Let There Be Judith Light

Judith Light returns to TNT's Dallas as deliciously evil queen

The TV gods heard our prayers: Judith Light is back on Dallas. Playing Judith Ryland, matriarch of a rival family to the Ewings of Southfork, Light was abruptly written off last season to accommodate her being cast in a Broadway play.

To get rid of her, Dallas exec producer and head plot-deviser Cynthia Cidre had Judith's evil son Harris (Mitch Pileggi) push her down a flight of stairs and then ship her off to a rehab hospital. But she wanted to return to the show this year, Cidre told Entertainment Weekly. So they found the money to hire her again and gave the series back its deliciously evil queen.

Light's voice as this character sounds like she's gargled with battery acid.

On this week's episode (written by Bruce Rasmussen), Judith's entrance was preceded by the menacing step-clunk, step-clunk noise of her hobbling with a heavy cane into son Harris' office at home in Murky Mansion. Surprised by the "intruder," Harris grabbed a gun from a drawer and pointed it at the door just as Judith appeared.

"Let's not shoot Mommy on her first day home," she growled. Light's voice as this character sounds like she's gargled with battery acid.

Judith let Harris know she was taking over the family's trucking business again. She isn't averse to doing deals with drug smugglers hauling party powder across the Mexican border into Texas.

When Harris meekly suggested this could bring trouble, she reared back like an angry adder: "Money and morality are like two cars on a one-lane road. When they meet, morality's gonna end up in a ditch."

Just to review: Harris is fresh out of prison, sent there for a brief stay in a set-up by his nymphet daughter Emma (Emma Bell, the Charlene Tilton of the new Dallas). He got sprung by paying off a crooked judge.

Emma is now living at Southfork and boinking John Ross Ewing (Josh Henderson) regularly. He's newly married but game for some games on the side. Emma's bedroom is directly across the hall from John Ross' marital boo-dwah. Convenient.

The last thing Harris needs is a violation of his parole, but his mother has other ideas. "I made my bones dealing with psychopaths and criminals while you were still playing with your Easy Bake Oven," she said this week.

Watch how Judith Light squints on the really good lines. When she blinks, only her right eyelashes move up and down, as if she's keeping one open to see if Pileggi is stealing focus. (He looks appropriately terrified in their scenes.)

Back at Southfork, Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and John Ross were still arguing about fracking this week. Yawn city. But Sue Ellen (Linda Gray), bless her, was honing in on the bedroom antics of her baby boy. She set a tail on John Ross.

"I spent 40 years being cheated on. I'm pretty good at picking up the signals," she said. Then she pulled a flask out of her handbag and took a healthy swig of firewater. Sue Ellen's back on the sauce! Let's all drink to that!

There were some dandy nuggets of dialogue in this episode. Bobby's wife Annie (Brenda Strong), trying to get him to come to bed, said, "I can't watch Duck Dynasty without you. I get all the beards confused."

And this one, after Judith Ryland took a hefty snort of cocaine offered by one of the cartel members she's doing a deal with. "Mama like," said Judith, then she sniffed another line as long as a garden snake and rubbed the excess into her gums.

The end of this week's installment offered a humdinger of a cliffhanger. Harris Ryland, it turns out, has become a quisling. He wired up to tape his mother's nefarious goings-on with the coke smugglers, and he's working with the CIA to bust the cartel.

To let Bobby Ewing in on the secret, he arranged a Deep Throat-like (the Watergate one, not the dirty movie one) meeting in an underground lair. Annie came along to the meeting but managed not to burst into tears, as is her wont.

Now this is the kind of hot nighttime soap writing we can get addicted to fast. Mama like.

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Catch full episodes of Dallas on TNT online. New episodes air at 8 pm CST every Monday, with a rerun at 10.

Judith Light is back on Dallas as Ewing rival Judith Ryland.

Photo courtesy of TNT

Judith Light is back on Dallas as Ewing rival Judith Ryland.

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Movie Review

Nordic film Fjord challenges cultural and linguistic biases

Photo courtesy of Neon

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In modern society, where fear of “the other” has made many people into insular creatures, it has become easy to get locked into one point of view. The new film Fjord will be a challenging one for many viewers, as it puts forth a situation that confronts narrow-minded thinking and forces even those who think they’re open-minded to re-evaluate their own biases.

Mihai (Sebastian Stan) and Lisbet (Renate Reinsve) are a married couple who have just moved back to Lisbet’s home country of Norway. They have five children, all of whom were born in Romania, Mihai’s home country. The family, which is part of an unspecified Evangelical Christian sect, runs into issues almost right away when their oldest daughter, Elia (Vanessa Ceban), shows up to school with bruises on her body.

A well-intentioned but perhaps overzealous Child Protective Services system gets put into motion, resulting in the children being removed from the home while Mihai and Lisbet are being investigated. The parents, while acknowledging some minor physical punishment, deny doing anything that would cause bruising, and the possible failings of the system mostly get ignored despite a lack of hard evidence.

Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, the film is an infuriating watch due to its depiction of a system that seems to be oblivious to its own faults. But it’s also illuminating, as the cultural and linguistic divide that exists between the characters in the film could just as easily be applied to those viewing it. Misunderstandings arise as people switch between Norwegian, English, and Romanian, and interpretations of different words or phrases play a crucial role in how people and actions are perceived.

But the film is about much more than just language mix-ups. Mungiu is purposefully vague about Mihai and Lisbet’s religion, but it’s clear that it leans conservative. This puts them at odds with a liberal society in Norway, and more than one character voices their disapproval of the family’s beliefs. The film is framed in such a way, though, that it’s those who are seemingly most progressive who can’t get over their own prejudices, with Mihai and Lisbet rarely being able to object to how they’re being treated.

The cold and forbidding landscape adds to the drama of the film, especially when Mungiu includes side stories from Mihai and Lisbet’s neighbors about, for example, a rebellious neighbor daughter or their ailing father. While those elements don’t impact the plot much, they add complexity to the film as a whole and demonstrate that some characters are more than who they seem to be on the surface.

Stan, who’s had notable roles in recent years in A Different Man and The Apprentice, puts in another solid performance that is less showy. With a bald head and stoic-but-firm demeanor, he brings depth to a potentially unlikable character. Reinsve, coming off the success of Backrooms, is the emotional center of the film and demonstrates chemistry with Stan after co-starring in A Different Man. The supporting cast is all solid, especially the actors portraying lawyers, who bring to life a system that seems much different from that in the U.S.

Fjord does not play out like a typical American film would if it were depicting a similar situation, and by holding back where western storytellers wouldn’t, it allows viewers to make up their own minds on who is right or wrong. Many things go unspoken in the film, and the debate on what should happen with Mihai, Lisbet, and their family continues even after the film ends.

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Fjord is now playing in select theaters.

movies film fjord

Let There Be Judith Light

Judith Light returns to TNT's Dallas as deliciously evil queen

Judith Light is back on Dallas as Ewing rival Judith Ryland.

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Movie Review

Nordic film Fjord challenges cultural and linguistic biases