Can’t See the Forrest for the Flies

Or

If a Stiff Falls in the Forrest, and No One Hears Him, Does He Make a Sound?

 

Or

Rot, Forrest, Rot

Steve Forrest, best remembered for spending two years trying to convince the Ewings he was the long-lost Jock, has died at the age of 87. When Jim Davis died in 1981, Dallas producers spent more than a year dithering over how to deal with his passing, eventually deciding to send him off-screen on a South American wild-catting operation, where he was thought to have died in a helicopter crash. In 1986, a stranger named Ben Stivers showed up, eventually claiming to be Jock, having survived the crash and been rescued by natives. Rather than let this preposterousness die out when Bobby emerged from the shower and wiped out the previous season as Pam’s vision quest, Season 10 was the year of the idiot storylines. Forrest returned, playing the same con, but the pretender to Jock’s empire this time was named Ben Parmalee, because Pam was apparently was psychic and foretold the coming of the fraud in her dream. While the characters had to go through the motions of reliving the same plotline viewers hated the first time, we found that Parmalee had been on Jock’s helicopter, and that Jock had survived the crash, hanging on in a feverish state telling family stories, so that Parmalee could create enough doubt to hang around for half a season. Lesser minds may think of Forrest as Dan “Hondo” Harrelson on S.W.A.T. or General Sline, who tried his best to send Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd to their deaths in Spies Like Us. Forrest also accomplished the rate double feat of having fought in the Battle of the Bulge in real life and in D-Day in The Longest Day.  And if you’re thinking that I included a fairly non-descript character actor because I could have fun with his name and riff on Dallas, you’re right. It’s not all about you, people.