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Amazing how drunk driving got swept under the rug after the Driscoll reveal, isn’t it? I guess vehicular manslaughter made everyone forget.
Dallas Random Thought Thread
- Thread starter Billy Wall
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Saw Bert Remsen on an episode of "Leave it To Beaver" as a gas station owner.
Dandy was not a popular character, but I think that more could have been done.
In seeing Dandy as a Digger type character, there was potential for Cliff to grow as a character and
maybe become more self-aware, less of a vindictive buffoon.
It would have been better than most of the post-Pam Cliff that we saw.
A relationship could have been explored further, with Dandy as the surrogate Father,
and Cliff becoming something closer to the character at the beginning of the Series.
I suppose, though, that would not have fit the Ewing-Barnes narrative, and the show
would not have needed Cliff as much in such a context.
Bert Remsen was a good actor, and he is an example of how Dallas sometimes
didn't make the best use of supporting actors.
Dandy was not a popular character, but I think that more could have been done.
In seeing Dandy as a Digger type character, there was potential for Cliff to grow as a character and
maybe become more self-aware, less of a vindictive buffoon.
It would have been better than most of the post-Pam Cliff that we saw.
A relationship could have been explored further, with Dandy as the surrogate Father,
and Cliff becoming something closer to the character at the beginning of the Series.
I suppose, though, that would not have fit the Ewing-Barnes narrative, and the show
would not have needed Cliff as much in such a context.
Bert Remsen was a good actor, and he is an example of how Dallas sometimes
didn't make the best use of supporting actors.
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Sue Ellen had two drunk driving incidents. Both times she was trying to escape something. The first, the sanitarium, the second JR.
Both accidents had severe consequences. John Ross almost died because of the first, Micky did die because of the second.
Sue Ellen never faces a single legal consequence for either.
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Possibly they hadn't been invented yet.
I suppose a small pair of scissors would've sufficed though.
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Who did Sue Ellen think she was? Talk about wanting your cake and eat it too. She actually has the nerve to have an attitude when Dusty shows up with a wife while she’s engaged to JR. Right after she was going back and forth between Cliff and JR.
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Always bugged me.
Kinda felt like she was only going back to JR because she didn't have any other options so she was trying to create options with Cliff and then Dusty.
When she called Southfork and told Miss Ellie she was coming home, felt to me she was just giving up and accepting her fate.
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Larry Hagman reasoned that Dallas at that moment couldn't continue on without J.R. Ewing, and he made sure that he wasn't in the USA when the episode aired over there. He was in the UK instead, having the brass chasing him all over.
Sue Ellen wants the Ewing money and status through marriage to J.R., and thought Cliff would stand by her but he didn't compared to his desire for power or being the head of the OLM. Sue Ellen loves Dusty yet is too scared to leave J.R. for him even though Dusty is rich himself when he isn't cowboying and doing Rodeos. Sue Ellen's issues at root are her low self-esteem, caused by her mother Patricia teaching her to get a high status man, yet Patricia clearly didn't tell Sue Ellen what to do if her husband showed little to no interest in her for some length of time. Even though Dusty is rich, his cowboying is a lower class look compared to J.R.'s oilman and tuxedo, so Sue Ellen's snobbery definitely comes in a bit there too, in my opinion, even though she doesn't like her own snobbery a lot of the time. Sue Ellen even took out her dislike of J.R. and Cliff on baby John Ross for some time after he was born.
Was Cliff wrong when he went on that "You're a user" rant to Sue Ellen?
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And that's mostly because she didn't get what she wanted.
Sue Ellen was her own worst enemy.
Doctor Elby knew what he was talking about when he told her that she was relying on someone else's strength.
This is because she had no strength of her own. She hadn't the gumption to stand on her own two feet and leave JR of her own free will!
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I don't think Cliff was wrong when he called Sue Ellen a user.
But he was a user too.
At least Sue Ellen grew out of it. Cliff never did.
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If Sue Ellen was using J.R. as a means to a wealthy and fabulous lifestyle, then she found out too late that wealthy does not always mean happy.
Sue Ellen might have felt trapped once she was under J.R.'s thumb. Cliff had no such excuse. He was always free to leave Dallas and begin a new life somewhere else. Did he really think he could be with Sue Ellen while J.R. around to cause trouble?
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Cliff was badly damaged by the Election episode, and then the For Love or Money episode. The Election episode refers to the Ewings using the death of Penny Ames (Cliff's girlfriend around the late 1960s) in an illegal abortion before Roe v. Wade to damage Cliff's election to the Texas Senate. Cliff's response was to take big money and say "I've just become a realist" when he had actually just sold out. And the For Love or Money episode was when Cliff and Sue Ellen were going to be together, and then J.R. paid Cliff a visit and made Cliff realize that he cared more about a position of power most of all. It made Cliff much more cynical than the early episodes of the show when he was a nice guy.
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I like Cliff’s Cutlass from the early days of the show
(hey, the thread title allows it!)
(hey, the thread title allows it!)
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I like Cliff’s Cutlass from the early days of the show
(hey, the thread title allows it!)
Cliff didn't like Bobby's Mercedes when Pam drove it when they were going to find Digger!
He refused point blank to get into Ewing 4 when he first saw the licence plate. He wasn't long in changing his mind when Pam attempted to drive off and leave him.
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I think that after VP left, the writers didn't know what to do with Cliff. It started out well with Cliff ending the feud, but
the writing inevitably went back to making him a buffoon.
Would like to have seen Cliff continue on his way to being a better person, and maybe even head up a charitable foundation
that would contrast him with the Ewings.
But then again, maybe that would have been too soft for the series.
the writing inevitably went back to making him a buffoon.
Would like to have seen Cliff continue on his way to being a better person, and maybe even head up a charitable foundation
that would contrast him with the Ewings.
But then again, maybe that would have been too soft for the series.
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Cliff was obsessed with proving he was a better man than JR. He didn't think the consequences of his post divorce romance with Sue Ellen through. Any fool would know JR would destroy him for it, but Cliff lived in some fantasy world where he could marry JR's wife and raise JR's son and be able to stick it to JR for the rest of his life.
Cliff wasn't big on rational thought. When he went and asked Sue Ellen for money to bail him out of his business trouble, he should have known how she would react. After all, he called Sue Ellen a user - should have known she wouldn't take to kindly to being the one being used.
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They could have brought Afton back and allowed Cliff to be a father to PR. The emotional struggle to connect with his daughter would have made for great drama and it would have gone a long way toward making Cliff "a better man "
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Random thought about the way the characters looked in the last seasons of the show...
I didn't like Sue Ellen's long straight hair. It somehow seemed to somehow age her. Lucy always looked cheap. It strikes me that Cally was trying so hard to look classy while Lucy was the one running around looking like she was shopping a drag queen thrift stores. April's head bands were outrageous and unattractive.
And JR's eyebrows. Good God someone get that man a trimmer!
I didn't like Sue Ellen's long straight hair. It somehow seemed to somehow age her. Lucy always looked cheap. It strikes me that Cally was trying so hard to look classy while Lucy was the one running around looking like she was shopping a drag queen thrift stores. April's head bands were outrageous and unattractive.
And JR's eyebrows. Good God someone get that man a trimmer!
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I think I read somewhere once that she left to take a role in "Chorus Line."
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I always thought Audrey Landers was the glamorous daughter of advice columnist Ann Landers.