Dallas Character What The Hell Was Clayton Thinking?

[Kenny Coyote]

Sue Ellen, when she first left JR, went to The Southern Cross to live and was further developing her relationship with Dusty.. It seemed they might get married. Dusty was impotent at the time but Sue Ellen said she could still have a very happy marriage with Dusty so apparently sex wasn't a priority to her. WE all remember why Sue Ellen finally left Dusty though and right after that, Clayton started coming over to her townhouse quite often. Sue Ellen looked at Clayton as the father she never had, but Clayton discovered he wanted a love relationship with her and even bought her an engagement ring. Before he could give it to her, she told him she and JR were remarrying. I can't believe Clayton was actually going to propose to Sue Ellen!

Can you imagine what it would have done to the Farlow family, specifically the relationship between Clayton and Dusty if he had proposed to Sue Ellen? Imagine how awkward Clayton and Dusty's relationship would have become! Picture Dusty finding out for the first time that his father is having a sexual relationship with the only woman Dusty ever truly loved (according to Dusty's own words). "Boy do I have a surprise for you son! My relationship with Sue Ellen has progressed quite nicely. Apparently I can do for Sue Ellen what you no longer can. Aren't you glad at least one of the Farlow men is making Sue Ellen's life fulfilled? I know you used to call her "honey" but after the marriage you can call her "Mom"! Not quite something you ever expected to happen, huh? Well, I really have to thank you, son. When you brought Sue Ellen here to live you started something that is making me happier than I've been since Amy was alive"!

The Farlow famlly, by adding Sue Ellen to the family not as Dusty's wife but as Clayton's wife, would have been dysfunctional to the point of being perverse!

 

[Tullamore]

Yes I totally agree

But that would be a sure fire hit storyline now!!!

 

[Presea]

I really don't think that Dusty would have cared if Clayton had married Sue Ellen. He moved on from her, and his true love was the rodeos. And because of that, he was barely even home. But I do think that Clayton's proposal was stupid. He and Sue Ellen were NOT in a romantic relationship, and she never even expressed that kind of interest in him, so how he ever believed that she would want to marry him is beyond me. It was just another stupid move on the writers' part to try to make Sue Ellen (and this was also done a lot with Pam as well) into a perfect little Mary Sue character that the men in the show would do anything to be with, even going so far as making them have Disney movie based reactions to her by immediately falling in love with her after just looking at her just once. Granted, Clayton didn't go so far as the "love at first sight" reaction with Sue Ellen, but it was still rather pitiful.

 

[Justine]

Maybe it was how the writers decided to show-off Sue Ellen's newfound independence - like "Look how well adjusted she's become since the divorce; she doesn't even need a man" kind of attitude - but I don't think they ever really planned to marry the two. I do think it would have been fun, however, if they had done. It would've been a spectacular failure, I'm sure, but so much drama and you can already hear the kind of remarks J.R. would make about Clayton in the bedroom

 

[Angela Channing]

Sue Ellen would have been far better off with Clayton that to go back to a man that serially abused her. Dusty wouldn't have cared as he had moved on to Linda and was able to get it up with her, which he could never do with Sue Ellen.

 

[Herofan]

I agree that the Clayton/Sue Ellen deal was strange. I think another weird storyline with Clayton was when he saw the young woman in the painting and suddenly wanted to start spending time with her. That would have
made more sense if they had met in real life first and he took a liking to her, but to get caught up in a painting was a little strange to me. I also kept waiting for there to be a reason such as it looked like an old flame, dead wife, or something. But to just be entranced by a painting was a little strange.

 

[Chris2]

Clayton’s engagement ring plan - in retrospect - is completely bizarre. The two of them had never even been out on a date! I guess in his mind, they had been.

 

[IDFfm0870]

A fun fact considering Clayton's non-proposal: For its entire original run over here in Germany, up to 4 minutes were cut out from every single episode, which had to do with the episodes being a little longer than 45 minutes (The episodes were broadcast without ads, in a time frame of 45 minutes.)

With the DVD's, German viewers had the very first chance to see those cut scenes at all, and I most definitely had a blast with that, as it was quite interesting to see which scenes were cut, and if it had hurt the structure of the episodes in any way (which IMO it didn't most of the time.)

And Clayton's two scenes of first calling and then not proposing to Sue Ellen during the last episode of the fourth season (or fifth season if you count the pilot season as the first season which I don't) were the ones cut out of the episode, so we never knew about the non-proposal at all back then, as it was never mentioned again. No Clayton at all in that episode if I do remember right.

We 'lost' a lot of scenes including Lucy, Ray & Donna, Cliff & Afton (and thankfully some very odd scenes with Peter Richards) back then, Jessica with the knife in the Southfork kitchen, Afton hilariously trying to speak french when calling Pam in France ...

Season four was when I really started watching the series on a regular basis, and Clayton quickly became one of my favorate characters. I thought he was a nice older vital man who became infatuated with Sue Ellen before he really knew it. And I always loved him for taking no bs from J.R. So I didn't really get the ick factor, maybe I was a little too young back then.