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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustard" data-source="post: 72124" data-attributes="member: 46">When Leonard Katzman worked alongside Philip Capice, Katzman was obviously a huge part of what was successful on Dallas, as he was the Producer, a writer and a director. It seems obvious that Capice, the Executive Producer, would not agree to all that Katzman wanted to do on Dallas. Personally, I think that Capice made sure that Katzman’s positives got on the screen and that Katzman’s negatives didn’t so much, but that Katzman didn’t see those traits of his as negatives, so was frustrated. By Season 8 DVD, this conflict came to a head. I think it’s obvious that the quality was down compared to previous years, and that this led to an increase in tensions to the extent where Capice and Katzman could no longer work together as Executive Producer and Producer.Therefore, for Season 9 DVD, Katzman was gone as Producer and Capice carried on as Executive Producer and worked with new Producers in Peter Dunne and James H. Brown, and a brand new writing team involving people like Joel J. Feigenbaum, Stephanie Garman, Hollace White and Peter Dunne, while David Paulsen effectively took Dunne’s old job over on Knots Landing for one season (Season 7 of Knots Landing – 1985-86). Despite all these changes and Katzman’s considerable demotion, Katzman was still involved in Dallas in Season 9 DVD as “Creative Consultant” and occasional writer.The ratings for all US soaps were down after 1985, as a general trend, yet at the time there wasn’t the benefit of hindsight regarding this, and there was a lot of old wounds and bad blood still there from Katzman’s supporters. I believe targets to get at Capice politically during this time were to blame the fall in ratings on Capice, to claim that women had too prominent and powerful a role in the show, that J.R. had gone soft (very ironic, considering what J.R. became in Seasons 12-14 DVD), and that killing off Bobby Ewing was a big mistake. So the war that Capice had seemingly won after Season 8 DVD was back with a vengeance, with Capice now in the firing line. Eventually, it’s agreed that Capice was to leave Dallas completely at the end of Season 9 DVD, and that Katzman would not only be back in the production team, but promoted to Capice’s old job as Executive Producer with totally authority over Dallas. This saw most of the Season 9 DVD production team leave Dallas, many of whom were only there for Season 9 DVD. Katzman then had Bobby return, and wrote off the whole of the previous season’s storylines (where Katzman’s influence was at its lowest), as a dream of Pam’s.In Season 10 DVD, we see Katzman running Dallas completely his way, without Capice there to filter out anything. David Paulsen also returned to Dallas for two years. There’s a noticeable increase in sexist comments in Season 10 DVD that was way beyond anything that had been in Dallas before. This seems to be Katzman’s resentments about the Dream Season coming out in the scripts, which shouldn’t happen.When Pam leaves, and then they decide not to kill her off at the beginning of Season 11 DVD, they went on to make a dog’s breakfast of Pam’s whole storyline situation, and thus messed up the key link in the dynamics of the Dallas storylines, resulting in a downward spiral that particularly accelerated after both Paulsen’s departure and after they turned J.R. into a shell of himself in Season 12 DVD. Dallas just declined massively at this point.As for Philip Capice and Larry Hagman, it seems that their differences and uneasy working relationship goes back to the “Who Shot J.R.?” period, where Hagman demanded new terms in order to return to Dallas, and won. Notice how the original co-Executive Producer with Capice in the first 3 seasons DVD, Lee Rich, left Dallas at this time. Hagman may have been excellent as J.R. and also a very good director, but he was a really poor Executive Producer with Katzman. Hagman and Katzman should have stuck to what they did best, and Capice being Executive Producer was the best thing for Dallas.</blockquote>

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