it wasn't so much that they were afraid to have her be single for awhile but they did it as you know for Drama. no one can seem to be happy in soaps for some reason, i think when it comes to drama there's a lot of times where they really can get carried away. course it also depends on how it's written as well too. but the same thing can he said on comedy's as well if you look at the show Friends they had Ross & Rachel together only a year and broke them up and they never got back together for some reason or other but to cause drama until the series finale. funny how years later i read they regretted how they handled that lol.
I agree in that I don't think they were afraid to have Pam be single for awhile, I think that it was their vision for Pam that she was a woman who could not stand to live by herself - she needed a man to be feel secure and happy. Thee's a point of view that it made her weak - that she should have been secure in herself to not need to always be with a man. As I've stated before, weaknesses in characters is what creates vulnerabilities and allows for dramatic stories to be told. It would be a terrible mistake to make all your characters so strong that they're invulnerable. Then they can't be hurt. That's gonna make it damn hard to manufacture drama. How does the audience empathize with people who have no vulnerabilities and therefore can't be hurt or feel pain or any of the things that as human beings we can empathize with?
I do think it was tasteless to have Pam get involved so quickly after her abandonment of Bobby. She'd just left the love of her life! She should have been grief-stricken and not have even been able to think about dating - just like Bobby was! Look at how long he took to start dating after Pam left him in season six. That creates a sympathetic character who comes across as having not just human feelings we can empathize with but it also gave his character decency!
To make things worse, they made Pam out to be a complete hypocrite. She left Bobby because she "didn't have the stomach" to be in a marriage with a highly driven, highly competitive, type A personality man who wanted to gain control of Ewing Oil by accepting the opportunity Jock gave him to compete with JR to prove which one of them was the son best fit to run Ewing Oil. She begged Bobby to give up the contest for Ewing Oil so they could live "a nice, ordinary life." That was what she said she wanted. So, did Pam go looking for a man who could provide Pam with an ordinary life? No! She went straight to another high driven, highly competitive man who ran a huge oil company!
Pam clearly wanted a life that was anything but "ordinary." She said money didn't matter much to her, but her actions proved otherwise when she immediately starts dating a man who was a billionaire, or close to it. That made Pam look like such a hypocrite! They wrecked her character by having her so unwilling to make any sacrifices for Bobby when he had something that truly mattered to him and she did it after he'd spent the last several years doing anything and everything to help Pam when she was trying to either have or adopt a baby. That wasn't something Bobby had to have but he realized having a baby was incredibly important to Pam, so he helped her get a child.
Bobby went as far as to be willing to steal his own brother's baby and give it to Pam! Isn't it interesting that Pam didn't have any ethical problem with Bobby over that, but when Bobby blackmailed Hicks, she just about lost her mind. Apparently Bobby acting unethically and even illegally was just fine with Pam as long is was done for the purpose of providing Pam with something she wanted. When Bobby did something far less bad, to try to obtain something he wanted for his happiness, Pam couldn't stand it. That's how you take one of your most sympathetic character, possibly your most beloved character and just wreck that character.
Finally, I completely disagree with the concept that nobody in a drama (or soap, if you prefer), can be happy and still have the show be good. A good drama explores different aspects of life - not just people being in terrible situations. Having the characters have to be unhappy is so limiting! Also, how much gloom and doom does an audience want to see? Most people get tired of seeing constant negativity. When they see a character they like having attained happiness, they're happy for that character; it makes them feel good! I don't think the idea of having constant unhappiness is any better than having constant happiness. There has to be contrast, and it becomes ever so much more interesting when a show explores both the good and bad in life instead of focusing on just one of the two.
