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As the new season neared, Lorimar announced that Mary Crosby, who plays Kristin, would appear only in the first five episodes. "My part was up," she gallantly deadpanned early last week. "They need new people." In fact, Kristin was always the ideal perpetrator. As Sue Ellen's sweet sister and J.R.'s conniving mistress, she was in the family but not of it; her purging from Dallas would set off enough shock waves to surprise the unwary viewer without destroying the basic family unit. Moreover, Kristin had both motives and nerve for the deed.
She could — and did — drug Sue Ellen (Lin da Gray) and steal her gun, proceed to the Ewing Oil Building, shoot that triple-timing cad in the gut, deposit the unconscious Sue Ellen at an airport parking lot, and later plant the gun in J.R.'s bedroom closet, thus implicating Sue Ellen. Confronted with her guilt, Kristin announced she was pregnant with J.R.'s child, and dared him to put her in jail, leaving her ex-lover in a quandary and the TV audience wondering what sort of offspring these vipers could produce.
Said Crosby, as the Dallas cast and crew met for a Revelation Night party at Chasen's restaurant in Beverly Hills: "It's nice to leave the series with a bang."
Leonard Katzman promises more ex plosions in the unfolding season. J.R.'s ail-American brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy) will take over the family business and "be less pure as he becomes more powerful.
J.R. will meet a new lady, a professional lady — and not the oldest profession either." J.R.'s niece Lucy (Charlene Tilton) will marry an idealistic pre-med student (Leigh McCloskey) in a two-hour episode in January. Patriarch Jock (Jim Davis) will reveal that Ranch Foreman Ray Krebs (Steve Kanaly) is his illegitimate son. As for Kristin, she is on her way to the Dallas spinoff Knots Landing. And she may yet return to the Ewing spread with new and grander plans. Bobby is still infuriatingly faithful to his wife; and Sue Ellen might take one drink too many . . .
Is sororicide next? On Dallas, any thing is possible. As Ken Kercheval says: "We've just scratched the surface of evil. Just wait."
Reported by Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles