Closure. How Do You Find It?

[Bobby Southworth]

The dream...the way Pam was written out..inconsistencies in the two reunion movies...and then the mess that was TNT Dallas, and the two reunion movies being erased with that. arrgghh. It's frustrating that it couldn't have just had a nice, neat closing. Such a great show. Where does it end for you? When Bobby came back? When Pam vanished? The reunion movies, or TNT Dallas. For me, as much as I hated the way Pam was written out, I would have to say the most logical ending would have been the end of season 13, before it just became the JR and Bobby show. I mean, no more Miss Ellie? A woman that had always cherished the land and her heritage just no longer wants anything to do with it? I just had a hard time buying that, even though, yes, it's possible she had finally just had enough of the drama, but we know the real life reason was contractual disputes.

 

[Bobby Southworth]

Plus, April being killed off. No, she wasn't Pam, but by then we had invested three seasons in the story of Bobby and April, and that's how it ends?

 

[the-lost-son]

For me it's VP's exit in season 9 (DVD 10). I'm happy for everyone who can enjoy the next 4 seasons, but I can't.
There were some nice moments, like in the reunions movies and in Dallas TNT but the bad outweighs the good.
So I own the DVD sets until VP's exit and in my fantasy I ignore her crash and it's fine for me.

I assume back then they tried to drag it out as long as possible. Today it seems to be more important to avoid huge drops in quality. Dvds and streams can be distributed more easily without complaints how bad the series ended resulting in fewer seasons.
But it's hard/impossible to compare TV business over decades.

For me VP's exit is the full stop in Dallas.

 

[DallasFanForever]

I’ve always been a little conflicted on this one. I watched up until the end even though I knew it wasn’t close to the glory years anymore.

Do I regret watching those last 4 seasons? No, I really don’t. I still loved the show no matter how far removed it was from its best seasons. My family started me watching when I was about 9 and I owed it to them to keep watching.

But looking back on it now, I feel that Swan Song would’ve been the perfect ending. I think it’s the best episode in the history of the show and if it ends there I’m fine with it. I don’t feel it was ever the same after that.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

This thread is a good, logical idea. I once started a thread addressing the gargantuan "mess" DALLAS was as a series -- here was the most successful drama series literally in global TV history, and a soap which critics, albeit reluctantly, acknowledged during the early-'80s, was pointedly well-done.

For several years after 'Who Shot JR?' DALLAS had become a legend in its own time.

All that changed once Donna Reed stepped off that plane, Bobby was revived by way of a dream which wasn't even his!, Pam was blown to smithereens and all-but-ignored by the Ewings, and the show slipped into wink-at-the-camera campishness in its closing seasons thanks to Howard Lakin which Katzman seemed to allow, committing one new gaffe per year. The program ends with yet another dream, a THIS IS YOUR LIFE satire actually missing Donna Reed, the 1990s reunion movies seemed totally uninspired at best, and the TNT nuDALLAS reboot of 2012/2014 missed its potential by demoting the lead characters and bringing in too many extraneous roles and silly plots wrapped up goofily.

How could our DALLAS, this show of shows, tumble in such a pathetic -- and protracted -- fashion??

Well, it happens. Sure, most long-running series tend to lose steam as they age, but DALLAS takes that cake and eats it all ravenously. With no toilets to flush as the 30th anniversary guests at Southfork escape their seating arrangements and paw at the cast in 2008. It all fits.

What ... a ... mess.

How do I find closure? In a manner about as nice and neat as if it had occurred in Dealey Plaza just down Elm Street from the Ewing Building. You just don't, and today that almost seems the point.

It's one of the reasons the Wes Parmalee plotline and its video-esque blurry season makes so much sense to me, especially in retrospect. The whole show became a kind of nightmare midway through, and you were never really sure of who was doing the dreaming. But it's like a strange public execution which never ends, and we're never really told the truth about, even though we know what probably happened.

DALLAS, and Dallas, is haunted. It's just haunted. And everything the series does, both brilliant and bitterly banal, is just metaphoric for everything else. Nothing makes sense, and yet somehow it retroactively does: life is utterly messy, and so is the Ewing Saga. So it's like that.

I usually stop watching after Pam blows up, although that next year, though flawed and containing too much Jack Scalia, is the last time DALLAS feels even remotely like DALLAS. And I only catch the later years on rare occasion to reminisce, and it makes me a wee bit sad.

I say Jeremy Wendell spiked the Southfork aquifer in 1984. And that got the hallucinative ball rolling.



"And just who are you, cowboy...?"

 

[Crimson]

For me, it's easy. It ended right here. I've moved everything after in my head to being classified as apocryphal.



Other than Donna Reed as not-Miss Ellie, everything up to this had been on point.

 

[Jabari Lamar]

I still consider J.R. Returns to be the real ending to the original Dallas.

 

[lbf522]

Yes JR Returns was a good ending. They should have come up with a better ending. The show had lost its luster and should have ended similar to how Falcon Crest ended.

 

[Rove]

This is a difficult one. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and if I had the gumption to walk into that clairvoyants tent at my local fair back in 1984/85 and ask what was in store for my favourite series and heard her reply I would have slapped her silly, requested a refund and said, "That would never happen."

But it did.

I could easily state Swan Song as the punctuation point when Dallas ended for me but that would be disrespectful to Barbara Bel Geddes, here's looking at you @Barbara Fan . If only she was there leading up to that death bed scene and IF Dallas had finished right there it would have been beautiful.

Instead.

We had to tolerate the debacle that was the Miss Ellie recast. That was the first blow. The second punch in the gut was bringing back Bobby and erasing the whole season. The third low blow was the debacle surrounding Pam's disappearance. Talk about a monumental stuff up. And so Dallas limped to its inevitable death with characters we had no interest in. Reunion movies created for the sake of creation and then if we hadn't suffered enough by a thousand cuts...TNT Dallas.

Perhaps Dallas should have ended here...

​

 

[Grangehill1]

It should have ended with Blast From The Past.
Up to the point we’d had the Miss Ellie recast shambles and then half of season 9 straying perilously close to Dynasty territory. BUT… we also had Ray and Donna and their journey to become parents, we had Cliff finding out he actually loved Jamie , we had JR dumping Mandy and going back to Sue Ellen. The Barnes Ewing feud seemed over and JR finally got Ewing Oil all to himself. And to top it all really really good incidental music.

imagine being a viewer in 1986 and hearing that Dallas was going to end. Everything about Blast from the Past has a sense of finality about it. And then you have Jamie being blown up, then Sue Ellen and then suddenly Bobby reappears. Imagine being a viewer and not knowing Bobby was coming back but that was the least scene we ever had of Dallas. I think it would have been a terrific end point

 

[Sarah]

I’m not a fan of Pam and have never understood the fuss to be honest . For me Dallas ended in my heart from the moment JR and Sue Ellen parted, that whole mess with Vanessa was a total insult so I didn’t really get any form of closure until JR Returns if I’m totally honest when I know for a fact Larry told the writers to ‘make things right between JR and Sue Ellen’. Just a shame it took till then. In my opinion some of that writing regarding Seasons 10-14 should never have happened.

 

[Jabari Lamar]

I’m not a fan of Pam and have never understood the fuss to be honest .

I liked the character and Victoria Principle well enough, but I'm not with the fans who think that she was so essential the series, that they should have ended it when she left, or fought harder to keep her on, or that she was needed for the TNT revival. Yeah, the series may have begun with the Bobby/Pam relationship being the focus but the J.R./Bobby rivalry became more important and was the thing that drew me into the show.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

For me, it's easy. It ended right here. I've moved everything after in my head to being classified as apocryphal.

View attachment 29684

Other than Donna Reed as not-Miss Ellie, everything up to this had been on point.

Of course, you're right. But I'd've hated to have missed B.D. Parmalee Calhoun -- the show's identity had already been compromised, so the arrival of Jock's Ghost was somehow in keepi0ng with the changes.

 

[DallasFanForever]

Imagine being a viewer and not knowing Bobby was coming back but that was the least scene we ever had of Dallas. I think it would have been a terrific end point

We’d be sitting here 35 years later debating how he got there and was it really him or someone else and to tell you the truth I kind of like that idea.

Imagine the debates we’d be having about the final episode and all the what ifs?

 

[Sarah]

I liked the character and Victoria Principle well enough, but I'm not with the fans who think that she was so essential the series, that they should have ended it when she left, or fought harder to keep her on, or that she was needed for the TNT revival. Yeah, the series may have begun with the Bobby/Pam relationship being the focus but the J.R./Bobby rivalry became more important and was the thing that drew me into the show.

Agreed. In the beginning yes, but by mid to late seasons no. JR and Sue Ellen became the dominant couple, like it or not and on a personal note I’ve never been a fan of La Principales attitude to either the show or her co stars or indeed that amongst some she appears to be entirely pure and one must always genuflect to her icon before making any decisions regarding acting jobs or otherwise! The show far from ended with her departure.

 

[Crimson]

Of course, you're right. But I'd've hated to have missed B.D. Parmalee Calhoun

There's no doubt there are still some good storylines after that point; I have fond memories of Sue Ellen's plot in the early part of the Dream Season, among others. But to me, Swan Song is the dividing line. Up to then, the good far outweighed the bad; after, the bad far outweighed the good.

If somehow all of the remaining compelling, reasonably non-redundant storylines could have been condensed, I think DALLAS had enough life for two more good seasons. But stretched out over six more years, diluted by increasingly off brand follies ... I'd rather mentally toss it all out.

 

[Sarah]

I’ve never been able to really say I wanted it to end out of sheer loyalty but instead of introducing that hideous Kim Cryder and her strippogram, I would have chosen to end the show with Sue Ellen and JR triumphantly taking Ewing Oil back. If Pam comes back so be it and the the rest of the Ewings return.

But I will never ever accept Cally James Michelle and the utter excuses for family members that followed, with the one exception being April.

 

[pete lashmar]

This is a tough one.

I've stopped at different times on various DVD re-watches, and sometimes skipped the dream season so the story continues from Bobby dying to Bobby in the shower.

Sometimes I stop after Pam's crash, sometimes at the end of the penultimate season - VERY RARELY do I watch the final season because it's an insult to the viewer and offers absolutely nothing but dreary writing and yawning plots with HORRIBLE characters.

So, for me I would have to say the penultimate season is my final season. It wasn't the best, but still had sparks, maybe...possibly S12 though as it had a few more sparks but also had one of my least favorite storylines = Sue Ellen's film - no A listers in the film, revealed the set's 4th wall for the show and had one of the poorest pay offs of any plot in the show's history....and also it had Linda Gray leaving, which was the last straw for me.

So, on reflection - S12 (DVD) for me is where Dallas ends.....I think.

 

[Karin]

The dream...the way Pam was written out..inconsistencies in the two reunion movies...and then the mess that was TNT Dallas, and the two reunion movies being erased with that. arrgghh. It's frustrating that it couldn't have just had a nice, neat closing. Such a great show. Where does it end for you? When Bobby came back? When Pam vanished? The reunion movies, or TNT Dallas.

Well I hated the way the original Dallas ended. But I would have been satisfied with JR Returns (1996) as the end if the Julia character had been Pam, which I suspect she was in the first draft of the script.

Then as for Dallas TNT. The show certainly didn't end the way I wanted it to and it bugged me. So after a few years I decided to write a fanfic to get closure. I've posted it here on the board:

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

It is a completed story, so if you are dissatisfied with the way Dallas TNT ended and want closure you are welcome to read it.

 

[Rove]

I’m not a fan of Pam and have never understood the fuss to be honest .

This surprises me Sarah because most would agree the character of Pam was pivotal to the story of Dallas. She sat between the houses of Ewing and Barnes. She loved Bobby but was also protective of Cliff. This constant conflict drove the series. It's what brought Digger back and eventually Rebecca and Katherine. In fact take away the character of Pam and I don't think Sue Ellen would have had prominence. Up until Pam's arrival, Sue Ellen was simply a rich man's wife pouring him drinks while driving Miss Ellie to Dallas for shopping or charity events.

It could also be argued Bobby and Pam's shenanigans in the boudoir is what kickstarted the intense relationship between JR and Sue Ellen. She desperately wanted a child. JR was having none of it...despite Jock's insistence.