Goin' home to Southfork

Barbara Bel Geddes, who played the Ewing clan matriarch Miss Ellie on Dallas, has died.

I actually liked Dallas a lot when I was a kid. I remember guessing correctly as to J.R.'s would-be assassin (although I would be wrong a few seasons later as to who shot Bobby -- I was sure that little runt Peter Richards did it), and I wasn't too vexed by the "Bobby in the shower/last year was a dream" thing, although it did wipe clean a fairly touching storyline from the "dream season" in which Ray and Donna Krebbs patched their marriage back together and adopted a kid with Down Syndrome. (With the awakening of Pam from her dream, the Krebbs were right back in the thick of marital strife, and this time they ended up divorcing.) I still kind of wish the writers had had the guts to have Wes Parmalee actually turn out to really be Jock Ewing, as opposed to having him simply hallucinate himself to be Jock, or however it went. Oh well.

Yeah, I was a fan of that show for about five years. Sue me. Anyway, I always liked Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie, the only person whom J.R. never screwed.

(Well, OK, he did try to sabotage her wedding to Clayton Farlow. But he had her best interests at heart. Really. That J.R., he sure loved his Mama....)