connyben
Telly Talk Newbie
I watched until the end, but I must admit the last two seasons were hard to watch. I actually liked season 12 even though the storylines (J.R in Haleyville, etc) were a bit silly, it was still an enjoyable show at times. When Barbara Bel Geddes left it was the biggest disappointment for me, the family feel of the show got lost.
Herofan
Telly Talk Active Member
I’m currently on the Haleyville season. As I mentioned in another thread, I think it’s rather interesting at times, but it’s just not the old Dallas. So, you’re saying the last two seasons get even worse? Do the characters just totally lose their way?
Luke_Krebbs_Ewing
Telly Talk Champion
Swami
Telly Talk Supreme
Barbara Fan
Admin
as someone waho watched and loved Dallas from the very beginning in 1978, I have to say the final season was watching it out of loyalty only as it bore no resemblance to the show I adored
It was Dallas in name only, no heart, no soul and proof that patrick and larry werent Dallas, it was so much more than that and it was the ensemble cast who made Dallas a success, and it was a mistake to get shot of the core cast.
the rot set in with Victoria leaving, by far the biggest loss to the show - then Linda, Susan, Steve, barbara and bringing in talentless, insipid, Z listers to replace them! April, james, Michelle, Cally et al!
TNT- Dont ever consider it Dallas in any way, shape or form, like final season of original dallas - It was Dallas in name only and I did give up watching it, I couldnt bear it.
It was Dallas in name only, no heart, no soul and proof that patrick and larry werent Dallas, it was so much more than that and it was the ensemble cast who made Dallas a success, and it was a mistake to get shot of the core cast.
the rot set in with Victoria leaving, by far the biggest loss to the show - then Linda, Susan, Steve, barbara and bringing in talentless, insipid, Z listers to replace them! April, james, Michelle, Cally et al!
TNT- Dont ever consider it Dallas in any way, shape or form, like final season of original dallas - It was Dallas in name only and I did give up watching it, I couldnt bear it.
Jimmy Todd
Telly Talk Mega Star
I thought the beginning of the dream season was very good. It crashed when Pam left Ewing Oil and the focus was on Angelica and her hat pins. They might as well have had Beatrice Lillie in the role. Now there's a lady who knows how to wield a hat pin!
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tommie
Telly Talk Hero
It turns into the JR & Bobby show & not in a good way, that's all I'm gonna say.
I wouldn't even say it turned into a JR & Bobby show - it turned into a Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy hour. There's a difference.
Snarky Oracle!
Telly Talk Supreme
As I said above, I watched until the end. I also watched the two reunion movies in the '90s, and the TNT nuDALLAS of 2012-2014.
Although I wish most of what happened post-Bobby's shooting never happened... I was convinced back then, during the best two year period the series ever had (1982 to 1984) when DALLAS felt almost biblical, that DALLAS -- of all shows -- couldn't and wouldn't deteriorate the way it actually did.
In fact, DALLAS became almost the ultimate example of TV series deterioration, unfortunately.
But once a Lorimar executive decided in 1984 that Miss Ellie's faces were interchangeable, the Emmy winning-matriarch of the biggest drama series in global television history, then nothing was ever the same, nor could it be. It told us a virus existed somewhere behind the camera. It cast a depressive pall over the otherwise competent 1984-1985 season even before Duffy had made the decision to kill off Bobby and leave the series, as if something great had just been ruined, permanently and unnecessarily.
And that's where the show ended, at least its clarity and momentum: the arrival of a new matriarch which could not work.
From that point on, nothing was ever quite right again on DALLAS, and the fiasco just led to all the subsequent fiascos: the dream explanation, Pam's accident and her retroactive ignoring by the family, the campy wink-at-the-camera tone of the closing seasons, the forced and contrived plots for the reunion movies, the 2012 continuation series which pushed the Ewings aside so the maid's family and the new wife's ex's family could dominate.
Susan Howard once referred to it as "abuse of the audience." And after you kidnap Mama and change her face, and expect the audience to accept it (when you should have known to begin with that they couldn't) no further glaring error is unthinkable or impossible. As a result, abject absurdities became an annual event.
So the year between Bobby's shooting and his death became the series' metaphoric death, a Lance Rubin dirge that accompanies a funeral procession leading up to the burial. The muddled-but-fashionable dream season became, indeed, just a stagnant dream, one that tapped into the pointless, soapy zeitgeist of the mid-'80s. And then the season of Wes Parmalee became a blurry, majestically ghostly expression of DALLAS' ambivalent, mythological history: What's Real and Who's Who at the Oil Baron's Ball or anywhere else...
It's a banshee manifestation, the 1986-87 year. A séance at Southfork.
And it's the last period I can sit through. Everything after that feels like rolling a corpse down a street with a stick.
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pete lashmar
Telly Talk Addict
As I said above, I watched until the end. I also watched the two reunion movies in the '90s, and the TNT nuDALLAS of 2012-2014.
Although I wish most of what happened post-Bobby's shooting never happened... I was convinced back then, during the best two year period the series ever had (1982 to 1984) when DALLAS felt almost biblical, that DALLAS -- of all shows -- couldn't and wouldn't deteriorate the way it actually did.
In fact, DALLAS became almost the ultimate example of TV series deterioration, unfortunately.
But once a Lorimar executive decided in 1984 that Miss Ellie's faces were interchangeable, the Emmy winning-matriarch of the biggest drama series in global television history, then nothing was ever the same, nor could it be. It told us a virus existed somewhere behind the camera. It cast a depressive pall over the otherwise competent 1984-1985 season even before Duffy had made the decision to kill off Bobby and leave the series, as if something great had just been ruined, permanently and unnecessarily.
And that's where the show ended, at least its clarity and momentum: the arrival of a new matriarch which could not work.
From that point on, nothing was ever quite right again on DALLAS, and the fiasco just led to all the subsequent fiascos: the dream explanation, Pam's accident and her retroactive ignoring by the family, the campy wink-at-the-camera tone of the closing seasons, the forced and contrived plots for the reunion movies, the 2012 continuation series which pushed the Ewings aside so the maid's family and the new wife's ex's family could dominate.
Susan Howard once referred to it as "abuse of the audience." And after you kidnap Mama and change her face, and expect the audience to accept it (when you should have known to begin with that they couldn't) no further glaring error is unthinkable or impossible. As a result, abject absurdities became an annual event.
So the year between Bobby's shooting and his death became the series' metaphoric death. The muddled-but-fashionable dream season became, indeed, just a dream, one that tapped into the pointless, soapy zeitgeist of the mid-'80s. And then the season of Wes Parmalee became a blurry, majestically ghostly expression of DALLAS' ambivalent, mythological history: What's Real and Who's Who at the Oil Baron's Ball or anywhere else...
It's a banshee manifestation, the 1986-87 year. A séance at Southfork.
And it's the last period I can sit through. Everything after that feels like rolling a corpse down a street with a stick.
That pretty much sums up exactly how I felt and how I still feel and Susan's quote is absolutely correct in my opinion.
Luke_Krebbs_Ewing
Telly Talk Champion
My memory of the TNT Dallas got wiped by the Time Lords!
So I honestly don't know why I bought season three of it!
David to Liberator. Teleport please!!
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Herofan
Telly Talk Active Member
I thought Clayton’s amnesia storyline was a bit underused. It just seemed like something they threw in to fill space, and then all at once, he’s back to normal. Maybe it makes a difference when one can watch back to back episodes instead of having to wait a week made it seem more real and important.
No but then again I was late to watching Dallas. I only watched the final four seasons of the original broadcast. Still I loved it. Even with those seasons Dallas was my favorite show. It was only later when I watched it in reruns that I realized that the beginning was of course better.
Sarah
Moderator Emerita
It is true love then @Karin Schill - one of the first characters you met was James and you still loved the show.
True love. :love5:
True love. :love5:
tommie
Telly Talk Hero
No but then again I was late to watching Dallas. I only watched the final four seasons of the original broadcast. Still I loved it. Even with those seasons Dallas was my favorite show. It was only later when I watched it in reruns that I realized that the beginning was of course better.
This was actually the same for me - I was born when a popular book title hit, so I only really remember the last few seasons originally.
In hindsight, they're crap. But I can still feel some weird fondness to those last crappy seasons.
stevew
Telly Talk Star
While I kept watching here and there I agree 100%. I remember being up set with casting Donna Reed - just wishing they’d let Miss Ellie be off traveling the world. But by the time of the dream I felt betrayed. It was the only show I just couldn’t miss up until then. I saw Knots Landing when I could - school night and Falcon Crest when I could and watched Dynasty with my grandmother here and there but Dallas was every Friday come hell or high water until that point. I did actually think the finally was fitting. The movies were so so, more for old times shake then very good. The continuation was frustrating because it had so much potential it didn’t live up to - like an 80’s Rolls Royce, looked good but it was really crap.