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By John
in DTS: Cancelled Soaps

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Soapsuds Grand Master

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Today!

Too bad he isn't going to be asked the Victoria Principal question.

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Soapsuds Grand Master

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Leigh took control of the interview but I was disappointed there wasn't more Dallas talk. He did say Jim Davis was the heart of Dallas and things felt different when he passed. How Jim wore a wig but was still positive during his final days.

He did mention Patrick Mulcahey @BetterForgotten and what a phenomenal head writer he was and he also discussed JFP and his time on Santa Barbara.

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Vee Grand Master

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Lord, Dallas really does not ever change much. Every time I check it out on FreeVee out of boredom when I need a break from thinking and skip ahead a bit, it's back to the same things: Sue Ellen pulling a face as she is either back with J.R. or hating J.R., Bobby and his hair getting bigger and angrier, Pam wondering how this show went from clearly being centered around her in the first season as a prime mover to just being the moralistic brood wife of Patrick Duffy, and a lot of mostly anonymous men (sorry, 'the cartel') sitting around talking about J.R., what has J.R. done, what will J.R. do, did J.R. fùck my wife and/or my dog, and how will we Get J.R. This time they've even gone so far as to show up at J.R.'s barbecue to try to lynch him, only for the family to stand against them on behalf of J.R., who they all hate! Larry Hagman is hilarious and fun generally all the time, but there's only so far you can stretch a dynamite lead! 

Lois Chiles is here as Holly Harwood and is still not a fantastic actress after her varying failed attempts at movie stardom in the '70s, though I found her very appealing in her supporting role in Broadcast News a few years later (as the anchorwoman who gets exiled to an Alaskan serial killer story, hysterically shivering her way through live shot dispatches about 'more bodies pulled frozen from the earth'). What she does have though is authenticity as a Texan, and a kind of unpretentiousness to her performance, which makes me wish she'd been a bit more formidable a match for the leads than she apparently turns out to be. But this is Leonard Katzman's boys' show and none of the women on this show are really allowed to ever be a match for the men, unless they're quiet storm matriarch Miss Ellie who is a senior citizen and who often recedes to the wings shaking her head and saying 'oh, J.R.' anyway. (I know Quentin Tarantino was fond of Chiles, and made a point to put her in his CSI episodes which was classy of him.)

The show has literally had multiple scenes in these last several episodes where Sue Ellen, her strong new Second Round Ewing Wife Mullet and Pam sit around with Sue Ellen saying things like 'you know, Pam, I thought we agreed that we would let Our Men talk business alone'. That's Dallas, baby! Poor Linda Gray deserves hazard pay, but I know she had a blast on the show and with Larry Hagman. Whereas whatever Victoria Principal's BTS behavior, I have no idea how she sat through ten seasons of this. Granted my viewing is slapshot at best but I have yet to see Pam have a single storyline since the end of maybe the second year that is not about Bobby, wanting a baby, having a baby for Bobby or losing her mind. And now she sits around that chintzy living room complaining with the rest of them every night. This place looks low rent as hell compared to Westfork on Knots Landing, I am sorry.

Cliff Barnes has the manner, physicality, sloping brow and character depth of an anime pervert. The money and camaraderie among his castmates must've been real good for Ken Kercheval to hang around playing the state jester for a million years.

Clayton Farlow is one sweet dude, and I do love that there is this weird undercurrent with him and Sue Ellen given their whole thing in addition to him and Miss Ellie. I do wonder how settled they ever actually made him on the show, and with Ellie and the viewers. (The Wikipedia page would suggest there were deep misgivings on poor Clayton's part with being in the family.) Is this down to the showrunners never fully accepting him in place of Jock, or am I hypothesizing wildly? Anyway, I like Ellie and Clayton together, I'd rather watch that than a lot of the show. Priscilla Pointer is interesting as Pam's About to Die Mom who grows increasingly irate and obsessed with Getting J.R. too, but unlike all those random men she has actual force and presence so of course she must die. I'm not sure how much they ever paid off the clear thread with her and Clayton (she was clearly jealous and heartbroken watching him with Ellie a time or two) because I skipped ahead through some of this repetition.

I cannot believe they let Donna Krebbs go down the road. She's literally the only female regular on the show with agency other than Miss Ellie, and Miss Ellie's role is pretty variable. You believe Donna can do everything she says. Sexy Ray was a fool to let her get away, I have a lot of time for ol' Ray Krebbs. Lucy, meanwhile, continues to be one of the most annoying characters played by one of the worst actors I have ever seen. How she lasted [X] many years is beyond me, because they clearly ran out of story for her long ago and this isn't even halfway through the show's run! Her one interesting love interest is here and I know he buys the farm!

People rag on the TNT show a lot and I recall many of the complaints - that Cynthia Cidre clearly wanted to make a crime show and pasted Dallas into it, that the gaggle of new characters were unappealing - but I can't see how you can totally mangle a show featuring Judith Light, Mitch Pileggi and Carlos Bernard as heavies. I would think that doing a modern show you have to deal in Latino characters, but I guess focusing entirely on an actual cartel (as opposed to The Cartel of Concerned White Guys from the original show) was a bit too silly.

Of course as I watch this now all I can think of is how dated this all is, given where our planet is going with fossil fuels, and how the Dallas I'd make would be in fact even more unpopular than the TNT one! I'd hinge it on a political crisis not unlike Borgen: Power & Glory, where oil is both dying out and killing us all and the few Ewings are clawing for life and power at all costs! Gary and Val's boy Bobby from Knots Landing would come back to bust the whole thing up and kill it stone dead! John Ross or whoever would fight him, there'd be some younger folks, some Latinos who are not just drug barons like whatever they did on the revival, maybe a couple people from the TNT show I dunno, surely once again trying and failing to bring Victoria Principal back as the vengeful living spectre of Pam, and you'd do it all in maybe a single season and then be done with it. Texas would get crippled by a searing climatized heatwave like the UK's getting right now! It would be an elegiac, defiant "Dallas", raging against the bitter end. I don't know. It just seems a shame no one has done something more relevant with this franchise today. But what do I know - I didn't get rich making like 14 or 15 years of this. Nobody would watch my bad idea!

I hope you've all enjoyed my latest Dallas Diss Post.

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Soapsuds Grand Master

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Awwww... Loved her on the Jefferson's too.

Here is her memorial service. Her daughter and son appear around 1:30:00 in the video. Her son is handsome.

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