Majors as Minor Character

Bombshell Audrey Landers returns and Linda Gray gets a major romance on Dallas

This season of Dallas on TNT keeps jumping into the Wayback Machine. Destination: late 1980s Dallas, with a side trip this week to 1970s Six Million Dollar Man.

We’ve already seen brief returns to Southfork by J.R. and Bobby’s alcoholic brother, Gary Ewing; Gary’s wife, Valene; and J.R.’s long-ago squeeze Mandy Winger. This week we got Cliff Barnes’ old girlfriend Afton Cooper, played again by the golden-haired 1970s bombshell Audrey Landers.

And, by golly, there was Lee Majors as new character Ken Richards, who’s canoodling with Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) for the five remaining episodes this season.

By golly, there was Lee Majors as new character Ken Richards, who’s canoodling with Sue Ellen for the five remaining episodes.

Last week’s installment ended with most of the Ewings, plus pregnant-with-twins Pamela Rebecca Barnes (Julie Gonzalo), standing atop a Ewing Energies oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico just as it exploded into flames from a bomb set on the orders of Pamela's daddy, Cliff (Ken Kercheval). This week’s “Guilt & Innocence” episode, written by Robert Rovner and directed by Jesse Bochco, jumped directly to the hospital, where everyone but Pamela was in good shape after being rescued.

Pamela and her fetuses were in cardiac distress. The episode ended with the babies’ heart rates flat-lining as their genetic father, Christopher Ewing (Jesse Metcalf), and Pamela’s fiancé, J.R.’s adopted son Christopher (Josh Henderson), looked on in horror.

More dirt and deets in episode 10:

Getting a leg up: Judith Ryland, the scary harridan played by Judith Light, didn’t die in last week’s cliffhanger tumble down the staircase in her spooky mansion. She ended up with a broken leg and scraggly hair, which gave her twisted son Harris (Mitch Pileggi, who looks the same age as Light, which is so wrong it’s right) a chance to boost her morphine dose just enough to shut her up.

He then dispatched her to a mysterious “rehab facility” so he can take over her money. Hope this isn’t the end of Light’s tenure on Dallas. Her Gothic performance makes great contrast to so much of the whispery, weepy simpering by the other actors. (We’re talking to you, Brenda Strong.)

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Victoria Principal: The actress has said she won’t return to Dallas. Ever. But the writers this season keep bringing her character, Pamela Barnes Ewing (she was Cliff’s sister and Bobby’s first wife in the original series), into the storyline.

This week Bobby (Patrick Duffy) got a report from investigators who had tracked Pam’s whereabouts to Abu Dhabi, where her trail went cold after 1989 (much like Ms. Principal’s acting career). Why are they looking for Pam at all? Son Christopher wants to find her.

Tech talk: Lots of palaver about “over-pressured methane in the flow pipes” this week. That’s what Christopher worried could have caused the oil rig catastrophe. He doesn’t yet know it was an explosive device planted by his fiancée’s brother, Drew Ramos (Kuno Becker), working for Cliff Barnes.

Smooch-fu: Harris Ryland’s daughter Emma (Emma Bell) has hopped into bed with three guys in the Ewing/Barnes universe. Now she’s mackin’ on a fourth, handsome demolitionist Drew Ramos. That kind of behavior is a ticking time bomb.

Who’s related to whom: Always confusing in this crowd. Family tree-wise, it seems that John Ross and Pamela Rebecca Barnes were almost brother and sister. Now they’re engaged to be married. She’s pregnant (or was until the explosion) with his cousin Christopher’s twins.

Castinig backstory: Lee Majors told Access Hollywood that he was offered a recurring role on Dallas this season because of his friendship with his longtime Malibu neighbor Larry Hagman. Majors last heard from Hagman just a week before the actor died last Thanksgiving, letting Majors know he’d urged the producers to hire him.

Two lives, one soap: Both Judith Light and Audrey Landers are former stars of the long-running ABC daytime drama One Life to Live.

Best Sue Ellen moment this week: All of them. If Linda Gray doesn’t get an Emmy nomination for her consistently brilliant work as Sue Ellen this season, it’ll feel like over-pressured methane in the flow pipes for a lot of her fans.

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New episodes of Dallas air at 8 pm Mondays on cable’s TNT, with frequent reruns.

Linda Gray as Sue Ellen on TNT's Dallas.

Photo courtesy of TNT

Linda Gray as Sue Ellen on TNT's Dallas.

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Movie Review

The life of an actor is far from rosy in dramedy Misty Green

Photo courtesy of A24

Rosalind Eleazar in Misty Green.

For every well-known/successful actor in Hollywood, there are thousands of others whose lives are more tenuous as they struggle to find work. The new film Misty Green is about one such actor who, after a period in the limelight, now finds herself on the outskirts of the industry, just hoping to find her way back in.

Misty (Rosalind Eleazar) won an Emmy for a 2000s-era TV show that still gets her recognition, but not much work. Still living in the apartment of a recently-deceased man with whom she was having an affair, Misty spends her days sleeping in and her nights getting blitzed on alcohol and drugs. She seems to be heading nowhere fast until a few things coincide to break up her routine.

The man’s wife (Amy Landecker) shows up and tells her she has seven days to vacate the apartment; Misty’s brother, Jay (Daniel Kaluuya) — who is bipolar — arrives after being kicked out of his facility for non-payment; and Jordan (Chris Rock), a former colleague with whom she had a falling-out, reappears in her life, offering a possible chance to rehabilitate her image.

Written and directed by Rock (his first feature since 2014’s Top Five), the film is a funny and excruciating look at how the entertainment industry might actually work. Misty is her own worst enemy thanks to late nights fraternizing with unsavory characters like Zach (Adam Driver), who deals in drugs and women in equal measure, but her frustration proves warranted when her agent, Randy (Topher Grace), and casting directors like Rhonda (Tracie Thoms) hardly give her the time of day.

Misty tries her best to stay positive, but when jobs like singing in a bar are the best she can do, the mountain seems insurmountable. Rock does an effective job of demonstrating the elements that are within and without Misty’s control that affect her ability to regain her position in the industry. The chip on her shoulder is almost as big as the bias some have against her, and other negative circumstances don’t help matters much.

There are many small touches that Rock and his crew put in the film to give it an air of authenticity. Filming in Los Angeles (a rarity these days), Rock uses both subtle and overt shots of homeless people in the city, suggesting that the line between the haves and have-nots is a fine one, especially with Misty on the verge of not having a place to live. He also has cameos from a few of his funny friends, including a bit of meta-casting of Anthony Anderson (who has faded a bit after starring in Black-ish) in a bit part as a cop.

Eleazar, a British actor best known for appearing on the Apple TV show Slow Horses, is a magnetic presence as Misty. The character herself is somewhat cringey in her decision-making, and Eleazar sells every bit of her righteous indignation and self-defeating actions. The supporting cast is great across the board, including Rock, Driver, Kaluuya, Thoms, Grace, Anna Kendrick, and Rich Sommer.

Misty Green makes you rage against the Hollywood machine, laugh at the various ways different people deal with its maddening quirks, and hide behind your fingers as Misty chooses options that don’t help, either voluntarily or because her back is against the wall. It’s a powerhouse of acting that gives a unique angle on the inner workings of Hollywood, one that ironically might be competing for awards at year’s end.

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Misty Green is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

The life of an actor is far from rosy in dramedy Misty Green