place ahead of the sale and getting ready for a goodbye barbecue. Tommy helps out by lifting a few boxes and kissing some ass. Christopher and Elena talk business over breakfast and carefully time their awkward canoodling to coincide with Rebecca's entrance. She looks slightly aghast, but recovers quickly and heads off to her secret meeting with John Ross. Meanwhile, Bobby's being kind of a baby about not helping Ann with packing up his family's belongings. Yeah, it's painful, but whatever. He's the one who decided to sell.
J.R. drops by Sue Ellen's office to give her Miss Ellie's pearls. Before he can get much into the sweet talk, Cliff Barnes walks in. "Well, what do we have here? An angel talking to the devil!" J.R.'s eyebrows lower like the horns of a bull getting ready to charge. Sue Ellen says Cliff is giving her some political advice. The old coots start hurling insults at each other before Sue Ellen drags Cliff off to their lunch date. J.R. starts plotting Cliff's demise.
Rebecca meets up with John Ross outside an abandoned building. He shows her the email, which she claims not to have sent. John Ross rolls his eyes and threatens to expose her to Christopher. That would be dumb of him though, wouldn't it? Christopher would almost certainly go running back to Elena, which is the opposite of what John Ross wants. Rebecca should probably realize this, but instead crumples under the pressure. Worst con ever. She agrees to get pictures of Lobell's son doing drugs in exchange for John Ross's silence.
Later, Elena finds John Ross at his favorite bar (the one that doesn't serve Chinese drinks) and asks him for some business help. She says she's found an old oil well on Miss Henderson's property that she thinks is sitting on another big reservoir, but Henderson won't hear her out. "You were always better with people than me," she says. A little more charm and he's agreed to talk to the reluctant Miss Henderson. From a little ways down the bar, Bum watches with interest.
Back on Southfork, Bobby and Christopher work on a busted fence. Bobby senses something is awry in his son's love life. Christopher doesn't want to talk about it. A ranch hand drives up and tells them a pregnant cow is about to give birth to a metaphor and she's having some difficulty, on account of how painfully forced it is. Bobby rushes off to help the cow while Christopher scowls at the fence.
John Ross woos Miss Henderson and then he and Elena head out into the field to check the old well head. Elena has some crazy Maleficent cheekbones on her. John Ross ignores another call from Marta so that he can get into a playful hose fight with Elena. This turns into light wrestling, which turns into hugging, which turns into staring into each other's eyes. Bum snaps pictures of it all from a short distance away. Every time Elena hugs a guy, someone is there to take blackmail pictures of it. Bum calls J.R. "I finally got something good on your boy," he says. "Finally"? Didn't he only start working on this that morning?
Elena and John Ross go to Sue Ellen for drilling money. Sue Ellen takes the opportunity to talk to her boy about his daddy. She's not sure J.R. has really changed. John Ross says, with some defensiveness, that his daddy is finally teaching him the oil business like he always promised he would. Sometimes J.R. also gives him Milk Bones and tosses a "good boy" his way, too.
Christopher seeks out his father, who is in the barn with the distressed cow. She's lying on the floor, mooing in pain. Christopher decides now is the right time to start talking about his romantic dilemmas. He tells Bobby about his plans to elope with Elena two years ago and how the mystery email broke them up and he only found out about it just before he married Rebecca. "You must be going through hell," Bobby says. The cow looks at them like, "I am giving birth to a hundred-pound baby with hooves! You don't know what hell is!" Bobby tells Christopher he has to make a choice. Christopher says he doesn't think that he can. The cow starts wailing in pain. It's only partly because of the labor.
Rebecca heads over to the addiction support group that Lobell's son is hosting. It's either Jeremy or Jason London. The credits don't say. I'm going to say it's Jason. After the group ends for the night, she asks Jason for a little one-on-one time. Elsewhere, J.R. is meeting with Bum to look over the new pictures of Elena and John Ross. J.R. plans to use them to get Marta "madder than a hornet's nest." Speaking of Elena and John Ross, they're just calling an end to their day of hugging. They decide to work together again, but Elena isn't quite eager to jump back into romance with him just yet. She says goodbye with a kiss on the cheek.
John Ross goes home and finds his apartment door already open. Marta's waiting for him inside. She and her slinky lingerie are very sad because John Ross has been ignoring her calls all day. He makes some excuse about shooting pool with his buddies all day and losing track of the time. She should have been like, "What? You don't have friends! You're an asshole!" But she forgives him with a kiss, and even promises him a present of the naughty variety. She's crazy, but fair.
Rebecca is having less luck with Jason. She tells him she's having relationship troubles and wants to cope by getting high. She asks if he has any drugs they could share. He's sympathetic, but talks her out of it. "I know you that you don't think you have a choice, but you do," he says. "You just gotta stop lying to yourself about this being the only way." She's like, "Man, that is so unintentionally relevant to my situation!" He shows her pictures of his girlfriend and talks about falling in love and not wanting to let her down. He manages to change Rebecca's mind about the drugs, but really about the whole blackmail thing.
She goes back to Southfork to find Tommy in her bedroom. He's mad because she didn't install that spyware on Christopher's computer like she was supposed to and it's getting in the way of their stealing the methane patent. So instead, Tommy downloads the family files off Christopher's computer in the hopes of uncovering some dirt to use against the Ewings. This is a terrible plan and Rebecca and Tommy are terrible cons.
Marta wants to make sure John Ross isn't late for one of their dates again. This involves getting Neiman Marcus to open after hours so she can get him a fancy new Piaget watch. Tying him to a chair would have been a lot cheaper. In the middle of this, Rebecca calls to tell him she couldn't go through with framing Lobell's son. When John Ross tells Marta about it, she offers to take care of Lobell herself like it's no bigger an errand than, say, picking up the dry cleaning.
Back on the ranch, that poor cow is still trying to give birth. Bobby has his arm all up in her and announces that the calf is all turned around and its hooves have punctured the uterus. Bobby wants to get the vet over to cut the calf out, which will, unfortunately, kill the mother. Christopher wants to save them both, but there isn't time and there's a risk both would be lost. He has to choose either Rebecca or Elena -- er, the calf or the cow.
Morning. J.R. finds Elena at the breakfast table and tries to sweet-talk her into inviting John Ross to the barbecue. Why didn't Bobby ban Elena from Southfork along with John Ross? He reminisces about John Ross's childhood crush on Elena. "I doubt he ever would have finished a whole book if it weren't for you," J.R. says. "He was dyslexic, not stupid," Elena says. "Yeah," J.R. says, dismissively. He tells her to think about the invite, then goes off to have breakfast with Sue Ellen. Cliff Barnes has offered to fund her campaign, but Sue Ellen changes the subject to John Ross. She isn't entirely sure that J.R. has his best interests at heart. J.R. says he wants a fresh start. Sue Ellen looks as flustered as a schoolgirl the minute she gets around J.R.
Bobby and Christopher bring the new calf out to meet his new mama. "It's a shame we had to put the mother down," Bobby says. On the plus side, everyone gets double helpings of brisket at the barbecue. They watch the calf frolicking and talk about Christopher being adopted and needing to make a choice about Rebecca. It's a little bit sweet, but also kind of weird. Christopher's idea of doing the right thing is to present Elena with a check for $20,000. He tells her he doesn't want her coming back to him later and trying to claim a piece of his methane action. She's stunned. "Are you kidding me?" she asks. "I wish I were," he says. "You're ambitious, Elena. Out to prove yourself and to prove to everyone else that you're not just the help's daughter." He points out her business dealings with John Ross and secretly drilling on Southfork. He says she compromises her integrity for money. He's not wrong, but that's not why he's being cruel. It's not like she's a bear he raised by hand and then has to scare off so she doesn't trust humans again. No, he's a wuss and he doesn't want to have to deal with temptation, so he's putting it all on her to stay away from him.
Elena texts John Ross to invite him to the barbecue. He's pretty pleased with himself, not knowing that it was his daddy who gave Elena the idea. He turns around and texts Rebecca to tell her he'll be there. Why would he give her a heads up? She looks like she's going to barf.
Marta drinks champagne and downs some lithium. Even her prescription is made out to Marta Del Sol. She may be unstable, but you have to admire her level of commitment. She looks upset, but cheers up when a knock comes at the door. Hoping for John Ross, she's disappointed to find J.R. He shows her the pictures of John Ross and Elena playing with his big hose. Marta realizes John Ross has been lying to her about hanging out with his buddies. "I'm sorry, Marta. My boy was just using you." Marta hands J.R. a folder of her own photos. "I did that for your son -- and more." They show her in bed with Lobell's strung-out son. J.R. suggests Marta make a new deal that cuts John Ross out of their Southfork scam entirely.
Barbecue time! Lucy and Ray walk around cuddling each other and giving everyone the mistaken impression that they're dating. Bobby borrows a mic from the band and makes a touching goodbye speech that we know isn't really a goodbye. Rebecca spots John Ross slinking around in the crowd and pulls Christopher aside for a chat.
J.R. drops by Mitch Lobell's office to show pictures of his boy snorting lines of coke. He threatens to hand them over to the authorities. "You're gonna complete the transfer of Southfork without extorting another dime from us," J.R. says. Moreover, he wants a new deed drawn up without John Ross. "You're cutting him out of his own deal?" Lobell asks, sounding shocked for some reason. "Southfork was meant to be mine from the beginning, and now finally will be," J.R. says. "John Ross can wait his turn." Yes, I'm sure Prince Charles heard the same thing when he was young.
Christopher shows Rebecca the new calf and his adoptive mother. Rebecca just looks sad. Christopher promises he'll always love her. "There's something I need to tell you," she says shakily. "About the email got two years ago? The one telling her you weren't showing up for the wedding." Christopher's confused look ends the week's episode. There had better be a damned good payoff to all this. Two out of four episodes have ended on a cliffhanger about that stupid email. If it's as simple as Rebecca actually sending it and being too stupid to cover her tracks, it'll be a big letdown.
Tippi Blevins is patiently awaiting a reboot of the TV classic about her own hometown - Houston Knights. Email her at b_tippi@yahoo.com, or find her on Twitter.
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