Felt Forced

[Kenny Coyote]

J. Harris Wendell III, Jeremy Wendell’s son, determined to destroy the Ewing’s for revenge.

Judith Lee Wendell, Jeremy Wendell’s x-wife who hates the Ewing’s but not John Ross (turns out she was his first lover)

I like your list of characters. It's good. I'm wondering how you would explain that as public a figure as Jeremy Wendell would keep it a secret that he had a wife and son. How would he have gone about keeping anybody from knowing about that?


I have an idea for a Wendell-Ewing feud in a Dallas continuation as well. I don't write fiction on any regular basis but there's someone who says I should be a writer. I really don't know. So, if anyone reading this would like to read the following and critique it, I'd appreciate that.

My idea is for Jeremy Wendell to have had a brother he never talked about. Jeremy and his brother Jake would have been close early in life but stopped talking to each other after Jeremy centered his entire life around business, becoming so obsessed with it that he stopped having any sort of personal life at all. Jeremy shut his entire family out so he could focus on business. He wanted no distractions from it.

Jake never wanted to become that way and didn't. It was something he never wanted for his children either, but Jake has a son, Warren, who rebels against him and wants to do what Jeremy did. It turns out that before Jeremy died, he got to know Warren, just 17 then, and he's the only family member Jeremy speaks to. They get close enough and Warren admires him. He never connected with his father and they had nothing in common. So, Warren looks at his uncle as a role model. Maybe even idolizes him. When Jeremy dies, he leaves Warren his entire estate.

Warren goes to college and then uses the money to start his own oil company. He wonders if he's as smart and as good a businessman as Jeremy was. He wonders about it to the point it becomes an obsession. He figures the only way to be free of this obsession is to find out. To test himself. He figures the best way to find out just how good he really is, is to compete with the toughest competitors Jeremy ever had - the Ewings.

Warren is determined to completely dedicate his life to feuding with the Ewings, if necessary, just to see if he can do as well or better against them as Jeremy did. He's quite disappointed when hearing the news of JR's death. Now he won't have the opportunity to compete against him. But there still is his son. That's how Warren thinks.

There's nothing he isn't willing to do to them even though he has no animosity towards them. It's just a personal challenge he devises for himself. Warren has no personal feelings towards them one way or the other. Yet he's willing to ruin their personal lives just to get that edge on them. He is that cold. Warren will forego all else in life to feud with the Ewings and find out if he's every bit the man Jeremy was. The man he wishes had been his father.

 

[Rove]

I'd be quite happy if the man himself - Jeremy Wendell - appeared in a continuation of Dallas. William Smithers might be 92 but if the bloke is happy to reprise the role I'd use him. Imagine how cranky he would be.

 

[stevew]

I like your list of characters. It's good. I'm wondering how you would explain that as public a figure as Jeremy Wendell would keep it a secret that he had a wife and son. How would he have gone about keeping anybody from knowing about that?


I have an idea for a Wendell-Ewing feud in a Dallas continuation as well. I don't write fiction on any regular basis but there's someone who says I should be a writer. I really don't know. So, if anyone reading this would like to read the following and critique it, I'd appreciate that.

My idea is for Jeremy Wendell to have had a brother he never talked about. Jeremy and his brother Jake would have been close early in life but stopped talking to each other after Jeremy centered his entire life around business, becoming so obsessed with it that he stopped having any sort of personal life at all. Jeremy shut his entire family out so he could focus on business. He wanted no distractions from it.

Jake never wanted to become that way and didn't. It was something he never wanted for his children either, but Jake has a son, Warren, who rebels against him and wants to do what Jeremy did. It turns out that before Jeremy died, he got to know Warren, just 17 then, and he's the only family member Jeremy speaks to. They get close enough and Warren admires him. He never connected with his father and they had nothing in common. So, Warren looks at his uncle as a role model. Maybe even idolizes him. When Jeremy dies, he leaves Warren his entire estate.

Warren goes to college and then uses the money to start his own oil company. He wonders if he's as smart and as good a businessman as Jeremy was. He wonders about it to the point it becomes an obsession. He figures the only way to be free of this obsession is to find out. To test himself. He figures the best way to find out just how good he really is, is to compete with the toughest competitors Jeremy ever had - the Ewings.

Warren is determined to completely dedicate his life to feuding with the Ewings, if necessary, just to see if he can do as well or better against them as Jeremy did. He's quite disappointed when hearing the news of JR's death. Now he won't have the opportunity to compete against him. But there still is his son. That's how Warren thinks.

There's nothing he isn't willing to do to them even though he has no animosity towards them. It's just a personal challenge he devises for himself. Warren has no personal feelings towards them one way or the other. Yet he's willing to ruin their personal lives just to get that edge on them. He is that cold. Warren will forego all else in life to feud with the Ewings and find out if he's every bit the man Jeremy was. The man he wishes had been his father.

I would assume many people would know about his x-wives and his various children, even though they weren’t mentioned in original Dallas - there just wasn’t any need, but there wasn’t anything which precluded their existence.

I like your idea for a new nemesis. The concept of the Wendell’s feuding with the Ewing’s was a missed opportunity.

 

[Jock-O-Lantern]

Besides, Jeremy Wendell told, I believe Sue Ellen when asked, I’m paraphrasing, “that he didn’t want a family.”

 

[stevew]

I like your list of characters. It's good. I'm wondering how you would explain that as public a figure as Jeremy Wendell would keep it a secret that he had a wife and son. How would he have gone about keeping anybody from knowing about that?


I have an idea for a Wendell-Ewing feud in a Dallas continuation as well. I don't write fiction on any regular basis but there's someone who says I should be a writer. I really don't know. So, if anyone reading this would like to read the following and critique it, I'd appreciate that.

My idea is for Jeremy Wendell to have had a brother he never talked about. Jeremy and his brother Jake would have been close early in life but stopped talking to each other after Jeremy centered his entire life around business, becoming so obsessed with it that he stopped having any sort of personal life at all. Jeremy shut his entire family out so he could focus on business. He wanted no distractions from it.

Jake never wanted to become that way and didn't. It was something he never wanted for his children either, but Jake has a son, Warren, who rebels against him and wants to do what Jeremy did. It turns out that before Jeremy died, he got to know Warren, just 17 then, and he's the only family member Jeremy speaks to. They get close enough and Warren admires him. He never connected with his father and they had nothing in common. So, Warren looks at his uncle as a role model. Maybe even idolizes him. When Jeremy dies, he leaves Warren his entire estate.

Warren goes to college and then uses the money to start his own oil company. He wonders if he's as smart and as good a businessman as Jeremy was. He wonders about it to the point it becomes an obsession. He figures the only way to be free of this obsession is to find out. To test himself. He figures the best way to find out just how good he really is, is to compete with the toughest competitors Jeremy ever had - the Ewings.

Warren is determined to completely dedicate his life to feuding with the Ewings, if necessary, just to see if he can do as well or better against them as Jeremy did. He's quite disappointed when hearing the news of JR's death. Now he won't have the opportunity to compete against him. But there still is his son. That's how Warren thinks.

There's nothing he isn't willing to do to them even though he has no animosity towards them. It's just a personal challenge he devises for himself. Warren has no personal feelings towards them one way or the other. Yet he's willing to ruin their personal lives just to get that edge on them. He is that cold. Warren will forego all else in life to feud with the Ewings and find out if he's every bit the man Jeremy was. The man he wishes had been his father.

I like it. Sounds like a way to go.

My idea of Jeremy having a family of his own isn’t to suggest they were a secret, that the Ewing’s could very well know he’d been married and maybe more than once with several children. It wasn’t that people didn’t know, it’s just they weren’t part of his business the way the Ewing’s were in business together. I felt Jeremy would be the sort to ignore them altogether.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

When they swapped properties it didn't even click with me at the time, I just rolled with it. I was too focused on the characters.

That was Miss Ellie updating the TARDIS outer plasmic shell to a better ranch configuration.

She regenerated herself at one point, didn't like her new look & regenerated again to look like her original body.

The BBC weren't even notified that Dallas had pinched those concepts from their Doctor Who series!!

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

Of course the TNT Cyntax Dallas felt forced. The Ewing's were just shoe horned in to give Cynthia Cidre something to write about!

It was only called Dallas in name only.

As I've said umpteen times before this show wasn't really Dallas at all. It just pretended to be. There were too many extraneous characters which Cidre focused on rather than the Ewing's themselves. Anyone who has actually watched the original Lorimar produced Dallas will know that the series revolved around the Ewing family, the Cyntax Dallas certainly didn't because there were only really three blood Ewings on the show. JR, Bobby & John Ross. That diminished to just two after the sad death of Dallas legend Larry Hagman.

Cidre's main problem with the TNT continuation was despite introducing too many characters that were never seen on the original Dallas, she also abandoned any sense of continuity with the actual hit series produced by Lorimar Television in favour of retconing history to suit her own agenda.

I'm not surprised it got cancelled after three series. People wanted a soap opera, what they got was a crime drama & there are far too many of them on TV. She jettisoned all the character touches in favour of rapid plot development. Not a good sign & in my opinion the marque of a very poor writer.

The original series of Dallas will always be the best whilst the TNT version will end up being largely forgotten. Sad but true.

 

[Sarah]

That was Miss Ellie updating the TARDIS outer plasmic shell to a better ranch configuration.

She regenerated herself at one point, didn't like her new look & regenerated again to look like her original body.

The BBC weren't even notified that Dallas had pinched those concepts from their Doctor Who series!!

I work for the BBC and I can assure you, they know everything about Dr Who !

 

[Michael Torrance]

Of course the TNT Cyntax Dallas felt forced. The Ewing's were just shoe horned in to give Cynthia Cidre something to write about!

It was only called Dallas in name only.

And that is really the issue. It's not that Cidre turned Cliff into a psycho villain. It is that she wanted her show to have a psycho villain, and she was trying to figure out which Dallas character she would shoehorn into that role. She had a blueprint of what show she wanted, and TNT did not give her that, so she figured she would twist Dallas into whatever. She wanted a Hispanic family, so enter the Ramos and their never-before-seen whole family that original Dallas just forgot to mention. She wanted a drug cartel ... you know how it goes.

 

[bspooky9]

She had a blueprint of what show she wanted, and TNT did not give her that, so she figured she would twist Dallas into whatever.

I take it that TNT was more than willing to preserve the Dallas legacy, but that Cyntax didn't want that.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

I take it that TNT was more than willing to preserve the Dallas legacy, but that Cyntax didn't want that.

TNT probably wanted a modern update of the original Lorimar Dallas.

Cynthia Cidre obviously didn't want that which is why the ratings kept dropping. She only wanted to create her own characters mostly. She wasn't really interested in the legacy characters from the old hit series. I'm not surprised it got axed.

 

[bspooky9]

TNT probably wanted a modern update of the original Lorimar Dallas.

Cynthia Cidre obviously didn't want that which is why the ratings kept dropping. She only wanted to create her own characters mostly. She wasn't really interested in the legacy characters from the old hit series. I'm not surprised it got axed.

Bumping this up-- I think that if she had seen what made O-R Dallas the phenomenon it was from 1978-91 on CBS (preferably by seeing it on DVD and studying it closely, noticing all the nuances), we might have had a better TNT Dallas; would you agree?

 

[DallasFanForever]

Bumping this up-- I think that if she had seen what made O-R Dallas the phenomenon it was from 1978-91 on CBS (preferably by seeing it on DVD and studying it closely, noticing all the nuances), we might have had a better TNT Dallas; would you agree?

Better, yes, but ultimately I’m not sure it would’ve made a huge difference in the long run. In her defense that’s an awful lot of magic to recapture and I’m not sure anyone could’ve done it to be honest. Could it have been done differently? Sure but when you think about it she really had her work cut out for her. I don’t envy her.

 

[bspooky9]

Better, yes, but ultimately I’m not sure it would’ve made a huge difference in the long run. In her defense that’s an awful lot of magic to recapture and I’m not sure anyone could’ve done it to be honest. Could it have been done differently? Sure but when you think about it she really had her work cut out for her. I don’t envy her.

Great point! I didn't think of it that way.

 

[Rove]

we might have had a better TNT Dallas; would you agree?

It has been noted the top brass (WB) informed the showrunner to ignore the reunion movies, hence why she started her continuation when Dallas finished in 1991. But can someone here on Tellytalk correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it mentioned in TNT Dallas that Elena made coffee for Pam or something to that affect? This would mean the Ramos family were known to the Ewing family prior to Pam's last appearance in 1988. Hogwash.

 

[DallasFanForever]

This would mean the Ramos family were known to the Ewing family prior to Pam's last appearance in 1988. Hogwash.

Which begs the question, how were we supposed to even take this show seriously at this point?

If they wanted to introduce another family then fine. I have no problem with that but introduce them another way. Telling us they were around during original Dallas’s run just insulted our intelligence.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

Which begs the question, how were we supposed to even take this show seriously at this point?

If they wanted to introduce another family then fine. I have no problem with that but introduce them another way. Telling us they were around during original Dallas’s run just insulted our intelligence.

I think Cidre hoped to shoehorn her continuation into established Dallas history to show everyone that her show was still Dallas!

If anything the reasoning behind it backfired because it only made the existing fans of Dallas gnash their teeth at all the continuity mistakes. I think she hoped the viewers would ignore all the reconning she did. Well, it didn't work!

 

[Garry]

It has been noted the top brass (WB) informed the showrunner to ignore the reunion movies, hence why she started her continuation when Dallas finished in 1991.

In Cidre's original Dallas Pilot script there are references to the events that happened in the J.R Returns reunion movie from 1996, such as J.R turning up at his own memorial service. These scenes were shot during the filming of the Pilot in April 2011.

When it was decided that the Ewings would be unaware that Pamela Rebecca was Cliff's daughter on the new series they realized that they could not include the events of the reunion movies as Pamela had already featured in J.R Returns, sharing many scenes with John Ross and Christopher. So the two Dallas reunion movies were sent in to an alternate universe.

 

[Rove]

So the two Dallas reunion movies were sent in to an alternate universe.

This explains a lot.

 

[Sea - Boo! - Er]

But when was it decided that she was Cliff's daughter? That seemed very much like a retcon within a retcon.