I'm absolutely against anyone except Victoria playing Pam.

What I think should've happened

Morgan returning as Katherine should've been properly utilized by having Katherine kidnap Pam from the hospital. Bobby and Cliff could then spend several eps searching for them. We would finally learn that a plane believed to be carrying both Katherine and Pam had crashed somewhere and all on board were believed to have died (think Fallon in Dynasty Season 5) but no bodies are recovered allowing Pam to return with amnesia at some point should Victoria wish to return or remain dead.

That's the only storyline that could've worked. Bobby would then spend a chunk of the season trying to move on after some great breakdown scenes.

I'd have preferred Dallas had just ended when Victoria left though.

 

Primetime recasts just don't work -- not for core characters.

 

A plane crash is too cliche. My version is this:

(Bobby finally captures Katherine after finally realizing that she kidnapped Pam)

Where is she?!

I killed her!

You what?!?!

That's right! I killed her! I strangled her! She was so sick she couldn't even fight me off!

Dear God! Where is she now?! What did you do with her body?!

I cut her up! Mutilated her! I've dropped pieces of her body off in places all over the world where you'll NEVER find her!!! And you can't have me arrested because there's NO PROOF!!!!

 

Cocky Bobby didn't realise that his confession was recorded. Not only was he arrested, he was tried and sentenced to jail for life. Cliff had the last laugh.

 

They should have had a new chief buyer at the Store about Pam's age, brunette and good looking, casually befriend Cliff and Bobby and gradually start dropping bits of knowledge only Pam could have known. Things like the riddle she told Bobby when she was first pregnant, that Cliff was sitting on the floor outside her apartment when she went back to get some clothes the day she moved to Southfork, and the fact that Bobby was shirtless when he told her he didn't like that she might still be married to Ed Haynes.

Eventually, one morning as the Ewings ate breakfast, this woman, who we viewers knew as "Wendy Farmalee", would burst up from within the Southfork swimming pool where she'd been hiding underwater with a small scuba tank, casually grab a towel and stride up to the patio table and announce she's really Pam.

She'd subsequently pass a lie detector test and provide irrefutable medical proof (verified by Dr. Danvers) that she'd had miscarriages caused by a fall from a hayloft and a fall from a horse spooked by a rattlesnake.

Just as people were starting to believe she was Pam, Wendy would tell Bobby offscreen that she had befriended Pam at a fashion show in Paris and heard Pam tell her life story in detail at the afterparty after indulging in too much of the cocaine that was so rampant in the fashion world of the late 70s. Their identical miscarriages and their very specific circumstances were mere coincidence.

Wendy would then steal a Southfork helicopter and take off, never to be seen again, although it would later be rumored she'd become the chief buyer at the Store in Houston. The episode would end with a tearful Bobby silently gazing at a semi-lewd photo of himself and Pam frolicking inside her black Corvette from around the time when Ray was dating Garnet McGee. He'd subsequently start taking frequent, inexplicable "business trips" to Houston. Wendy was Pam after all.

 

For those who don't get it -- there's some fun to be had in playing with logic.

 

Replace VP with PSM

Problem fixed, everybody happy.

 

When did PD and PSM take that picture?

 

I wish Victoria hadn't left when she did, the whole way Pam's departure was dealt with was messy to say the least, not resolved in any proper way.

Swami

 

I think PSM would have made a good new character to be Bobby's love interest. She could play Christopher's teacher who is very comforting after Pam's departure. April was one of my favorites, but I think sticking her with Bobby was a mistake. I think putting her with Ray would have been better. Jenna should have died or left after Bobby got engaged to Pam.

 

I think Pam staying on would have slowed down Dallas' decline, but the general trend would still be downwards, and Victoria Principal could see that. The weakest season of all for Pam was her last one. I can't see that trend changing with Philip Capice out of the Executive Producer's office, whether it's Victoria Principal or Margaret Michaels playing Pam.

 

Pam would no doubt have gotten pregnant - they set that up in VP's final episode - but the writers would probably have found some reason to split them up again.

 

Enter Mark Graison once more.

 

I’m generally against recasts after an actor has been playing a role for a long time. But in this case, I would make an exception because Pam was such a crucial character. The show’s central conflict (Bobby’s wife is a member of the rival family) went away without her.

I would have been less enthusiastic about a quasi-lookalike. I don’t think Margaret Michaels would have worked because she and Patrick Duffy didn’t have much chemistry. I think they should have gone for someone who had great chemistry with Duffy (and Ken Kercheval). They already had the plastic surgery excuse of why Pam looked different.

That said, even if Pam had been successfully recast, the show would have still gone downhill, albeit more slowly. The creative team they had in place for those last years wasn’t very good.

 

Oh, Lord, PSM would never have put up with that show's misogynistic ways on and off the screen!!

 

Which is exactly why she left DYNASTY.

 

Of course Bobby could have Katherine arrested - for attempting to murder him for shooting him, then jumping bail, and then attempting to lethally inject him with something.