Biggest Drop in Quality

[Monzo]

In the later years of Dallas, there was a feeling that the quality declined (further) with the start of each new season, but when do you think the biggest drop in quality occurred?

A note regarding the different ways of counting the seasons: The poll you can participate in is based on a total of 14 seasons.

 

[Seaviewer]

I voted season 14. As you say, there was a steady decline through the later seasons but at least there was some semblance of continuity. In the final season it was like "is this even the same show?"

 

[CeeCee72]

I voted for season 11. Season 10 was the last time Dallas actually felt like Dallas to me. Between the mummy fiasco, Kimberly Cryder, Nick, April, and Lisa, it was just awful.

Oh yeah, isn't season 11 when we got that dreadful Laurel storyline? Gross.

 

[Angela Channing]

Dallas's decline wasn't linear, it seemed to steadily go down and then plummet before another steady decline before the next plummet. A sort of staircase descent.

I think the first major drop was season 9 with the Marinos Shipping storyline and bringing back Bobby at the end. The next major drop was season 11, as @CeeCee72 correctly identifies the ghastly Laurel Ellis storyline as a new low.

However, season 14 was so dire, it's hard not to think that the fall from season 13 (quite ghastly) to season 14 (incredibly ghastly) not to be the biggest fall in quality.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

As mediocre as Season 9 was (too daytime soapy) nothing in Peter Dunne's Season 9 was as dire as much of Seasons 12, 13 and 14.

While the pace was off in Season 11, and it couldn't hold a candle to Season 10, I at least felt DALLAS was still DALLAS -- until Season 12.

 

[Willie Oleson]

A sort of staircase descent.

How very soapy of them.

Everything post-PamCrash looks like DALLAS Extra, almost like an Alternative Reality Dallas that we may or may not remember correctly, like a foggy cloak-and-dagger meeting in Vienna.
I don't trust any comments posted about those episodes, let alone the seasons as a whole.

 

[Bobby Southworth]

For me, I would agree that the absolute sharpest decline was between seasons 13 and 14, but the one between 11 and 12 really changed the show forever. As badly as the Pam situation, and Bobby's reaction were handled, season 11 still felt like Dallas. Season 12 started inserting the camp. The Harper brothers.. Need I say more, really?

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

I’m not sure it would be my “objective” answer, but I voted Season 8. Afton gave way to Mandy, Lucy to Jamie, Barbara to Donna, ambiguous and simple “Jock and Digger” to cartoonish and harebrained “Jock The Saint and Digger and (heretofore, not-remotely-explicably, unmentioned) Jason, the Drunk Idiots”.

There’s an early-season scene with Katherine getting arrested at the hospital for attempting to murder Bobby that’s about 3 levels worse than “mailing it in”…

Swan Song was a highlight of the entire series… but even the great Scotty Demarest (the Superlawyer who never won any cases) couldn’t redeem Jenna’s interminable murder storyline..

Actually, looking at the above… it *is* my answer and I’m sticking to it! Season 12 with Haleyville was quite a leap into the abyss of unmitigated brainlessness, though..

 

[Bobby Southworth]

I’m not sure it would be my “objective” answer, but I voted Season 8. Afton gave way to Mandy, Lucy to Jamie, Barbara to Donna, ambiguous and simple “Jock and Digger” to cartoonish and harebrained “Jock The Saint and Digger and (heretofore, not-remotely-explicably, unmentioned) Jason, the Drunk Idiots”.

There’s an early-season scene with Katherine getting arrested at the hospital for attempting to murder Bobby that’s about 3 levels short of “mailing it in”…

Swan Song was a highlight of the entire series… but even the great Scotty Demarest (the Superlawyer who never won any cases) couldn’t redeem Jenna’s interminable murder storyline..

Actually, looking at the above… it *is* my answer and I’m sticking to it! Season 12 with Haleyville was quite a leap into the abyss of unmitigated brainlessness, though..

Believe it or not, I had the same thought on season 8. I guess that would be my 3rd choice, but in hindsight, it really is when things deviated from the original characters and timelines. It's a season I find it hard to get through. It might have been ok the first time around, but it's not a very easy binge watch.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

When Paulsen left. Both times.

 

[Billy Wall]

IMO, Season 11 is the last great season of Dallas.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

IMO, Season 11 is the last great season of Dallas.

Or .. at least the last one that's recognizable as DALLAS.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

No one's voted for Season 9 (dvd) yet??

 

[Taylor Bennett Jr.]

No one's voted for Season 9 (dvd) yet??

hm, I wonder if that’s because the initial episodes of the Dream Season were high-quality, before Angelica and the emeralds took over..

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

hm, I wonder if that’s because the initial episodes of the Dream Season were high-quality, before Angelica and the emeralds took over..

Yes, the first part of Season 9 was perfectly acceptable, until mid-year when the plots stopped coalescing, and Katzman called it "a woman's show," the series taking on the rambling tone resembling a daytime soap. (The women became weaker while the new producers pretended they were making them stronger).

DALLAS has been called, seriously in some corners, "Shakespearean" -- but the Shakespeare came from Paulsen (who really was a brilliant constructionist). Yes, Season 3, which ended with "Who Shot JR?", was brilliant as well (before Paulsen was there) but DALLAS was still fairly new, and the writers were figuring out what their show was about and what it was going to be... Paulsen was brought in after that, but the more control he had over the scripts, the more biblical DALLAS became.

At least, Katzman had the instincts to see Paulsen's skill and ceded a certain narrative power to him.

And the two greatest drops in DALLAS' quality happened in Seasons 9 and 12, immediately after Paulsen's two exits... I can forgive Season 11's problems, because there was no spring hiatus during which they normally plotted out most of the next year's storylines (Lorimar thought there would be an industry-wide writers' strike in 1987, although it would be delayed by twelve months) so they had to write as they shot the show. Obviously, that's a problem, and the pacing became a problem among, other things (e.g., Laurel Ellis, too much Jack Scalia, Pam's clunky exit).

But as flawed and imperfect as Season 11 was, it was the last year DALLAS felt even remotely like DALLAS.

Art Lewis in Season 12, and silly Howard Lakin in Season 13 & 14, couldn't make it work. And Katzman let it happen. For three years he let it happen.