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Dallas the TV series
Dallas - The Original Series
Closure. How Do You Find It?
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<blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 288704" data-attributes="member: 57984"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>For several years after 'Who Shot JR?' DALLAS had become a legend in its own time.</p><p></p><p>All that changed once Donna Reed stepped off that plane, Bobby was revived by way of a dream <em>which wasn't even <strong>his</strong>!</em>, 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 <em><strong>actually missing</strong></em> 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.</p><p></p><p>How could our DALLAS, this show of shows, tumble in such a pathetic -- and protracted -- fashion??</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><strong>What ... a ... mess</strong>.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>I say Jeremy Wendell spiked the Southfork aquifer in 1984. And that got the hallucinative ball rolling.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><em>"And just who are <strong>you</strong>, cowboy...?"</em></p><p><img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/bd/11/e6/bd11e64153b3009e9abab06bd027cd6a.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Snarky Oracle!, post: 288704, member: 57984"] 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 [I]which wasn't even [B]his[/B]![/I], 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 [I][B]actually missing[/B][/I] 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. [B]What ... a ... mess[/B]. 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. [I]"And just who are [B]you[/B], cowboy...?"[/I] [IMG]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/bd/11/e6/bd11e64153b3009e9abab06bd027cd6a.jpg[/IMG] [/QUOTE]
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Dallas the TV series
Dallas - The Original Series
Closure. How Do You Find It?
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