Dallas Season 7

[Jock Ewing Fan]

Alexis Smith was the best actor/actress that season.
Would liked for her to have stayed as a recurring character

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Pam knows Mark Graison's gonna die
Pam knows Mark's gonna die...

The '83/'84 year for the nighttime soaps seemed to be their peak; they were at their most stately and secure somehow.

I've been having DALLAS Season 7 episodes popping up on my FB feed all day. It's interesting how well it all holds together: by 1983, the show had marinated (??) into a level of maturity -- it's so calm, so quietly confident (even the silences resonate), the narrative so well-structured, and then there's May's camerawork work... it all so Biblical in its feel. And still Number One even four years after 'Who Shot J.R.?'.

Who could have imagined what was right around the corner?

Alexis Smith was the best actor/actress that season.
Would liked for her to have stayed as a recurring character

At the very least, Jessica's homicidal return five years later should have been played absolutely straight instead of for laughs -- but when DALLAS could no longer take even a murder spree seriously, how were we supposed to care about the oil deals and the requisite jealousy triangles?

 

[Laurie Marr]

And in that screenshot there’s ample evidence of the wonders wrought by Bradford May. There are shadows. They fall naturally as geometry and light source would suggest. Even here the SF lounge looks like a real house rather than a stage set.
Season 7 is my favourite season. It’s well nigh perfect.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

And in that screenshot there’s ample evidence of the wonders wrought by Bradford May. There are shadows. They fall naturally as geometry and light source would suggest. Even here the SF lounge looks like a real house rather than a stage set.

And Katzman hated it. Preferring the usual flatlighting.

 

[Laurie Marr]

H

And Katzman hated it. Preferring the usual flatlighting.

He did and he fired May a few episodes before the end of the Season.

Even a cursory glance at May’s episodes reveals a world that looked like one the viewer could step straight into. In some of those scenes in the Oil Baron’s Club , for example, the lighting is almost penumbral. This befits a location where so many shady plotting took place. There were other set pieces put together by May that made the Ewing clan look like they had wandered into the nefarious atmospheres of a grand master’s painting.

Alas, by season’s end it’s back to the garish oversaturated look that robs the locations of so much drama even before a line of dialogue has been uttered. JR’s confrontation with Sue Ellen and Peter at the erstwhile moody Oil Baron’s now leaves the viewer with nothing very much to see apart from floodlit blocking.

Katzman was a philistine. He wilfully deprived Dallas of the distinction of being a genuinely stylish visual popular drama rather than a succession of pancaked talking heads.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

H

He did and he fired May a few episodes before the end of the Season.

Even a cursory glance at May’s episodes reveals a world that looked like one the viewer could step straight into. In some of those scenes in the Oil Baron’s Club , for example, the lighting is almost penumbral. This befits a location where so many shady plotting took place. There were other set pieces put together by May that made the Ewing clan look like they had wandered into the nefarious atmospheres of a grand master’s painting.

Alas, by season’s end it’s back to the garish oversaturated look that robs the locations of so much drama even before a line of dialogue has been uttered. JR’s confrontation with Sue Ellen and Peter at the erstwhile moody Oil Baron’s now leaves the viewer with nothing very much to see apart from floodlit blocking.

Katzman was a philistine. He wilfully deprived Dallas of the distinction of being a genuinely stylish visual popular drama rather than a succession of pancaked talking heads.

Well said. Katzman didn't like the cinematic look May brought the show (although the audience did) because Uncle Lenny saw DALLAS as "a cartoon." Even the viewer who understood the show was essentially a satire, really didn't want it to be a cartoon. So the maturing the series had attained by Season 7 was quickly undone -- followed by the Mis-Ellie debacle and The Dream scenario.

Ugh. I guess DALLAS becoming too good made some people nervous.

 

[Bobby Southworth]

For me, season 7 was probably the last great season of Dallas. I will say, for whatever reason, it's the season where the show really begins to start feeling soap like to me, but it's not as if Dallas didn't have soap elements before.. I'm also not saying there's anything wrong with a soap, although I've never really been able, or really wanted to get into the daytime variety . There was just something that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's an entertaining season, and as I said, it might be the last truly solid season of Dallas. I never really thought of this until recently because I do also really enjoy season 10, but so much damage had been done by then, and at times, certain characters seemed more over the top than ever. I don't hate the remainder of the seasons, as a lot here seem to, but yeah.. season 7 might have been about the peak, and Bradford May did make it look lovely...Dallas was somewhat cinematic in the beginning, at least in certain tones, and the music. It's too bad that when Bradford May brought this element back(visually, at least) or I guess really introduced it, Katzman didn't seem to be a fan.

I could easily look this up, and just might, but was someone different handling the cinematography for season 9 as well? I have memories of watching that season on DVD, and when my ex would occasionally catch a scene or two, I remember she took note of some of the filming, thinking it looked as though they were trying harder with some of the detail.

 

[Seaviewer]

Katzman didn't like the cinematic look

Can't help but wonder how Dallas would have progressed if David Jacobs has been in control of it. Still, I would never wish him away from running Knots Landing instead.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I could easily look this up, and just might, but was someone different handling the cinematography for season 9 as well? I have memories of watching that season on DVD, and when my ex would occasionally catch a scene or two, I remember she took note of some of the filming, thinking it looked as though they were trying harder with some of the detail.

Season 9 had different producers (ones who had previously worked on KNOTS) and they permitted a degree of artistic experimentation from the directors that Katzman did not. Hence, the different look that year (even though the cinematographer was the same).

While I can understand why a producer might want to prevent their series from becoming self-consciously artsy-fartsy, I'm afraid Katzman erred too far in that direction.

Can't help but wonder how Dallas would have progressed if David Jacobs has been in control of it. Still, I would never wish him away from running Knots Landing instead.

Yes, Jacobs was more objective than Katzman. But, at least for DALLAS, David Paulsen was the brilliant constructionist, and there are many things Katzman did in the last-half of DALLAS that Paulsen would never have permitted were Paulsen running the show himself. There is a reason Paulsen wanted to leave in 1988 after Season 11 (even before he got the offer to take over dying DYNASTY's ninth season).

Katzman always gets credit for turning DALLAS into a massive hit, overseeing the rise of the first half of the series. But mid-way through its run, Katzman got caught up in power struggles (which he mostly won) and became a destructive presence creatively during its last half: he became too rigid. too entrenched in his way of doing things, ran dry of ideas (which some of the later writers conceded), constructed the show as a kind of autobiographic roman a clef, and allowed DALLAS to get too silly as it drew to a close.

But, again, Katzman permitted the disastrous recasting of the matriarch (which we, even then, saw as a bell towing in the distance for DALLAS -- as indeed it was), and he then insisted on using The Dream explanation to erase a year. And then he let Paulen get away (although it sounds like Lenny tried to get him back for Season 13 and 14). So just what could we have expected when Katzman was allowing this kind of self-destructive de-railing of his own show as early as 1984?

What is the Greek myth of the bird that warbles its beautiful song just before expiring? Don't they call that s Swan Song??

Which is why I've always thought of Season 10 as a crazily brilliant, ghostly seance for DALLAS, in all its blurry (up until recently) glory -- Bobby is suddenly alive again, and so perhaps is "Jock". And somehow it's all over from there.

So it seemed utterly appropriate that J.R. committed "suicide" at the end of the series in 1991. Because the show itself had already done the same. In an act of protracted Mishima-esque hari-kari.

Funny, but a friend of mine asked midway through DALLAS' run if I thought J.R. would ever commit suicide. I responded that I though Larry Hagman could under certain circumstances, but not J.R.

Ha! What did I know??

And then even that was undone.