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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 443109" data-attributes="member: 57984">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. 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??<img src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RL0pv0z_OaY/maxresdefault.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 769px" />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.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?