Chris 2

He sounds terribly misguided. There’s nothing employers love more than their employees complaining publicly about their jobs. And we’re not talking about someone who was drop-dead handsome or had charisma to spare or was the second coming of Olivier.

30 minutes ago, j swift said:

I know it was an ex-GH actor.  He basically said that there was no room for a new male character because the women were the focus of the show and the existing male actors were unwelcoming. 

Eh - hard to shed a lot of tears for him when there were so many other male-oriented shows (including soaps such as Dallas).

Doug Sheehan had a four year run on the show - that’s pretty good for someone who is essentially coming between the one of the main couples on the show.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, Chris B. I’m about a third of a way through it now. I’m enjoying it. As you said, it’s the last season of traditional FC.

I’m surprised Anne Archer (Cassandra) is still hanging around - long after her revenge storyline was resolved. Not sure why. But I remember that she didn’t make it through the whole season.

The music videos for Babylonia are a bit much. And they had an episode where she sang at a country and western bar (where Emma first met Dwayne) and she was totally off key.

Dwayne and Emma’s romance, BTW, happened way too quickly - before they even developed Dwayne as a character. Robin is another character who deserved more development.

I don’t love Morgan Fairchild’s character. Too brittle.

i do like Ken Olin as Father Christopher, but he has an accent that I find a little distracting. Chicago, maybe?

Trying to resurrect Alice/Steve/Rachel without any of the original actors was just foolhardy. And Alice is going to be foolish enough to get involved with Rachel’s ex-husband after all the misery she went through with Steve and Rachel 10 years earlier? Ridiculous.

The tea scene makes me laugh. If I am ever rich enough to have a live-in maid, I will insist that she wears a black uniform with a white frilly apron and cap, a la Vivian. Mac needs to run a tighter ship where Louise is concerned.

The funny thing about the Ewings is that they don’t really lead a glamorous lifestyle. They live in a house where everyone enters through a sliding glass door. And they drive Cabriolets and Lincolns and station wagons.

Dallas used film the interiors for the first six episodes at MGM, then would film the exteriors for the first 12 episodes on location, then go back to MGM and film the interiors for the second six episodes. Then, the rest of the season was shot in LA (similar to what French Bug describes above). The final location-based episode would usually be the Ewing BBQ or some milestone episode and then they’d shift to the fake Southfork. They filmed this way until the final two seasons, where they eliminated the location shooting due to budget.

I agree that FC got more out of its location shoots than Dallas did. But it helps that the Napa Valley is prettier, so i think the locations managers had more to choose from. The area around Dallas is not particularly pretty in general. The city itself is kind of non-descript and the area is flat and dry, with lots of strip malls. Other cities in Texas - like Forth Worth and Austin - are much more interesting-looking. I did think that the Dallas revival used the location shooting much more effectively.

The manor house at the Spring Mountain Winery, which was Angela’s house on FC, is much closer to what you see on TV than the real-life Southfork interiors are. The real life Southfork was never used on the original series, and the interior sets were based on another house in the Dallas area. But the Spring Mountain Manor house actually was used for interiors in at least the pilot, and the entrance area and main staircase are the model for the sets they used later on, which adhere to the style of the original house.

The season after Bobby’s return actually had the smallest drop in Dallas ratings in several seasons. The show’s ratings average for the  1986-87 was only a half rating point lower than the previous season, though the overall ranking was several places lower since there were so many highly-rated half hour sitcoms in the top 10 that year. It was the following year, after Victoria Principal’s departure, when the ratings truly plummeted.

On 3/26/2022 at 12:17 AM, Soapsuds said:

Oh wow..I didn't know Laura Johnson was married to Harry Hamlin

They had a pretty ugly divorce that I recall. The tabloids covered it closely. I recall he left her for Nicolette Sheridan.

Two things. As you pointed out, CBS didn’t have any blockbuster comedies, and comedies were in vogue at that point. NBC was doing gangbusters with its comedy lineup, but CBS was dependent on a lineup of aging dramas.

The second problem was that was the season that Nielsen switched from a diary method of measuring audiences to electronic “People Meters.” Series with older audiences showed a significant decline from the previous season. The thinking was that older audiences had been more diligent about filling out their diaries than younger audiences had been, so those older audiences had been over-represented in the Nielsen sample. People Meters were considered more accurate, since no one had to fill anything out.

It’s also a function of having a large number of showrunners (Earl Hamner for season 1, Bob McCullough for seasons 2 and 3, Rod Peterson and Claire Whittaker for seasons 4 and 5, Jeff Frielich for seasons 6 and 7, Michael FIlerman for season 8, and Jerry Thorpe for season 9). Each new showrunner wasn’t necessarily invested in the previous showrunner’s cast additions.

I remember reading at the time that it was kind of an unwritten rule among the various executive producers that no one was going to change the intro. I agree with the poster who said they should have just re-recorded Autumn Breeze and filmed/taped a new shot of the ambulance approaching the USC medical center.

The problem with Empty Nest was that Dinah Manoff’s character, Carol, was pretty annoying, but it was ok with Barbara (Kristy McNichol) around to balance her out and spar with her. But once Kristy was gone, it was all Carol all the time. The third daughter was played by this actress that casting directors kept trying to foist upon us in the 90s, to no avail (she also played on King of Queens, as another sister who also quickly disappeared). 

Empty Nest kept adding all these extraneous characters to make up for the loss of Kristy, to no avail. It reminds a bit of One Day at a Time - another show where one sister crucial to the dynamic of the show was written out, and then just kept adding all these other people to make up for the loss.

The challenge with a family-centered show like Dallas is that once you’ve exhausted the main plots about the family, where do you go from there? Bobby being killed off should have provided a new direction for the show, but it wasn’t executed well, so they went back to the tried and true. Which worked well for about a season, but that setup was already running out of steam when Patrick Duffy left.

Someone on another board suggested that the last few seasons should have been about JR’s redemption. Not that he would have turned into a goody two shoes. He could have still been a cunning, clever business man. But one with more of a moral compass. Larry Hagman had talent to make that characterization interesting. Then, they could have created a new villain to help drive the show.

Lorimar actually considered a similar setup for the 1988-89 season. JR would have chilled out and ex-wife Sue Ellen would have turned evil (I suppose inspired by the Blake-Alexis setup on “Dynasty”). Not sure Linda Gray would have had the range to pull that off, but interesting to think about.

It felt like a cop out at the time - you just knew they wouldn’t have any of the main, opening-credit characters - as the culprit. But as j swift mentioned, it set up the pregnancy and Christopher, which powered storylines for years to come.

I think Abby Dalton was playing younger than she was at the time (in her early 50s IRL). I think Julia was in her early to mid 40s. So I’d guess Emma was in her late 30s.

4 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

Sounds like a soap version of Are You Being Served?

Or a daytime version of Berenger’s.

Slightly off topic, but I always love hearing Lee Majors and Linda Evans talk about Stanwyck and how she mentored them. A real down-to-earth, no-nonsense but caring person from the way they describe her. I read a story about Charlton Heston trying to get his Colbys costars back from lunch on time because if they were late, “Barbara will be mad.” LOL.

Yep - agreed. It was still watchable and recognizable in season 4, but a step down from its peak during seasons 2 and 3.

GH: Robert and Holly

DOOL: Doug and Julie (back in the 70s); Tom and Alice

Y&R: Katherine and Jill (Brenda Dickson)

AW: Rachel and Ada

RH: Jack and Mary (Kate Mulgrew, though I don’t think I need to specify that); Jack and Siobhan (Sarah Felder)

I can’t imagine Faith Caitlin or Karen Morris Gowdy in the whale movie instead of Hicks. 

Barbara Stanwyck was a good 10 years older than Jane Wyman and looked it. One thing about Jane Wyman’s portrayal is that Angela seemed pretty robust and up to a good fight during most of her years on the show. Stanwyck would have played a more aged, frailer Angela. Not sure it would have worked as well.

Tony was played by John Saxon in all but one of his appearances, when he was played (strangely) by Robert Loggia. He had abandoned Julia and Lance years earlier because he couldn’t stand Angela’s influence over her.

Daniel Hugh Kelly (Frank Ryan #3) appeared in “Star Trek: Insurrection”, the third TNG movie.

I’d argue that the ratings for Frielich’s first season only stabilized because it was no longer facing Miami Vice. And the ratings were a bit lower than the season that came before, despite having no real competition (though the overall ranking was higher). I suspect the ratings wouldn’t have been any lower had Earl Hamner and his team stayed another year.

I never thought about that, but you’re probably right.