Dallas Killed Off Way Too Many Good Characters.

Snarky Oracle!

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I'm stiff baffled why the writers on Dallas thought it was a great idea to dangle the carrot, "Is this Jock?" Did they not learn from the colossal mistake recasting Miss Ellie?

But somehow, it was just different. On the heels of Miss Ellie's multiple head switches, and Bobby's being shoehorned back into the show via a still-shockingly lazy dream explanation, bringing back Jock sounds like a horrible idea on the face of it (as it were).

Yet it worked -- even though some still disagree. The difference was that Wes Parmalee wasn't definitively Jock. And that ambiguity, an ambiguity that remained even after the deception had been ostensibly cleared up in the script, helped it work. And, had Bobby's resurrection been better handled, it could have been used to bolster (as Harve Smithfield would point out) the public and legal perception that Parmalee might be Jock because it's now established, via Bobby's return, that Ewings hide relatives and execute their wills despite that relative still being alive.

Miss Ellie should never have been re-cast, and Bobby's revival should have been handled differently (if it happened at all). But the Wes Parmalee plot was damned-near brilliant -- as outrageous as it was -- because it was at the very epicenter of everything DALLAS was really all about: a family haunted by the specter of a patriarch who'd given them all their status, affluence and power, yet whose domination left them with a damaged, wildly dysfunctional and internecine dynamic which ruined most of their lives.

As Susan Howard once described the show: it's one great big morality play about all these fabulously wealthy people with every imaginable advantage, constantly stabbing away at one another --- for nothing.

It wasn't necessary that Parmalee actually be Jock, but he essentially represented the ghost of Jock for the family, and whatever he'd meant to them. And the shoddy new video-edit visuals for that season (although I'm glad they've finally been fixed) somehow underscored the sense that this character, scammer or not, was perhaps an apparition the Ewings might or might not be imagining as the result of a group hallucination. (I always like to believe that Jeremy Wendell had begun poisoning the Southfork aquifer since 1984. But that's just me).

Had poor Donna Reed not been brought in, and had Bobby's return been rationalized via the requisite Federal Witness Protection Program explanation (imperfect, I know, but the only scenario that could have happened "realistically" and handled in a single episode instead of a single two-minute scene), I would have done the Wes Parmalee plot just exactly as they did it, and then ended the show in 1988, one year after Pam crashed and burned and disappeared (her accident explained as her careening coincidentally into a tanker truck doing illegal oil business for J.R. in the Texas badlands). Right after Sue Ellen shoots her ex-husband and possibly kills him... Ending on Sue Ellen leaving Dallas in 1989 would seem ideal, except that that season was largely crap-ish.

The two remaining years were too campy, DALLAS' mojo whittled away via too much silliness. I might have accepted Season 13 (DVD) with the Ewing-Valdez oil spill, and Lady Jessica's homicidal return (had it been done like a horror movie and not facetiously), and had Bobby's fixation with Jeanne O'Brien led to his and Cliff's learning of Pam's possible death by neurofibromatosis (making her Digger's daughter after all), the entire series ending with either JR trapped in that mental institution or Miss Ellie's dying out on the Southfork prairie, surrounded by the remaining family, as she was about to reveal the secrets buried under Section 40.

But that's not really what happened.

Ectoplasmic memories of the past should have framed and defined the last two or three years of the show. Going for shlock instead had a deleterious effect on DALLAS' esteem retroactively, and pushed the ratings way down.

So who they killed no longer resonated one way or the other.

 
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Killed too soon:
- Definitely Mark. We needed more pornstache...
- Jeff Farraday. Idem.
- Naldo Marchetta. Sleaziness in its purest state. What Da Vulva should have been on Dynasty...
 

Jock's Ghost

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Kristin with JRs kid hanging around would have been fun. She surrenders due to drug abuse, her kid to Bobby and later tries to take him away. Instead of that idiot Faraday sister.
Rebecca was gone too soon.
Katherine should have been a corporate shark. Pam, Cliff versus her. She gets her father's company back. She doesn't kill Bobby or shoot him.
Cousin Jamie needed a redo. Re-purposed.
Afton was kind of a nag but Cliff needed a morals check. Surprised she didn't die.
Julie Grey definitely. Tina Louis was fantastic and should have been JRs shooter.
 

Pandora

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I'm one of the few who liked Mark as he was on equal footing with Bobby.
I liked Mark as well. I would have liked to have seen some of his business dealings expanded. JR vs Cliff got rather boring, and it might have been interesting to see some business storylines besides them .... it could even include them.
 

Rove

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I would have liked to have seen some of his business dealings expanded.
I have mentioned this previously in another thread but for a short period in Dallas something special was developing with the Barnes family. There was Pam, Mark, Cliff and Afton. I was thoroughly enjoying how the Barnes family was going from strength to strength while the house of Ewing was decaying before our eyes. I think for a brief time just JR and Bobby were residing at Southfork. It was if history had finally caught up with the Ewing family...starting with Jock.

Pity the writers or producers couldn't see what they had created or perhaps they did. I wonder as the story was unfolding on the small screen they suddenly became aware the focus was moving away from the Ewing family...as if the Ewing's became the secondary story. But this wasn't a bad thing...for a change.
 

Monzo

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Isn't it strange that Dallas stopped killing (many good) characters when ratings dropped? Other shows do the exact opposite: characters are killed off as dramatically as possible to boost declining ratings. On Dallas, characters like Jack, Mandy, Donna or Jenna could have been killed off for exactly that reason, but instead they were allowed to start a new life somewhere else.
 

Pandora

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Isn't it strange that Dallas stopped killing (many good) characters when ratings dropped? Other shows do the exact opposite: characters are killed off as dramatically as possible to boost declining ratings. On Dallas, characters like Jack, Mandy, Donna or Jenna could have been killed off for exactly that reason, but instead they were allowed to start a new life somewhere else.
Well after the fiasco with Bobby's death and resurrection I could understand a reluctance to do this again.
 

DallasFanForever

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Julie Grey definitely. Tina Louis was fantastic and should have been JRs shooter.
Had she not fallen to her death off the very top of that building I can definitely see her being the one to shoot a few bullets into J.R. instead of Kristin. Julie could’ve just been away for awhile at that point, making the eventual reveal of the shooter an even bigger surprise because she hadn’t been around for a long time and therefore we wouldn’t have even suspected her.
 

lbf522

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Kristin with JRs kid hanging around would have been fun. She surrenders due to drug abuse, her kid to Bobby and later tries to take him away. Instead of that idiot Faraday sister.
Rebecca was gone too soon.
Katherine should have been a corporate shark. Pam, Cliff versus her. She gets her father's company back. She doesn't kill Bobby or shoot him.
Cousin Jamie needed a redo. Re-purposed.
Afton was kind of a nag but Cliff needed a morals check. Surprised she didn't die.
Julie Grey definitely. Tina Louis was fantastic and should have been JRs shooter.
I especially agree in regards to Katherine. She was wasted which was a shame. There were possibilities other than making her JR's sex toy and her being obsessed over Bobby.
 

Billy Wall

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Had she not fallen to her death off the very top of that building I can definitely see her being the one to shoot a few bullets into J.R. instead of Kristin. Julie could’ve just been away for awhile at that point, making the eventual reveal of the shooter an even bigger surprise because she hadn’t been around for a long time and therefore we wouldn’t have even suspected her.

I like that idea, but would enough people know who she was for a shock factor? Was Dallas the juggernaut it later became when Julie Gray was on the show?
 

DallasFanForever

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I like that idea, but would enough people know who she was for a shock factor? Was Dallas the juggernaut it later became when Julie Gray was on the show?
It’s a risk because as we know the show wasn’t at that level yet when Julie was part of it. I really wouldn’t change anything about the Kristin character except for keeping her around longer, of course. Her being the shooter always made the most sense to me in the end. Julie being the shooter could’ve been an amazing reveal for those that did remember her, but I’ll also concede that for others it might’ve been viewed as a possible letdown at the time had they not been watching from the beginning.
 

Snowcat

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There were possibilities to

I get that recasting a main character is a risky move that fans may or may not like. I wish that they had explored Jock's family maybe meeting his parents or siblings. Did not care much for Jamie the freeloader and Jack. I agree that Jock was an important part of the show and it was sad losing him.

I also never cared for Clayton. He earned JR's dislike and I agreed with JR whenever he referred to Clayton as an outsider which is what he was. Clayton did not belong on Southfork.
I think recasting Jock could have worked because Jim Davis actually died. But they should have had a New actor return from South America as him rather than bring him back from the dead
 
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Jock's Ghost

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I think recasting Jock could have worked because Jim Davis actually died. But they should have had a New actor return from South America as him rather than bring him back from the dead
Yeah, they waited a whole year. Imagine if the episode titled, THE SEARCH ends instead with all the boys climbing out of the truck.... they bring a battled, banged up Jock, amenisa from his trauma. He remembers his boys and his wife's face. The first thing he says is, "I'm home, Miss Ellie..." Tears and cheers. BOOM! Many more years of great storylines. People would have understood and accepted him.
 

Jock's Ghost

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It’s a risk because as we know the show wasn’t at that level yet when Julie was part of it. I really wouldn’t change anything about the Kristin character except for keeping her around longer, of course. Her being the shooter always made the most sense to me in the end. Julie being the shooter could’ve been an amazing reveal for those that did remember her, but I’ll also concede that for others it might’ve been viewed as a possible letdown at the time had they not been watching from the beginning.
Or a conspiracy between the two to kill JR. One lures him, the other shoots him...
 

Snarky Oracle!

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Yeah, they waited a whole year. Imagine if the episode titled, THE SEARCH ends instead with all the boys climbing out of the truck.... they bring a battled, banged up Jock, amenisa from his trauma. He remembers his boys and his wife's face. The first thing he says is, "I'm home, Miss Ellie..." Tears and cheers. BOOM! Many more years of great storylines. People would have understood and accepted him.

Would they? Did they accept Parmalee? Donna Reed, if she was now playing Jock instead of Ellie?

Again, recasting core characters in primetime shows almost never works.
 
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