Underutilized Characters in Dallas

[Rove]

Not to mention preventing Lucy's annoying fascination with Peter, who was not even interested in her.

For someone so clued into other personalities how did Lucy not get the hint Peter was not interested in her? I love the scene where Sue Ellen is tending to Peter's badly bruised hand after another dust-up at the Oil Baron's Ball. Lucy walks in and thanks Peter for going as her date. I'm not sure what Lucy was expecting. Did she think Peter would have his wicked way with her on Miss Ellie's kitchen bench-top in full view of Sue Ellen? Nope, Peter offers his hand, how very gentlemanly.

 

[Rove]

Katherine I think was the 2nd biggest waste, I'm not sure if TPTB wanted their own "Alexis" archetype female bitch villain or a more or less remake of the Kristen storyline just four seasons earlier, right down to the "Who Shot...." cliffhanger, Katherine could've and should've been Pam's genuine friend and sister who acts bitchy towards the Ewings because she's protective of Pam and a Cliff to a lesser extent.

I thought the loss of Kristin was bad enough. By the way another great loss in Mary Cosby. Instead of the Christopher story-line I would have loved if the writers had Kristin vanish with JR's child only to return some time later. And if suffering the loss of Kristin was torture nothing prepared me for the loss of Katherine albeit briefly.

I liked Katherine's initial introduction to Dallas (minus the television reporter job). Katherine should have been written as a young executive, trained to one day take over her daddy's company, Wentworth Industries, until mother decides to play catch-up mother hen to Cliff. This of course creates some friction between Cliff and Katherine. As you put it Katherine's relationship with Pam should have been the sister relationship they have so longed for.

Rebecca's death should have been the catalyst for change in Katherine, just not in the way the writers eventually would have taken it. Her outburst at Cliff after Rebecca's death was justified and it would have been fitting to have her show up at Southfork and give the whole family a good telling off. I can just picture the Ewing family sitting down to dinner and in walks an uninvited Katherine.

"It's nice to see families can still sit together for dinner...unlike mine."

With the Ewing family on one side and the fractured Barnes/Wentworth family on the other it had laid the foundations for great story-telling and in part the following season it did live up to that promise with Cliff, Afton, Pam, Mark and Katherine as a groupie. Pity the way it all ended.

 

[ArchieLucasCarringtonEwing1989]

I've seen an episode of Knots Landing ages ago, the one where Kristen shows up, while Gary is indifferent to her Val seems to show concern for her and tries to help her from what I remembered, and it's strange that considering she's Gary and Val's distant in law, she seemed natural to the Knots setting, I can't remember if this was season 1 or 2 when this happened and they were testing the waters for a female JR in Knots and they decided to see if Kristen could fit in, ultimately they went with Abby.

But Kristen seemed to fit into the Knots setting better than Lucy, it's a shame as I feel Kristen could've grown as a character with Val and Gary's help, maybe not lose her edge or make her as extreme as Abby was, but she could still be the cat amongst the pigeons.

She could actually have been the one to inform Val, who she's become close to, that Gary was cheating on her with Abby.

Kristen was dispensed with too soon, so much more could've been done with her.

 

[Jon Ewing Jr.]

 

[Don Howard]

This guy (who had scenes with Linda Gray and nobody else)........

 

[Presea]

This guy (who had scenes with Linda Gray and nobody else)........View attachment 2713

A lot of other characters besides Sue Ellen could have benefited from his services.

 

[lbf522]

There was missed opportunity to do with Katherine. As I have said in the previous website, they wasted her chasing after Bobbie and bedding JR.

She should have challenged Rebecca's will in court. A female executive would have been good. Holly Harwood was an idiot.

 

[Seaviewer]

This guy (who had scenes with Linda Gray and nobody else)........View attachment 2713

Was that hairstyle considered attractive back then?

 

[Presea]

There was missed opportunity to do with Katherine. As I have said in the previous website, they wasted her chasing after Bobbie and bedding JR.

She should have challenged Rebecca's will in court. A female executive would have been good. Holly Harwood was an idiot.

Totally! They could have made a believable background with business experience for Katherine by implying that her father had trained her for years to take over Wentworth Tool and Dye. And she had a good demeanor for it, too. Why did everything always have to solely go to romance or crushes for the female characters? And Katherine could have made a good case in court just by providing evidence of Cliff's embezzlement, or even records of Pam being at Brooktree that could have argued against her ability to run a business.

 

[Tullamore]

This guy (who had scenes with Linda Gray and nobody else)........View attachment 2713

Dr.Elby

I would like to have seen him square up to JR after hearing all the horrible stuff. A nice twist could have been either he 'convincing Sue Ellen to shoot JR or he did it hinsrlf6

 

[Tullamore]

The Cartel were underused.

Agree totally regarding Katherine -her kidnapping Pam after the tanker crash could have been clever

 

[Tullamore]

Dr.Elby

I would like to have seen him square up to JR after hearing all the horrible stuff. A nice twist could have been either he 'convincing Sue Ellen to shoot JR or he did it hinsrlf6

Himself sorry !

 

[Matthew Blaisdel]

I always found Dr. Elby to be VERY creepy! :eck:

 

[Presea]

And then there was always good old Dr. Dagmara at Brooktree!

 

[Tullamore]

And then there was always good old Dr. Dagmara at Brooktree!

 

[Justine]

I really liked Alexis Smith's (season 7) appearance on Dallas as Jessica- I didn't realise she returned to the show in season 13 until I checked Wikipedia, but I think her stint could have been extended for another season, at least.

 

[Lastkidpicked]

I came here because we are currently re-watching the series and are at the point where J.R. and Bobby are fighting for control of Ewing Oil as per Jock's will.

And then noticed that many of you mentioned Mickey, and I agree with you. He had a great storyline-- a fill-in son for Ray, and what looked like a future husband for Lucy. He was underutilized because many of us wanted to see the relationship between Ray and Mickey grow, and also we wanted to see Lucy happy for at least a few more episodes.

The fact is that Mickey had to die.

The writers wanted to show how the battle for Ewing Oil would seriously hurt, if not destroy, the lives of many people not involved in the battle, including Lucy, Ray, and Donna.

How could the battle hurt Lucy, Ray, and Donna? By having Mickey come along. He is a fill-in son for Ray. And we can even imagine that he and Donna will come to appreciate each other and he can be the son that Donna never had. They begin to show how Ray is to Mickey the way that Jock was to Ray.

Then, Lucy falls in love with Mickey. It is easy to see that he is the first boyfriend who truly made her happy. We could even imagine them getting married.

When Mickey is killed as a direct result of the battle for Ewing Oil, it showed that the battle deeply affected Ray, Donna, and Lucy.

To put a finer point on it, without Mickey those three would have been unaffected by the battle, and the writers (painful as it was) wanted them to be casualties of the battle, right along with Walt Driscol, Rebecca Wentworth, and many other innocents.

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

I agree with a number of people earlier in the thread that abandoning Cousin Jimmy was an odd decision. The show always seemed to have a hole in that young adult range a bit below Bobby and Pam, and the promising ones (Jimmy, Kristin, Mickey, Alan Beam even though he was a bit older) never seemed to last.

Later on, it seems they tried to insert a number of characters in that age range into the show out of nowhere and the consensus seems to be they were pretty much all lame!

Also, it’s been pointed out that Jimmy would have balanced out the disparity in the number of Barneses vs Ewings. They kind of fixed that later with Rebecca and Katherine, etc., but I thought the “let’s suddenly make Cliff and Pam fabulously independently wealthy via their long-lost mother” move changed the dynamic of the feud significantly, turning Cliff from a scrappy, ambitious, if overly obsessed underdog to an outright buffoon pretty quickly.

 

[darkshadows38]

dr. creepy elby eh? he was a meh character that was pretty much forgotten about after some point. at times i think they got carried away with the feud instead of writing better storylines too. i say give cliff some wins at least. yeah it's kinda surprising they never brought Alan Beam back to be honest and that was Knots Landing looking it up recently that was season 2 of Knots she was on. i have only seen season 1 of Knots landing so far and that show for me is a struggle to get through at least season 1 was i dunno about season 2 yet

 

[connyben]

Vanessa Beaumont...no, just kidding Maybe she was not underutilized, but it was a shame that Priscilla Pointer did not stay for longer. Good actress. Agree with Punk and Mavis. I would say Lucy in the later seasons. There are probably more.