Curse of the Cliffhanger

[Snarky Oracle!]

Katzman was an idiot. It was a very large F**k You but not just to the audience but to the previous production team!!

It's not that black-and-white. He was a very skilled producer and had a great deal to do with DALLAS' success -- but time and power can take a toll on objectivity, and he and the boys decided that doing a lighthearted, slightly campy version of the show in its closing years would work -- when it cried out for the opposite.

Even Duffy said they "lost objectivity about what qualified as a good story" towards the end of the series' run.

It happens. Although some of the details of the deterioration remain hard to fathom.

Personally I think it was a very bad decision to get rid of Philip Capice and let Leonard Katzman have free reign over the show.

And yet DALLAS couldn't have continued on with the Capice/Dunne regime from the dream season.

Both Capice and Katzman lost proper sense of the show (if high-handed Capice ever had it). David Jacobs said both men had "exactly the same approach" to TV production, but couldn't get along.

Paulsen, of course, could have done it for the closing years (but after he did Season 9 of DYNASTY, he said he didn't want to go back to DALLAS -- which makes me think he was asked) and Robert McCullough could probably have done it (but was apparently persona non grata at Lorimar after being fired in 1984 from FALCON CREST, which destroyed that show forever).

So many series, so little time to ruin them.