My list for DALLAS rewrites:
*An explanation for the new ranch house following the 1978 miniseries ("twister got us!")
*Not much between 1978 to 1985 -- except no Miss Ellie recasts (either make Reed Jenna's aunt while BBG is on layaway in a hospice -- or may that mental institution Cidre liked so much -- or just give BBG her reduced work hours and be done with it)
*During the dream season don't let the plots keep circling to no avail, no matter WHAT they are. And don't have Pam sell Christopher's portion of Ewing Oil because that stops the entire series' premise right there.
*If Bobby must be revived, you can only use the Federal Witness Protection explanation -- yes, it's imperfect, but you can cleverly do it in a single episode. And Mama was the only family member that knew (turns out Angelica Nero was a high-end assassin hired anonymously by Katherine Wentworth before she died to knock off Bobby and the other Ewings, the elaborate Martinique scam done to get JR and family out of the country before killing them so Nero could make her quick escape --- that would give the Marinos Shipping crap a little more reason to exist retroactively). JR discusses suing his Mama for fraud in the execution of Bobby's now-invalidated will, but Harve Smithfield convinces JR that with the CIA and the IRS having cooperated with the hiding of Bobby, who'd flatlines and then was revived, the chances of JR winning the fraud suit (without destroying the company and the family) is unlikely and he should just settle on rebuying up the remaining pieces of Ewing Oil. This is also useful when Wes Parmalee claims to be Jock because, as Harve explains, there is now a precedent of Ewings fraudlently executing wills of undead family members...
*After Pam disappears, Cliff is the one who realizes something's wrong, suspicious, with the story of her "leave me alone" exit but Bobby won't listen. And JR discovers the tanker Pam crashed into belongs to Ewing Oil because JR was doing illegal oil business in the badlands he was forbidden to do after Jeremy and Mrs Scottfiled sicked the government on them; JR runs around all year trying to keep anybody from finding out, especially Bobby, and once Bobby DOES find out then HE has to run around trying to keep anybody from finding out lest the family business be destroyed once and for all. All of which is classic DALLAS irony. Give us a wee bit less screentime for the Jack Scalia mafia plotline, and when JR kills him at season's end, I'd like to see Sue Ellen stab him with a gardening spade and turn the knife in JR's gut while she drools in sadistic glee. Freeze frame. Fade to black. (Who needs another shooting).
*Much of the problem of the closing years is tone as opposed to storyline. Everything gets too campy and out of pace. Have the family hold Sue Ellen's actions against her, beyond the brief speech she got from Bobby and Ellie. If Halleyville and the chain gang have to happen, then literally make them like DELIVERANCE and COOL HAND LUKE, not a wonky satire of those scenarios. During this last season for Sue Ellen, DALLAS seemed to be trying to reclaim its western roots, so let the show FEEL like it; film in exotic national parks or something while JR is on the lam or whatever instead of Moscow. The range war plot was a good idea, but make Ellie reluctant to call in the authorities, much to the frustration of Clayton; Ellie's motives are mysterious and seem to be tied to what Wes Parmalee whispered to her two years earlier just before he took off and disappeared. I accept Sue Ellen's movie scenario, but do it more seriously, her explanation for pulling the picture before release making a bit more sense (and once JR drives off Cally, the movie is indeed released in Season 13 (per DVD count) causing more scandal on top of everything else).
*I don't mind JR's deterioration, as long as the show around him doesn't do the same thing. I don't mind JR tired and burned out as long as it's not played too much for laughs. DALLAS needs to get dustier and darker in its closing seasons, more organic -- not less, which is what they did instead; the show needed to be steeped in its own mythology and legacy by this point, not deconstructing it with a wink and a fart. Wendell's replacement with Carter McKay was never convincing, including Wendell's preposterous arrest (as if the Ewings, with their weakened company by this point, could take down Wendell so easily). As the tanker oil spill is occurring and Cliff is at Ewing Oil, have JR and Bobby actually discuss how improbable their easy takedown of Jeremy several months ago was, their discovering not all may have been as it appeared (Wendell had a reason to "allow" himself to appear to be removed from his position). Let the serial murder of Clayton's business associates be the Dallas cartel we know instead -- those men Lady Jessica had been sleeping with in the late-'40s she thinks may have fathered Dusty (I think JfL though of this) and who may be been being bilked for cash by Jessie on the sly for decades; and have the murders done like a horror movie, and not as a jokey shlocky thing. (David Jacobs said years ago that if there were a DALLAS big screen movie, he'd like to see Miss Ellie with her own TV chat show -- I'd love this for the oilspill/serial-murder season: Miss Ellie appears twice on Roy Ralston's local show and wins over the audience such that she's offered the show now that Ralston is going national; she agrees to the deal, with JR's initial encouragement, until she starts making too many liberal statement, especially of an environmental nature, leaving the oil community up in arms and JR trying to sabotage her any way he can). Lucy would take over running the Oil Baron's Club, and I want to see the southfork interiors get darker and more dramatic, kind of western-gothic.
After the Margaret Michaels/fake Pam story is revealed to not be Pam at all, Bobby's suspicions that the culprit was JR turn out to be unfounded -- somebody else was behind it and perhaps behind Pam's disappearance to begin with (did Wendell have some reason to pull this off, acting as puppetmaster from a distance?) Even JR is disturbed by it. Once Ellie's makeup is spiked with cocaine by her chauffeur (in an attempt to please JR) and she has an on air seizure and collapses as a result, she winds up in the hospital and, convinced she's going to die, whispers in Clayton's ear that Digger Barnes is JR's biological daddy (I think JfL though that up, too). She lives, a drunken Clayton spills the beans, and JR goes nuts in Season 14 (per DVD count) at the prospect that he might be a dreaded blood Barnes. Meanwhile, frustrated by Cliff's neglect, Afton gradually turns to a lonely Bobby (although the wife killed in Paris was Tracey, which Carter blames the Ewings for, and April was just a benign stalker who was in the line of fire) which predictably infuriates Cliff once he learns of it. And instead of having Ewing Oil bought with the pocketchange of every bimbo who drives thru Texas, Sue Ellen would return in the last two or three episodes and, flushed with fresh cash from her various business activities, saves the company on the verge of collapse and default -- which delights JR until she announces she's naming Cliff Barnes as CEO.
*Bobby, JR and Cliff uncover increasing evidence that Pam was either taken by the trolls at Weststar and/or she may have died --- from neurofibromatosis, meaning she was a blood Barnes after all. And maybe JR's sister! (Although a DNA test can restore JR's Ewinghood by year's end, if we prefer). I envision a show-ending Southfork barbecue, with Wendell and McKay now wanted by the feds, crashing a private plane into or near the pool in McKay's red-faced last-ditch effort to "get JR!" Both Weststar executives are killed. Later that evening, JR finds Sue Ellen nursing a cup of coffee in front of a barely illuminated Southfork. He sheepishly tells her how impressed he is by all her manueverings which saved Ewing Oil and then asks if she's coming inside. She looks up and aloofly responds, "maybe later"; JR hesitates, turns to walk back to the house, and the camera pulls back. Freeze frame. End of series. And a near-exact reverse-replay of the final scene from the first Barbecue episode 13 years before.
