DALLAS ARTICLES

Here are seven authors' ingenious resolutions to the summer's hottest cliffhanger

©TV Guide August 30, 1986

It was a summer of unrest in South Africa, discord in Congress over aid to the contras, fear throughout the world about Arab terrorism. But the really crucial issue that had TV viewers everywhere breathlessly waiting out the long summer months was this: how did Dallas's Bobby Ewing come back from the dead?

Speculation has been rampant, the favored theory suggesting that Bobby's tragic death last year was all just Pam's bad dream, from which she awakens only to discover Bobby blithely lathered in soap in her shower. Besides rendering the entire past season's episodes meaningless, what a cheat that approach would be for audiences.

But there are other theories. It isn't really Bobby in the shower at all, but a heretofore unknown identical twin brother. Or, goes another theory, after having been brutally mowed down by Katherine Wentworth's car then breathing his last, agonizing breath in a hospital bed, poor Bobby was being wheeled down to the morgue when suddenly he showed signs of life and doctors were able to miraculously revive him.

Which is it? Frankly, we haven't a clue, but just to confuse things even more, we've asked some of our most inventive writers, many of them confirmed Dallas watchers to suggest their own theories. Here's what they came up with:

Stephen Birmingham: It's perfectly clear to me what's going on in Dallas. The writers have simply decided to borrow the plot from the old movie "Gaslight." in which a husband tries to drive his wife crazy by making her think she sees things that aren't really there. To be specific, Pam's new husband, Mark Graison, is definitely a man not to be trusted. He's oily-looking, has difficulty smiling, and wears a small, sinister mustache. What he's done is this: he's either found a Bobby Ewing lookalike, or had a plastic surgeon construct one for him. Now his plan is to have this ersatz "Bobby" appear before Pam's eyes only, and always in irrational places such as in the shower, naked. Naturally, Pam will begin carrying on that Bobby has come back from the dead but whenever she tries to prove it, "Bobby" will be nowhere to be found. Soon everybody will be convinced that Pam is a candidate for the loony bin, which is exactly where Mark Graison wants her. His motive? Her money, of course. It is just what Charles Boyer tried to do to Ingrid Bergman in 1944. How long will this cat and mouse game go on? For the duration of Patrick Duffy's new contract.

Roy Blount Jr.: Two possibilities: One, it is not Bobby at all, but J.R. in a Bobby suit. Two, it's a brazen example of "breaking the proscenium." I believe that's what it's called when actors step out of the story to wink at or speak to the audience. It happens on Moonlighting all the time, and now it is going to happen on Dallas. Bobby will say, "Hey. I'm an actor named Patrick Duffy and my idea of a good time is taking a shower with Victoria Principal. So my character's dead. So sue me."

Judith Krantz: The Ewing's have obviously never watched hospital drama on television or they would have known that after an apparent cardiac arrest like Bobby's, the room should have been filled by a resuscitation team, all trying to revive him. There was no screaming of "Code Blue" -- no crash cart -- no jumping up and down on Bobby's chest as would be normal in General Hospital. Why not? Because the death was faked by J.R. He blackmailed the hospital manager to drug Bobby and pretend he was dead. J.R.'s detective saw to it that this all happened and a casket containing a perfectly faked "Bobby" made of plastic and complete with wig was buried. Meanwhile, Bobby has been taken still drugged to the wilds of Mexico. There he is kept under guard by four hired thugs. Why? J.R. wants Bobby out of the way so he can control the oil business, but even J.R. doesn't have the heart to kill his own brother. Not quite. During his incarceration, Bobby stops being Mr. Nice Guy. He undergoes a personally change-revenge becomes his only motive. Bobby is now more evil than J.R. He escapes his captors during an earthquake and heads back to Texas. Of course he shows up in Pam's shower to give her a happy surprise. He's evil now, but he still loves her and he assumes her shower has been waiting for him all this while. Anyway, he needs a shower after all that time.

Stephen King: The answer to the question of how Bobby Ewing comes back is very simple. Bobby Ewing is still dead. He has been reanimated, probably by enemies of J.R.'s with access to certain arcane books and rituals. Bobby may smile and look sexy, but if you look closely, that twinkle is gone from his eyes. I think he is taking sharp things and putting them under his bed. And when the time comes - probably the last episode of the season - he will simultaneously kill certain cast members. We will find out whom he kills and who survives the following season. We will also find out if the decay process can be reversed, depending upon how the viewers accept Patrick Duffy.

Cyra McFadden: Why all the fuss over the most plausible storyline on Dallas in years? The reason Bobby Ewing's back is obvious. He hasn't been reincarnated because Bobby never died. In fact, his most serious injury, after that car crash, was bent hair. Enter the doctor who treated him in the hospital - a graduate of the "Baby Doc" medical school Duke runs in "Doonesbury." In collusion with J.R., who promised to build him a billion dollar VoodooDrome in his native Haiti, he turned Bobby into a zombie, alive but with no vital signs. Since Bobby showed no vital signs before the accident, no one intervened on his behalf. Why should they have the spell removed, when they noticed nothing different? What J.R. has in mind for him is anybody's guess. Mine is that all those miles of white picket fence on the Ewing ranch need painting again, and that we'll next see Bobby the zombie numbly tackling the job. Or, on the strength of that shower scene he may quit Dallas again and star in Irish Spring commercials.

Erich Segal: Realizing that Pam will always love Bobby, Mark has made the ultimate sacrifice for her on their wedding night sneaking out to undergo all-night plastic surgery-including a "height job"-to have himself made into a replica of Pam's first husband. Now she can love him for what he isn't. Meanwhile, we find out that the very optimistic Miss Ellie had arranged to have Bobby interred in a refrigerated coffin, thus preserving him intact until medical science can find a cure for automobile crashes. In fact this is accomplished during the summer hiatus by the lovely Dr. Mercedes Bent (played by Whoopi Goldberg)
Unfortunately, Bobby is only defrosted in time to learn of Pam's imminent, nuptials. So he performs the ultimate sacrifice and has plastic surgery to acquire the features of Mark Graison. Thus, while Mark is absent having his operation, Bobby climbs into bed with Pam who, in her passion does not notice there are still a few icicles dropping from his ears. This will pose enough problems to carry Dallas through another season, at which point both Mark-Bobby and Bobby-Mark will be killed by the fallout from a small nuclear reactor that J.R. has secretly built at Southfork. Of course, this blast, which has a killing distance of 25 feet, will wipe out everybody in the cast, giving us the all-time cliffhanger.

George Plimpton: I've never seen the show. But I remember once seeing a girl shot out of a cannon, and then you magically see her appear sitting on a half-moon. The trick, of course, was that they were twins. It would seem to me that in this particular case, Bobby is one of the famous Ewing Quintuplets from Shreveport, La., which is convenient, since it means Bobby Ewing can be run over four more times.