Kenny Coyote
Telly Talk Star
Interesting points, Grangehill.
When the audience wanted Bobby back, and Parick Duffy wanted to come back, the producers had very few choices:
1. Bring Patrick Duffy back as Bobby's long lost twin brother
2. Reveal that Bobby faked his own death
3. Just bring Bobby back and pretend that nothing ever happened.
4. Bring Bobby back and pretend that the entire prior season never happened.
And that brought us to the shower scene.
I think the biggest problem with the storyline is that the show had already started to go downhill. The shower scene was just such a big event that people could point to and say, "This is when I quit watching."
Those four choices aren't even feasible choices.
1. Bring back Patrick Duffy as Bobby's long lost twin brother - Why would we have only found out in the tenth season of Dallas that Bobby had a twin brother? Why would he have been "long lost"?I f any family could pay any amount required to find a long lost soon theirs, it was the Ewings.
2. Reveal that Bobby faked his own death - Not only wouldn't Bobby have been coherent enough after sustaining massive internal injuries to formulate and execute such a plan but it was completely out of character to put his wife, son parents and the rest of his family through that hell.
3. Just bring Bobby back and pretend that nothing ever happened - Once they can bring a dead character back - one of the most intregal characters to the show, and not have to give any explanation, not even the explanation of it being Pam's dream, they would have lost even more credibility than they did. It would be crazy to blame a second character coming back from the dead because of a dream, especially considering how poorly received the dream was received by the audience. So fans could be pretty sure nothing like that would happen again. But of they can bring dead characters back and not have to provide any explanation at all, then how could the audience take any future death seriously?
4. Bring Bobby back and pretend that the entire prior season never happened - That's basically what they did except they even would be taking away the one explanation to make it even slightly believable - Pam's dream. If Pam's dream wasn't good enough, why would less explanation or no explanation at all be better?