Wes Parmalee

[Billy Nolan]

What a stupid storyline with Wes Parmalee. Why didn't they just do a DNA test to confirm his identity?

Suddenly, the storyline was no longer relevant. Very poor dramaturgy in my opinion.

The fact that Pam had already "dreamed" this storyline, but other storylines from the dream season were dropped (like the one with the deaf Tony, for example), is rather negative.

It's a shame, but I'm slowly losing interest in Dallas.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Yeah, just shut it off.

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

randomly, I just watched an episode of the Streets of San Francisco last night featuring Steve Forrest as a hitman charming a younger woman who was reminiscent of a young Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo (also set in SF). He had real presence and gravitas - too young, but about as good as you could do for someone who truly believed he was Jock.

pictured below: Steve on an Italian hunting expedition with a young Naldo Marchetta

 

[Pandora]

What a stupid storyline with Wes Parmalee. Why didn't they just do a DNA test to confirm his identity?

Suddenly, the storyline was no longer relevant. Very poor dramaturgy in my opinion.

The fact that Pam had already "dreamed" this storyline, but other storylines from the dream season were dropped (like the one with the deaf Tony, for example), is rather negative.

It's a shame, but I'm slowly losing interest in Dallas.

I was never a fan of this whole storyline. It just seemed stupid if there was no intention of him ever being Jock. I do not think DNA testing was anywhere near a sophisticated then. Perhaps they could have tried blood typing but it is only useful if it completely rules someone out. Those tests were not legally admissible for paternity claims as they left so much room for doubt.

 

[Chris2]

Miss Ellie should have demanded he drop his pants. Wouldn’t she know Jock’s penis?

 

[Laurie Marr]

Miss Ellie should have demanded he drop his pants. Wouldn’t she know Jock’s penis?

Wasn’t it Jock’s chopper that was his undoing?

 

[Seaviewer]

Miss Ellie should have demanded he drop his pants. Wouldn’t she know Jock’s penis?

That was probably rebuilt, too.

 

[lbf522]

I was never a fan of this whole storyline. It just seemed stupid if there was no intention of him ever being Jock. I do not think DNA testing was anywhere near a sophisticated then. Perhaps they could have tried blood typing but it is only useful if it completely rules someone out. Those tests were not legally admissible for paternity claims as they left so much room for doubt.

I feel the same way. If he was not meant to be Jock, what the purpose of the storyline then? It was a waste of time. Also, he passed all the tests and knew things that only Jock would know.

 

[Billy Wall]

I don't care what anybody says, Parmelee was supposed to be Jock. You CANNOT overlook those x-rays.

 

[Pandora]

I feel the same way. If he was not meant to be Jock, what the purpose of the storyline then? It was a waste of time. Also, he passed all the tests and knew things that only Jock would know.

I think they attributed his knowledge of those things to being with Jock when he was running a high fever and hearing him babble. But the storyline was still ridiculous.

I don't care what anybody says, Parmelee was supposed to be Jock. You CANNOT overlook those x-rays.

Is it possible the producers changed their minds? Namely, that the original intent was for Wes to be Jock but the producers had a change of heart.

Miss Ellie should have demanded he drop his pants. Wouldn’t she know Jock’s penis?

I don't know if TV was ready for that.

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

I think they attributed his knowledge of those things to being with Jock when he was running a high fever and hearing him babble. But the storyline was still ridiculous.

I think I’ve said it before on this site but.. I’d pay good money to see footage of Jim Davis as Jock on a cot down in South America sweating and shivering and ranting and raving about random things that had happened in the previous decades, with Wyatt Haines and his elephant-like memory sneakily taking it all in.

 

[Billy Wall]

Is it possible the producers changed their minds? Namely, that the original intent was for Wes to be Jock but the producers had a change of heart.

Yes. I heard the backlash was really bad.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Yes. I heard the backlash was really bad.

There was no backlash (which led to changing Wes' identity) because by the time his episodes started airing, Steve Forrest had already left the
show to go shoot a GUNSMOKE reunion movie.

I don't care what anybody says, Parmelee was supposed to be Jock. You CANNOT overlook those x-rays.

Wes was in a very similar helicopter crash. So it keeps us guessing.

I think I’ve said it before on this site but.. I’d pay good money to see footage of Jim Davis as Jock on a cot down in South America sweating and shivering and ranting and raving about random things that had happened in the previous decades, with Wyatt Haines and his elephant-like memory sneakily taking it all in.

Jock's chopper careened into Matthew Blaisdel's jeep in 1981. They were both shivering. Lindsay kept crying, so they had to kill her and eat her. When her carcass was consumed, Jock and Matthew returned from the jungle to the States, but it took a while.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

In some ways, the Wes Parmalee story was DALLAS because the details, the backstory, the reactions of the family members to the possibility that he might or might not be Jock, the Ewings still haunted -- seemingly literally -- by the patriarch long after his death, the fact that the story managed to be both riotously funny and oddly poignant simultaneously, all of which was negotiable.

Did it happen? Was it the end of the dream or a continuance of it -- a dream within a dream?

I thought even then that it worked astoundingly well, especially given that Bobby himself had just been resurrected only weeks earlier to great controversy.

People also remain divided even to this day about whether Wes was Jock or not. The actors were apparently told different things by the producers. But there was enough red herring and enough ambiguity that it permitted each viewer to come to his or her own conclusion and even to feel their conclusion was self-evident.

But the storyline incorporated all the elements which made DALLAS the show DALLAS: both brilliant and awful, compelling and preposterous, vivid and ghostly.

If DALLAS was Shakespearean, which some critics argued over the years -- even seriously, the Wes Parmalee story was at the epicenter of that. In retrospect, it was everything the show was about.



And the ambivalence made it more interesting.

People assume Wes took off because he'd been exposed as an alleged fraud, but he left before he knew what information Bobby was bringing back from South America.

But he did leave immediately after Jeremy Wendell told him that Wendell's only agenda was to destroy the Ewing family once and for all. With that revelation, Wes showed up at Southfork, told Ellie he wasn't Jock, relayed a personal past startlingly like that of Jock's, and then disappeared like vapor.

The observant viewer is left to wonder what all this meant. Regrettably, the downturn of the show during its closing seasons makes the Parmalee/Jock enigma less effective in the long run.

I just want to hear Ray, circa Season 15, tell Clayton in some sun-streaked bar someplace, just after Miss Ellie has kicked the bucket, that "that faker -- that Parmalee..." had his death reported in some tiny, obscure gazette somewhere up in the rural wilds of Canada (maybe Harve's team found the story) where Wes was working on some spread... With no mention made of the eerie synchronicity in the timing.

Maybe Wes was thrown from a horse (which is how I want Ellie to croak at the end of Season 14). The parallel never discussed.

 

[Bobby Southworth]

So, on paper the idea is utterly ridiculous, but it was captivating to watch. I was totally drawn in, and loved every minute of it. In retrospect, though, it's so unrealistic on so many levels. It's him, but everything has been replaced. Ok, is this Dallas or The Twilight Zone. It's a moving story because who wouldn't want a loved one, long thought to be dead, to somehow still be alive? I think it would have been a little more moving if Bobby or JR even considered it for a second, but they didn't. The idea that he had all of these surgeries.. I could get them doing enough to keep him alive, but if they didn't know who he was, and he didn't at the time(?), there would have been no money for all that extensive work. You also would think the hospital might have put two and two together and realized who he was, and contacted the family...

You would also think that you would just know if it really was the person or not. All of that said, it's still a very entertaining, moving story. It brings to mind a Richard Gere movie that would come years later called "Somersby" . I don't know that I've ever seen that movie in it's entirety, so I'm not sure how similarly things play out. I just know there was question on whether Gere's character was really Somersby.

My guess is that they were going to make Wes Jock before they knew Patrick was returning. I think then they actually just more or less stuck with the original ideas and scripts pertaining to the subject..until Steve's contract was up. That's why he passed the lie detector, all the tests matched up..I really think this was the original direction, but then that's why it just suddenly comes to a halt the way that it does. Patrick came back, they kept the story-line and ran with it the same way they would have had Duffy not returned, but ultimately, he just vanishes because the idea was squashed as soon as they knew Patrick was back. Just a hunch.

I do like the way they left it open to our own interpretation. A part of me believes it really was Jock, but I don't see Jock just leaving things be. Maybe with Ellie and Clayton, but he would want to be in his son's lives, and grandkids. You could make the argument that the whole experience changed his personality, but this is still Jock we are talking about here. I just don't see him leaving them all behind forever.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Yes, it was the closest DALLAS ever got to self-parody that actually worked.

My guess is that they were going to make Wes Jock before they knew Patrick was returning.

That may very well be true. Rumor was that when Peter Dunne, under Philip Capice, created "Ben Stivers", the intention was to reveal he was indeed Jock. But the ambivalent ending Katzman & Paulsen gave it was better -- even if it frustrated some viewers.

But the Parmalee plot was all that DALLAS was about, wrapped up in one ghostly half-season story. And it might have resonated more greatly and lastingly had the series not begun stumbling in its last three or so years (let alone switched Ellie heads and revived Bobby via a dream).

But DALLAS, for all of its potential -- and potential achieved -- was a great, big, sloppy mess.

Maybe that's why we loved it. I don't know. But I could have done without the annual gaffes that began the moment Donna Reed stepped off that plane.

"That bitch ain't my wife..."

 

[Billy Wall]

There was no backlash (which led to changing Wes' identity) because by the time his episodes started airing, Steve Forrest had already left the
show to go shoot a GUNSMOKE reunion movie.



Wes was in a very similar helicopter crash. So it keeps guessing.

Something made them switch it up. Same helicopter crash or not, two different people are not going to have the exact same cracks in their bones.

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

Something made them switch it up. Same helicopter crash or not, two different people are not going to have the exact same cracks in their bones.

Wes said “bizness” where Jock said “bi’ness” or “bidness”. There’s a better chance of a full bone scan/MRI/DNA match between two different people than there is of that happening!

Now that I think of it, I can’t recall Ben Stivers ever saying the word “business”, which lends credence to the hypothesis that Ben was Jock but Wes wasn’t.

 

[Seaviewer]

his elephant-like memory

That's the point that makes the so-called solution more ridiculous than the original claim.

Same helicopter crash or not, two different people are not going to have the exact same cracks in their bones.

I think the theory there was that Wes had so many fractures that some of them were bound to be in the same places as Jock's. I'm not saying it makes sense but it was enough to keep it uncertain.