|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Choose a press article from the drop down list
Dallas Critic
A Season by Season look at Dallas part 7
LAST TIME: Part Four: The Season of Travilla Starring Barbara Carrera and Bye-Bye Donna Reed.
MAIN TITLES $ THEME MUSIC: DALLAS: A Lorimar/Telepictures Production. Starring (In Alphabetical Order): Barbara BelGeddes (Ellie Ewing-Farlow). Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewing). Linda Gray (Sue Ellen Ewing). Larry Hagman (J.R. Ewing). Susan Howard (Donna Krebs). Steve Kanaly (Ray Krebs). Howard Keel (Clayton Farlow). Ken Kercheval (Cliff Barnes). Priscilla Beauleau Presley (Jenna Wade). Dack Rambo (Jack Ewing). Victoria Principal (Pamela Barnes Ewing). ALSO STARRING (In Alphabetical Order): Steve Forrest (Wes Parmalee). Jenilee Harrison (Jamie Ewing Barnes). Deborah Shelton (Mandy Winger). Sherie J. Wilson (April Stevens). CREATED BY: David Jacobs.
FADE IN: Times were tough in the world of nightime soaps. As reported in Part Six, the once dominant nightime dramas were slowly losing their audiences who turned instead to sitcoms such as THE COSBY SHOW, THE GOLDEN GIRLS, etc. To keep the audiences from leaving in droves, some nightime dramas tried to emulate the daytime soaps by coming up with outlandish storylines (The Moldavia mess on DYNASTY, the Empire Valley scheme on KNOTS LANDING, etc). DALLAS, even tried to imitate it's biggest rival DYNASTY by adding glamour and foriegn intrigue in the form of Barbara Carrera.
None of it worked too well however, and DALLAS and it's sister show KNOTS LANDING were the first to go back to basics, i.e. to the ingredients that made them popular in the first place. In DALLAS' case, that meant the return of former producer Leonard Katzman, who left the show in 1985 (He was still listed in the credits as a "Creative Consultant" however), as Executive Producer replacing Philip Capice.
After Capice's departure, Katzman's first task was to explain to audiences how Bobby Ewing, who was presumably killed off at the end of the 1984-85 season, ended up in Pam's shower in the last scene of the 1986 cliffhanger. Patrick Duffy was persuaded by Capice (And reportedly Larry Hagman as well), with the help of a hefty salary increase and a $1 million bonus, to return to the show.
In order to facilitate the return of Bobby to DALLAS, it was decided to make Bobby's death, and all of the events which occured during the 1985-86 season...a dream.
That meant asking the audience to forget that....Bobby was killed by Katherine Wentworth......his subsequent funeral....Sue Ellen falling off, and getting back on the wagon....Ray and Donna making up and losing their unborn child as well as adopting a hearing impaired boy named Tony afterwards....Cliff and Jamie living happily ever after....the evil Angelica Nero blowing up Sue-Ellen and Jamie...the existence of the aforementioned Nero...the diamond mine storyline involving Pam Ewing....the return of Mark Graison whom Pamela later married...None of it, we repeat, none of it ever happened!
Another minor problem Katzman faced was how to explain the presence of actor Steve Forrest who appeared during the last four shows of the previous season as ranch foreman Ben Stivers. That was easily solved by simply reintroducing Forrest again (As he had a contract to appear in the first twelve shows of the season) as Wes Parmalee, who had a hidden agenda all his own, but more on that later.
The 1986-1987 season premiere "Return To Camelot," which aired on September 26, reprised the last thirty-seconds from "Blast From The Past" (The cliffhanger), in which Pam wakes up with a start and opening the shower door and seeing a man taking a shower with his back to her. The man turns around and greets her with a hearty "Good Morning," which startles Pam momentarily. Pam then briefly explains the events of the previous season after which Bobby assures her that none of it happened. Bobby then gets dressed and leaves for Southfork (Nice humorous touch when Pam looks towards the driveway looking for her sister-in-law's car).
Meanwhile at Southfork, Miss Ellie, Jenna and a very hung over Sue Ellen are having breakfast (Since the show picked up from the 1984-1985 season, Sue Ellen had to go back to being a drunk), Bobby arrives shortly afterwards and starts to tell Jenna that he asked Pam to marry her. Jenna doesn't take this bit of news very well as she expected to marry Bobby, but then remembers that she told him at Lucy's wedding that she wasn't so sure that they should get married after all. She and her daughter Charlie move off the ranch shortly after that.
To break off all ties with her former fiancee' she gives him back the boutique he bought for her shortly after they resumed their relationship a few years before. Unfortunately she couldn't completely forget about Bobby since she had another minor crisis to deal with, she was pregnant by Bobby. Needless to say that Jenna was less than thrilled about the news under the circumstances. She then tells Ray Krebs who at the moment is facing a major crisis of his own, his impending divorce from Donna, who is also carrying their child.
Donna decides to leave DALLAS for Washington and into the political arena she had missed since marrying Ray. Ray, in the meantime, tells Bobby about Jenna's pregnancy on the day of the latter's wedding to Pam who, unfortunately, overhears the conversation, but they decided to go on with the wedding anyway after discussing the matter (Doesn't Bobby know that it's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?).
Meanwhile, speaking of unhappy marriages, Ewing cousins Jamie and Jack have troubles of their own. Jamie is being treated very badly by Cliff who only married her to get the piece of Ewing Oil that she would have won stemming from the lawsuit for ownership of the company. Since she lost, Cliff wants out of the marriage; and Jack's past literaly comes back to haunt him when his ex-wife April Stevens (Sherrie J. Wilson, later of WALKER: TEXAS RANGER) comes into town. She, with the help of Cliff, eventually gets half of the ten percent piece of Jack's money.
Not to be outdone by the outsiders, the Ewing family had a bigger crisis to worry about in the form of the new ranch foreman Wes Parmalee (Steve Forrest of the 1976 cop drama S.W.A.T.), who claims he's actually the presumed dead Ewing patriarch Jock (His body was never recovered). No one in the family believes his claim, although he nearly convinces Miss Ellie thanks to his remembering certain events known only to them. He eventually tells Miss Ellie the truth that he was in the same hospital Jock was in shortly after the helicopter crash and Jock told him everything about his family before he died. Parmalee then dissapears.....(Episode 235, "Bar-B-Qued" which aired December 12, 1986).
But, as soon as that particular crisis ended, another one took it's place and this one was a doozy because it was the begining of the end of the Ewing Oil empire. It seems that J.R. had hired a mercenary named B.D. Calhoon (Hunter Von Leer) to blow up some fields in Asia so that could strengthen the American oil economy, a ploy J.R. used twice before.
But, J.R. got cold feet as soon as he learned that the CIA were investigating Calhoon and tried to call the plan off. Calhoon, however, went ahead with the plan and J.R. distanced himself from the mercenary who then planned revenge against him, which of course put the entire Ewing family in danger, especially John Ross whom Calhoon kidnapped. J.R. rescued his son by killing Calhoon. But, that wasn't then end of that......
Meanwhile, Sue-Ellen, who sobered up finally, decided to get rid of romantic rival Mandy Winger by first buying a "Frederick's of Hollywood" type small business called Valentine's Lingerie and used Mandy Winger as a model ("Trash With Class" was the slogan), making her a household (or, in this case, bedroom) name, all of which made J.R. unhappy. Sue Ellen, then co-financed a film starring Winger with the intention of getting out of DALLAS, and J.R.'s life.
The Ewings recieves more bad news when they learn that cousin Jamie Ewing Barnes died from injuries substained from a mountain climbing accident. Since she hadn't divorced Cliff before her untimely demise, Cliff wound up with the five percent of the Ewing Oil stock given to her by her brother Jack before he left DALLAS. April, thanks to some manipulations of her own, wound up with half of jack's five-percent, making her a wealthy woman.
Pam and Bobby had more than their hands full with the fact that Bobby is the father of Jenna's unborn child. Pam has a hard time dealing with that fact, and goes to Jenna to try to ease the tension between them which Jenna refuses ("We can't just smoke a peace pipe and be pals, there's been too much history" Jenna bitterly tells Pam refering to the longtime rivalry between the two women for Bobby).
Jenna and the recently divorced Ray became closer. His ex-wife Donna moved to Washington and gave birth to a baby girl which she named Margaret, after Ray's mother. Donna also fell in love with a Senator named Andrew Dowling, who brings the bad news that the Senate is forming a fact-finding commitee to investigate the Ewings because of the events leading up to the incidents involving J.R. and D.B. Calhoon. "I could very well be on the investigating commitee" Dowling tells Donna before she makes the call to Southfork to warn Miss Ellie. Ellie of course becomes upset at the news and Clayton, upon learning about it as well, angrilly confronts J.R. and proceeds in getting two socks to the jaw before falling down the Southfork staircase (Episode 249, "The Dark End Of The Tunnel," which aired May 1, 1987)
On the season finale, "Fall Of The House Of Ewing" which aired on May 15, 1987, the investigation begins and thanks to some clever manueverings by J.R., both he and Bobby escape procecution by the investigating commitee, but with one catch. Ewing Oil must be disolved and the name retired, but with all the stock holders receiving cash for their shares of the company. The building is sold to none other than Jeremy Wendell (William Smithers) who tells J.R. that he was the one who brought them down. Wendell then starts to take down the portrait of Jock in the main causing J.R. to threaten the Westar president ("Touch that painting and I'll kill you where you stand!"). J.R. tells his son after taking the painting from Wendell, "This (pointing to the painting) is Ewing Oil."
In the last scene of the episode, Pam, who is driving back to Southfork, calls Bobby on the car phone and tells him the good news that she will be able to have children of their own. But, shortly after she hangs up the phone, a large truck pulls out from an intersection seemingly out of nowhere causing Pam to slam into it, causing the car to burst into flames......End of episode and of season.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Leonard Katzman.
 JR RECOMMENDS |
|
DALLAS DISCUSSION Discuss Dallas and meet fans in the official Dallas fans forum. |
DALLAS PRESS Dallas news, critics and merchandise. |
Contact Us | Press | Fan's Forum | Podcasts | DVD | Warner Bros. Studios
The Official Site For The Hit Television Series Dallas
Designed by Goldlion © Ultimate Dallas All rights reserved.