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I think Cliff was so obsessed with JR, that he made error after error, and wasn't rational. I realize that it is fiction, and that head to be the writing direction.
Dallas Random Thought Thread
- Thread starter Billy Wall
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Cliff seemed to be completely driven by emotional impulses (primarily jealously of JR). He never stopped to think things through - not on business, not in his personal relationships.
Cliff believed JR was responsible for all the bad things that happened to him, but it was always his own decisions that got him in trouble. JR may have laid the traps - but Cliff is the one who blindly kept stepping in them.
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Some of my colleagues on here have speculated that he possibly did suffer brain damage as a result of trying to take his own life in one of the end of season cliff hangers. This would certainly explain his irrationality and obsession with JR.
With the TNT version I think it was as a result of discovering that his sister Pam was dead which eventually pushed him over the edge and turned him in to a psychotic monster. It is also a possibility that he was starting to exhibit signs of adult neurofibromatosis which was contained in his genetic make up.
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Didn’t the doctor in the hospital at the time warn the family of the risks of permanent personality changes due to the possible damage to the brain? I wonder if that was just something they wrote in there coincidentally or if it was indeed thrown in intentionally to lay the groundwork for Cliff’s worsening paranoia in the upcoming years?
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I think you are right. Although he was obsessed with JR even before that story, he had a much different personality afterward - more impulsive, more buffoonish,
more spontaneous, less thoughtful until Pam's hospitalization (for a while)
Thought for a Dallas reboot
Much like Dallas the Early years, Bobby hires a biographer. This allows Patrick Duffy to be in the series as a
central character. He can recount the events of the Ewing family as he remembers it, and the other series cast can appear from time to time
as the biographer seeks out other sources. Actors could portray Younger Jock, Miss Ellie, Digger, JR, Cliff, Sam Culver, etc
The biographer, unknown to Bobby could be a Ewing relation (a grandson of Jock and Amanda? Callie's son? an unknown offspring of JR?)
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Yeah, the Doctor said exactly that.
The writers probably put this in to help justify some of the asinine things Cliff did in his obsession with the Barnes Ewing feud and trying to compete with JR.
Clayton sold the Southerncross & contemplating moving to Dallas before he was with Miss Ellie. They changed this storyline at the time she gave him joint ownership to he relocated for her
I wished that story would have gone further
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I enjoy watching old commercials on YouTube. Just came across some CBS commercials from December 22, 1981. Dallas was so big that CBS didn’t air it on Friday/Christmas night. Dukes of Hazzard and Falcon Crest both aired.
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it was foolhardy for Sue Ellen to shop for baby clothes with feisty young Rita Briggs at The Store where Pam worked when she could have easily gone to The Other Store instead
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it was foolhardy for Sue Ellen to shop for baby clothes with feisty young Rita Briggs at The Store where Pam worked when she could have easily gone to The Other Store instead
Yeah, why didn't she go to Tesco?
After all Every Little Helps.
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JR was right to object. If Ellie predeceased Clayton, Jock's sons would have no claim to the property, and Ellie didn't mention anything
to the contrary. Bobby was not happy either and he should have supported JR rather than just stare.
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it was foolhardy for Sue Ellen to shop for baby clothes with feisty young Rita Briggs at The Store where Pam worked when she could have easily gone to The Other Store instead
I know. They sometimes made Dallas seemed as if it was a small town. How many times did people conveniently ended up in the same place? Lol
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the one that always gets me in that regard.. how on earth were Pam and Ray dating before the show began? Didn’t she live and work in the city? I don’t see how their paths would have crossed unless she was intentionally trying to spite the Ewings by dating their ranch foreman.
I guess maybe they met at a disco (even Cowboy Ray was at the opening of Braddock Disco in his finest kerchief in Lessons), or maybe when Ray was in town shopping for jeans or cowboy hats?
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The Barnes family were certainly working class city people, and on the poorer side of that for a long time as well, while Ray was from Emporia, Kansas, as a kid up to age 15, and then moved to rural Southfork to work on the ranch. Ray must have gone to a disco or something further afield to meet Pam.
Pam as a teenager hated the Ewings more than Cliff did, but I think she was mostly over that by the time that she was with Ray. By this point, Cliff was fast rising as a good lawyer and investigator with Texas state senators into corruption in the oil business. Pam at that time was just a very confident woman in her own self, but still had even Miss Ellie eyeing her with shock and caution when Bobby brought her to Southfork as his new wife. I think the Ewing family still slightly viewed Pam as that teenage tearaway, as well as being Digger's daughter and Cliff's sister.
Very probably.
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Here is a random thought for you. Ray slept with every leading lady of Dallas except Miss Ellie.
Pam
Sue Ellen
Lucy
Donna
Jenna
Ray gives JR a run for his money in the revolving bedroom department.
Not surprising. Remember when the show first started, JR and Ray were running around buddies.
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I dunno, “Ray, get the shotgun out of the hall closet” may have been a literal statement in that one episode, but that doesn’t mean it always was…Here is a random thought for you. Ray slept with every leading lady of Dallas except Miss Ellie.
Pam
Sue Ellen
Lucy
Donna
Jenna
Ray gives JR a run for his money in the revolving bedroom department.
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Yep, all those nights in Waco. J.R. and Ray got on very well back then, before the big Garnett McGee fallout which changed their relationship for good. While Ray was seriously pissed off with J.R. over that betrayal, J.R. seemed to think less of Ray for letting himself get attached to Garnett like that, so saw him as a "dumb cowboy".
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It seems like Ray was with more leading ladies. JR was with many significant supporting characters
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One of the things that always bothered me in later years was that Ray and Pam and Ray and Sue Ellen acted like the whole thing never happened - same with Lucy. I get that when he was with those three ladies, the writers didn't intend for him to be Jock's son, still I think it would have been interesting to see the characters confront both the outright incest and the one night stand with JR's wife