In Episode 10, Nicolas Trevino and his cartel homies dump Drew Ramos’ body on the grounds of Southfork Ranch, carefully staging their hit to look like a suicide. Here’s some counterintuitive advice for our modern times: Turns out the Yellow Pages aren’t useless in 2014 after all. After firing your victim’s gun into the phonebook, the thickness of the stacked paper absorbs the bullet and you get the number to the local Pancho’s Mexican Buffet, where you and your accomplices can get your story straight over delicious sopapillas—all without hitting your data plan. Despite the police totally buying this, Mami Ramos refuses to believe that her very Catholic son would pull the trigger on himself.
Meanwhile, John Ross is still lingering at the hospital hoping to patch up the wreckage of his marriage. His ham-fisted attempts at bribing his way onto the visitor’s list are stymied by that implacable sentinel of hospital rules, the Sassy Black Nurse, whose dialogue seems to have been ghostwritten by Tyler Perry. He finally gets into Pamela’s room, but his declarations of fidelity are waved off. But Pamela tells Sue Ellen later that she has no plans to get a divorce- she and Junior never got a prenup, and she has no desire to let the bastard get his paws on even half of her money.
Bo is in full-on hero mode: after helping to save Sue Ellen from the fire and being exonerated by the arson investigators, he gets to make up for lost time with his estranged family. This happy family scene is not lost on Bo’s ex’s current squeeze Christopher, who sees the writing on the wall. He breaks it off amicably with Heather and even pays for Bo to undergo a radical surgery in Israel that may restore his ability to walk. Christopher Ewing, ladies and gents: What a schmuck stand-up guy.
Back at the ranch, Emma Ryland and her d-bag of a dad, Harris, show up to fetch her stuff. Still seething about Harris being the cause of his temporary split with Annie, Bobby can’t resist engaging in some flex with ol’ Cueball. Carmen gives Emma a note from Drew, which says that he always saw the good in her (probably with an electron microscope). Emma blames the failure of their budding relationship squarely on her dad. Later, at a meet with the Cartel, she enlists the help of the boss to put Harris back in jail.
During a depressing montage of Drew getting prepped for his funeral, toxicology experts discover traces of propellant on his body and contact the fire investigators. They, in turn, break the bad news to Carmen and Elena that Drew, not Sue Ellen, had started the fire using rocket fuel and a Glade Plug-In (a regular MacGyver, our Drew). Because Mami still can’t see why her baby could commit such a monstrous act against her benevolent employers, Elena finally reveals their motivation—revenge for their father getting screwed in a land deal by J.R. thirty years ago. Carmen tells Elena that she saw Bobby receiving a letter from Bub that may hold the key to the Ewings’ downfall. She also saw Junior with the letter. But how do they get it?
That night, John Ross is stumbling around the ranch, drowning his marital woes in liquor. Elena quickly pre-games with a few shots of her own before joining him. The two engage in some mutual “woe-is-me” before things get hot and heavy, and soon they’re soon entwined. While Junior sleeps, Elena goes through his wallet and finds J. R.’s “masterpiece”: a detailed letter to Bobby by the old devil himself, outlining his frame-up of Cliff Barnes for his own murder!
And that’s last night’s episode of Dallas, Dead Reckoning. Join me back here after Labor Day for next week’s episode and I’ll see ya next Tuesday, darlin’.
