1984-85: A season of decline

[Jock Ewing Fan]

It's also about the scenes, to see how the characters interact, and then it doesn't matter how big the stories or characters are.
BBG really needed to be in Bobby's death scene - even if that was the only thing she did that season.

It depends on what's happening and therefore I want every actor to be as good as possible (and that includes the one-offs from the early years).

BBG made a big mistake by asking (perhaps strongly) for more pay and less work.
From the production team's view, it could open the door to more cast members making the same demand.
It is not necessarily about performance.
This was business - Hagman, Duffy and Principal might have had more leverage. Yes it is an ensemble
cast, but not everyone in that ensemble had the same appeal/marketability.
No one is disputing BBG's talent. In a case like this, there are business considerations.
Remember, this is show business. Networks and production teams are profit minded.
Whether the fans agree or not with the decision, and whether it was a good one or not,
the production team/network, investors etc have different priorities

 

[Willie Oleson]

I am not disputing the behind-the-scenes business, I'm just saying that I like to watch original Miss Ellie as much as I like to watch JR (and preferably together because I always enjoyed their arguments).
Dallas isn't about ratings and success and decline, it's about what's happening on-screen and who's doing what (or who).

Incidentally, would Jock have been "reduced to supporting cast" if Miss Ellie had died?

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

In a case like this, there are business considerations.
Remember, this is show business. Networks and production teams are profit minded.
Whether the fans agree or not with the decision, and whether it was a good one or not,
the production team/network, investors etc have different priorities

And these profit-driven businessmen with different priorities made a lot of decisions in the latter half of the show which hurt profitability of the show long-term. That's not good business.

Some executives just like to say "no" to an actor just because they can. Even if it hurts the product in the long run.

The producers of DYNASTY re-cast all four grown Carrington children because Aaron Spelling thought (as said, on tape) that the viewer "doesn't give a damn" if you re-cast the supporting characters so long as the leads (Forsythe, Evans and Collins) are still there. And while the audience will usually come back, such recasting do matter to the viewers and hurt the show long term -- if anything, it's a symptom of tone-deaf wrong-headedness which will hurt the show eventually in other ways.

It's no coincidence that both programs began to get into serious writing problems after they started pulling those shenanigans with re-casting the core characters.

 

[Willie Oleson]

That being said, I do wonder why BBG asked for a raise if the workload was her main concern.
Technically speaking, doing less for the same salary is already a raise.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

That being said, I do wonder why BBG asked for a raise if the workload was her main concern.
Technically speaking, doing less for the same salary is already a raise.

Her contract was up at the same time, unfortunately. Larry has said BBG should have come to him for assistance with her negotiations, and she probably should've, but that wasn't her personality.

 

[Mustard]

Miss Ellie was basically reduced to a a supporting character/plot device after Jim Davis passed, and had little impact other than trying to sell Ewing Oil twice.

I thought Miss Ellie's best season was Season 5 DVD, especially when bailing J.R. out of the disastrous financial mess that he had gotten himself and Ewing Oil into when he tried to blackmail the Farlows into chucking Sue Ellen and John Ross off of the Southern Cross.

 

[Jock's Ghost]

I didnt mind Reed as Ellie. I always felt BBG was wrong for the part. Never felt like she was from Texas or the South and her reactions towards JR, no matter how awful, never felt authentic. Mother's defend their sons, often times when they are behaving badly, but that's just my take.....

Season 7 is showing cracks. I'm watching now and Presley is now in as Jenna. I wish that Morgan Fairchild had returned, she was offered the part, not sure if she declined or if she was busy. She's a helluva lot better actor, PP does fine, she's not terrible or ruinous, but she's limited. Never felt she had a purpose on the show other than to be a distraction for Bobby and keep him apart from Pam.

I would say the things that hurt the show was breaking up the Barnes family. Mark was always a bore to me, but why lose Katherine and Afton? Katherine should have gotten over the Bobby crush and moved into the corporate arena and tried to wrestle Wentworth Industries out of Cliff's control. Making her a scorned harpy was tiresome, although Brittany played it well. Afton and CLiff should have married so there was a reason and point for her to be on the show. And anything to keep her from singing!

By having Bobby shot in the season finale should have somehow set up his exit... without killing him, of course....

The Ewing cousins were a needed addition, but I would have added JASON EWING, alive and well and eager to get his slice of the pie. If Duffy had left, he would have been JR's true nemesis. Have JR actually remember meeting him a few times and interacting with the cousins once or twice.

Although not terrible, I've made Jamie slightly older, enamored with JR and his wealth, they become buds in crushing Cliff Barnes.

No big deals. The bad stuff is trivial and doesn't hurt things until later on.

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

I thought Miss Ellie's best season was Season 5 DVD, especially when bailing J.R. out of the disastrous financial mess that he had gotten himself and Ewing Oil into when he tried to blackmail the Farlows into chucking Sue Ellen and John Ross off of the Southern Cross.

Jock was still alive for at least the start of season 5. It was probably the last season BBG had any meaningful storylines for any length of time.

 

[Mustard]

Jock was still alive for at least the start of season 5. It was probably the last season BBG had any meaningful storylines for any length of time.

And Season 6 DVD, with Miss Ellie trying to break Jock's will, and her failure meant a big change in the dynamics of Dallas as a show. Barbara being back in Season 9 DVD was also great.

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

And these profit-driven businessmen with different priorities made a lot of decisions in the latter half of the show which hurt profitability of the show long-term. That's not good business.

Some executives just like to say "no" to an actor just because they can. Even if it hurts the product in the long run.

The producers of DYNASTY re-cast all four grown Carrington children because Aaron Spelling thought (as said, on tape) that the viewer "doesn't give a damn" if you re-cast the supporting characters so long as the leads (Forsythe, Evans and Collins) are still there. And while the audience will usually come back, such recasting do matter to the viewers and hurt the show long term -- if anything, it's a symptom of tone-deaf wrong-headedness which will hurt the show eventually in other ways.

It's no coincidence that both programs began to get into serious writing problems after they started pulling those shenanigans with re-casting the core characters.

What viewers consider long-term may not be as important to the the producers as the immediate future. TV shows have notoriously short shelf-lives ( with very few exceptions), and maximizing profit in the short term is the more common practice, especially when the show exceeds a certain number of episodes and/or seasons.
In economics it is basically called the economics of diminishing marginal returns. When the level of profits starts to drop incrementally after reaching its peak level, it becomes more profitable to invest elsewhere, because productivity and efficiencies decrease with additional expenditures. It may not be bad business, in that context. If the same investment produces a greater return elsewhere, then decisions about budgeting a tv show will reflect that reality. Saying "no" to an actor is not necessarily an isolated event when dealing with multiple actors who all want more compensation, and the likelihood that a long-running show may be approaching the end of its shelf life.
Steve Kanaly and Linda Gray, among others, eventually were considered too far out of the budget constraints to maintain as series regulars. People can disagree with that decision, certainly, but it is simply the economic reality of the business

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

And Season 6 DVD, with Miss Ellie trying to break Jock's will, and her failure meant a big change in the dynamics of Dallas as a show. Barbara being back in Season 9 DVD was also great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dallas_(1978_TV_series)_episodes#Season_5_(1981–82)

Season 6 was when Miss Ellie tried to break the will, and it was probably the last time her character was more than a plot device.

 

[Mustard]

I didnt mind Reed as Ellie. I always felt BBG was wrong for the part. Never felt like she was from Texas or the South

I thought Barbara's Miss Ellie was the absolute embodiment of old money of the land in Texas. Also, the Southworth way of doing things, and its outlook on things, was often different to the way of Jock Ewing and new money in big oil. Miss Ellie, in her mind, is more secure in her privilege than Jock is and Clayton is. That creates an interesting dynamic. With Donna's Miss Ellie, all that goes out the window.

 

[Mustard]

Sehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dallas_(1978_TV_series)_episodes#Season_5_(1981%E2%80%9382)ason 5 was when Miss Ellie tried to break the will

No, Season 6 DVD. The will wasn't even read until the Season 6 DVD episode Jock's Will. Miss Ellie's attempts to break the will was after that. The cliffhanger to Season 6 DVD, Episode 15 (The Reckoning) is when Miss Ellie and Pam had lost the struggle to break Jock's Will. So many things changed after that, a series of disastrous events, such as Rebecca's death and Cliff getting some of the Wentworth fortune (not what J.R. wanted!), an increasingly hostile Ewing Oil fight, Bobby and Pam separating and Pam leaving Southfork (until Season 10 DVD), the Walt Driscoll affair with the shipping of oil to Cuba and Bobby and Ray's interference in that which led eventually to J.R. and Sue Ellen's marriage going into crisis and the Mickey Trotter tragedy. Miss Ellie's nervous breakdown too, reflecting Barbara's health issues and then the change in personality of Miss Ellie when Donna comes in.

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

No, Season 6 DVD. The will wasn't even read until the Season 6 DVD episode Jock's Will. Miss Ellie's attempts to break the will was after that. The cliffhanger to Season 6 DVD, Episode 15 (The Reckoning) is when Miss Ellie and Pam had lost the struggle to break Jock's Will. So many things changed after that, a series of disastrous events.

Season 6, but the point is still the same. After the will, Miss Ellie was poorly written, and was at best a supporting character and plot device
The nadir was thar horrible Jessica Fletcher imitation

 

[Mustard]

Season 6, but the point is still the same. After the will, Miss Ellie was poorly written, and was at best a supporting character and plot device
The nadir was thar horrible Jessica Fletcher imitation

The cosy Dallas atmosphere at Southfork changed after the fallout from the breaking of Jock's will, after years of previous stability. While there was still mostly greatness in Dallas as a show Series 7-9 DVD time (and I personally thought Series 9 DVD was a revival into a new era), the amount of mediocrity did start increasing.

Most of Dallas was poor in the late seasons, especially storylines.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

The cosy Dallas atmosphere at Southfork changed after the fallout from the breaking of Jock's will, after years of previous stability. While there was still mostly greatness in Dallas as a show Series 7-9 DVD time (and I personally thought Series 9 DVD was a revival into a new era), the amount of mediocrity did start increasing.

Most of Dallas was poor in the late seasons, especially storylines.

I, for one, had no problems at all with Season 10 (DVD) except for the too perfunctory "I had a terrible 31 episode dream!" scene which opened it -- and Telepictures new crappy visuals (since correctly recently). That year did have a more satirical tone, it's true, but I thought they got the balance right: it was the closest DALLAS ever came to self-parody which actually worked.

Afterwards, it didn't. Yet they kept leaning into the facetiousness rather disastrously.

But the downward spiral started with this:

Donna Reed was a likeable presence on the show. But not as a re-cast matriarch. I still like my "Jenna's aunt" scenario: flirting with Clayton and appearing while Miss Ellie is recuperating at the Takapa Smoker's Mental Ward off-camera; once Bobby's dead, and BBG's contract issues are fixed, Reed exits stage left...

...or perhaps keep Reed around for a while longer, and have a geriatric triangle rarely seen on TV. (A septuagenarian catfight in the Southfork pool? Probably not).

The silly need to have Reed only assuming the role of Ellie because "only Miss Ellie can control JR" (as the executives said in 1984) makes no sense. For one thing, when did Miss Ellie ever control JR?? (Almost never). Also, given how quickly the producers began cutting Reed back in her scenes, would it have been so much more difficult to do the same with BBG -- temporarily -- while she further heals from her damned heart surgery???

But again, the producers and executives weren't on the same page. And that couldn't have helped.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

The Ewing cousins were a needed addition, but I would have added JASON EWING, alive and well and eager to get his slice of the pie. If Duffy had left, he would have been JR's true nemesis. Have JR actually remember meeting him a few times and interacting with the cousins once or twice.

Although not terrible, I've made Jamie slightly older, enamored with JR and his wealth, they become buds in crushing Cliff Barnes.

No big deals. The bad stuff is trivial and doesn't hurt things until later on.

You say you would've added Jason Ewing to the show.

Would you have cast Steve Forrest in that role or used another actor instead?

 

[Willie Oleson]

I thought Barbara's Miss Ellie was the absolute embodiment of old money of the land in Texas

Yes, of all SoapLand's powerful people I thought she had a special kind of power: the kind of power that never has be to used simply because no-one would ever consider saying "no" to her.
Barbara Bel Geddes seemed perfect for that sort of understated authority.
Jock on the other hand claimed his power and used it - I guess that was the only way to build an oil empire - and it was mostly the money that talked, not respect.

 

[Mustard]

Yes, of all SoapLand's powerful people I thought she had a special kind of power: the kind of power that never has be to used simply because no-one would ever consider saying "no" to her.
Barbara Bel Geddes seemed perfect for that sort of understated authority.
Jock on the other hand claimed his power and used it - I guess that was the only way to build an oil empire - and it was mostly the money that talked, not respect.

Yes, and that's what I meant by Miss Ellie being totally secure in her privilege. Jock started out working class. And new money in big oil is a different kind of privilege to old money in the land. Oil money is wheeling and dealing business, and therefore less secure. Old money in the land is rooted and more aristocratic. Of course, the 1930s depression era was a nightmare for the Southworths, where they needed bailing out, but the Southworth values about themselves and their attitudes about the world won't change too much. Jock and Miss Ellie's relationship and marriage is a compromise between new money and old money. People can have whatever opinions about Donna Reed's portrayal of Miss Ellie as they want, but all this dynamic between the Southworth and Ewing outlooks was lost because of how Reed saw and played the character of Miss Ellie rather than because of any acting ability per se. Those Dallas fans who say that Barbara's Miss Ellie wasn't right for an oil baron's wife also have the same faults as Donna Reed on the character of Miss Ellie. The rancher's daughter outlook on the part of Miss Ellie is a big part of what made Dallas tick, what made it BIG. Ewing vs. Southworth is as important to Dallas' dynamics as Ewing vs. Barnes.

J.R. is different from his daddy in the sense that he's always known, in his mind since childhood, the ruthless oil business edge, so is very secure in his privilege, but which is totally rooted in the new money of oil, so he's therefore also very different from his mother in that sense. J.R. has little interest in ranching beyond Southfork's standing for the Ewing family image. In one of the early episodes, Sue Ellen sets up J.R. to go to a cattle auction with Jock, asking J.R. "Don't you want to spend more time with him, darling?" and J.R. responded "Not around a bunch of cows, I don't".

 

[Slugworth]

I wish that Morgan Fairchild had returned,

Me too. It would've been a vast improvement of the character. Some of those plotlines would've went over better like Jenna in jail. Presley just isn't convincing. Never should've been cast.

Mark was always a bore to me

Couldn't stand him ...like nails on a chalkboard.

Bobby should've knocked him out cold when he went to see Pam at the hotel and Mark shows up with flowers.

Katherine should have gotten over the Bobby crush and moved into the corporate arena and tried to wrestle Wentworth Industries out of Cliff's control. Making her a scorned harpy was tiresome,

It was serviceable but they simply took it too far. She was boiling bunnies there towards the end.

You're right...not enough feuding between her, Pam, and Cliff over Wentworth. Katherine was in the right on this...she was far more deserving than the other two.