Did Miss Ellie Hang Ray And Lucy Out To Dry?

It was meant as a warning to JR. They were already on his bad side so it didn't hurt them. The whole emergency meeting was a joke anyway because it was a meeting comprised of some people who didn't know anything about running a company deciding who was best qualified to run a company.

 

It's not as if J.R. didn't know that Ray and Lucy didn't like the way he did business. They no more put themselves on his bad side than before. J.R. knows that Lucy resented him for the situation with her parents and that Ray never forgave him for the Garnet McGee affair. And J.R. himself said that if he was voted out as President of Ewing Oil, then who takes over? I suppose Bobby could, but he wasn't ready to go back into that job at that time.

 

The voting shares storyline was dumb. Lucy and Ray had no business having any say as to who should run Ewing Oil. Neither of them has any idea about Ewing Oil or the oil business so giving these two shares was dumb. Yes Ellie did hand them out to dry but they should not have been there at all.

 

I don't see how it was dumb. It was only a temporary arrangement, until Jock got back from South America. He gave Miss Ellie 30 voting shares because he saw her as calm and level headed, J.R. and Bobby each had 20 voting shares as oil men, while his other sons Gary and Ray had 10 voting shares, while the John Ross 10 voting shares was pressed at getting J.R. to sort out his situation with Sue Ellen. It was Gary who gave his 10 voting shares to Lucy.

J.R.'s whole shenanigans with stockpiling the Farlows' oil (on a personal basis, too) to try to blackmail the Farlows into handing over John Ross, almost ruined Ewing Oil financially, and it took Miss Ellie to sort it out and bail J.R. out of his mess. As the stockpiling of the oil was done on a personal basis and included using Ewing Oil assets as collateral, then what J.R. did was effectively embezzlement, and that's what Cliff later did that season to Wentworth Tool and Die.

 

She went into the meeting wanting J.R. out, and at least wanted him to feel pressure to toe the line. Bobby wasn't going to take over at that time, but J.R. was warned.

Ray had self-esteem issues, and had made a complete cock up of that whole land deal. Miss Ellie had to strong arm Ray in order to give him a loan, but discovered from Franklin Horner that J.R. had borrowed all those millions of dollars for his stockpiling of the Farlows' oil. When Miss Ellie had finally sorted the whole mess out and was ready to give Ray his loan, Ray had already sold his land in despair for a financial loss. That's what got Ray down, a series of business failures and in his own macho cowboy head having to rely on women to bail him out (Miss Ellie and Donna).

J.R. also went to Ray offering him a loan for his land business problem in return for his 10 Ewing Oil voting shares. Ray decided to turn him down. In the end, Ray ended up selling him the 10 Ewing Oil voting shares anyway. Ray has to take responsibility here.

 

I remember this in the original run. This was the start of people who know nothing about the oil business suddenly running these large companies. Back then, in my younger, wide-eyed optimistic days, I was shocked that they would portray these complete novices as running a large company. That could never happen in real life, right?

Well, I'm older now, and seen a few things. They had those story lines more accurate than they ever knew.

 

And Lucy's reaction was out of character. Her very smug "out!" when voting goes against her own interest.

Lucy would know by now that love him or hate him, J.R. was by far the most qualified to run Ewing Oil. And assuming she would be living off Ewing Oil money for the rest of her life, she would want the best person running the company, no matter how she felt about him personally.

 

I think that Gary´s decision about his shares proved what a b*****d Gary could really be, as his actions on KL revealed so often. He just gave them to Lucy because he probably had agreed with her (off-screen) that she had to vote no! every time. I can see early Lucy doing that, and, well, by that time, Gary was eyeing the blond whose eyes had it! If Sue Ellen´s revenge against J.R. was something that had to be built-up, this was sort of Lucy´s revenge against him too. At least, IMHO.

"Remember what you have to say, honey?"
"Out!"​