Dallas Character The complexities of Cliff Barnes.

[pete lashmar]

Out of all the characters in Dallas, Cliff Barnes was probably the most complex and, in my opinion, probably the most important character in the show.

Without Cliff J.R would have no nemesis, without Cliff Pam wouldn't have been torn between two families, without Cliff Sue Ellen may have been long gone - he was the glue of the show, but it's almost impossible to give him a label.

He was the good guy, the bad guy, the foolish guy and many times hugely selfish and inward looking, he cared for his sister but never really listened to her, I felt he was always somewhere else where Pam is concerned.

He was a very greedy and ambitious man, without the knowledge he needed to fulfill his dreams and of course he had the biggest chip on his shoulder...Digger being cheated by Jock.

Cliff could never face up to the truth of that feud, he felt he always had to protect his daddy, even after his death - he was a hugely loyal son, much to his detriment.

He was a great character to watch, and we can't discuss Cliff without talking about Ken - he played the role effortlessly, his performance was unique and an absolute joy to watch, right to the very end of the original run.

When he showed up in TNT Dallas he was a massively changed man, which I couldn't accept. However, if CC had taken time out to explain some backstory as to why he had become so hardened and bitter than I would have been willing to accept that he became this "new" Cliff.

When it came to the Ewings Cliff was like a dog with a bone, he never let things go and even when J.R was getting on with his own deals and schemes Cliff would find a way to antagonize him. In fact when you look at J.R's schemes against him, it was usually Cliff that started it all off....he just didn't know when to stop.

Had TNT followed that to it's logical conclusion maybe the "new" cliff would have been completely understandable.

I also think the writers of the original show did themselves proud with Cliff, they never really waned with him - he was always involved in a great story or plot - they lost their way with J.R but never with Cliff.

 

[Sarah]

Sue Ellen would not have been long gone, that's not true at all ( why would she be?!) Sorry that doesn't make sense - she's JR's wife and their dynamic alone meant she was going nowhere. Nothing to do with Cliff.

But this is a great idea for a thread, especially coming up to Ken's birthday.:danc:

 

[pete lashmar]

Sue Ellen would not have been long gone, that's not true at all ( why would she be?!) Sorry that doesn't make sense - she's JR's wife and their dynamic alone meant she was going nowhere. Nothing to do with Cliff.

But this is a great idea for a thread, especially coming up to Ken's birthday.:danc:

I feel that Sue Ellen's affair with Cliff kept her in Dallas. Without her involvement with him in the early years I think she may have just ran for the hills. At that point she detested J.R with a passion and didn't have the baby. Of course Sue Ellen was an integral part of the show and her dynamic with J.R kept us entertained for years - for me they were the stars of the show, but I still feel that Cliff was the most important character. Of all her affairs I think Cliff meant the most to her - both times - but of course he let himself and her down.

 

[Swami]

The TNT interpretation of Cliff was totally wrong, even though there were many occasions in the original series where Cliff was very selfish and inconsiderate (chiefly to Sue Ellen and Pam in different respects), he wasn't the hate-filled figure that TNT made him out to be.

Swami

 

[CeeCee72]

I feel that Sue Ellen's affair with Cliff kept her in Dallas. Without her involvement with him in the early years I think she may have just ran for the hills. At that point she detested J.R with a passion and didn't have the baby. Of course Sue Ellen was an integral part of the show and her dynamic with J.R kept us entertained for years - for me they were the stars of the show, but I still feel that Cliff was the most important character. Of all her affairs I think Cliff meant the most to her - both times - but of course he let himself and her down.

Oh, I don't know. I think her relationship with Dusty meant more to SE than her relationship with Cliff. She basically used Cliff to get under JR's skin, and Cliff was using her for the same reason. I think they developed warm feelings for each other, but I don't think SE ever truly loved him.

Their affair was the most important one though. It set up YEARS of conflict between JR and Cliff.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

Sue Ellen would not have been long gone, that's not true at all ( why would she be?!) Sorry that doesn't make sense

Sue Ellen didn't make sense half of the time either, so I wouldn't expect her decisions to make sense. A well adjusted woman, who knew JR and Cliff as well as she knew them, would have ran from the idea of marrying either!

Out of all the characters in Dallas, Cliff Barnes was probably the most complex and, in my opinion, probably the most important character in the show.

Without Cliff J.R would have no nemesis, without Cliff Pam wouldn't have been torn between two families, without Cliff Sue Ellen may have been long gone - he was the glue of the show, but it's almost impossible to give him a label.

He was the good guy, the bad guy, the foolish guy and many times hugely selfish and inward looking, he cared for his sister but never really listened to her, I felt he was always somewhere else where Pam is concerned.

He was a very greedy and ambitious man, without the knowledge he needed to fulfill his dreams and of course he had the biggest chip on his shoulder...Digger being cheated by Jock.

I think Cliff was possibly the most difficult character to play because of the tremendous challenge the part presented for any actor. How would it be convincing that a man who is as clearly out of his depth as he is by taking on the Ewings not only chooses to do it anyway, but then continues to go after them while sustaining defeat after crushing defeat? Somehow Ken Kercheval found a way to make it convincing.

Would I say the character was complex? I think he was very predictable in that I knew what his motive was: jealousy of the Ewings disguised as loyalty to Digger to make himself look more virtuous. His motive never changed until season 11 and even that didn't last long. He announced to Miss Ellie that he'd finally learned his lesson. Within a year we found out he had not. He was perpetually jealous, perpetually obsessed with JR, and continually lost his girlfriends because of how inconsiderately he would inevitably treat them. Cliff was the personification of "unteachable." I think Jeremy Wendell summed it up best when after Cliff told him that we all make mistakes, Jeremy replied: "But you make them again and again"!

 

[Michelle Stevens]

Cliff was certainly one of the most complex character in all of Dallas. I can't imagine any other actor other than Ken Kercheval being able to play such a character. I wondered how Cliff stayed sane throughout the years we saw of him on the show.

The TNT interpretation of Cliff was totally wrong, even though there were many occasions in the original series where Cliff was very selfish and inconsiderate (chiefly to Sue Ellen and Pam in different respects), he wasn't the hate-filled figure that TNT made him out to be.

Swami

Agreed! Jeremy Wendell would have been better suited for the role that we got with the TNT Cliff. I think a possible reason they didn't go that route is that Jeremy Wendell isn't as widely known for the casual Dallas viewer as Cliff.

 

[Swami]

Cliff was certainly one of the most complex character in all of Dallas. I can't imagine any other actor other than Ken Kercheval being able to play such a character. I wondered how Cliff stayed sane throughout the years we saw of him on the show.



Agreed! Jeremy Wendell would have been better suited for the role that we got with the TNT Cliff. I think a possible reason they didn't go that route is that Jeremy Wendell isn't as widely known for the casual Dallas viewer as Cliff.

Wendell was more of a threat in terms of clout, and was more calculating that Cliff. Cliff always allowed his emotions to affect his judgement.

Swami

 

[Sarah]

I strongly disagree. Sue Ellen never really hated JR and it was her love for him that kept her in Dallas.

Cliff paled in comparison and although she cared for him, it was nothing like her feelings for JR. I do feel you are misinterpreting her character. No way would she have left JR or ran for the hills. You’re giving Cliff too much importance in her life. I love Cliff but I also disagree he’s a more important character than Sue Ellen and certainly no way is he more important than JR. These two are certainly the stars of the show!

I do love Cliff a lot though! He also awakened Sue Ellen sexually - giving her that bedroom confidence which JR would be thankful for

 

[Laurie Marr]

The corruption of the idealistic young lawyer is what gave Cliff’s early stories genuine dramatic force. The deranged obsession that slowly consumed the character thereafter sealed his fate and generated many ‘committed’, inventive and immensely watchable performances by Kercheval.

 

[Ukdallasfan]

I agree. The early Cliff was a much more rounded character and, therefore, a more sympathetic enemy to JR. The episode where he was running for office but was ruined by the abortion scandal was a powerful one. The way that Cliff explained himself showed, in those days at least, that he had a strong sense of right and wrong. He became more one dimensional as the show went on but Ken never ran out of energy and kept the character interesting

 

[Ukdallasfan]

I agree. The early Cliff was a much more rounded character and, therefore, a more sympathetic enemy to JR. The episode where he was running for office but was ruined by the abortion scandal was a powerful one. The way that Cliff explained himself showed, in those days at least, that he had a strong sense of right and wrong. He became more one dimensional as the show went on but Ken never ran out of energy and kept the character interesting

 

[Kenny Coyote]

I agree. The early Cliff was a much more rounded character and, therefore, a more sympathetic enemy to JR. The episode where he was running for office but was ruined by the abortion scandal was a powerful one. The way that Cliff explained himself showed, in those days at least, that he had a strong sense of right and wrong. He became more one dimensional as the show went on but Ken never ran out of energy and kept the character interesting

Cliff was certainly a much more well adjusted individual in the early episodes. He found himself vastly overmatched going into a feud with the Ewings but at the beginning I don't think he quite realized just how far out of his depth he was. After losing badly, on numerous occasions, the better adjusted, more sensible Cliff would have acknowledged that he was fighting a war he could not win. To continue with it would only seal his fate.

Cliff had already lost a significant amount of the mental stability he had once had and continued his feud with the Ewings. Suffering crushing defeat time and again, finding out his very best would never be good enough, was driving him insane. We saw the progression of that as he became even more obsessed. Awkward mannerisms began manifesting themselves in his behavior. He was oblivious to what he was becoming, to how he was treating the women in his life, to why he was losing them and to having placed himself on a path towards self-annihilation. All he had to do was walk away but he wouldn't. He was mentally crumbling.

We saw the inevitable result of decade after decade of his bitterness, his jealousy, his obsessiveness eating him away from the inside when we saw what Cliff had become by his initial appearance on TNT Dallas. He'd allowed any good qualities he'd once had to be eroded, drowned in a solution of bitterness and jealousy, until all that was left was a grim visage devoid of a soul, an empty shell of his of his former self.

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

It was quite a shift when Cliff magically became fabulously wealthy, with his own oil company no less, via his long-lost mother. I liked him more as the scrappy, if over-obsessed and over-intense, underdog. He was more entertaining later as he started getting more eccentric and manic, I guess.

Also, for all the "Cliff is such a loser and JR always wins" conventional wisdom... he had his victories here and there, even when he had far less resources than JR. Even Jock took him quite seriously from the pilot episode through his stint with the OLM.

 

[Michelle Stevens]

It was quite a shift when Cliff magically became fabulously wealthy, with his own oil company no less, via his long-lost mother. I liked him more as the scrappy, if over-obsessed and over-intense, underdog. He was more entertaining later as he started getting more eccentric and manic, I guess.

Agreed! Why couldn't Rebecca Wentworth be poor like Digger or at least not married to a wealthy business owner? To have Cliff on a similar social status as the Ewings I felt took some of his charm away. If he had achieved wealth and success through his hard work instead of inheriting it may have given him some respect from the likes of Jock. LOL, I liked the later manic Cliff too.

Also, for all the "Cliff is such a loser and JR always wins" conventional wisdom... he had his victories here and there, even when he had far less resources than JR. Even Jock took him quite seriously from the pilot episode through his stint with the OLM.

To add too, he did end the original series the owner of Ewing Oil.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

Why couldn't Rebecca Wentworth be poor like Digger or at least not married to a wealthy business owner?

That's a good question and I'm wondering, do you think it was to establish Rebecca as that much more of an awful woman? That she had the financial resources to send her children to help with things like helping them go to college but chose not to? Then to look at Pam after Pam had done all that work to find her and say Pam was mistaken and she wasn't Pam's mother? Then only when the rich guy dies and she gets lonely, she decides to look up her now adult children? Then proceeds to have the gall to basically disown Cliff after he embezzled some money?

What? Rebecca felt entitled to make tons of mistakes, but Cliff makes one mistake and she not only fires him but doesn't even want to continue to maintain any relationship at all with him? It wasn't long after she did that, that Cliff tried to kill himself.

I think they wanted to make sure we absolutely hated Rebecca so that when she threatened the Ewings, we would (in our minds) be cheering that much harder for the Ewings.

 

[Sarah]

A well adjusted woman would have ran from JR?

But you want Mandy to marry him?

Thank you so much for proving my point

 

[Kenny Coyote]

.

A well adjusted woman would have ran from JR?

But you want Mandy to marry him?

Thank you so much for proving my point

You only got the first and last parts of this sentence:

A well adjusted woman, who knew JR and Cliff as well as she knew them, would have ran from the idea of marrying either!

Mandy hadn't been married to JR for all those years and been subjected to the verbal abuse Sue Ellen got from JR so that makes her perspective of JR very different.

Your idea that my opinion is proof of what Sue Ellen should have done is flattering though!

 

[CeeCee72]

I don't think SE was well adjusted. I don't think ANY Dallas character was well adjusted. They ALL had some serious emotional baggage. That's what made them so fun to watch.

Then again, I don't think I am well adjusted either sooo....