Vee

Why did Dick Van Dyke need to turn out to be John's dad (having apparently swapped dogtags with Jigsaw)? It's not like he's going to keep recurring on the show for years to come. Just make him the long-lost Horton (Tommy?) and call it a day.

@dc11786 your laser-like focus on eras of these shows down to the smallest detail, subplot and recurring player is always absolutely essential and incredibly welcome. I thought I had that for a few shows but yours often puts me to shame. The wealth of shared and learned history for a waning art form among the poster base is the central reason I stay here year after year, and you are definitely at the top of the list. Thanks so much for these windows into vast swaths of material, both primary and obscure, that so many of us have either lost or never known before. As to this era: I've said it before and will say it again, I still don't know why the actors and a good portion of the audience were against Robert and Anna reunited. I understand why Monty went for it (one of her few sane decisions the second time) and I still think they should be back together. I love Emma Samms as a person but Holly only does so much for me. But I am in the minority on all this. I saw some of Greg(?) Beecroft as Faux Duke recently - as someone who found him obnoxious as hell playing the blue collar hero on GL, watching him play a suave bon vivant was bizarre and even more strange.

I had a feeling individual studios and companies would continue breaking with AMPTP/the streamers, and I was right (AMPTP denies this, of course):

Agreed.

My first thought.

It's pretty accurate, except I would argue Lee Meriwether was still fairly warm and a solid recast. Donna Reed was very different.

So, the end of Season 8. "Swan Song" is deservedly famous for some lovely moments, like the stunning tableau outside the house with Bobby and Pam in all white as Victoria Principal lets out that primal howl, and the ambiguous note where Bobby appears to be addressing both Pam and Jenna on his deathbed and most of the family - and probably Jenna - has no clue. But I couldn't help but think that in HD Bobby's fatal wounds looked like giant swaths of pepperoni. Morgan Brittany was a good sport to return just to loll back on a car seat for a few seconds and die. Talk about easy money. Donna Reed gave her all at the end there and at various points throughout this season, including the big scene where she takes down Jock's portrait. But she still always felt pretty off to me - far too buttoned up, cool and removed, a stylish tourist. Which is not to say the great Barbara Bel Geddes was not at times reduced to a collection of vague tics and misty looks herself; I remember some of those alleged bitchy quotes in Reed's letters about Bel Geddes after being fired: 'An old brown wren who blinks a lot.' She had a point! Jenilee Harrison is now sporting a helmet of Nancy Reagan hair and is the latest under-30 to somehow end up chained to phrenology spokesmodel Cliff Barnes. Her acting has not improved and somehow HD has made her and Charlene Tilton's performances that much worse. (Thank God Tilton is gone for awhile) It does make you wonder how much long-term planning was actually in play here BTS - obviously Jamie was potentially intended to replace Lucy, but after her first several hours on the show Jamie so far has lost any semblance of a tomboy/rough-hewn personality beyond 'clueless dupe for Cliff'. Granted, Clueless Dupe for Cliff/J.R. is a time-honored role for young women on Dallas at this point but it's wearing more than thin. Even Lucy was at least spoiled and occasionally snarky, not that Tilton could deliver any of it; her claim to fame for me remains being the woman who giggled with delight as Charles Rocket dropped the F-bomb on Saturday Night Live and ended Jean Doumanian's reign for good. And what exactly was the plan for Dack Rambo? If he was intended to slot into Bobby's place who was he to be paired with? He's handsome but both he and Jamie seem like attractive cyphers in search of space on a TV show, fake Shemps in the Three Stooges. I know the Knots team brings back Mark Graison yet again, which seems like a mistake as Mark and his gigantic mustache have haunted the show for over a year and they only just got closure on that storyline after dragging Pam through it for an entire season. (I will always know John Beck best as the jolly redneck who got brain damage in Rollerball with James Caan.) After a certain point, many support characters/love interests who are not Ewings simply become revolving door widgets who rotate in and out repeatedly - not just the many clueless sexpots and bimbos that J.R. and Cliff pass around like poor Afton or the stultifying Mandy Winger, but Lucy's various terrible and/or dead love interests (or reheated ones like Leigh McCloskey), and now Zombie Mark and the beyond boring Dusty Farlow, he of the low-lit rodeo movie screenings where he drinks and broods about his impotence. Dusty has returned for what feels like the sixth time and somehow Sue Ellen does not look as bored with it as I am, though oddly Dusty's own father does. Anyway: I will be consuming the 'dream season' probably in full, in tandem with Knots Landing Season 7 to examine their creative swap in full. I had forgotten that! Good old Helen Shaver, such a class act and a formidable character actor and apparently now director. I don't believe it was her first time dubbing either.

A bit amazed this finally happened.

I was somewhere in those 10 eps when I left off - I'll have to check my notes. I will say I was surprised they simply concluded the Ruth arc off-camera. In between the penultimate episode and the finale Greg finds out what Ruth did with Abby to con Laura into thinking Abby and Greg had slept together again (a Melrose Place-esque or late Dallas-level scheme that seems beneath KL tbh) and sends Ruth packing without a final scene, all offscreen. Presumably because Ava Gardner's contracted run was up and maybe she was too run ragged by the network TV filming pace to even be bothered with more. There's also no Joshua or Cathy in "The Long and Winding Road" which feels appropriate, if a bit surprising given that story ticking up and up.

After a lot of delay and a lot of IRL priorities, I've wrapped KL Season 6. I have stuff to say about it for those who care, but my commentary on the show will be considerably spaced out and in more generalized blocks from now on. I also am wrapping the end of Dallas Season 8 shortly, because I'm hoping to try watching Dallas' famous 'dream season' and KL Season 7 together in sync due to their unique Lorimar creative showrunner swap to compare and contrast. I'm back in my Lorimar era! I am sure people are tired of my critically hammering Dallas in multiple threads, and I do think it has its merits especially earlier on. I enjoy watching portions of it for what it is even in its later years, but it's a very different beast to me. What I will say though is it's consistently strange how connected I can be to even tiny character moments in Knots - Ben playing post-coital bagpipes for Val in the season finale before the big news comes down while Val giggles and says 'this is getting weird' - which never seem to happen on the mothership show, and how you feel the character history weight and stakes for every person involved. There's such care taken too with the cutting and production value, like the cross-cutting in the opening, ricocheting back and forth between a shellshocked Karen struggling to talk to the police after Ackerman's blown his brains out, to Mack finally fully committing himself to his wife's faith in her beliefs as he illegally ransacks Ackerman's house for his files. And the big, famous tableaus like the end sequence at the Fishers has all the characters arrayed across the screen and location shoot like they're in a Western, just splayed across a suburban street. I just never see stuff like this on Dallas much, character-wise or style-wise. It's not a wonder to me that KL ran fourteen years at this point; the wonder is how it seemingly (by comparison to Dallas at least which was understandably larger than life and tapped into the zeitgeist) flew relatively under the cultural radar at the same time.

That's definitely Pam.

One Life to Live. Roger Howarth as Frat Boy #2. Bradford Anderson was supposed to die as Spinelli in his initial GH storyline. I knew instantly he would not (I will admit to having a crush on him in those early days; I like geeks, sue me).

I've watched a lot of '80s shows both then and now, I was born pretty early in the decade lol. I don't have oversensitivity about that. But Dallas often makes most of those other shows look like Designing Women. And it wouldn't be an issue for me if, as I've said before, I didn't feel most of Dallas was extremely repetitive story-wise. You switch a few names out (like Afton and Mandy) and you get the same plots with these characters year after year, and little evolution. I do think the earlier seasons had highlights, and I do still enjoy characters like poor Clayton, etc. It's hard seeing what became of Pam in particular in later years, she started out a firecracker. Sue Ellen is beyond parody at this point for me. I will say Jamie Ewing at least got a little fire back presenting that oil/land deed at the latest barbecue, though I do think Jenilee Harrison is miscast (imagine if they'd landed the young Demi Moore or something). Yet apparently she too will somehow end up in bed with old pervert Cliff Barnes!

So I've been watching some of Season 8 as I prep to finally begin watching the big Dallas/KL creative switcheroo in sync. Is it me or is the whole abrupt Afton/Mandy Winger swap one of the most egregious examples of just how disposable most women on this show are? Afton wasn't exactly queen of the suffragettes but the audience was somewhat invested in her long-suffering loyalty to Cliff Barnes, the premiere goat-faced fool and anime pervert of '80s primetime drama. Within an episode or two though she is gone and fully replaced in Cliff's life by another comely sexbomb, Mandy Winger, played by Deborah Shelton, last seen as a largely mute male fantasy dream girl for the hapless protagonist of Brian De Palma's classic film Body Double. There is a reason Shelton has maybe five to ten lines tops in that movie before getting slaughtered by a power drill, and Season 8 demonstrates it beautifully. Now, less than halfway into the season Mandy has simply replaced Afton in virtually all aspects of story: Accompanying Cliff to his sister's house to cluck over Pam, agreeing blithely to Cliff's latest doomed scheme against J.R. who she will surely fùck, etc. The only major change is hair color and less personality. I still have a lot of annoying notes on the close of Season 6 of Knots Landing that I will foist upon this board at some point soon. But there's a reason I take time with that show and dedicate myself to it, whereas Dallas is just silly fluff. It's because so much of the show is an endless Mobius loop of male power fantasy.

@DRW50

Impressive: Swift apparently went to the studios, was offered a bad deal like the Guilds, then promptly cut them out of the equation and went to AMC directly. Relevant because Swift again has her finger on the pulse of the moment, and it reflects even worse on the studios.

Thanks.

I'd like to see that scene. I had heard before that Ed might have been sent off to reunite with Carla and Sadie in Arizona or wherever, but I've never known if it was true. Sounds as though it might be. I know Ed apparently returned briefly a year or two later but I don't know in what way. I still remember that late '70s episode that went up not long ago where they clearly, shockingly appeared to be testing the older teen Josh (I don't believe it was Laurence FIshburne) with Julie Montgomery's Samantha. I still don't get how they introduced a mid-late '20s son of Josh in 2000 - Jared Hall, the wooden ADA with a checkered past. He didn't last long after JFP tested him poorly with the returned Ellen Bethea as Rachel. Al Freeman did come back for a day or two for Jared's dumb storyline (I think he cheated on the bar?) but I barely remember it and I don't believe it's on YT. I always wanted (and would still want) to bring Josh and the Halls back. Though at this point if the show were still alive, instead of a viable recast I would want to see Ellen Holly and Al Freeman, Hayman, etc. honored by seeing if Fishburne was willing to appear for a day (a la Nathan FIllion) as a tribute to them. And I would simply bring on either his kids, or other cousins/relations as contract players.

I'd be willing to check it out on BritBox, though I have been skeptical about Cindy's return and the particular sort of tossed-off, offscreen approach of the reveal from the jump. It just feels like a cartoon at this point when you have one dead character surprising another dead character at home, their immediately trading bitchy barbs and the whole thing seeming underplayed. The UK soaps used to be more grounded, a resurrection was a rare occurrence. (Though I do think bringing back Kathy was absolutely a good choice, she should've never been killed off however so-so her usage has been since.) Does anybody have dates on the reveal episodes where they unveiled her with Ian and family in more detail beyond a stinger? Or I guess when she rolled back into town. I'll give it a chance.

I remember him well from my days in NM.

You can always go back and rewatch it all. I plan to with several of these recently.

This headline reads as a puff piece, but it's not that IMO. A decent read:

Breathless, gossipy coverage from Swan (another foreign journo who always seems endlessly and inappropriately amused and fascinated by the most corrupt American politicians possible while knowing full well what they are, a trend in that industry I have not failed to notice over the years), but with important information: