# Dallas: J.R. Returns

Dallas: J.R. Returns is a 1996 American made-for-television drama film and is the first of two Dallas reunion films, produced after the series went off the air in 1991. It originally aired on CBS on November 15, 1996, and was rerun as part of TV Land's salute to 50 years of Warner Bros. Television.

## Plot summary

The film begins with an American Airlines flight landing in Dallas. Aboard the plane is J.R., who is returning home after spending the previous five years living in Europe. The last time he had been seen in Texas, J.R. was in the throes of a catastrophic downfall that cost him everything that was near and dear to him, including control of his family's company Ewing Oil and being disowned by his progeny, son John Ross (Omri Katz). In the years that have passed, however, J.R. has become rejuvenated and wants to return to the oil business.
Meanwhile, Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) lives at Southfork Ranch alone with his son Christopher (Christopher Demetral). After Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval) took over Ewing Oil, Bobby was given the deed to Southfork after Miss Ellie Ewing and Clayton Farlow opted to retire to travel. Having been out of the oil business for some time, Bobby is considering selling the ranch.
Cliff, meanwhile, is also looking for a way out of the business. Although he won the ultimate victory over the Ewing family, Cliff has grown more and more frustrated over the amount of time that running the oil company has taken from him. He desires to spend more time with his family, especially his recently discovered daughter, and has been in what he thought were secret talks with Carter McKay (George Kennedy) to merge Ewing Oil and WestStar Oil. J.R., however, pays a surprise visit to Cliff's office and tells him he intends to enter the bidding war.
In order to do this, J.R. is going to need financial backing and after Bobby refuses to go along with him, he enlists the assistance of his former assistant Sly Lovegren (Deborah Rennard), Ewing family accountant Harv Smithfield (George O. Petrie), and Harv's daughter and business partner Anita (Tracy Scoggins) to try and find some way to get enough money to buy back into the business.
In her search, Anita discovers a previously unknown stock portfolio belonging to John Ross. Prior to his death, Jock Ewing had bought five thousand shares of a technology company named Cyberbyte and had placed them in a trust for his grandson. The shares have a current worth of over $200 million, and Jock left a codicil in the will that John Ross only receive the portfolio once J.R. has died. However, to that point, nobody else but he and Harv had known about it.
Knowing that the money would enable him to purchase a majority stake in WestStar Oil, J.R. has his attorney put the portfolio in his name. He would then sell the shares off, purchase the stake, then buy back the stock he sold and return the shares to John Ross' name; to cover himself, he would claim a clerical error resulted in the portfolio accidentally being placed in his possession.
To set this in motion, he fakes his death and has his attorney "accidentally" put the shares in his name instead of his son's. Bobby holds a memorial service, with John Ross and Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) attending and Cliff in quiet celebration, believing he's won the ultimate victory over J.R. until J.R. returns to Southfork. He claims to have been kidnapped and escaped. Sly is disgusted and resigns as J.R.'s assistant.
J.R. is the majority shareholder in WestStar, and he uses that clout to force McKay to back out of buying Ewing Oil. After being sent a letter notifying him of his daughter's whereabouts, Cliff decided that finding his family is more important than beating J.R., but Bobby figured out a way that Cliff can have both, and he bought Ewing Oil. Bobby later realizes that he was tricked back into the oil business by J.R., who knew getting Bobby off Southfork would force him not to sell. J.R. maneuvered the board to remove McKay as Chairman of WestStar and for himself to take his place.
An unhappy Bobby sells half of the company to his new partner, Sue Ellen. A drunken and bitter Sly (Deborah Rennard) had tipped off Sue Ellen that J.R. faked his own death. Sue Ellen suspected this all along and felt that J.R needed to be taught a lesson. Cliff, meanwhile, greets Afton and their daughter Pamela (Deborah Kellner) outside the sanitarium, and they leave to be a family.
In the last scene, John Ross asks J.R. why he is smiling even though he lost Ewing Oil to Bobby and Sue Ellen. J.R. points out that Bobby is back in the oil business and is no longer going to sell Southfork. Sue Ellen is back at Southfork to stay, and John Ross will remain in Dallas to learn the oil business from J.R. John Ross realizes that his father planned everything to work out this way. J.R.'s last words are, "You see, John Ross? You're learning already."

### Series finale cliffhanger resolution

During the scene where J.R. reunites with Bobby, the latter mentions how he found his brother at the end of the final episode of the original series, which had ended on a freeze frame of Bobby saying "oh, my God" after J.R. had fired a gunshot in his bedroom. Bobby reveals that J.R. had blown a hole in a mirror in a drunken stupor, babbling on about how the devil was looking back at him. The next morning, J.R. was gone from Dallas and the two had barely spoken in the ensuing years.

## Ratings

Dallas: J.R. Returns was a ratings success for the CBS Network, and ranked 14th place for the week it was shown, with a 13.4 rating. Its success prompted Warner Bros. to produce a reunion miniseries for the Dallas spin-off series Knots Landing (entitled Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac) in 1997. A second Dallas TV movie, War of the Ewings, was produced in 1998.

## Continuity

As with War of the Ewings (1998), the events depicted in J.R. Returns are ignored for the revival series, which premiered on TNT in 2012.

## Cast
### Starring in alphabetical order

* Rosalind Allen as Julia Cunningham
* Christopher Demetral as Christopher Ewing
* Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing
* Linda Gray as Sue Ellen Ewing
* Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing
* Omri Katz as John Ross Ewing III
* Deborah Kellner as Pamela Rebecca Cooper
* George Kennedy as Carter McKay
* Ken Kercheval as Cliff Barnes
* Audrey Landers as Afton Cooper
* Tracy Scoggins as Anita Smithfield

### Guest Stars

* Deborah Rennard as Sly Lovegren
* Buck Taylor as Steve Grisham
* George O. Petrie as Harv Smithfield

## DVD release

Warner Home Video released Dallas: J.R. Returns on DVD April 12, 2011 as part of the Dallas: The Movie Collection 2-disc set. It was only available as a region 1 set.