Dallas Discussion Thread

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[FrenchBug82]

Do you reckon? How do you think this should have ended instead?

Coz the way I see it this was the least bad solution: it wasn't the lazy soap trope of making it some random character noone cares about but it also avoided the narrative problems that would come up if it had been a main cast member.
Kristin was a reasonably prominent supporting character of the previous season so the audience didn't feel completely cheated but she could easily be written out so the story could play out without long-term consequences.

That being said, I don't know how others feel about her but I just recently saw again pieces of Mary C's appearance on Knots Landing and while I have not rewatched that time of Dallas in many years, it reminded me that I thought at the time she was not a very good actress at all.
Smirking isn't acting.

[j swift]

I gotta agree with @FrenchBug82 many good points

Also, Sue Ellen had been arrested, as she was a prime suspect and her gun was thought to be the primary weapon.  It looked like JR was going to brutally punish Sue Ellen, taking her away from John Ross and kicking her out of Southfork, just after she had established a lot of audience support as a victim of JR's abuse. 

So, when the proverbial penny dropped that Kristen had shot JR and set Sue Ellen up to take the fall, it was a well earned shocker.  Then, the coda that she was pregnant and therefore would not pay for her crime was an excellent way to tie up the story without a trial or protracted pursuit of justice.  And it set up the story of Christopher which was a key plot point for future seasons.

Edited March 21, 2022 by j swift

[Chris 2]

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.

[Bright Eyes]

Do you think it could have worked in the long run to actually kill J.R. off?

[Khan]

Good question!  Chances are, if DALLAS had killed off J.R., someone (either a new character, or one already on the show) would have needed to step up and fill the "chief antagonist" role.  Personally, I would have chosen Sue Ellen, but either way, I'm sure the show would not have been the same w/o J.R./Larry Hagman.

[DRW50]

I would have killed him off as I felt JR was too powerful and this drained the canvas of vitality, but honestly, JR was an international icon, so it would never happened.

[Chris 2]

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.

[FrenchBug82]

I am one of these very few people who do find some redeeming features in the last few seasons and while the writing wasn't good enough to sustain it, I do think there was a lot of potential in the series of humiliations and defeats JR started to endure in the late years.
That could have set up exactly what you suggested if the show had had the guts to do it. But I think they wanted to play it safe with JR always reverting to "classic" JR.
Plus they wrote pitiful stuff played more for laughs (the asylum stuff) and they sadly didn't really manage to find characters that were up to this level and could have made it believable that JR was now vulnerable.
I always said JR had lucked out that Cliff was so lame and stupid and that it would have been nice if he had realized that part of his success was lucking out that his archenemy was mediocre.
McKay could have been a stronger contender and I still think the first half of that season with the ranch war was very effective in setting him up as a worthy adversary but for some reason they chose to then turn him into a sad sack.
But I can see a scenario where McKay gets something out of betraying Wendell and then becomes a equal-to-equal rival for JR at the same time JR realizes he isn't what he once was and that drives some recalibration on his part and some nice character evolution. And real suspense as to who will come out on top.
Dallas however was never that show and wasn't going to become thoughtful in its last legs.

As a separate point that I will simply mention but not elaborate on because this is the Dallas thread, this is also EXACTLY what Y&R should be doing with Victor, if EB wasn't so insistent on screaming bloody murder as soon as his character is shown to be a human with weaknesses.
The decline of a once-powerhourse could be such a powerful storyline with lots of ramifications AND great material for an actor: how does one cope with getting older and seeing time pass you by and reassessing one's own morality and what is worth it or not. Great stuff.
Anyway..

Edited March 21, 2022 by FrenchBug82

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[j swift]

I think there were lots of candidates for the "next gen" JR including Michelle and James (although the casting of James was atrocious).  JR should have served as a mentor, allowing the development of new scenarios that could have further expanded the Dallas universe beyond Southfork.  Sort of like what Falcon Crest tried with the racetrack and Knots did with the other employees at Greg's company in season 13 once Abby left the show.

In my opinion Dallas was too conservative in sticking with the remnants of the original  seasons rather than trying to maintain a contemporary voice, and as a result there were too many repetitious stories.  I mean look at the preview above, how many times could Sue Ellen confront one of JR mistresses at a BBQ?

Edited April 3, 2022 by j swift

[FrenchBug82]

I have confessed before that I actually am of the three or four people who really liked Michelle.
The writing was awful by then but I thought she was interesting and beautiful and was clearly learning and improving at scheming from the initial impulsive girl. It was more character development they allowed anyone else.

She could have been a out-of-left-field adversary.

And yes I still have trouble understanding how that guy landed the role of James'. Especially since we now know he was a piece of work IRL too.

[victoria foxton]

I liked Michelle as well. 

[FrenchBug82]

I think people associate her with the awfulness of the last few years AND especially some of its worst plots like April's killing and James.
But on the merits Michelle was the least bad new character they introduced in the last few seasons.  I was disappointed that Kimberly Foster's character on AMC turned out to be a big ball of nothing.

[Khan]

I read somewhere - it might've been IMDb, lol - that the producers strongly considered returning to self-contained stories once DALLAS' ratings began to slide.  IDK how successful such a move would have been after years of ongoing storylines, but at the very least, it might have brought some variety to a series that needed it.