Greatest Soap Cop-Out's.

[dragonflies]

 

Caroline/Thomas were doomed from the start this go around. They rewrote their history(they were never in love with each other), and then turned Thomas into a rapist. Which in turn makes one wonder, why would anyone want him with Sasha? The Thomas/Caroline pairing flopped and Caroline/Linsey paid the price for it.

Thomas has always wanted what he can't have, tis the only reason he wanted Caroline. I'm sure he'll forget about Sally when his next true love comes along.

[Roman]

The P3 reveal. Just nonsensical. I loved Cane being P3 and they had so much chemistry.....why that was changed still sticks in my craw. 

[Roman]

well. the Dynasty MWDM was planned because most of the cast' contracts were up at the end of that season, so if they had any actress or actor who gave them trouble....plus Ali McGraw wanted to leave Dynasty so that's why Lady Ashley was killed. 

This is not the only time I have read that Peter Bergman was a racist. Is there any truth to this or just speculation (Now I do remember him hating the Keemo story even though I happen to have loved it myself). 

[amybrickwallace]

My mom says that Bobby in the shower on Dallas was the biggest cop-out in TV history. That said, it did launch some great parodies like the last scene on Newhart.

[Roman]

You know, she just may be right. What pissed off so many fans was that they invested a year in his death, the mourning of the family (the season IMPO started off well) and then it turned into Dynasty. So, Leonard Katzman came back as EP the same year PD returned. the writers and producers watch every episode and said that was the only thing they could do because the previous season was bad (LK actually was a consultant on the dream season) and even though the next season was their last great season...your mom could be right. it just insulted a fanbase worldwide like "The previous crap you've justs een didn't happen. forget ALL that [!@#$%^&*]..."

[amybrickwallace]

She said her other choice for biggest cop-out was Geraldo and the vault. Of course, that wasn't a soap...or was it? 

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[Khan]

 

 

 

And I would agree.  Unfortunately, I don't think Leonard Katzman and his team had any other choice.

 

Patrick Duffy wanted to return, and I think Larry Hagman made it clear that he wanted PD back (and EP Phil Capice gone) "or else."

 

At that time, whenever a soap character died onscreen, it was assumed that they were "for real" dead.  Ergo, it wasn't as if they could turn around and say Bobby only PRETENDED to die.  

 

And if they HAD gone in that direction, how would they be able to explain why Bobby would deceive his loved ones like that?  Katherine Wentworth was dead (in the original story, I think she was alive again post-dream season?), so she no longer posed a threat to Bobby or Pam.  

 

Was Bobby in trouble with organized crime?  Was he, in fact, a government agent, who had faked his death in order to carry out some top-secret assignment?  THOSE alternatives sound even more far-fetched to me than The Dream Shower.

 

IIRC, they DID float the possibility of bringing back PD as Bobby's long-lost twin brother, a Ewing relative, or an unrelated character (possibly, one who undergoes extensive plastic surgery to resemble Bobby).  However, Katzman and others decided that viewers would only accept PD back AS Bobby.

 

So, they (and specifically, Katzman) chose to retcon it all as Pam's protracted dream.

 

Now, if I had been in charge, I might have said "Thanks, but no thanks" to PD's offer to return.  Even if it guaranteed the show's further decline in ratings and popularity (which it suffered even WITH him back).  However, turning away PD also might have guaranteed that LH would have followed his onscreen brother out the door.

 

Could DALLAS have survived without Bobby AND J.R.?  Frankly, I don't think so.

 

So, in the end, the dream amounted to a total cop-out, but I don't fault Katzman for attempting to fix (in a non-cliched or TOO far-fetched way) what was, IMO, an impossible situation.

 

ETA: Someone (forget who) once suggested that the producers, from season ten forward, should have made each, successive season of DALLAS part of one character or another's dream in order to justify season nine all belonging to Pam's imagination.  So, for example, season nine might have been Pam's dream, but season ten could have been, say, Sue Ellen's dream; and season eleven, Cliff's; and so on and so forth.  At the time, I thought that was either the dumbest suggestion I'd ever heard, or the cleverest.  My opinion has not changed.

[Soapsuds]

Katherine returned again in the 87-88 season after Pam's car accident. I think she was on 2 episodes. It was a waste of time and her appearance was used just so the viewers might think that Pam was abducted by Katharine. I guess LK didn't want to revisit the Katherine/Bobby story so that the dream season would be forgotten. I thought they could have used Angelica Nero as the one who had Bobby. He could have been revived and Angelica putting her plan in motion could have kidnapped him with no one knowing to have leverage on JR but instead Bobby escapes in the last episode. It would have gotten rid of Jamie for good instead of having her have accident after accident the following season until they killed her off screen which I thought was ridiculous. Also it would've had Sue Ellen at death's door with JR finally realizing how much he loved her even though they were back together at the time.

[Roman]

There are actually pictures from a scene where bandages are taking off of PD's face, revealing Bobby did survive his accident. JR is shown hugging him...the reason would have been explained that Bobby came back to life after the family left his hospital room, but had no memory of who he was and was severely injured. that would have explained why he was gone for the entire season...plus the ones you mentioned...Bobby being an evil twin brother, a man who was made to look like Bobby so he could take over EO....all kinds of stuff. 

[Khan]

@Soapsuds: But do you see how your whole Angelica/Bobby explanation might look antithetical to everything that was DALLAS?  I mean, that kind of twist might have worked on FALCON CREST or even DYNASTY.  However, at their peak, DALLAS and KNOTS LANDING were comparatively more grounded shows.  You couldn't write stories like that and expect their audiences to stick around.  Heck, many people quit the show once they realized Bobby never died at all, not because they weren't glad to see PD back, but because bringing him back as Bobby had violated, in their minds, the series' sense of integrity and fair play.

 

 

I still want to know what the heck Geraldo and his team expected to find.  Because I truly doubt Al Capone would have stashed bodies or money in a place like that.

[YRBB]

 

Not really. That's mythos born from LH, LG, and PD's incessant PR campaign since the mid-80s to make it so. This wasn't a poor Katzman and his team scenario. There are several ways that Bobby could have ended up being alive that wouldn't require evil twins or government conspiracies and certainly not a year-long dream.

 

The answer as to why it happened that way lies in Barbara Curran's quintessential DALLAS book, and I quote:

For Katzman, however, pulling off Duffy's return was only the tip of the ice-berg. Katzman thought that, Duffy's absence aside, DALLAS suffered during Season 8 because of three main problems: too much international intrigue, weakened male characters, and a wimpy J.R. [...]
Writer Howard Lakin recalled that Katzman "couldn't deal with what they had done [in Season 8]. He didn't understand it. He just didn't get a grip on it. And that upset him because he was a very controlling kind of man. So, faced with this, he decided to make the year disappear."

 

From everything we've heard about Katzman, he was exactly the type of producer to throw such a big "fυck you" to those that replaced him previously.

 

The book goes on to say,

Katzman also felt that, during Season 8, "DALLAS had become a women's show." He did not believe DALLAS should "have weak women, but the men have always been the strong characters in the show. The women have been strong in their own right, but they haven't dominated the men."

The writers, said Katzman, "practically ruined J.R. last year. He was deceived by women. They lied to him. If you diminish J.R., you diminish the series."

 

It's not that he couldn't find a semi-plausible way to bring Bobby back. He didn't want to. In the process, he RUINED the way the show was perceived to the point that, last years, 30 years later, one of my directors was making a joke about it -- you can imagine what a joke it was closer to when it happened.

 

 

The problem lies in the assumption that Bobby was deceiving them. Why couldn't he be unwitting, a victim?

 

Also, regarding Katherine Wentworth, she was not dead. Her death occurred after Pamela started dreaming. Don't tell that to the writers though, who seemed to have forgotten all about that in Season 11 and actually thought she was dead. Oops.

 

 

But so is the dream scenario. The only positive it offered was that you could bring Bobby back and immediately move on, as if nothing happened. At the expense of DALLAS' credibility and ratings, of course.

[Soapsuds]

What if Bobby was revived and for some reason had no memory of who he was and Angelica did take him because he looked like an ailing Dimitri, the owner of of Marinos Shipping? Instead of the whole Jack fisaco. In the last episode Bobby remembers who he is and Angelica tries to kill him off. Both return to Dallas where Angelica puts Sue Ellen in grave danger instead of Bobby. As Pam and Mark begin saying their I do's ..Bobby shows up and role credits....LOL

The dream season could have been better had JR vs Pam continued but instead the writers squashed it. There was no way in hell JR would have stopped his nastiness towards Pam. That could have been the whole season with Sue Ellen falling of the wagon completely with JR losing complete control of Ewing Oil to Pam.  Of course that could have copied the whole Dynasty story too...LOL....I didn't care for the whole Pam going to the wilderness mess. I am glad they cut that story short.

I think VP even said that she hated that story with actor Marc Singer.

[amybrickwallace]

 

I think it was Charlene Tilton who said that the execution of Bobby's return was poor, but no one could think of anything better to explain his reappearance. I'm pretty sure she said that when the TNT reboot was launched.

 

About the vault, I was too young to have remembered seeing that special but heard plenty about it in the following years. Was this before or after his nose got broken on his talk show?

[Roman]

I saw it live....they dragged that crfap out for two hours and there was a small bit of trash and an empty bottle in a corner. his career was never the same....even the crew was laughing. 

CT is right in that his return was poor. PD has said that LH called and told him to come up to his home and have a hot tub. he did, and after they both were sufficiently lit, PD said LH told him in very colorful language that he knew he had made the biggest mistake of his career....he left as being the No. 1 good guy on the top tv show in the world at the time. So PD said "if they back the truck up and it's filled with cash...." he signed, got a HUGE raise....but the crew felt fans would not accept Duffy back as anyone but Bobby. I had that Dallas: The Complete History book and I HIGHLY recommend it for any Dallas or tv show fan. What I had posted last night was one way Bobby could have returned without the Nero crap and the secret spy and evil twin and all that BS. LK didn't want to pull the trigger. and I have read over the year at Katzman was a REAL piece of work. LG was negotiating a new contract and asked to direct some episodes since the men were allowed to do it. She was fired for that 'demand'. she went to Larry, who went to LK (I believe) and said that if Linda wasn't rehired and allowed to direct he was quitting. and Guess what? (Also, Howard Keel was asked to take over the role of Jock Ewing after Jim davis' death. he said that Davis was a good friend of his, and was so happy to have been on the show.....he could never do that to him, so he turned it down. Thus Clayton Farlow was born. Keel would have been Jock, having survived the helicopter crash but having had extensive plastic surgery...the same SL they used seasons later with the star of the show SWAT. It was revealed by the NE that he would be the new Jock....fans saw this, called and sent letters to both CBS and Lorimar and demanded that Jock stay dead. that's why the character ended up being a fraud....even though if you watch that season, this man has the same injuries Jock had and there's a scene at the office where there is a office door with Jock's name on it). 

[amybrickwallace]

 

I never knew all that. What a gracious man.