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Dallas: Top Ten Moments

Sylph

By Sylph
in DTS: Cancelled Soaps

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All My Shadows Proficient

All My Shadows

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I've been watching Dallas again recently, making my way through the early years, and I think I've discovered another thing that set this era of primetime soap apart from the modern shows. Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing weren't afraid to give you a self-contained episode from time to time in their earliest seasons, and that helped TREMENDOUSLY when it came to building characters and relationships. I don't include Dynasty simply because they were full-blown serial from the beginning.

The episode that got me thinking of this is "The Dove Hunt." The handful of episodes that preceded it in season 3 kept tight on the main stories of the time: Sue Ellen's depression, Pam's medical woes and pregnancy, and the Ewing Oil business dealings. But then out of nowhere comes this episode that mainly takes you away from all of that and focuses on a plot that begins and ends within the episode yet creates waves that are still felt several episodes down the line. It gave them time to let the characters breathe and exist outside of the roles they played in the continuing stories, thus making them richer and realer. A huge problem I have with even the best of the modern serialized shows is that everything is SO. MUCH. ABOUT. THE STORYLINE. that we never see who these people are outside of that. They don't become real people who laugh and cry and have good days and bad days -- they're merely the antagonist or the protagonist or whatever mixture of the two TPTB had concocted.

Stuff like this also gives your show more depth, I find. It can be light and dark and every tone in between when the time calls for it, whereas so much of what we have today is eternally ominous and tense. I think there's something to be said for having just enough story tension below the surface for it to be noticed but not so much that you literally can not do anything else with your characters.

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DRW50 Grand Master

DRW50

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Most of the time serialized shows now are just serialized for the sake of it, not because they have anything to stretch out. It's the same as so many shows now having love triangles and breakups/makeups 50 times just because they assume that's what you're supposed to do. It bores me to tears. It's one of the reasons I don't watch any of the superhero shows. I'd rather watch old Superfriends cartoons on a loop than hear "Olicity" fans bitching 24/7 because their OTP are in turmoil yet again.

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Soapsuds Grand Master

Soapsuds

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Great pic!  Punk Anderson looks good….glad he is still alive. Its a shame Morgan Brittany wasn't in the new Dallas on TNT. That lady is one fierce actress.

Nice to see Christopher Atkins in the pic too….its too bad Timothy Patrick Murphy didnt live to join Lucy's many loves….

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Soapsuds Grand Master

Soapsuds

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Yup…I remember every year being excited for the season cliffhanger and then the season premiere…..Dallas still remains the best soap of them all…its the only one that was rebooted …..It was nice to see the show again for 3 more years…but the glory years were golden…..love me some Angelica Nero….LOL

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