Should Miss Ellie have gone crazy near the end of DALLAS?

[Spooky Owl!]

After all those years of denial...?

I mean, nuDALLAS said she did.

 

[Bobby Southworth]

After all those years of denial...?

I mean, nuDALLAS said she did.

I mean..I could certainly see why she would have..It might have been interesting to have her start having some psychiatric issues because of everything that happened over the years, but I wouldn't have wanted to see it get too over the top. Of course, here I am, taking all the fun out of the story-line already. What I'm saying is, it would have been realistic, to a point, but I don't know that the Ellie that we saw in the early years ever would have had mental health problems. Of course, a lot did transpire over time, but still.

Did they really paint it that she went crazy in TNT Dallas? I'm not doubting you, I just don't remember exactly the circumstances. I'm sure once you say whatever story-line it was brought to light in, it will probably click. I'm thinking they used this as some kind of plot device to explain something business wise, but at the moment, I am kind of blanking.

 

[Monzo]

The only way I can picture Miss Ellie acting crazy is if she had developed dementia and done wild things as a result—perhaps driving a car and causing an accident, riding a horse to death, or setting fire to a barn.

At the start of season 13, Miss Ellie could have noticed early signs of dementia and—in typical Ellie fashion—kept it to herself. It could have made for a poignant storyline spanning seasons 13 and 14; as her condition worsened, she might have mistaken James for JR. Then, for the series finale, everyone could have gathered at Southfork to say goodbye as her moments of clarity became increasingly rare. If Barbara Bel Geddes hadn't been part of season 14, Miss Ellie could have tumbled down the Southfork staircase in the season 13 finale and died. That certainly would have given Barbara Bel Geddes some fantastic material to work with.

 

[Rove]

The only way I can picture Miss Ellie acting crazy is if she had developed dementia

I don't think dementia or Alzheimer's was talked about then as it is today but that would have played well with Barbara Bel Geddes acting chops and in a strange way would have been a great book-end to Jock's first wife Amanda...especially if she confused Bobby as Jock.

 

[The Eyes of Laurie Marr]

The early signs would have been poorly prepared chilli at the Ewing bbq - resulting in everyone doing an unfortunate version of the Texas Two Step.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

Should Miss Ellie have killed Lady Jessica at the end of Jessica's murder spree during Season 13?

 

[Sea - Boo! - Er]

Did they really paint it that she went crazy in TNT Dallas? I'm not doubting you, I just don't remember exactly the circumstances. I'm sure once you say whatever story-line it was brought to light in, it will probably click. I'm thinking they used this as some kind of plot device to explain something business wise, but at the moment, I am kind of blanking.

They didn't say she went crazy as such. I think it was just a typically poorly thought out reference to the time that Clayton was keeping her under wraps after Bobby was shot.
On the broader question, some kind of age-related mental breakdown could have been a juicy plotline for Bel Geddes - better than the endless overseas vacation they sent her on.

 

[Guzzler’s Frightening Hair]

I think she really did kind of go crazy after being bonked over the head and thrown in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car by Jessie. A delayed reaction to the traumatic brain injury left poor Ellie in a state not unlike Jock’s fever down in South America.

For weeks as she recuperated in an exclusive rehab center in the Caribbean and/or next to Lake Takapa on her “honeymoon”, Ellie drifted in and out of consciousness, ranting and raving compulsively about her entire life while awake. As this happened, the attending nurse couldn’t help but accumulate enough knowledge to pass as Miss Ellie herself.

Clayton, who’d been a huge fan of public domain Christmas movies for decades, and also secretly harbored an intense hatred of sack dresses and drawn-out vowels, seized the opportunity to return to Southfork with his ‘new wife’… who was not Miss Ellie at all, but instead was longtime rehab nurse, onetime beauty queen, and secret aspiring social climber Donna Parmalee.

The Ewings were too baffled by the recent sudden appearance of cousin Jamie and the addition of Jason to the family backstory to notice that Miss Ellie had changed. We’d already seen hints of their congenital occasional face blindness when they accepted the presence of an obviously different Jenna the previous year.

Ellie’s longtime friends like Mavis Anderson and Linda Bradley just figured the “honeymoon” was a cover story for major plastic surgery and a style makeover.

The real Ellie stayed in the rehab center for months, gradually regaining some semblance of normalcy. When she sensed that Bobby had briefly died (she’d developed some sort of clairvoyance along the way), she rushed back to Southfork, blasted the fake Ellie with the hall closet shotgun and stuffed her in the trunk of Jock’s car, which she’d secretly stashed in a hidden underground barn out near Two Stick Pasture on Section 39 a few years prior.

Careful viewers could sense that Ellie was still a bit nuts at this point as she started doing things like accepting Wes Parmalee as Jock and suddenly driving a Volkswagen convertible. It’s no wonder she eventually left Southfork and ended up in a sanitarium in faraway Europe.