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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kenny Coyote" data-source="post: 219909" data-attributes="member: 102">Thanks Toni, for the very nicely written reply. We disagree on some things, but as you said, you “kindly disagree”, which I appreciate. It’s always fun to see people’s different perspectives on Dallas and you do a good job of explaining how you see things regarding this.It may be that most shows are worn out after their first three or for seasons, but Dallas is not typical of most shows. Losing 10 million viewers in two years would have killed most shows! Dallas still stayed in the #1 or #2 spot through season eight, and in my opinion, the show was not worn out at all by season four. I think season six, with the contest for Ewing Oil, was their best season. Considering how many forum members have said the contest for Ewing Oil was their favorite storyline, it surprised me to find out they actually lost 2.7 points in season six from their previous season, roughly 4 million viewers in what many consider their best season. If you consider seasons 5 and 6 to be some of the great seasons of Dallas, and seasons 6 maybe even being their peak, when I realized that they were losing viewers at that time, it was something I found intriguing. That was such an unusual situation that I started this thread so people could discuss it. How do you lose 10 million viewers when your show is still reaching its peak? It’s my idea that since the stories were so good at that time, that the most likely reason people tuned out is because they were so disappointed that their favorite couples broke up, whether their favorite couple was JR and Sue Ellen, or Bobby and Pam. It’s worth noting that their viewership increased every single year that they featured them as married couples, and the loss of viewers started with the season five, in which JR and Sue Ellen divorced.It would be fun to be able to ask some of those 10 million people why they stopped watching Dallas during seasons five and six, but those people aren't here. This forum is made up almost entirely of people who kept watching Dallas no matter what happened.  We’re the die-hard fans who loved the show much that we felt compelled to watch even as the quality of the show dropped off sharply in the last few years. Since we don't have any of the 10 million who stopped watching in seasons five and six here to ask them about it, we can only speculate as to what heir reasons were. I agree with you that Bobby and Pam weren’t entirely stable as a couple and yes, Pam temporarily leaving after Julie Grey's death is a good example. I think they had to be that way to make the story exciting. I expected their marriage to certainly be tested because of the feud the two families had going, but I thought they would be the couple that would always endure any test. I considered them a couple who were so intensely loyal to each other that neither of them would ever leave the other.You mentioned we have the benefit of hindsight, and that’s a good point. Considering what we now know what happened to their audience in that two year period, I believe that the divorces were detrimental to the show. I think it would have probably turned out better if they had kept those two couples together, or at least kept Bobby and Pam together, and allowed the audience to see them go through the process of working through their problems instead of divorcing. It’s my belief that a show can do pretty much anything it wants to make a story exciting as long as they remember to: Keep things believable and don’t break up your most popular couple!By the way, are you saying you preferred seeing Sue Ellen when her marriage was going badly, as opposed to when her marriage was going well?  That’s funny because I feel the opposite way about Sue Ellen. Seeing a couple have a serious argument from time to time is one thing, but with JR and Sue Ellen we saw them antagonistic towards each other for periods of 4 to 6 months at a time in some cases and that’s a lot of  constant negativity. There is only so long I can see the constant fake smiles, Sue Ellen continually saying the opposite of what she means, and the overall nastiness towards each other that we saw between JR and Sue Ellen without it just being too much. Seeing couples in prolonged misery doing their best to ugly to each other is not my idea of a good time. I like to see happy couples!</blockquote>

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