Bobby Ewing

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Bobby Ewing is a multi-talented, strong-willed man. He’s in excellent physical shape and in fact quite a lot stronger than one would expect.

He has always been something of a ladies man.

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History

Now, this is a heavy lot, which, apparently, nobody has summarized fully.

Very shortly: Bobby Ewing is the youngest son of Jock and Miss Ellie Ewing. He was born in 1949. Bobby was a successful (though reluctant) oil baron, like his father and brother J.R., but he lacked J.R.’s ruthlessness and insisted on playing fair which resulted in his limited success.

Bobby could be seen as kind-spirited or naïve in what was portrayed as a vicious, cut-throat business.

Still he managed to beat J.R. several times in business acumen and control when the family name and stakes were high enough. When they weren’t at odds with each other, the brothers had many run-ins with his brother in law Cliff Barnes, and later more formidable enemies such as Jeremy Wendell and Carter McKay, successive heads of huge oil conglomerate Westar.

The oil industry was not Bobby’s only interest. From time to time he also took part in the raising of cattle on the family ranch, Southfork. He was also a state senator in Austin for a while. Bobby had one of TV’s greatest love relationships ever with Pamela Ewing.

Tragedies !

Sadly, Pam left Bobby after she was involved in a car crash which resulted in her suffering severe burns. She disappeared from the hospital and Bobby never saw her again. Bobby also had a long time on off relationship with Jenna Wade and the two were briefly engaged.

In 1990, Bobby married April Stevens but she was kidnapped on their honeymoon in Paris before being shot dead. Bobby always had an interesting relationship with his on again-off again sister-in-law Sue Ellen Ewing. They kissed on several occasions, but a relationship never materialized.

Quite early on, Bobby adopted a boy named Christopher, who was the son of J.R’s deceased sister-in-law, Kristin Shepard. He also has a son named Lucas Krebbs from his relationship with Jenna Wade.

After many years of company struggles, ranching and many other things and tragedies, Bobby eventually left the oil business completely and retired to Europe to life in peace.

Description

Bobby is a tall, dark and handsome Texan. He often wears jeans, a white shirt and boots. Women are in general very attracted to him.

Personality

At his core Bobby is a principled and honest man with great moral and ethic values. He doesn’t care about any family feuds, and is extremely upset about anything illegal connected to his family’s name. As such, he refuses to help his brother J.R. to set up one dubious thing or another.

Bobby has always gone his own way. He feels no need to prove himself, and most of his life had no real interest in running the family company, Ewing Oil. However, he had to do so anyway for the sake of his family and to keep the business clean and legal. He is not flexible when it comes to his principles.

While having nothing to prove, he, curiously, felt that he simply had to be the best at everything. As an Ewing he just had to succeed at everything. He had to sell his principles for a while as he did some pretty dirty business during the Ewing challenge. At this time the company leadership stood between him and J.R., whose management he doesn’t care for one bit – it was a family honor thing.

While looking worried, he still does the right thing even if it’s dangerous. Messing with him or his family or company is guaranteed to make a very dangerous foe.

Almost everybody likes him. He’s got a real good guy charm going on there. He gets along well with anyone in the family. Bobby is good friends with his half-brother Ray. His relationship with J.R. is a very complicated one. On one hand he loves his brother, and on the other he detests his ways and methods.

He knows or suspect most of J.R.’s immoral or illegal affairs, but tries to cover for him anyway until he has gone much too far, and then he will personally beat him up.

He tried to end the family feud and did help out Cliff Barnes. That was both because he thinks that Cliff is basically a good but misguided man and because he is Pam’s brother – as long as it didn’t hurt his family or business directly.

Bobby won’t make power plays on family members until they have been warned and are capable of defending themselves. Anything else wouldn’t be fair (meaning that J.R. is always fair game).

In addition to the differences between their treatment of others, as well as their conflicting views on morality, another reason for JR and Bobby’s rivalry was their father’s preference for Bobby (their mother, Miss Ellie, favored middle son Gary). Growing up, and even into adulthood, Jock made no secret of the fact that Bobby was his favorite son.

This caused a major rivalry with J.R., who was jealous of the unearned favoritism Bobby got from Jock. In the end, he saw it best if J.R. had nothing more to do with Ewing Oil and arranged for him to loose power in the company.

J.R. only returned many years later from Europe to retake part of his former glory. Still their relationship is basically good because J.R. knows he has done many bad things and forced Bobby’s hand. Naturally Bobby cares greatly about his own children and his mother as well, and had tremendous respect for his father, Jock.

Bobby truly loved his wife Pam – they were one of the greatest love couples of the 1980s. He eventually settled down with her, but even then he had to make lots of compromises to keep their relationship. When she disappeared it took him a long time before he started to consider new relationships.

Katherine Wentworth was in love with him, but he thought that a relationship was impossible because she was Pam’s sister. This turned Katherine into a real enemy that later attempted to kill him several times.

When Pam dissappeared after the car crash Bobby had romantic relationships with a string of women, including Kay Lloyd, Tracy Lawton, Julia Cunningham and Jean the Pam-lookalike and perhaps also Tammy Miller and Laurel Ellis. He ended up marrying April Stevens, but later became a widower, and started something romantic with Marjorie during his hunt for vengeance.

Much earlier, before Pam, he had been engaged twice to Jenna Wade, with whom he has a son, Lucas Krebbs. He was last seen heading for Europe with Jennifer Jantzen, a much younger woman. He is rumored to later have wed a woman named Ann.

Regardless of various other business opportunities he still feels like an oil man preferring oil business before anything else. He is never afraid to take matters into his own hands, and if somebody is attacked he will beat them up in revenge. Kindness and manners are met in equal; while realizing that it can be seen as offensive, he does pay people for their help.

Bobby has a kind soul, but will take to physical violence to protect the right principles. He has a reputation for honesty, and makes a soft impression although can be very hard when needed to be. Bobby does in fact have quite the temper at times.

He’s a caring father and good with kids. In his younger days, when he was something of a playboy, his stern father called him the company pimp.

He enjoys rodeo riding, tennis, working out, clay shooting and drinking scotch on the rocks.

Quotes

“You knew about this all the time, didn’t you ? Just when I think I know how low you are, J.R., you surprise me and reach a whole new depth.”

“Allright, the rest of us. If your mom doesn’t understand that there is a difference between J.R. and me, that she should come out here to Southfork to see her own grandson, that’s her problem. As for Sue Ellen and you, I want you to be friends and I want you to stay friends too. But whatever happens happens. As to my momma, after 45 years of marriage she’s just gonna have some faith in her husband’s judgement and it’s going to be that faith in him that’s going to keep her from being torn apart. And as for me, my daddy put a challenge to me in that will and somewhere in that challenge is his confidence in me. Confidence in that I might have just a little bit of what he had – the guts that it took to build Ewing Oil. If he had that confidence in me, Pam, I’m not gonna back off. Not now and not ever.”

“Barnes, hell will freeze a lot colder in that field before I sell anything to you. Keep your nose out of my marriage. You know, Barnes, you are a nasty little man and no wonder my brother stepped all over you every chance he got. You just keep your nose out of my affairs. You just remember what I said and don’t cross me.”

By Dr. Peter S Piispanen.

Source of Character: Dallas Seasons 1-14; Character played by Patrick Duffy.

Helper(s): www.wikipedia.org, ultimatedallas.com, Ethan Roe, Robin, Siamak Djawadian, Marcello.

Writeup completed on the 6^th of April, 2012.