Dallas: Discussion Thread

[j swift]

I know its thirty year later, but self-contained episodes are what bugs me about the Dynasty reboot.  It gets so repetitive that every week two characters have an argument and then makeup in the final act.  I need a nighttime soap to leave me with a cliffhanger so that I am motivated to come back every week.

[Chris 2]

Yep - Lorimar considered returning both Dallas and Falcon Crest to the self-contained format for the 1988-89 season. They mentioned in the press it would allow them to do stories like one where Bobby tracks down his old basketball coach to give him some bad news.

Thrilling!

[Khan]

LOL!

In order for the return to self-contained episodes to have worked, both shows would have needed to scale everything down (or back down), make the characters less arch, and so forth.  No longer could DALLAS or FALCON CREST do stories about corporate takeovers and criminal cartels.  That would have been tough for audiences to accept, to say the least.

On the other hand, if KNOTS LANDING had returned to their original format of self-contained episodes, with stories that are resolved (more or less) within sixty minutes, I think it could have worked, because the characters weren't quite as larger-than-life.  For sure, David Jacobs would have been ecstatic about the prospect of maybe bringing the show back to his original, "Scenes from a Marriage"-like concept.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Khan

[FrenchBug82]

The reason I don't think these shows could have done self-containing stories - and why it didn't work for soaps that tried - is because doing it in 60 min forces a resolution and that's not how life works, particularly for the kind of stories soaps tell
When it comes to romance, social issues, business dealings, nothing ever gets resolved and things re ongoing. You can't tie everything with a neat bow like you can when the perp gets arrested on Murder She wrote.

[Soapsuds]

Please register in order to view this content

 

[Khan]

I mean, Pamela didn't even try and pump her brakes, lol.

[Chris 2]

LOL, no. After finishing up her phone sex with Bobby, Pam just throws up her hands in front of her face in a lame attempt to protect the money.

They should have ended the series with the previous scene: JR walking out of Ewing Oil and vowing to get it back.

[AbcNbc247]

I still consider Seasons 10 and 11 watchable. It's Season 12 when the show really started to go downhill, imo

Edited April 20, 2022 by AbcNbc247

[Khan]

Leonard Katzman must have been royally pissed at Victoria Principal for leaving to come up with an exit that heinous.

[Soapsuds]

I recall Victoria Principal being pissed about her exist. 

In all honesty Dallas should've ended in 1989 like Dynasty did. The numbers for the show were still not into the gutter and without Sue Ellen the show had nothing left.

[j swift]

These days they'd make Victoria Principal do a coda PSA about distracted driving.

"Whether you're dreaming about your husband's death or your long lost half-sister is scheming to steal your man, always keep your eyes on the road."

Please register in order to view this content

We've got the touch, you and CBS...

[FrenchBug82]

It is an interesting purely theoretical question but I reckon of the 80s supersoaps the one that would be unlikely to be made today as anything resembling the original would be Dallas

I am not foolish enough to believe Hollywood has solved its gender problem and that toxic sets don't exist anymore but the obvious macho culture on that set and in the writing room, I believe, was too over-the-top to be acceptable in today's environment.
So it is hard to pile hypotheticals upon hypotheticals but I think nowadays a showrunner - and a network - would recognize the value of Pamela to balance JR and the overly male cast and she would have been unlikely to be written out at that stage unless she wanted out.

[Chris 2]

Victoria likes to say these days that when she signed her two-year contract extension in 1985, she told them that would be her last contract. In reality, she was negotiating for another new contract in 1987. The sticking points: she wanted salary parity with Patrick Duffy (who got a big raise when he returned a year earlier) and she wanted a one-year deal (the producers wanted two). So they let her walk away. Big mistake. And the producers pissed her off by leaking to the press that they had let her go, which she forced them to correct, and they even took away her parking space.

But they were expecting her to come back, which is why Pam’s exit is so bungled. They started shooting the next season immediately after they finished Principal’s last season, trying to bank episodes in anticipation of a writers’ strike. TV Guide reported at the time that they were removing Pam from the new season’s scripts.

When Sue Ellen did her “movie” a couple of seasons later, notice how there were no clips of Pam. And when Bobby showed Pam’s lookalike a picture of Pam, it was NOT Victoria. She wouldn’t give permission for her clips or image to be used. That’s unusual for an actor - again, they must have really pissed her off.

[kalbir]

Dallas was still a Top 30 show in 1988/89. The final two seasons were below the Top 30. Of note is that CBS was in 3rd place during the final four seasons of Dallas (1987/88 to 1990/91).

[AbcNbc247]

Agreed