When did Dallas stop being good?

**Swami** · 04-12-2012, 07:08 PM

For me, one of the worst aspects was how JR became so easy for rivals to bully around.

Swami

**alexis colby carrington** · 07-01-2012, 01:30 PM

Okay so I've just watched Swansong and Bobby is dead, so now I've got the dream season to watch and I'll judge whether or not I agree. Another question I have is that if it's all just a dream, can season 9 be easily ignored? Does it not affect season ten in any way, other than everything from season 9 being ignored because of the dream? Also, if Bobby didn't die, doesn't that mean she must have dreamed swansong also?

**pammy_ewing** · 07-03-2012, 03:23 PM

I think season 10 was the last good season... I have watched them all and I bought them all. but it is hard to watch the later seasons knowing you have the better ones sitting there

I got up to season 11 and had to go back to season 3 I just got bored during 11 and decided to start over on my watching order.

**jeff_ewing** · 07-03-2012, 04:49 PM

Originally Posted by alexis colby carrington

Okay so I've just watched Swansong and Bobby is dead, so now I've got the dream season to watch and I'll judge whether or not I agree. Another question I have is that if it's all just a dream, can season 9 be easily ignored? Does it not affect season ten in any way, other than everything from season 9 being ignored because of the dream? Also, if Bobby didn't die, doesn't that mean she must have dreamed swansong also?

We're suppose to assume that the dream started when Bobby and Pam were in her bedroom the next morning and Christopher came running in.

**jeff_ewing** · 07-03-2012, 04:51 PM

Originally Posted by tomparks

Had Duffy not come back the show may have ended sooner, but the quality would have been better. The dream season was a damn fine season.

If he hadn't come back how bad would the show have been effected when Victoria left. She stated in interviews that she told them she was leaving two years before she did. So if Bobby had stayed dead, I'd assume that Pam, Mark, and Christopher would have all left Dallas leaving Cliff there alone to deal with JR. I doubt that would have lasted long.

**Gabriel Maxwell** · 07-03-2012, 05:47 PM

Originally Posted by alexis colby carrington

If it's all just a dream, can season 9 be easily ignored?

This would be my question, too, if anyone would care to weigh in. I've never seen a single episode beyond "Swan Song," which I watched on DVD last year. I've been meaning to get back to "Dallas" this summer, but I'm not sure if I should:
- simply continue with the dream season,
- skip it and immediately go to season 10 per DVD count (and then perhaps stop when Principal exits) or
- not bother and just go back to the beginning and re-watch the first 8 seasons
(the battle for Ewing Oil in season 5 was my favorite - I gobbled it up in just a few days).

**jeff_ewing** · 07-03-2012, 06:21 PM

storyline wise you obviously wouldn't really be missing anything, but there are some really good scenes during the dream. Linda Gray did some awesome work, and then there was the oil baron's ball.

**PAMANDBOBBYFOREVER** · 07-03-2012, 07:34 PM

When they decided an entire season should be a dream, and a man that we saw buried in the grown was walking around Southfork.

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**SnarkyOracle!** · 07-03-2012, 07:42 PM

Let's face it, DALLAS jumped the shark annually throughout the entire last half of its run.

Thank you, Lenny Katzman.

**Pam&Bobby4ever** · 07-03-2012, 09:42 PM

For me until swan song

**KatherineWentworth** · 07-04-2012, 05:50 AM

it stopped being great at the end of season 8 and then it stopped being good in the end of season 10

**Anti-Krebbs** · 07-04-2012, 06:25 AM

Donna_Krebbs, stop where you are. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 dollars. I've been doing a rewatch for the last few months and I am currently on DVD11. I did the final four seasons three times before and swore never again. Now I remember why. Seeing DVD11 for the first time in about ten years is really making me almost hate the entire show. Everything is such a slap in the face to the fans. I'm losing massive amounts of respect for Paulsen and I now detest Katzman. The handling of VP's exit just deflates the show and it never recovers. I can't accept anyone's reactions as being true to character and the assassination of the Pamela character because VP chose to leave is just a step further than I am willing to swallow anymore. The small bright spot is a humbled Cliff, as he had gotten to be so clownish in the previous season. Fall of the House of Ewing is a good place to end. It's where the show SHOULD have ended. If I had the choice to do it all over, I'd stop there and never see this. That being said, if you do choose to go on, you might as well go to the end, just to say you did. But don't. Really.

**SnarkyOracle!** · 07-04-2012, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Anti-Krebbs

I'm losing massive amounts of respect for Paulsen and I now detest Katzman. The handling of VP's exit just deflates the show and it never recovers.

Although S11 (per DVD count) is not as bad as what comes later, it's got a ton of problems. Part of that is the fault of the fact that they didn't have the usual Spring hiatus between S10 and S11 to plan the stories -- they went right in to shooting S11 without a break in anticipation of a possible writers' strike that summer (which actually occurred a year later).

As a result the pacing is way off for S11, just for starters.

Paulsen must have known it, because he stated he was wanted to leave DALLAS that season and then did (going over to DYNASTY to take over its final season). Was Paulsen unhappy because Art Lewis, with seniority, had just returned to DALLAS, too, eating away at Paulsen's authority over the storylines?

Who's to say? But when Paulsen left, Larry Hagman made a jab in the press saying it was probably a "good" thing that Paulsen left because he "didn't have a sense of humor."

Didn't have a sense of humor?? Given the overtly self-satirical tone DALLAS took on in it's closing years, is it possible Paulsen saw where Katzman was taking the show and didn't want to be a part of that?

But it was Katzman who fired Bradford May, hired Donna Reed, used the Dream Scenario, re-hired John Parker, swept Pam's exit under the rug, let Paulsen slip away, turned the show into camp parody in its later seasons, and thought April's eleventh hour death was the series' "biggest mistake."

So Katzman may have been "the brains" of DALLAS, but that brain eventually developed Mad Cow.

**Anti-Krebbs** · 07-04-2012, 07:59 PM

Hiatus or no hiatus, there's no excuse. I realize they wanted to leave it open-ended so they wouldn't have to deal with another PD situation in the event VP returned, but in a crash and explosion like that, why not just have no body ever found? A few teeth, maybe. That's open-ended enough to come up with all sorts of explanations years down the road without the mess that we were dealt. That's not even hindsight talking, it's common sense. What they did to Pamela was completely out of spite. They were spiteful VP left so they burned her and turned her into a bandaged mummy then had her run away because she wasn't pretty anymore. It was childish and disgusting. The fact Paulsen is even involved at all is what makes me lose respect (though Dynasty S9 is a stroke of genius, don't get me wrong). Katzman wrote and directed the episode where the mummy leaves the hospital and the explanation for why it was done. I found myself cursing a dead man and I didn't like the way that felt. I'll be happy when this rewatch is over because I won't ever be subjecting myself to these episodes again.

**SnarkyOracle!** · 07-04-2012, 08:07 PM

Originally Posted by Anti-Krebbs

Hiatus or no hiatus, there's no excuse. I realize they wanted to leave it open-ended so they wouldn't have to deal with another PD situation in the event VP returned, but in a crash and explosion like that, why not just have no body ever found? A few teeth, maybe. That's open-ended enough to come up with all sorts of explanations years down the road without the mess that we were dealt. That's not even hindsight talking, it's common sense. What they did to Pamela was completely out of spite. They were spiteful VP left so they burned her and turned her into a bandaged mummy then had her run away because she wasn't pretty anymore. It was childish and disgusting. The fact Paulsen is even involved at all is what makes me lose respect (though Dynasty S9 is a stroke of genius, don't get me wrong). Katzman wrote and directed the episode where the mummy leaves the hospital and the explanation for why it was done. I found myself cursing a dead man and I didn't like the way that felt. I'll be happy when this rewatch is over because I won't ever be subjecting myself to these episodes again.

Obviously, it Katzman's pettiness. And one wonders if Paulsen wanted out because of the more facetious direction the show was going in.

**ronald mascot** · 07-05-2012, 11:13 PM

Originally Posted by Anti-Krebbs

Fall of the House of Ewing is a good place to end. It's where the show SHOULD have ended. If I had the choice to do it all over, I'd stop there and never see this.

I totally agree. "Fall of the House of Ewing" should have been the last one. For one thing, Ewing Oil is gone, the Ewing Oil people have been watching in all the years, it never really reappears after that episode. Sure, Bobby gets the name back, they get the equipment back and even the offices, but it never feels the same, it never feels like the company that Jock built.