A lot of people tend to call stuff they personally didn't like as "jump the shark" moments, overusing the phrase to death but it's about the one absolute, definitive moment where things were destroyed forever.
That's my take on it too.
But exactly what is it that's being destroyed, I wonder.
Now, my memory is a bit fuzzy and I was only a kid when it aired, but I seem to remember the almost instantaneous backlash from Pam's dream.
At a time when there was a great deal of snobbery in the UK about American shows (and soaps in particular),
Dallas was the exception: the one that casual British viewers found endearing.
Knots Landing had been taken off the air in Britain in 1982 (only returning about the same time as the dream scenario aired, where the four year old episodes were consigned to a mid-afternoon weekday slot).
Dynasty too never found the same affection with the British public. The overwhelming majority of my family and friends viewed it as a bit silly and rather shallow. Right or wrong, my impression was that British housewives had it on in the background to see what the women were wearing. So the Moldavia Massacre outcome a year earlier just reinforced the daftness and caused a few chortles. The show jumped its own shark, but very few people here seemed too bothered by it and it continued to be tolerated (
Dynasty didn't get as much press here as
Dallas, so I may be completely off the mark there. I'm going by comments from family members)
But with
Dallas, people seemed to care more. I remember hearing letters of relief read out on
Points Of View when Barbara Bel Geddes returned (good news/bad news when combined with the sorrow about Bobby's death). Presumably there had also been letters of complaint when Donna Reed had floated onto the series. But it was nothing compared to the letters and articles that popped up everywhere after Pam's dream.
Over the summer after Bobby appeared in the shower (before the dream explanation was given), there was a tentative buzz. People were concerned that the outcome might be a bit daft. I remember the "long lost evil twin brother" scenario being mooted on the radio more than once. The dream scenario was discussed as a possibility but I don't think many people seriously considered that they would insult viewers' intelligence to that degree.
Pam's dream was the coup de grâce for American soaps in the UK. It really did feel like the entire country gave a collective groan and the climate changed overnight. I was a schoolboy and can well remember how American soaps - and anyone who admitted to watching them - became an instant laughing stock. They were no longer tolerated or ignored. Now they were out and out mocked. And so was anyone who dared admit to still watching them. With the dream scenario providing all the ammunition (until the final scene of
The Colbys the following year was thrown into the mix).
To me, it felt like Pam's dream was the foundation of hate watching. Not just
Dallas, but other soaps whose credibility
Dallas had taken down with it in the eyes of the British public. If
Dynasty and
The Colbys came on the screen, the grandiose music cued in howls of laughter from my family. So did any scene that featured a shower (I remember reading a tongue in cheek write up in a TV magazine for a Dynasty episode which was actually named
The Shower). And poor, newly returned
Knots Landing never stood a chance. We were four years behind and I had no idea if the 85-86 season of
Knots would also be written off as a dream, which coloured the way I viewed it when it finally aired here.
I don't remember Fonzie jumping the shark, but Pam telling Bobby about her dream destroyed the reputation and credibility of both the show
and the entire genre. It did it publicly and it did it overnight (or at least that's how it feels looking back on it). It was a single, high profile moment which is referenced again and again by casual viewers and even
non-viewers as summing up everything that's bad about the show and the genre. And sadly, it's become one of
Dallas's two defining moments.
