Dallas: The Complete Third Season

The 1980-81 season opens just after the previous year's “cliffhanger” ending of the shooting of J.R. (Larry Hagman), with the entire Ewing clan in turmoil, as J.R.'s life hangs in the balance and the family's oil business languishes. Several early episodes drag out the suspense related to the crime: J.R.'s wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) worries that she might have shot her unfaithful husband while in a drunken stupor, and the family matriarch, Miss Ellie (the late Barbara Bel Geddes), finds the gun hidden in the main residence. As J.R. makes a slow recovery, younger son Bobby (Patrick Duffy) assumes control of Ewing Oil and becomes intoxicated with power, worrying both his wife Pam (Victoria Principal) and his desperately ill but still scheming older brother. Later in the season the youngest Ewing, Lucy (Charlene Tilton), gets married to Mitch Cooper (Leigh McCloskey), whose beautiful sister Afton (Audrey Landers) catches J.R.'s ever-wandering eye. Needless to say, the intrigue mounts as the third season moves inexorably toward an enthralling climax that finds Ewing Oil about to be sold and J.R. enmeshed in a political scandal. The multiplicity of characters, many of them operating at cross-purposes, and the audacity of J.R.'s machinations make the 23 episodes here among the strongest in the entire series. DVD extras include the new documentary “Who Shot J.R.?: The Dallas Phenomenon,” and commentary on two episodes by Duffy and Gray. Recommended. (E. Hulse)