If Dallas Had an Alexis

[Ray_Krebbs]

Let's say this show decided to give J.R. his equal in the form of a female, how would you have proceeded? I would have started the show with Lucy being his daughter, and he had his first wife Valene banished for her own infidelities. Val could have appeared at a later time to raise hell. I would have cast another female in the role. How about Barbara Eden? She seemed strong and feisty as Leeanne and already had known chemistry with Larry Hagman.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Sue Ellen was the closest DALLAS could have had. And did. She was originally a doormat, it's true, but as JR himself said, he and Sue Ellen were (deceptively, perhaps) a lot alike.

Once she'd toughened up, however, her days were numbered. That's just how Southfork was.

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

If she'd been casted differently and the writers wanted to go in that direction, Lucy could have gone full-on 'JR Junior'. She certainly had the motivation and quite a role model to learn from. She had a rebellious and manipulative streak early on, but they chose to have her be ditzy and unlucky in love. Imagine if they'd taken the original character - the one cavorting with Ray in the hayloft and blackmailing her teacher - and had her go forward with an IQ a good 15-20 points or more higher than what we ended up seeing.

 

[stevew]

I’d have gone with the following:

1) Bobby leaves with Pamela and Cliff for D.C. as JR jets him appointed a U.S. senator instead of Kathryn running him down - create a new series.

2) so the cliff hanger becomes the reveal that JR had another family on the side. There’s another woman, older with two sons and a daughter. Maybe black or Hispanic, something Jock wouldn’t approve of. The woman would be an older Alexis type and the daughter would be a younger Alexis type.

3) the season which became the dream season would be JR shoring up his marriage to Sue Ellen, becoming more like Jock while dealing with another family. It would be his favoring John Ross over his other sons and spoiling his daughter. It would be one son like his father, a womanizer and corrupt businessman in the making, the other working the ranch and gay. And the mother of his children very capable of holding her own against a sweet, sober, and Miss Ellie like Sue Ellen. Maybe this woman would even partner with Windell against JR.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

Let's say this show decided to give J.R. his equal in the form of a female, how would you have proceeded? I would have started the show with Lucy being his daughter, and he had his first wife Valene banished for her own infidelities. Val could have appeared at a later time to raise hell. I would have cast another female in the role. How about Barbara Eden? She seemed strong and feisty as Leeanne and already had known chemistry with Larry Hagman.

I'm assuming Alexis is a character in one of the shows which copied the style of Dallas and competed with it on the 80s.

What if they'd had an Alexis? Maybe then one of the other shows would have been the most popular show on TV instead of Dallas. Dallas was the innovator in that style of show. Once the innovator starts copying the people copying it, that's bad. When you start second guessing yourself and start thinking "Maybe we should do what they're doing" you've lost. I've been told Dallas actually did that to a degree starting in season 9. There's a good reason why people usually consider the first 8 seasons the best ones. It's no coincidence. I'm glad Dallas did things their own way for the first 8 years because it was great.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I'm assuming Alexis is a character in one of the shows which copied the style of Dallas and competed with it on the 80s.

What if they'd had an Alexis? Maybe then one of the other shows would have been the most popular show on TV instead of Dallas. Dallas was the innovator in that style of show. Once the innovator starts copying the people copying it, that's bad. When you start second guessing yourself and start thinking "Maybe we should do what they're doing" you've lost. I've been told Dallas actually did that to a degree starting in season 9. There's a good reason why people usually consider the first 8 seasons the best ones. It's no coincidence. I'm glad Dallas did things their own way for the first 8 years because it was great.

Are you actually telling us you've never even heard of "Alexis"?

 

[MarkDallasAddict]

I do think part of the problem with Dallas was the lack of strong women, they were just there supporting the male leads, eg JR, Bobby, and Cliff (and Jock at the start). We never really saw a big strong female character, by the end of the original run all of the female leads were gone (Miss Ellie, Pam, Donna, Sue Ellen and Lucy). Cliff's mother was promising, yet they killed her off not long after they introduced her - she would have been a great lead but she wasn't the "Alexis" figure you suggested.

Of course had they gone down that round then it would have been seen as "Dallas copying Dynasty copying Dallas" but I do think it needed a stronger woman - no offence to Linda Gray who I adore but really all Sue Ellen did was to react to JR's affairs, get drunk, have an affair, get back with JR and start all over.

I don't know if a true Alexis character would have worked, but I feel that if they did have a really strong woman in there they ought to have kept her around, rather than 1-2 series there to support a man or to give JR someone to fight with. I suppose we came close to it with Leanne De La Vega, but yet again once she had sold Ewing Oil to Michelle for the price of a bag of chips, she was off again. What a shame.

There was also Marilee Stone who I absolutely adored, she was beautiful and witty, and had a strong appetite for the birds and the bees, but again she was there only to make JR look good. She performed that role incredibly well, creating that character was an act of real genius, but she would not have been the Alexis figure.

I have said it before but they could have done so much with April and Michelle had they thought about it properly. I would certainly not have killed off April (I know she was pregnant) but she was a real fine actress/character and there were so many layers to her.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Alexis Wade (played by Lesley Anne Down)

Bobby's beautiful and vindictive ex-fiancé, who marries Jeremy Wendell and then he dies!

 

[Willie Oleson]

Bobby & Alexis in Rome

Gawgeous, just gawgeous!

Get out of my sight, you miserable has-been.

 

[Richard Channing]

Nobody takes me to the cleaners and to bed in the same day, Bobby.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Damn you, Dex Graison. I..I...don't want you at all!

 

[Rove]

part of the problem with Dallas was the lack of strong women, they were just there supporting the male leads

It may have evolved into that but from the moment Dallas began (except Sue Ellen) I thought the women were on an equal footing with the men. Miss Ellie was never one to shy away from a heated argument with Jock or her boys. Remember the shellacking Jock and JR received from Miss Ellie when she caught Jock stating the woman's place is in the bedroom? Or her requesting demanding Ray to get the shotgun when a reporter managed to make it to the front door.

Pam stood her ground until her desire to become a mother became an obsession. Donna was one character I greatly admired for her intellect. And JR's constant physical and mental abuse of Sue Ellen eventually gave her the strength to leave the bastard.

 

[Rove]

As for an Alexis type on Dallas? There one and only attempt at this failed miserably with the introduction Angelica Nero.

​

However if there was a real need for a smart, devious, conniving uber-bitch the character was already in their lap...Katherine Wentworth. It was the writers/producers fault to take this character down the wrong driveway...pun intended.

​

 

[Kenny Coyote]

I do think part of the problem with Dallas was the lack of strong women

"Strong" can mean a lot of things in that context. What would you have wanted Pam, for example, to do? How about Miss Ellie?

Fir the first 7 years I don't think there was any problem with Dallas. It was a great show. It spent 5 straight years in the top two highest rated TV shows. You can't get much better than that. We're still talking about it forty one years after it began. If we didn't love what it was, we wouldn't be here discussing it.

 

[MarkDallasAddict]

"Strong" can mean a lot of things in that context. What would you have wanted Pam, for example, to do? How about Miss Ellie?

Fir the first 7 years I don't think there was any problem with Dallas. It was a great show. It spent 5 straight years in the top two highest rated TV shows. You can't get much better than that. We're still talking about it forty one years after it began. If we didn't love what it was, we wouldn't be here discussing it.

As I mentioned in my earlier message, towards the end the series hadn't done sufficient succession planning and hadn't changed with the times, I wouldn't have had Pam do anything differently - Pam was Pam, and VP had decided that she was leaving and was never coming back. I have already alluded some of the things that they could have done with Miss Ellie if there had been a season 15 so I won't repeat that here.

By strong, I mean precisely what I set out in my earlier message, a female lead that wasn't simply there to react to stories involving the male leads. Michelle had great potential.

 

[MarkDallasAddict]

It may have evolved into that but from the moment Dallas began (except Sue Ellen) I thought the women were on an equal footing with the men. Miss Ellie was never one to shy away from a heated argument with Jock or her boys. Remember the shellacking Jock and JR received from Miss Ellie when she caught Jock stating the woman's place is in the bedroom? Or her requesting demanding Ray to get the shotgun when a reporter managed to make it to the front door.

Pam stood her ground until her desire to become a mother became an obsession. Donna was one character I greatly admired for her intellect. And JR's constant physical and mental abuse of Sue Ellen eventually gave her the strength to leave the bastard.

Yes. Donna was a good example of a strong female lead, too bad she didn't stick around - again her story waned - I mentioned her in another post when she helped to run Ewing Oil with JR whilst Bobby recuperated. I really loved having her in that position and I just wish we saw more female characters in positions like that. When the female characters had their own businesses, we rarely got to see them actually running them, save for Sue Ellen and her knicker shop.

 

[MarkDallasAddict]

As for an Alexis type on Dallas? There one and only attempt at this failed miserably with the introduction Angelica Nero.

View attachment 17686
​

However if there was a real need for a smart, devious, conniving uber-bitch the character was already in their lap...Katherine Wentworth. It was the writers/producers fault to take this character down the wrong driveway...pun intended.

​

Katherine Wentworth was an incredible creation and it would have been amazing to have her stick around.

 

[Laurie Marr]

Strength in Dallas women had to be quickly overpowered (Holly) or pathologised (Jessica, Katherine, Kristin and a slew of others) or rendered exotically other (Angelica) or it had to be idealised (Ellie). Donna was the closest they got to a strong woman but whose strength could be policed by staying at the periphery of the main action.

 

[Rove]

she helped to run Ewing Oil with JR whilst Bobby recuperated.

I also enjoyed the trickery of placing Donna in Bobby's office...just to ruffle the feathers of JR. Ewing Oil needed an adversary to JR to keep the story interesting, both at Southfork and Ewing Oil. This was the joy of watching Dallas, the mix of business and pleasure and more often than not the business kept encroaching into Southfork, much to the annoyance of Miss Ellie.

Personally I would have kept Bobby's condition going for much longer. I would have ratcheted up the character of Donna more so by keeping her at Ewing Oil. Dallas was best when the story hummed along but was tinged with an underlying....something's gotta give approach.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

As I mentioned in my earlier message, towards the end the series hadn't done sufficient succession planning and hadn't changed with the times, I wouldn't have had Pam do anything differently - Pam was Pam, and VP had decided that she was leaving and was never coming back. I have already alluded some of the things that they could have done with Miss Ellie if there had been a season 15 so I won't repeat that here.

By strong, I mean precisely what I set out in my earlier message, a female lead that wasn't simply there to react to stories involving the male leads. Michelle had great potential.

I asked what you would do with Pam and Miss Ellie to make them what you consider "strong" because I think they were strong just as they were. What character flaws did you see in them that you would have needed to fix for them to be what you consider strong?