TNT revived Dallas for a 2012–14 series. Would you revisit it again?

[the-lost-son]

I think a problem with Dallas TNT was that it came back too late. The show was announced in 2009 but then they wasted a couple of years in development. Years that they didn't have. The audience still wanted to see JR Ewing. But by the time the show finally premiered in 2012 Larry was already sick with cancer and died a few months later.

I think David Jacobs' idea about John Ross and Christopher was the right one since by making John Ross the good guy and Christopher the bad guy you would set up a character dynamic that would clash with their parents and lead to character driven drama.

I think Dallas TNT was often too plot driven. There were too many plot twists and last minute changes just done for shock value. But it fell flat and failed you engage the audience as you stopped caring about the characters.

Imagine how good Dallas TNT could have been if it had started with a wedding. But instead of Christopher marrying Rebecca it would have been John Ross marrying Pamela Rebecca Barnes. JR's son marrying Clif's daughter. It is basically the same premise as the original show and yes it would have worked.

I wouldn't make them elope though but I would have had that big Southfork wedding with JR and Sue Ellen, Cliff and Afton all in attendance and not liking it. There you go you've got fireworks already there!

No threesomes, no sex with dog suits, no mama likes the cocaine or John Ross cheating on Pamela Rebecca. I think that was the main problem with Dallas TNT. It showed us a lot of crap that most of the audience didn't want to watch.

Yes it had moments of brilliance but those moments were far and few in between and sometimes got lost in the rubbish. I think that is what makes me the most sad when I think of Dallas TNT. All that wasted potential just thrown away.

Yes. It's actually quite easy. The Romeo/Juliet story carried into the new generation.
JR/Sue Ellen and Cliff/Afton as the new in-laws right from the start.
And then you got Christopher (Is it because I'm adopted?) as the new villain who creates conflict/drama all over the place:
Smart producers wouldn't have them fight only over Ewing Oil, but also over Barnes&Wentworth/Barnes Global - now between Pamela, Christopher and an offspring of Katherine (in best scenario JR's daughterwith Katherine). It was unnecessary to melt Ewing Oil & Barnes Wentworth into one. If you stay focused on the Ewings and the Barnes you can see all the offspring to be included and don't get tempted to include all these Rylands/Ramos no one ever heard of/cared about.

I agree that the timing didn't help either. In 2012 it was too late. Ten years earlier would have been helpful.
Or ten years later. I hardly watched/didn't like ABC's Dynasty. But I read that CW's Dynasty got picked up for a 5th season although the writing doesn't appear to be phenomenal (apparantly Krystle was recast several times, correct me if I'm wrong).
As Dallas was an international phenomenan maybe a global streaming provider would have had more success (despite it's many flaws).

 

[stevew]

Yes. It's actually quite easy. The Romeo/Juliet story carried into the new generation.
JR/Sue Ellen and Cliff/Afton as the new in-laws right from the start.
And then you got Christopher (Is it because I'm adopted?) as the new villain who creates conflict/drama all over the place:
Smart producers wouldn't have them fight only over Ewing Oil, but also over Barnes&Wentworth/Barnes Global - now between Pamela, Christopher and an offspring of Katherine (in best scenario JR's daughterwith Katherine). It was unnecessary to melt Ewing Oil & Barnes Wentworth into one. If you stay focused on the Ewings and the Barnes you can see all the offspring to be included and don't get tempted to include all these Rylands/Ramos no one ever heard of/cared about.

I agree that the timing didn't help either. In 2012 it was too late. Ten years earlier would have been helpful.
Or ten years later. I hardly watched/didn't like ABC's Dynasty. But I read that CW's Dynasty got picked up for a 5th season although the writing doesn't appear to be phenomenal (apparantly Krystle was recast several times, correct me if I'm wrong).
As Dallas was an international phenomenan maybe a global streaming provider would have had more success (despite it's many flaws).

Maybe it's just me but I get the impression what many of us are describing is a natural progression to the series and that CC seemed to fight such things. It seemed to me that even often what came natural to her story, she fought against. Like somehow she was trying to make Elena out to be this heroine fighting for right but she comes off as corrupt and morally bankrupt as JR. Things always seemed awkward to me in the story because it was like I was seeing one thing and being told another. I wonder if CC did this on purpose of if it was just unconscious. I hope I'm making sense.

 

[Karin Schill]

Well if Dallas ever came back again I think the perfect place to start it would be with Cliff's funeral. I actually wrote a fanfic about two years ago that tied up all the lose ends from Dallas TNT. Some of you have read it already. For those of you who haven't and would want some closure. This is how I imagine Dallas should have ended after Dallas TNT:

Dallas TNT - "Forgiveness"

Hi Everyone, So I'm back with a brand new story. :) I hope that you are all doing well and are safe in this trying times that we are currently facing in the world. I know a lot of people around the globe are currently in lock down or are afraid for their health or the health of a family member...

tellytalk.net

 

[darkshadows38]

i like that start with His Funeral they don't have to say he was killed like they did with JR i mean yeah he had his Enemies but with JR it would well make sense that someone would get to him at some point. he's hated more than Cliff ever was and for good reason too but that sounds like a good place to start at least at his funereal

 

[stevew]

Well if Dallas ever came back again I think the perfect place to start it would be with Cliff's funeral. I actually wrote a fanfic about two years ago that tied up all the lose ends from Dallas TNT. Some of you have read it already. For those of you who haven't and would want some closure. This is how I imagine Dallas should have ended after Dallas TNT:

Dallas TNT - "Forgiveness"

Hi Everyone, So I'm back with a brand new story. :) I hope that you are all doing well and are safe in this trying times that we are currently facing in the world. I know a lot of people around the globe are currently in lock down or are afraid for their health or the health of a family member...

tellytalk.net

Maybe they should have started Dallas TNT with Miss Ellie’s funeral. Marriage and Deaths always a good place to start. At least at that point a war over the oil of South Fork makes sense - we find out that while she gave the house and cattle business to Bobby years ago, she 1) leaves the land and all hers and Clayton’s money to set up a foundation 2) she didn’t make any statement as to the mineral rights, setting up a fight over them and 3) turns out Bobby gave the house back to Miss Ellie and she left it to John Ross for his young family in trust with Bobby as trustee. That would have had us off and running with a Ewing story and explain why a new fight over South Fork’s oil. Also, explain why Bobby and Christopher and John Ross live in the same house and Sue Ellen too, to help with John Ross’s children as a single father. And with that Dallas is back on the ranch and back in the fight for oil. Kinda simple really.

 

[Pamela_E]

Only he could clarify exactly what he met. Me, I'm thinking of something we've discussed here before, which is that if there is a second revival, it would need to essentially be presented as a new series. The target audience needs to be new viewers, not trying to recapture old ones, Larry's dead, and Patrick and Linda are even older now, so we can't hope nostalgia will draw in enough viewers. Shows like Succession and Billions is the model of what I imagine a new Dallas would need to be to work.

That's why it would need to be a reboot. The problem Cidre had with NuDallas was working with the ashes of the old series and trying to make sense of the dynamics.

Original Dallas was simple. Three brothers, the nasty one, the goody two shoes and the 'weak' one. The father they had to live up to and the mother who kept it all together. Plus the outsider wives trying to fit into this world of money and power.

Great and simple family connections.

Dallas 2.0 didn't have that, instead two old brothers, their sons, an ex wife, cousins.

It wasn't a great set of dynamics. So naturally it made sense to focus on the feud between the two cousins. For some reason Christopher rated badly with audience focus groups, so they decided to drop that idea and as a result the series kind of spiralled into a mess.

The only way I can see this series returning is a reboot with the original premise.

 

[Seaviewer]

Only he could clarify exactly what he met.

I have no idea what he was talking about. It could just as easily be production history as the onscreen history.

I would love for Dallas to be brought back once more but Christopher has to be alive!

He's alive until I see otherwise.

Abby Ewing looks around

I'd be up for that.

Not saying consistency isn't nice, but those things tend to be more a wink to the obsessives who remembers who-said-what-when

It wouldn't hurt for them to have an obsessive on staff just to prevent too many flagrant contradictions.

Where TNT got it wrong was doing it as a continuation of the old series and being something new at the same time.

Agree with you on that.

is it really only down to those 2?

There's still Lucy and Ray, to name two. They were treated shabbily on TNT. I'm sure there's a place for them in key supporting roles.

 

[Pamela_E]

I don't believe they had any intention of killing off Christopher, it was their Steven Carrington moment.

This scene was a knee jerk last minute decision, they knew their head was on the chopping board, so this last minute change was an attempt of rescuing the ratings.
But it didn't happen, which was clear. If the public didn't care before they certainly were not going to start caring enough to tune in for Jesse's exit.

Jesse was proving unpopular, his character already massively sidelined as a result. So a change of face was the likely outcome.

 

[Rove]

Cowboys in space, or something like that.

I like your thinking here Willie. Without bordering on the stupidity we could have a Ewing on the moon, discovering an untapped resource not known to man before.

 

[Rove]

Jesse was proving unpopular

Unfortunately for him it appeared to be the general consensus from viewers having both Jesse and Josh was a little too much Desperate Housewives. Sometimes the producers/casting agent places too much detail on how pretty the actors are rather than their acting.

 

[Karin Schill]

I think I might have been in the minority but I really liked both Josh and Jesse in their roles of John Ross and Christopher.

 

[DallasFanForever]

I don’t think Josh and Jesse were the problem as much as it was the direction the show took

 

[stevew]

I have no idea what he was talking about. It could just as easily be production history as the onscreen history.

He's alive until I see otherwise.

I'd be up for that.

It wouldn't hurt for them to have an obsessive on staff just to prevent too many flagrant contradictions.

Agree with you on that.

There's still Lucy and Ray, to name two. They were treated shabbily on TNT. I'm sure there's a place for them in key supporting roles.

Agree. Christopher is alive, probably going through rehab as we speak. Years to get his life back, but he’s making remarkable progress. While Elena is in prison for cavorting with known drug money launderer Nick Trevino.

 

[stevew]

I think I might have been in the minority but I really liked both Josh and Jesse in their roles of John Ross and

I agree.

 

[Jabari Lamar]

I don't believe they had any intention of killing off Christopher, it was their Steven Carrington moment.

This scene was a knee jerk last minute decision, they knew their head was on the chopping board, so this last minute change was an attempt of rescuing the ratings.
But it didn't happen, which was clear. If the public didn't care before they certainly were not going to start caring enough to tune in for Jesse's exit.

Jesse was proving unpopular, his character already massively sidelined as a result. So a change of face was the likely outcome.

Nah, Cidre was pretty clear that he was to be dead. They'd already started writing the next season, jumping ahead six months with him still dead and Bobby dealing with the fallout. I mean it's true it's a soap, so if they show had remained successful who knows what could have happened down the line, and it was definitely a last minute decision to attempt to raise ratings, but I believe them that the intention was that Christopher would be dead.

I personally never understood the criticism that Metcalf got here. I thought his character wasn't always written right but I never faulted him for that. As others have noted, Christopher as the "bad" cousin made a lot more sense from an in-story perspective, but they not only avoided that they tried to keep driving the point home that he was a goody two shoes, and it just ended up making him look boring (or smug, at times). By comparison Josh got to show a lot more emotional range.

 

[Pamela_E]

Nah, Cidre was pretty clear that he was to be dead. They'd already started writing the next season, jumping ahead six months with him still dead and Bobby dealing with the fallout. I mean it's true it's a soap, so if they show had remained successful who knows what could have happened down the line, and it was definitely a last minute decision to attempt to raise ratings, but I believe them that the intention was that Christopher would be dead.

I personally never understood the criticism that Metcalf got here. I thought his character wasn't always written right but I never faulted him for that. As others have noted, Christopher as the "bad" cousin made a lot more sense from an in-story perspective, but they not only avoided that they tried to keep driving the point home that he was a goody two shoes, and it just ended up making him look boring (or smug, at times). By comparison Josh got to show a lot more emotional range.

Well I think they would have left the door open, so no body, and his return easily written as some form of witness protection.

But yes the focus was going to shift with John Ross vs his sister. In the original ending we see her hands and arms working behind a bar as John Ross tells her she needs to come back with him. End of season credits roll.

I personally believe the casting was off for both Christopher and John Ross. I liked both actors but feel the show at times felt a bit teenagery. They were in their 30's but the characters came across as if they had just left high school. I think the show would have had more of an edge with different actors in those main roles.

I always thought an actor like Vincent Kartheiser would have been perfect as John Ross and possibly given the show a different vibe.

But the characters lacked any layers. I was hoping for a bit more dysfunction in a Knots Landing kind of way.

I just found everyone a little bit boring. Which didn't help Jesse's popularity as the writing was just not there for him. Trying to be a decent humanbeing does not have to be boring. Gary Ewing was fundamentally a nice guy but with fallibillities and vulnerabilities, making one of the most interesting characters in the whole Dallasverse.

I will always think it was a shame and a wasted opportunity that the show just didn't resonate, especially seeing Dynasty gather a global audience via Netflix.

 

[ChrisSumner]

The timing was wrong for this reboot. Had it come a few years later I feel it would've been better. Of course due to the deaths of Ken Kercheval and Larry Hagman I'm happy it happened, but it was all wrong. To think how high the ratings were when it debuted and it just plummeted is heartbreaking because that proved the audience would've been there if the show was good.

I agree with Pamela that the casting was just plain bad. The actors weren't strong enough to overcome such thin characterizations and bad writing. It felt like they had no budget which forced them into casting no name actors who just couldn't hold their own. I feel Ann, John Ross, Christopher, Pamela Rebecca AND Elena could've been cast better. The biggest miss though was the writing. You have a soap but a writer who hates soaps and can't write a romance, a continuing story OR a compelling multi-episode story. She was hopeless. I feel like by the third season she accepted it was a soap and it got better, but it was too little too late at that point.

Dallas and Knots Landing weren't Dynasty. Both were well written and respectable series so being a "soap" wasn't a bad thing for them. Cidre's problem was just that she couldn't write a GOOD soap.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I liked both actors but feel the show at times felt a bit teenagery. They were in their 30's but the characters came across as if they had just left high school.

Maybe, technically speaking, these characters should have been in their 30s but I never got the impression that they were depicted as being that old in new Dallas.
Whereas JR had already taken over most of Jock's work at Ewing Oil, they made it very clear that John Ross was still learning the oil business, courtesy of daddy dearest.
He was trying to play with the Big Boys and he often failed miserably. To me, this seemed like an important ingredient of the trials and tribulations of new generation Dallas.

As opposed to the already established position of the Ewing sons in old Dallas, John Ross & Co were still claiming that position.
It's a transition style story that, indeed, would have made more sense if it had happened 10 years earlier, considering the timeline of the 1980s Dallas. Alas, that wasn't meant to be.
I think they were the Allan Beams and Kristin Shepards of C21st Dallas - cunning, hungry, greedy but without the necessary experience - and in this day and age of young tycoons like Mark Zuckerberg not totally unbelievable, actually.

There are some negative comments that even though I don't necessarily agree with, at least I can understand, e.g. the crime-heavy tone of the show**
But the complaint that they didn't focus exclusively on the new generation while simultaneously complaining about the lack of storyline for and the inclusion of original Dallas characters doesn't make sense to me at all.
Even more so because they did focus on the new generation, and some of the old characters did get plenty of storyline.

**but maybe it only looked that way because old Dallas seasons had an additional 15 episodes to pad out their storylines.

 

[Barbara Fan]

I don't think it was so much the acting as the writing--

Oh I thought an awful of of the acting was pretty ropey including Pat D when he was ill, that was cringworthy.

Larry was the stand out for me - still great - but some originals were hammy, and the newbies except Mitch Pileggi and The guy who played Bum, left me cold

 

[Pamela_E]

Maybe, technically speaking, these characters should have been in their 30s but I never got the impression that they were depicted as being that old in new Dallas.
Whereas JR had already taken over most of Jock's work at Ewing Oil, they made it very clear that John Ross was still learning the oil business, courtesy of daddy dearest.
He was trying to play with the Big Boys and he often failed miserably. To me, this seemed like an important ingredient of the trials and tribulations of new generation Dallas.

As opposed to the already established position of the Ewing sons in old Dallas, John Ross & Co were still claiming that position.
It's a transition style story that, indeed, would have made more sense if it had happened 10 years earlier, considering the timeline of the 1980s Dallas. Alas, that wasn't meant to be.
I think they were the Allan Beams and Kristin Shepards of C21st Dallas - cunning, hungry, greedy but without the necessary experience - and in this day and age of young tycoons like Mark Zuckerberg not totally unbelievable, actually.

There are some negative comments that even though I don't necessarily agree with, at least I can understand, e.g. the crime-heavy tone of the show**
But the complaint that they didn't focus exclusively on the new generation while simultaneously complaining about the lack of storyline for and the inclusion of original Dallas characters doesn't make sense to me at all.
Even more so because they did focus on the new generation, and some of the old characters did get plenty of storyline.

**but maybe it only looked that way because old Dallas seasons had an additional 15 episodes to pad out their storylines.

You are totally right and that transition happening at that point made little sense to me. I know Josh Henderson is popular but he was strong enough to hold the show. I think it needed someone older.

But it had its moments, I love Judith Light and still think they should have recast Morgan Fairchild as Jenna. I think she is great, love her Twitter posts.