Judith Light Illuminates Dallas

After giving Dallas some Sober Second Thought on the occasion of its Season 3 premiere (er...specifically, getting a screener of its Season 3 premiere, if we're being brutally honest), I was won over by its throwbacky charms and got on board to give my Monday nights a shot of old-school soap magic. (And no, TNT has not asked me to blurb Dallas -- YET -- but that's both a print ad-ready review and how I sincerely feel about the show.) When I snuggled under the covers to watch the second episode, I was happy to sink back in for some nostalgic fun, and got it: an extramarital affair, a PD shooting said affair, drilling rights, blackmail, assumed identity. And then, if I had been on the fence about finishing the season, there was the clincher. Guess who else is in this thing? JUDITH LIGHT, DEALMAKER.

Admittedly, Judith Light did not always enjoy this designation. For 700 seasons of Who's The Boss?, she had the (thankless) role of high-powered '80s lady: fancy job, tight-assed attitude, and about four thousand blouses with flaccid neck bows. But even if playing Angela -- excuse me, "AINjeluh" -- on Boss made her tamp down her innate greatness, TV audiences already knew about it. She rocked the first season of St. Elsewhere as a woman who takes an OR hostage after learning that she's become pregnant for the ninth time because her worthless husband lied about having had a vasectomy, and however you feel about women's reproductive health, if there's a better way for a woman to deal with such a situation, I'm afraid I just don't know what that would be.

Post-Boss, whenever one saw Light on TV, one could be fairly sure she was telling people shit they didn't want to hear and doing so, as my esteemed colleague Sarah puts it, sugar-free. She brought up the tone of every three-sided room she was in, shooting dubious looks over turned-up collars from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit to Ugly Betty. Both Bureau Chief ADA (and eventually Judge) Elizabeth Donnelly in the former and Claire Meade in the latter let her embody the feminist values we first saw back on St. Elsewhere: Donnelly was a strong mentor for Alex Cabot, prosecuting sex crimes, generally committed against women; while Claire Meade was a staunch support for her transgendered daughter as she (controversially) stomped her perfect gams to the top of her family's publishing empire. (Both roles also let her bring attention to issues that have been important for her in her real life: she's a longtime LGBT advocate who was apparently instrumental in helping her former TV son Danny Pintauro come out.)

Light's Dallas role is not going to be winning her any awards for advancing any causes, unless cocaine traffickers have formed their own answer to GLAAD and I haven't heard about it. Judith doesn't make her début on the show in this week's episode, but this is her triumphant return to the show since, in the second season, her son Harris pushed her down some stairs -- see what I mean about the throwbacky charms? -- and then had her essentially locked up in a sketchy rehab facility so that he could carry on his own nefarious plans. But when Harris got sprung from jail in the season premiere and threatened his daughter Emma's plans to allow the Ewings to use the Rylands' vehicles in their Alaskan oil play (I think? I kind of zone out when they talk business talk), Emma turned around and got Judith sprung from her hospital. We're meant to think that Emma and Judith have been close, so why it took this long for Emma to get around to making this move is...not important, I guess: it's a soap, and Judith's out now, which is all that matters.

And though I don't know exactly how long Judith's been away, bitch is making up for lost time. After caning into Harris's office to gloat about fucking up whatever deal he has going on, she demands to go to his next meeting. Harris's connect is (reasonably) not so sure about this AARP member horning in on his cocaine trafficking plans (for which they're going to use Ryland trucks), and Judith affably agrees that he has no reason to trust her, so -- without breaking eye contact -- she opens up her jacket and encourages him to frisk her all over.

It's technically a move of supplication, except she's so obviously HBIC that if she ordered him to finish his patdown by licking her boot, no one could be surprised. I mean, look at this face!

Having made a convincing enough case for herself, Judith ends the meeting by sampling the product.

I JUST SAW AINJELUH DO A LINE. It's as scandalous as it is thrilling!

A soap opera is only as compelling as its villains, and in Light's Judith, Dallas has brought us a really great one. That she's being played, against type, by someone I consider a feminist hero makes her that much more fun. Thank you for Judith Ryland, Dallas and Ms. Light. You have a fan for life. (Judith's life.)