Even Even before before reporting reporting began for this week's cover story on television's whodunit hit Dallas, two TIME staff members knew the show intimately. Correspondent James Willwerth prepared for his interviews with Dallas producers, writers and actors -- including Larry Hagman, who plays Star Villain J.R. Ewing -- by sitting through hours of screenings. "I attempted to list which of the seven deadly sins, Ten Commandments and miscellaneous Freudian nightmares were depicted," says Will werth, "but I bogged down after anger, envy, lust, avarice, adultery, coveting thy neighbor's wife and worshiping false idols." Associate Editor Richard Corliss, who wrote the cover story, pored over the last Dallas episode, the one in which J.R. is shot, but confesses: "I still don't know who did it." Even after spending many hours watching video cassettes of old Dallas episodes, Corliss found it hard to keep track of the members of Dallas' teeming and steaming cast. "I kept asking myself, 'Who are all these people?' " he says. "I finally constructed a Ewing family tree to keep track of the relationships, romantic involvements and business deals. It really helped." We thought it would help readers too; Corliss's family tree accompanies the cover story.

Moscow Bureau Chief Bruce Nelan reports that TIME'S Moscow Bureau Chief Bruce Nelan reports that TIME'S coverage of the Olympics has gone smoothly. Almost. George Plimpton, author and professional Walter Mitty, was dispatched to Moscow to write a tourist's-eye view of the host city and the Games. Writes Plimpton: "It was deemed prudent for me to maintain my cover as a tourist. TIME Sport Writer B.J. Phillips, in Moscow and accredited to cover the Games, was to be my mail drop. She said she would not be hard to spot. She had broken an ankle three days before leaving the U.S., and was creeping around Moscow on two canes, one wood, one steel. We were supposed to meet secretly in Pushkin Square, where I would palm my copy to her. The day of our rendezvous I looked at my handwritten report (it was thought wise to leave my portable typewriter at home) and found it indecipherable even to my own eyes. I telephoned the TIME office on Kutuzovsky Prospekt and, with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece, asked if I could come over and type my story up before going off to Pushkin Square. Alas, B.J. was at the office, so I handed the typed copy to her there. Too bad. I felt I had let the side down. I liked all the mumbo-jumbo stuff, but my hand writing betrayed me."

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