I've finally finished my rewatch. It took far longer than I expected to get through 15 episodes but at last I've finally finished my rewatch.
Let's start by quoting Linda Gray herself (regarding JR's daughter):
"‘I remember thinking ‘Oh, my, god, there are already so many people here!’ but that was her idea which could have been interesting, ‘I think the fans already were confused. There were too many people and too many plots and they didn’t quite know what was going on, so I don’t know how that would have worked.'" (
https://metro.co.uk/2014/12/12/excl...there-were-too-many-people-and-plots-4984198/)
Overall, I think this season mostly suffered from being removed from the oil/energy business and when it did find business stuff to focus on it was all very high level (in the sense that it was always about percentages and control of the company rather than the work the company was doing. They were so focused on who was going to lead that they lost focus on what and where they were actually leading. I don't know how anyone had any directions to follow at a department level with the way they carried on at the very top). I also think the show suffered from the introduction of the entire cartel plot which until the end had nothing to do with the Ewings. Obviously we had plots in the original show that weren't about the Ewings, things like following Cliff's time at Barnes-Wentworth or the Mandy/Bruce stuff but they weren't that far removed from being able to be related to the Ewings. The Ewings are the main characters of the show, they're the constant, we follow their lives and the people that come and go in relation to them. No one wanted to see more scenes with Nicholas/Elena/Luis etc. but we got them, plenty of them. It's not the specific characters (or it is, but there's a but there) it's that any plot that isn't that strongly connected to the main family makes it difficult to really care. I didn't care when Laurel Ellis or Jory Taylor had their own plots in the original show either and they were connected to main characters, but not enough to really be interesting. It was clear by this season that the writers wanted to write what they wanted but to get it to air they had to call it Dallas, so they did. The show wasn't grounded in Ewing life and it suffered because of that.
Let's move to characters.
Elena - Bobby said it himself, there was a better way to go about getting back her father's stolen land. Don't get me started on what rubbish this all was in the context of the history we have at our fingertips that tells me about the time JR supposedly stole Papa Ramos' land was when he was working on setting Cliff up in season 5. It's possible JR had a finger in a lot of different pies, but the way they just pretend we can't look back at actual happenings in the characters lives at the time they pretend things happened is just annoying. Back to Elena though, she's so bland. I just can't with her. I understand why she was angry and why she would want to get back at the Ewings, but she's also so disloyal to them it's not even funny. I wouldn't have been upset at all if Elena had died in that explosion along with Christopher.
Pamela Rebecca - she's fine but I didn't like her as much this season, I can't say why necessarily. I find it hard to keep up with where she is emotionally. I get it, she's supposed to be complex and conflicted, but she goes between being angry with John Ross to angry with Cliff to an emotional wreck and all the way back, it's hard to keep up. I did like her negotiating in business, I like when she's capable, maybe I just wish she was more consistent? Would have been nice to see her interact more with Afton too. I think it's terrible that we left the show with Cliff in jail as well.
Ann - again I like Ann so much more than I remember liking her. I can sort of see why she softened towards Harris at times but I can't get behind any romantic relationship between the two of them. It's one thing to forgive him and see a better side of who he is now and it's another to forget that he was an absolute monster to her and it wasn't all Judith's fault.
Judith - she's so over the top and it's grating after a while. I get they wanted the eccentric powerful woman character but ugh enough with Judith already. Mama like :tv:
Emma - for once I agreed with her, she might have been better off with Drew. Outside of the kidnapping I just didn't like Emma at all, but I'm not sure we were supposed to like Emma.
Sue Ellen - give me more Sue Ellen, please. Once again I really wanted to know what was happening with her and got so little. I didn't like that she started drinking again but I did understand it and could appreciate that we didn't get another one of those dream season drunk sequences this time, but I'd have loved for Sue Ellen to have developed further coping skills in the decades since her addiction started.
John Ross - again Josh Henderson portrays John Ross very well, he's vulnerable when he needs to be but he's mostly cocky and it fits. I prefer John Ross to Christopher, but who doesn't? I have to reiterate again that I wish we'd seen different with his personal relationships though. I wish we'd gotten John Ross and Pamela Rebecca being the power couple who revelled in their joint efforts, if they were bad and unethical at least they did it together, that sort of thing.
Bobby - there's a scene where Bobby says something along the lines of JR never got the better of him, which just isn't true, but ok... I don't overly dislike Bobby in this show, I guess I just see him as a bit different to who he was in the original and sometimes it leaves you wondering who he is and what he stands for. JR's memory weighing on Bobby could have been more, but I guess it's a balance that takes some trial and error to get right without it being too much or too little.
Christopher - so bland and almost irrelevant. I appreciate that they tried to give him a plot with Heather (played by AnnaLynne McCord from 90210 which was somewhat distrating but that's not the show's fault) but the pained ex-husband, sweet kid, nice farm girl plot was just too brief and not interesting enough to have an emotional impact. Things happened quickly and ended quickly and nothing came of it so it might as well not have happened.
A few random thoughts.
Was there a Microsoft sponsor deal or were Windows phones just widely used in 2014? I've sort of forgotten. I only mention it because they focus on the Surface tablets and Windows phones a reasonable amount but then sometimes characters will have iPhones so it's hard to tell.
There was a Miller Lite sponsorship randomly placed which made me laugh. Who says things this way in real life? lol
Hunter and Tracey McKay reappearing was strange. It was like the writers heard that people wanted to see more of the original characters but then pulled a random name out of a hat. No one was asking for the McKays, they were asking for an update on Ray/Lucy/Lucas/Katherine or even more Afton etc.
At the beginning of the show John Ross is talking about remodelling Southfork and Bobby has a real problem with it yet supposedly Ann moved walls around and redecorated the house until it was almost unrecognisable but that wasn't a problem. John Ross was being cocky and rubbing in his plans, but Bobby was being silly here.
Unless they were taking about Cally's child with JR, the idea of bringing JR's daughter in when we already have two existing other children is just stupid. You were given characters with backstories, use them if you want to go there. It would have been far more interesting to see Lucas in my opinion, but I imagine they didn't even know Lucas existed.
On the DVD they put episodes 14 and 15 together as 1 episode because they aired together on TV however it seems so lazy to me that they left the opening credits in the middle of the episode where it goes from episode 14 to episode 15. It wouldn't have been very difficult to remove the credit sequence and just keep the scenes flowing together.
The DVD special features were incredibly poor this time around, it's deleted scenes and that's it. There were some decent ones (which are escaping me at the moment) but no commentary or featurettes? I imagine the cancellation of the show meant there was no care put into the DVD but it's disappointing.
It'll be a few years before I get these DVDs back out again. In the meantime I'm rewatching the original show and it's just so good, I can't wait to keep going with that,
