Conundrum. Who was invited back?

[Snarky Oracle!]

TV Guide later called the 'Conundrum' finale "a helluva way to end a once-great show."

Funny, y'know, since Joel Grey was the Devil and stuff.

 

[MarkSinacori]

The last episode of Dallas could have been better. It should have continued where it left off with JR and the gun in his bedroom BUT stayed in present day. The filmed last episode just has a "what if" theme to it, and it just has JR with the gun at the house and then Bobby coming back at the end as it goes off. It was not good.

I would have rather seen something like this happen:


Bobby comes home from the airport and sees JR with the gun, he stops him from shooting himself.
Michelle is all alone in her new house and vows revenge on JR
Cliff owns Ewing Oil
Bobby works at Southfork
JR tries and tries to get control of Southfork and Ewing Oil
Michelle is upset at Cliff for marrying her and her being alone in her new house
Somehow, JR ends up meeting Cliff at his old office for a meeting and thinks it's to buy Ewing oil from him
Someone takes a gun out of Cliff's drawer at his house.
At JR's old office, at night, Cliff is nowhere to be seen. JR enters the office and wonders where he is
Someone holds up a gun and shoots JR and he falls on his desk.
Either it would end there or there would be a reveal of Michelle, who puts the gun in Cliff's desk.
Maybe a scene the next morning with someone finding JR on the desk and the police searching and arrest Cliff, not saying JR's fate

 

[Sarah Danner]

The Sue Ellen story is much different than the one that ended up on screen. She had a son and daughter and there was no Nicholas Pearce as her husband.

I would have preferred Dusty Farlow. Or even Clint Ogden. Not a Nick Pearce fan.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

If I had to recraft the final episode, it maybe wouldn't be to the liking of a lot of the shows fans.

I would have the returning Steve Forrest along with Barbara Bel Geddes & Howard Keel finally admit that he was Jock & he left back in season ten to spare the family any more pain. I'd make the episode a real tear jerker & bring back Linda Gray & more importantly Victoria Principal.

I'd have Ellie, Clayton & Jock stop JR from shooting himself at the end of the first part. Jock says he has a surprise for JR & Sue Ellen & John Ross arrive at the ranch. Sue Ellen's marriage to Don Lockwood is over. JR tosses the gun away.

Bobby arrives & gets angry to see Wes Parmalee there. Wes tells him he's glad his two sons never died in the plane crash. Miss Ellie smiles, she finally admits that Wes really is Jock & left because his family wouldn't believe him. A silent Clayton says he will step aside & leave Southfork but Jock won't hear of it."You looked after my Ellie when I was gone, you will have to do it again, I'm dying!"

JR says to Ellie, "Does Bobby know about that Barnes woman!?"

"Not yet, but she'll be here shortly! Just you behave JR, Pam is the only woman Bobby ever truly loved, it's time for her to come home."

JR shakes his head & Jock laughs. "You never could stand her could you JR!? Behave yourself when she arrives. Bobby doesn't know she contacted Ellie about coming back. She's healed since the car accident. Let them both be happy."

JR nods. "Yes Sir, boy it's good to have you back. I just wish the Doctor's could help you." JR hugs his father. Jock smiles & there is a long flashback to Jim Davis. "I know I don't look the same, but I'm glad to be home."

A little later Bobby is getting ready to go out when Miss Ellie stops him. "Don't go yet, we're expecting a visitor. Someone you know very well."

"Who is it Momma?"

"You'll see," Ellie tells him.

We hear a car pull in. Cliff & Pam get out & Cliff knocks the glass door. Ellie opens the door, Cliff enters first, saying nothing he merely looks at Bobby & grins. Victoria Principal as Pam pushes past him & runs over to Bobby. Bobby embraces her & they kiss, behind them Sue Ellen kisses JR. Freeze frame, end of the series.

 

[Toni]

I would have preferred Dusty Farlow. Or even Clint Ogden. Not a Nick Pearce fan.

 

[Aaron P Dillon]

As far as I am aware of the only other 2 that were invited back were Victoria Principal and Priscilla Presley. We all know Victoria eventually said no and Priscilla we busy wrapping up Naked Gun 2. I do believe it was a mistake not to have Susan Howard, Morgan Brittany, Charlene Tilton, Deborah Shelton and Audrey Landers back.

 

[chrisjc]

Would have nice to see Punk and Mavis.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

Maybe the most important rule of the entertainment business is: "Give the people what they want." I seriously doubt there were many Dallas fans at all that wanted to see Cliff Barnes end up as the owner of Ewing Oil. Had Cliff been the good, honest, underdog that the fans rooted for to defeat JR, then having him gain control of Ewing Oil would have been satisfying to most fans. The problem is, Cliff was not that type of character. Neither JR nor Cliff were heroic, fan favorite types, but one big difference was that JR was a winner and Cliff was a loser. People like a winner. JR enjoyed life and was usually seen smiling. people like that. They don't like bitter, wimpy men who talk and talk about what they're going to do but lack the competence and strength to back up their words with action.

JR allowed Cliff to buy his half of Ewing Oil which was so out of character for JR that to try to make the audience believe he'd do that is nothing but an insult to the audience's intelligence. Audiences don't like to have their intelligence insulted. When JR failed to check and double check that the WestStar offer was legit and make sure nobody (such as Dusty) could knock him out of that spot in WestStar is asking the audience to just disregard everything they know of the character. Jr certainly would have known how stock and voting shares work. To ask the audience to believe JR thought that having the permission to use the voting rights was enough, despite the fact he knew Dusty owned the stock and the voting rights that went with it was far too much suspension of disbelief to ask from the audience. In the words of Scotty Demerest, "It stretches the imagination a bit too far."

 

[Mustard]

.

Maybe the most important rule of the entertainment business is: "Give the people what they want." I seriously doubt there were many Dallas fans at all that wanted to see Cliff Barnes end up as the owner of Ewing Oil. Had Cliff been the good, honest, underdog that the fans rooted for to defeat JR, then having him gain control of Ewing Oil would have been satisfying to most fans. The problem is, Cliff was not that type of character. Neither JR nor Cliff were heroic, fan favorite types, but one big difference was that JR was a winner and Cliff was a loser. People like a winner. JR enjoyed life and was usually seen smiling. people like that. They don't like bitter, wimpy men who talk and talk about what they're going to do but lack the competence and strength to back up their words with action.

JR allowed Cliff to buy his half of Ewing Oil which was so out of character for JR that to try to make the audience believe he'd do that is nothing but an insult to the audience's intelligence. Audiences don't like to have their intelligence insulted. When JR failed to check and double check that the WestStar offer was legit and make sure nobody (such as Dusty) could knock him out of that spot in WestStar is asking the audience to just disregard everything they know of the character. Jr certainly would have known how stock and voting shares work. To ask the audience to believe JR thought that having the permission to use the voting rights was enough, despite the fact he knew Dusty owned the stock and the voting rights that went with it was far too much suspension of disbelief to ask from the audience. In the words of Scotty Demerest, "It stretches the imagination a bit too far."

J.R. was out of character all the time in Seasons 12-14 DVD. J.R. in the late seasons was a loser himself. What makes it all the more baffling is that Larry Hagman a few years before thought J.R. was watered down in Season 9 DVD because there was a focus on Angelica Nero and a stronger Pam, but J.R. was incredibly strong that season compared to Seasons 12-14. It was really strange how J.R. was turned into a loser in the late seasons, but this obviously reflected the decline of Dallas itself at the time.

 

[lbf522]

Maybe the most important rule of the entertainment business is: "Give the people what they want." I seriously doubt there were many Dallas fans at all that wanted to see Cliff Barnes end up as the owner of Ewing Oil. Had Cliff been the good, honest, underdog that the fans rooted for to defeat JR, then having him gain control of Ewing Oil would have been satisfying to most fans. The problem is, Cliff was not that type of character. Neither JR nor Cliff were heroic, fan favorite types, but one big difference was that JR was a winner and Cliff was a loser. People like a winner. JR enjoyed life and was usually seen smiling. people like that. They don't like bitter, wimpy men who talk and talk about what they're going to do but lack the competence and strength to back up their words with action.

JR allowed Cliff to buy his half of Ewing Oil which was so out of character for JR that to try to make the audience believe he'd do that is nothing but an insult to the audience's intelligence. Audiences don't like to have their intelligence insulted. When JR failed to check and double check that the WestStar offer was legit and make sure nobody (such as Dusty) could knock him out of that spot in WestStar is asking the audience to just disregard everything they know of the character. Jr certainly would have known how stock and voting shares work. To ask the audience to believe JR thought that having the permission to use the voting rights was enough, despite the fact he knew Dusty owned the stock and the voting rights that went with it was far too much suspension of disbelief to ask from the audience. In the words of Scotty Demerest, "It stretches the imagination a bit too far."

Cliff did start out as a good guy. He was David and Ewing Oil was Goliath. But overtime the writers made him less Robert Kennedy like and made him corrupt. My idea of ending the series originally was Cliff as a US attorney finally getting the goods on JR. This was before shows returning graze.

Cliff's problem was that he let his ego overrule his common sense. When he was at the head of the OLM he came the closest he would ever come to destroying the Ewings and Ewing Oil but could not see that set up of him running for Congress. The law on the show was dumb. It said that he had to resign if he was to run for public office. I can understand having to resign if you are elected to office but not not for merely running for it.

I hated how the writers watered down JR. The Hayleyville storyline was absurd and it went down hill after that. JR losing to every Tom,Dick or Harry was hard to watch. Adding James Beaumont did not help. JR, who was suspecious of Jamie from the moment she arrived on Southfork uninvited, accepted James without question and not asked for a blood test. Worst was how he treated John Ross. He did what Jock and Ellie did with their son, play favorites and was blatent about it.

I agree JR giving Cliff Ewing Oil was out of character.

 

[Mustard]

Cliff Barnes was very likeable at the start. The very start of Cliff's decline was at the end of the episode "Election". Cliff was ahead in the polls and winning, and the Ewings knew that their candidate was a loser unless they put dirt on Cliff Barnes. After Pam responded to a J.R. insinuation at the Ewing dinner table that Cliff and Peter Larson might be homosexual lovers by saying that Cliff was engaged once, Pam then said "she died" after they inquired about what happened to her, J.R. and his detective did the rest and discovered that Cliff's fiancee Penny Ames around 10 years earlier had died after a then illegal abortion.

The resulting scandal in socially conservative late 1970s Dallas saw Cliff fall badly in the polls and he got beaten pretty badly as a result. So far, Cliff has kept his dignity and his integrity. However, at the end of the episode, Cliff called up a corporate lobbyist and said that he was their candidate in future, saying "I have just become a realist". In reality, Cliff had become a sellout and was now devoting himself to trying to beat the Ewings using J.R.'s kind of methods. What Cliff should have done after his defeat in the Senate election was carry on like before and wait for the scandal surrounding Penny Ames' illegal abortion to die down, and keep defending his actions from that time. With the passage of time, the scandal would have died down and Cliff would be shown as correct and on the right side of history, and he would have been more powerful as a man of the people by that point. By selling out just to get the Ewings anyway he could, he became something else, even though he did have Ewing Oil screwed over good for some time as the head of the Office of Land Management.

Of course, Cliff's decline after the Election episode was a pretty slow one. He still remained a likeable guy, but the next decline was when J.R. found out about Cliff being in an affair with Sue Ellen and possibly being the father of Sue Ellen's child and went to see Cliff, at a time when Sue Ellen was going to leave J.R. for Cliff. J.R. went to see Cliff and said that he was going to cause a scandal to damage Cliff's political career more, admitted that the Sue Ellen affair and baby situation would be embarrassing for him (J.R.) for a while, but mentioned how he had a lot of money and would get over it in time before dragging up enough of a scandal to damage Cliff's career. J.R. said he was successful because he knew how to play the other man's game, how Cliff wanted power and a political high office. Cliff then asked J.R. "What do you want me to do?", and J.R. said "Tell her (Sue Ellen) the truth. Tell her that there's something that means more to you than she does". Cliff then became more cynical, more of a bastard himself etc.

This process went on and on in different places. However, Cliff Barnes is at his worst in Season 10 DVD. So arrogant, so sexist, so bloody annoying full stop. Worse than J.R. that season, certainly. Ironically, in the dream season (Season 9 DVD), Cliff had been more likeable than he had been in years, since before he had tried to commit suicide in the Season 5 finale.

 

[Mustard]

I hated how the writers watered down JR. The Hayleyville storyline was absurd and it went down hill after that. JR losing to every Tom,Dick or Harry was hard to watch. Adding James Beaumont did not help. JR, who was suspecious of Jamie from the moment she arrived on Southfork uninvited, accepted James without question and not asked for a blood test. Worst was how he treated John Ross. He did what Jock and Ellie did with their son, play favorites and was blatent about it.

What makes it even stranger is that Larry Hagman and Leonard Katzman were the Executive Producers at the time that James Beaumont was around. They ruled the roost on running Dallas at that time. So why make J.R. weaker than he had ever been before by some distance, the very excuse that they used when the ratings fell a bit to strike the death blow to Philip Capice's time as Executive Producer a few years earlier, even though J.R. in the dream season (Season 9 DVD) was never anywhere close to being as weak as what he was in Seasons 12-14. And why make J.R. be so out of character all the time? They didn't even do a storyline where the Haleyville experience would destroy his confidence and lead to J.R. searching for his lost mojo. They clearly lost the plot in more ways than one somewhere along the line.

 

[lbf522]

Cliff Barnes was very likeable at the start. The very start of Cliff's decline was at the end of the episode "Election". Cliff was ahead in the polls and winning, and the Ewings knew that their candidate was a loser unless they put dirt on Cliff Barnes. After Pam responded to a J.R. insinuation at the Ewing dinner table that Cliff and Peter Larson might be homosexual lovers by saying that Cliff was engaged once, Pam then said "she died" after they inquired about what happened to her, J.R. and his detective did the rest and discovered that Cliff's fiancee Penny Ames around 10 years earlier had died after a then illegal abortion.

The resulting scandal in socially conservative late 1970s Dallas saw Cliff fall badly in the polls and he got beaten pretty badly as a result. So far, Cliff has kept his dignity and his integrity. However, at the end of the episode, Cliff called up a corporate lobbyist and said that he was their candidate in future, saying "I have just become a realist". In reality, Cliff had become a sellout and was now devoting himself to trying to beat the Ewings using J.R.'s kind of methods. What Cliff should have done after his defeat in the Senate election was carry on like before and wait for the scandal surrounding Penny Ames' illegal abortion to die down, and keep defending his actions from that time. With the passage of time, the scandal would have died down and Cliff would be shown as correct and on the right side of history, and he would have been more powerful as a man of the people by that point. By selling out just to get the Ewings anyway he could, he became something else, even though he did have Ewing Oil screwed over good for some time as the head of the Office of Land Management.

Of course, Cliff's decline after the Election episode was a pretty slow one. He still remained a likeable guy, but the next decline was when J.R. found out about Cliff being in an affair with Sue Ellen and possibly being the father of Sue Ellen's child and went to see Cliff, at a time when Sue Ellen was going to leave J.R. for Cliff. J.R. went to see Cliff and said that he was going to cause a scandal to damage Cliff's political career more, admitted that the Sue Ellen affair and baby situation would be embarrassing for him (J.R.) for a while, but mentioned how he had a lot of money and would get over it in time before dragging up enough of a scandal to damage Cliff's career. J.R. said he was successful because he knew how to play the other man's game, how Cliff wanted power and a political high office. Cliff then asked J.R. "What do you want me to do?", and J.R. said "Tell her (Sue Ellen) the truth. Tell her that there's something that means more to you than she does". Cliff then became more cynical, more of a bastard himself etc.

This process went on and on in different places. However, Cliff Barnes is at his worst in Season 10 DVD. So arrogant, so sexist, so bloody annoying full stop. Worse than J.R. that season, certainly. Ironically, in the dream season (Season 9 DVD), Cliff had been more likeable than he had been in years, since before he had tried to commit suicide in the Season 5 finale.

I agree with your analysis of Cliff's decline from good guy to corrupt. There was that David and Goliath vibe to it. Cliff not only wanted to avenge his father of Jock's betrayal but also saw the Ewings as an evil he needed to defeat.

In Conundrum it says that Cliff might have gone all the way to the White House if not for JR. I disagree with that. Yes Jock and JR did what they could to derail his campaign but Cliff let his ego overrule is common sense like when he was the head of the OLM and cam the closest that he will ever come to to destroying Ewing Oil but let himself be flatter to run for Congress. Now the law on the show was dumb. It said that he would have to resign as Head of the OLM if he wanted to run. It would make more sense if he had to resign if he was elected to Congress not merely running for it.

Anyway, Cliff did become less of what he was originally which was a shame.

 

[Mustard]

I agree with your analysis of Cliff's decline from good guy to corrupt. There was that David and Goliath vibe to it. Cliff not only wanted to avenge his father of Jock's betrayal but also saw the Ewings as an evil he needed to defeat.

In Conundrum it says that Cliff might have gone all the way to the White House if not for JR. I disagree with that. Yes Jock and JR did what they could to derail his campaign but Cliff let his ego overrule is common sense like when he was the head of the OLM and cam the closest that he will ever come to to destroying Ewing Oil but let himself be flatter to run for Congress. Now the law on the show was dumb. It said that he would have to resign as Head of the OLM if he wanted to run. It would make more sense if he had to resign if he was elected to Congress not merely running for it.

Anyway, Cliff did become less of what he was originally which was a shame.

Some corporate rules like that are dumb.

 

[Mustard]

Yes Jock and JR did what they could to derail his campaign but Cliff let his ego overrule is common sense like when he was the head of the OLM and cam the closest that he will ever come to to destroying Ewing Oil.

Although you can make a case that Cliff was closer to breaking J.R. in Season 5 DVD, when J.R. had a $200 million loan pending on stockpiling 5 million barrels of the Farlow's crude oil with the price of oil then falling. And I can't see any way how J.R. would have gotten himself out of that mess at the time. It was Miss Ellie who bailed out J.R. by making a deal with Clayton on $33 per barrel, which was the market price at the time of the initial stockpiling, as the market price had dropped to $30 per barrel. J.R. had paid $2 per barrel above market price at $35 per barrel, so still cost Ewing Oil $10 million and the interest.

Cliff gave J.R. a 10 day extension on the loan, except with 25% interest instead of 12.5% interest. Come the end of the season, J.R. had Cliff in such dire straits that Cliff was attempting suicide and his life hung in the balance.

 

[lbf522]

I had forgotten that. Thanks Mustard. That was one of JR's weaknesses. He never had a plan B nor asked himself what if this does not work? I am no expert on the oil business but JR probably should have watched the oil prices and had a plan if things went south. Yes Ellie did save JR's ass.

 

[cardiff1984]

The Series Finale of 1991, should have centred on Bobby/Pam closure - possibly him discovering she had been kidnapped by Katherine Wentworth and saving her. The two are reunited and head back to South Fork.

In between, JR is contemplating suicide and to make matters worse Cliff shows up and relishes JR's defeat, rubbing it in his face that he now owns Ewing Oil and that Jock would have disowned him as a son. JR then tries to murder Cliff, but Miss Ellie makes an abrupt appearance and tells JR he cannot kill his own brother. To JR's horror Miss Ellie confesses that Digger was JR's father, not Jock. Even worse for JR upon this revelation, Bobby and Pam overheard Ellie's confession and the final line of the show is from Pam.

"I guess you can quit calling me that Barnes Woman from now on."

CLOSE UP OF JR, FREEZE FRAME- END OF DALLAS!

 

[Miss Texas 1967]

I'm just going to ignore the utter disappointment of this episode, everyone else has already commented on that. I couldn't find a better place to ask, but does it make sense to anyone that the first son of Jock and Ellie would be Gary rather than John Ross Ewing Jr? Never mind whether the character was played by Ted Shackelford and had the personality of Gary Ewing, that could be explained away in the story, but for Jock Ewing not to insist his firstborn son be named after him seems iffy to me. The way Jock stepped in at the hospital when John Ross was born and just announced his name (or that in the "real world" JR was named after him) doesn't indicate to me that there was any doubt of his opinions on the subject of passing a family name down.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

Cliff Barnes was very likeable at the start.

Even in the early years of it, before he stared acting goofy, I never saw him as likable. I saw him as a bitter little man who produced nothing of his own and had such a lack of respect and love for his sister that he tried to ruin her marriage repeatedly.

Remember Jock's trial: Lawyer talking to Pam: When you needed your bother's help, did he come to your defense"

Pam: (embarrassed, so she whispers) "No"

Lawyer: Could you please speak up?

Pam: No

Then there was the time when he asked her for thousands of dollars of Bobby's money (when she was separated from him) and loan it to him, lying about what he was going to use it for. It turned out he used the money to keep the Ewings from being able to drill anywhere. Cliff deliberately had Pam use her own husband's money to hurt family!

I don't see the likability in that. It's one thing to not become friends with your brother in law, but to actively try to ruin your sister's marriage because you don't like her husband and you don't care that she's happy being married to her husband? So you're going to run her life by trying to ensure her marriage fails?

Which one of you would do that to your sister? I'd like to know if there is even one person on this forum who would do to their sister what this "likable" man did to his sister.

Anyway, Cliff did become less of what he was originally which was a shame.

I think Cliff became what they needed him to become. I think they were keenly aware of what each character needed to be and that's part of what made Dallas great. I'm glad they did what they did because what we got was 8 seasons of the best TV series I've ever seen, and the most successful TV drama series there's ever been.

I say 8 seasons but it was well over 200 episodes so in today's terms that's over 20 seasons of amazing TV! Who can do that today?

Up through Swan Song, they could do no wrong, except for that gross storyline with Peter in his little tiny clothes trying to bed a woman who looked like his mother and who had broader shoulders than he did.

Is it true that Peter's clothes were so small because they were clothes John Ross had outgrown?

 

[Kenny Coyote]

She basically wanted to know that the show was definitively ending to make an appearance but they couldn't promise that since CBS hadn't officially pulled the plug on the show yet

Why was it important to her to know the show was ending?

Some corporate rules like that are dumb.

It wasn't dumb, it was a conflict of interest. The purpose of the OLM was to find a way to keep the Texas oil industry healthy and keep the environment of the state healthy at the same time. Cliff's campaign was antithetical to that since his platform was pro-environment and anti-oil industry.