If they'd wanted to take things in a more serious direction, they could have had JR marry Mandy. Instead they had JR marry Cally, which I guess they thought was funny, but the audience didn't want to see a funny Dallas. I don't know why they thought that's a good idea. The rule of thumb is: "If it's isn't broken, don't try to fix it."
Making Dallas funny was never going to work anyway, no matter how good they'd been at making it funny. People watched Dallas to see a certain type of show. It's like anything else: If you're in a restaurant and you order steak but they serve you fish, it doesn't matter how good the fish is; it's not what you ordered!
That may be why Paulsen wanted to leave in 1988 -- and Larry said in the press that Paulsen didn't have a sense of humor. (Which is untrue).
David Jacobs has said that these shows can have humor and satire underneath, but must be played absolutely straight on the face of it. Katzman, who'd once derided the "camp" of other shows, apparently decided it was time for DALLAS to start winking at the camera, too. Jacobs has also said that the trick to series TV is that:
first you make it a hit, then you make it good -- and Katzman followed that maxim until he just threw up his arms and went full-on self-parody despite a ratings crash which suggested the audience indeed didn't want to see a "funny" DALLAS.
Not that I was as against the pairing of JR and Cally as others are. As a deliberate mismatch, it could have been interesting for a while -- she was certainly different from Sue Ellen. But what potential the story had seemed squandered, as did much from the last two or three years of the show.
Years later, Larry admitted the last couple of seasons "weren't up to par" and Patrick conceded that they "lost objectivity" about what qualified as a good storyline.
And while that candor is appreciated, one wonders why they couldn't see it at the time.
