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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 324199" data-attributes="member: 57984">Just as much-reviled guest character Wes Parmalee simply was the heart of DALLAS, demonstrating and exemplifying all the elements that defined that series, indeed much-reviled guest character Lady Ashley Mitchell, portrayed with dazzling incompetence by Ali Mac Graw, absolutely defines DYNASTY and all that that show is.Wes Parmalee for DALLAS and Lady Ashley Mitchell for DYNASTY represent both series' undiluted zenith.Ben Stivers/Wes Parmalee brought about a much-delayed crescendo to the disappearance of Jock Ewing, a man dead five years whose remains were never located. Once Parmalee appeared on the scene (and Pam woke up, her lengthy nap having been visually far more pristine than was her apparent return to consciousness -- which somehow made sense) the family and the city of Dallas were divided over his identity, their respective conclusions in the matter largely-based on what was useful to themselves... There was enough red herring tossed-out there by the writers, that the viewer could come to his or her own choices about whether Wes was actually a re-animated Jock Ewing or not, and even feel as if those decisions were self-evident... The audience was conflicted, just as were the Ewings, the actors apparently told different things about Wes' identity, his last-minute confession at the Southfork barbecue to Miss Ellie that he was a fraud nevertheless felt somehow inconclusive, and he disappeared into the mist like a myth in a way not-dissimilar to how Jock once evaporated.Ultimately, it mattered not whether Wes was Jock. The impact on the family of the very possibilty, how the Ewing patriarch's memory continued to haunt these denizens of Braddock like a homeless Hamlet, was what it was all about.The family briefly grumbled when Parmalee was gone, certain relatives swore revenge, and then the matter was dropped, never to be mentioned ever again for the program's remaining four years... Immense potential, tremendous brouhaha, and then --- nothing... it's over and gone in a low-resolution video blur like an ambivalent exhale.A dream within a dream wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma and slathered with Miss Ellie's chili.What did it all mean? We were never really sure. But it certainly got our attention and left us wanting more and yet less simultaneously.A monumental mess as big as Texas.  And then there's DYNASTY's Lady Ashley Mitchell... Ashley's high society connections and pretentious references, her "mysterious" backstory, her bumblingly-delicious artificiality, her lack of a storyline despite being there for half a season, her minimalistic dialogue meant to be seductive and insightful and yet not at all, her muted lust for married men and her accepting and/or declining marriage proposals for no discernable reason in relationships no one can possibly believe, her dying graphically yet arbitrarily in a glamorous pile of the living dead. And, of course, she's named after a GWTW character/authoress (a movie the producers covet) which is both blatantly transparent yet so dumb as to achieve paradoxical obliqueness.Lady Ashley Mitchell quite simply is DYNASTY. No other character quite taps into that vibe as purely and as sincerely in her insincerity.Ali Mac Graw's casting as Lady Mitchell is at the absolute vortex of All That Is Dynasty --- she's fabulous but fabulously drab, enigmatically ambitious yet pointlessly unfocused; she has nothing to do but sashay around in oddly-macrame-doily couture wardrobe which is intended to convey an avant-garde breeziness and yet she's too stiff to execute that sashaying and chew caviar at the same time. And she's so very, very affected with every breath and gesture that it's virtually unfathomable.She epitomizes all the series aims for, with exquisite success.Ali Mac Graw said in an interview during the mid-'80s that her fantasy had always been "to dance for the czars." And I thought that said it all.Perhaps Lady Ashley and Wes Parmalee were a romantic couple somewhere in some sudsy universe -- he, with his majestic brimstone, and she, stiltedly dissembling while perpetually attempting to sound coy... It has 'spin-off' written all over it. No one would watch it, of course, but that would almost be the point.<img src="https://cdn1.lockerdome.com/uploads/cca972736e81e66729cd2f11f327ff1d1d40e23c91f63e64ac11139cf13c871c_medium" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 442px" /><img src="https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.b2b91262212bbec0c6bb030a4ad30335?rik=ZBkqIf6%2fvcbIEw&pid=ImgRaw&r=0" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 433px" /><img src="http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/carringtondynasty/images/d/d5/Ashley.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100728215722" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 553px" /></blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?