What were DALLAS' biggest errors?

[Snarky Oracle!]

Multiple choice allowed

 

[Angela Channing]

Bringing Bobby back from the dead lost the show so much credibility and even though the following season was a good one it rapidly went downhill afterwards.

 

[Justine]

When the writers passed Bobby's death off as a dream, it really set the tone for the show's downfall. So many eloquently written storylines (Ray and Donna's baby loss and subsequent adoption, Sue Ellen's recovery) were literally thrown down the drain and incredible character development lost all because Patrick wanted to return.

 

[Billy Wall]

The dream season also forced an end to Dallas’ connection to Knot Landing as Bobby’s death was acknowledged.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

I think their biggest mistake was bringing Patrick Duffy back after the audience had already seen Bobby get killed. I don't blame him for wanting to return but I do blame the people running the show for agreeing to do it. They killed their show's credibility.

Another big mistake, and this is probably the fault of the network or whoever owns the show, to not replace people in the creative department who were burned out and creating sub-par storylines as a result with people who were capable of writing high quality storylines and scripts up to the standard Dallas was known for. I don't know if it was more a case of keeping people long after they were creatively burned out, or if it was more a case of hiring new people who weren't capable of creating ideas that were up to the standard Dallas had set in its first eight seasons. It may have been some of both.

In the case of people like the head writer and others on the creative team, at some point they're probably all likely to become burned out. So at some point, I believe in giving them time away from the show until they've become rejuvenated and then you bring them back.

Have some type of a rotating schedule where you have somebody as the head writer for a year or two, then you bring in the next one for a year or two, and then the first guy now has some fresh new ideas and is ready to take on the responsibility of head writer again. That way you keep these guys from getting creatively burned out and you keep the quality of creative ideas at a high level.

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

letting Cousin Jimmy Monahan disappear without a trace!

 

[Willie Oleson]

letting Cousin Jimmy Monahan disappear without a trace!

Yeah, why didn't he return in the famous shower scene?

I have voted for the Reunion movies. To be honest I don't even remember how good or bad they were but since they are movies and not sequel series it's disappointing by default.
To be reunited with all those favourite tv characters should be a happy occasion but it usually just makes me sad to be reminded of something that has ended. No need to rub salt in the wound.
Of course I like the real (non-fictional) reunions.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

their biggest mistake was bringing Patrick Duffy back after the audience had already seen Bobby get killed. I don't blame him for wanting to return but I do blame the people running the show for agreeing to do it.

Although I'm about 99% sure that Leonard and Larry went after Patrick; not the other way around.

 

[Michael Torrance]

I don't know that a lot of these quiz choices are unconnected. Let's start with Donna Reed: recasting a major Ewing without a must-happen reason (like a death or an actor walking out) was a blow to Dallas' credibility with the audience. Once that happened, the line had been moved as to what the show believed the audience would accept. Having an entire year be declared a dream was in fact a daytime soap device (same as recasting with Donna Reed), the kind of wacky thing a soap there could have done: Days of Our Lives had Satan in a storyline in the 90s, and before that General Hospital had the ice princess global climate blackmail plot in the 80s. Compared to that, what is an extra long dream? Daytime soaps do have daydreams after all, whole scenes or sequences of scenes where they trick the audience something has happened, and then they pull the rug under the viewers' legs going--nope, the character was (day)dreaming that. And wacky and campy are close blood relatives, ergo the later seasons' tone. And of course, once you have moved the goalposts of plausibility with the dream season, ignoring Pam's fate was small potatoes.

So I guess the cardinal error, for me, was Dallas forgetting it was a prime-time soapy drama, not a daytime soap with a huge budget airing weekly at night.

 

[Swami]

Recasting Miss Ellie, not dealing with Victoria's departure in a definitive way and the introduction of so many awful actors in the last two or three seasons in the original run who simply were not worthy of being in the show.

Swami

 

[Sarah]

For me, the biggest mistake Dallas made was not uniting JR and Sue Ellen in business during the WestStar takeover. Parting them permanently was a HUGE error. I realise Linda was leaving but who knows if she might have stayed had they given her this storyline to work with. Once JR lost her, he lost himself and as Dallas' main character, the show was never the same.

"Without Sue Ellen, JR was much less"....Howard Lakin.

 

[Jimmy Todd]

For me, it was a tie between making Bobby's death a dream and the way Pam was written out of the show. However, Bobby's resurrection wins because I think that Bobby returning solidified Victoria Principal's desire to leave. She seems smart enough to see where the show was going and would want to go in another direction. In other words, the dream resolution led to Pam's exit.
If they had made the the focus of the season following Bobby's death Pam working alongside JR, they could have had a gold mine, imho

 

[pete lashmar]

For me I put it down to the Producers - end of story.

They had the biggest show in the world, with the best ensemble cast but they had no respect for the characters or the viewers.

Up until Season 7 it was pretty much 100% spot on. The show had developed from a mini series to a fully fledged global phenomenon and it's audience had grown to love and care for the characters. But when producers decided to re-cast Miss Ellie it removed the audience from the drama and once you do that you've lost something very important and it's a tough act to recover from.

When Patrick returned it not only removed people from the drama it made them laugh - Dallas became a global joke but instead of accepting that the producers did all they could to ignore it and pretend it was their only option - only to then lose Victoria and did all they could NOT to confirm the fate of the character, which angered viewers even more.

Then the producers decided that new characters that no one cared about were more important that the original/core cast - so we lost Pam, Donna, Lucy and they were replaced by cheaper alternatives - most of whom were unlikable, poorly played and basically shat on the characters viewers did like.

Then - for me - the biggest loss - when Linda Grey walked the producers just said "thanks", there was no real effort to use the character to her full potential. Sue Ellen was one of the best characters in any TV show - she had fire, but also had huge weaknesses - but she also had sass, charm and was a very motivated and opinionated woman - her exit was not only low key, but the storyline of the film cheapened the TV series itself because it showed how cheap the sets looked by showing the backstage/camera areas.

By the time Linda had left, Barbara was only able to appear in so many episodes and so it became the Larry & Patrick show, accompanied by some very vacuous characters who were more like cardboard cutouts than characters and 99% of them were completely unlikeable and unwatchable.

So I blame the producers, because it was their belief that the show was bigger than the cast & with Dallas that wasn't the case - THE CAST was DALLAS.

 

[Laurie Marr]

To varying degrees all of the above and......

- Overindulging Larry Hagman to the point that some questionable creative decisions were made relating to the plots and the tone of the show
- Using the show as the site of numerous power struggles between producers
- A shameful under utilisation of BBG (and her considerable acting chops) in the later seasons
- Not ending the show in the Spring of 1987

 

[pete lashmar]

To varying degrees all of the above and......

- Overindulging Larry Hagman to the point that some questionable creative decisions were made relating to the plots and the tone of the show
- Using the show as the site of numerous power struggles between producers
- A shameful under utilisation of BBG (and her considerable acting chops) in the later seasons
- Not ending the show in the Spring of 1987

Oh I think the treatment of BBG is one of the most shocking in TV - the poor woman had a critical heart condition so they basically sacked and re-cast her character - where were the high and mighty cast then???

That season could (like later seasons) have just taken Ellie out of the show with a holiday.

And then, because the viewers (rightfully) wanted her back, they sacked Donna Reed brutally and brought back BBG.

It really is pretty downright disgusting behaviour for execs.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

- Overindulging Larry Hagman to the point that some questionable creative decisions were made relating to the plots and the tone of the show

Overindulging Hagman in what way? They didn't make his character stronger in the later years; they made it weaker! When his character was winning most of the time and made to look strong, the ratings were the best that Dallas ever had. As his character got weaker and started becoming less and less competent, , the ratings correspondingly declined. People wanted to see JR winning. They had a successful formula and they broke it for no good reason. Had they stuck to the adage "If it ain't broke don't try to fix it" Dallas would have been better for longer.

 

[Billy Wall]

Overindulging Hagman in what way? They didn't make his character stronger in the later years; they made it weaker! When his character was winning most of the time and made to look strong, the ratings were the best that Dallas ever had. As his character got weaker and started becoming less and less competent, , the ratings correspondingly declined. People wanted to see JR winning. They had a successful formula and they broke it for no good reason. Had they stuck to the adage "If it ain't broke don't try to fix it" Dallas would have been better for longer.

I think Laurie meant that the producers gave Larry Hagman (not JR) to much power when it came to decision making.

 

[pete lashmar]

The more you look at the history of the show you more you see a group of actors who only ever looked after themselves.

With the exception of Larry & Linda ( what a great name for a sitcom!) when Larry insisted that Linda's character was vital to the show to execs everyone just said their lines, got paid and went home.

When BBG was sacked not one of them spoke out about her treatment, nor when Donna Reed was also sacked, they just accepted it.

Victoria didn't discuss her leaving with any of the cast, she'd told Lorimar execs 2 years earlier and never mentioned it again to anyone - did these people ever really talk and get on? (You'd think she'd mention it to at least one member of the cast).

When Susan Howard spoke out about the dream season off she went too....supported by no one.

And it later seasons, once Larry became exec producer (as a way of earning more money) even more regulars vanished - replaced by cheaper actors and characters.

These days casts stick together to ensure better pay/conditions - I suppose although the show was powerful, it just trod on anyone (except Larry) that it wanted to.

 

[Billy Wall]

The more you look at the history of the show you more you see a group of actors who only ever looked after themselves.

With the exception of Larry & Linda ( what a great name for a sitcom!) when Larry insisted that Linda's character was vital to the show to execs everyone just said their lines, got paid and went home.

When BBG was sacked not one of them spoke out about her treatment, nor when Donna Reed was also sacked, they just accepted it.

Victoria didn't discuss her leaving with any of the cast, she'd told Lorimar execs 2 years earlier and never mentioned it again to anyone - did these people ever really talk and get on? (You'd think she'd mention it to at least one member of the cast).

When Susan Howard spoke out about the dream season off she went too....supported by no one.

And it later seasons, once Larry became exec producer (as a way of earning more money) even more regulars vanished - replaced by cheaper actors and characters.

These days casts stick together to ensure better pay/conditions - I suppose although the show was powerful, it just trod on anyone (except Larry) that it wanted to.

I can definitely understand why actors wouldn’t want to get involved with someone else’s issues.

You don’t want to get a reputation in the industry as someone who’s too outspoken. You would be taken a risk of being blackballed.

 

[Kenny Coyote]

I think Laurie meant that the producers gave Larry Hagman (not JR) to much power when it came to decision making.

If they weren't even giving him the creative control over his character to be able to demand "Stop weakening my character; keep JR strong " then why would you think that the executives were giving him too much power?

Do you have any links to something that would support this idea that even though Hagman didn't have the power to exert creative control over his own character that for some reason he was given a lot of power over the other aspects of the show?

When JR was winning, when he was a powerful force that had a maybe dozen characters on the show wanting to murder him, the show was at its peak.

They took a character that was an intimidating force that had most of the people in the oil business hating him and afraid of him and relegated it to a character doing manual labor on a chain gang, held captive by a couple brothers whose combined I..Q's didn't appear to reach triple digits, and got himself trapped in an insane asylum!

If he couldn't say "You're wrecking my character and F'ing up the whole show in the process" and make them do something about it, then how much power do you think he really had?