Who was the worst sister in Dallas?

Who was the worst sister in Dallas?

  • Kristin

    Votes: 13 76.5%
  • Katharine

    Votes: 9 52.9%
  • Lady Jessica

    Votes: 7 41.2%
  • Afton

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Michelle

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Jamie

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Other (Please Specifiy)

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Total voters
    17

Crimson

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I don't think it's because she really wanted him, she just wanted to cause chaos in Sue Ellen's life

When it comes to Kristin vs Katherine, Kristin seemed driven by spite and Katherine seemed mentally ill. I'm a Rebecca defender overall but that lady must have had a defective bloodline -- all three of her kids were self-destructive obsessives.
 

Taylor Bennett Jr.

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When it comes to Kristin vs Katherine, Kristin seemed driven by spite and Katherine seemed mentally ill. I'm a Rebecca defender overall but that lady must have had a defective bloodline -- all three of her kids were self-destructive obsessives.
Rebecca abandoned child #1 and child #2 when they were roughly 5 years old and an infant, then foisted them as “siblings” on child #3 over 30 years later, when child #3 was well into her 20s… and even seemed to prefer them.

She was horrible to all of them.
 
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Crimson

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Rebecca abandoned child #1 and child #2 when they were roughly 5 years old and an infant,

She was an impoverished teenager ("barely a teenager" when she met Digger, according to Van Wormer's official DALLAS history) married to an abusive drunk who murdered her lover. She left Cliff and Pam with Digger -- who, for all his flaws, was apparently a decent father and who had his sister to help out -- to save herself. She would have had no means to support two kids and made the best of a terrible situation. Her own kids forgave her self-preservation so I am not lacking in sympathy for her.
 
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Willie Oleson

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Kristin was young and smart and beautiful and could have found a suitable husband from a wealthy family
But they wouldn't be JR Ewing, and the Ewings are profiled as the Most Important People in the Dallas universe.
Patricia even told her that "if Sue Ellen fails to hold on to him then you should give it a try" (or something like that). Anonymous wealth was not an option, apparently.
Also, Kristin's job at Ewing Oil - and she was surprisingly enthusiastic about it - may have contributed to her illusion that she deserved JR more than Sue Ellen who was only sulking or complaining.

I love Kristin, she's funny and entertaining, so maybe I'm biased.
 

James from London

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I don't know about the worst sister, but I love a gold-digging poor relation so my favourites of those listed would be Kristin, Afton and Michelle. (I'd also include early April, except she didn't become a sister until after she'd got rich and a bit boring.)
 

James from London

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She was an impoverished teenager ("barely a teenager" when she met Digger, according to Van Wormer's official DALLAS history) married to an abusive drunk who murdered her lover. She left Cliff and Pam with Digger -- who, for all his flaws, was apparently a decent father and who had his sister to help out -- to save herself. She would have had no means to support two kids and made the best of a terrible situation. Her own kids forgave her self-preservation so I am not lacking in sympathy for her.

Also, she left Digger when she was seventeen, by which time she'd had four kids, two of whom had died.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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Surely, when Rebecca said, "I was seventeen!" she meant when she got with Digger. Otherwise, 11 or 12 is a little young even for Texas.
 

Crimson

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when Rebecca said, "I was seventeen!" she meant when she got with Digger

Depending on how canonical you consider the Van Wormer book to be, Rebecca is described as "barely a teenager" when she met Digger. So, yeah, I always figure 12/13.

As much as I like Priscilla Pointer as Rebecca, she was miscast. Rebecca should have been closer to JR's age but, Ken Kercheval had turned into such an old man so fast, an older actress was needed to play his mom.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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Depending on how canonical you consider the Van Wormer book to be, Rebecca is described as "barely a teenager" when she met Digger. So, yeah, I always figure 12/13.

As much as I like Priscilla Pointer as Rebecca, she was miscast. Rebecca should have been closer to JR's age but, Ken Kercheval had turned into such an old man so fast, an older actress was needed to play his mom.

Maybe if Rebecca smoked as much as Ken did --- and four babies before 17 and we'd all look like Rebecca by the time we're 25.
 

Crimson

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we'd all look like Rebecca by the time we're 25.

The lady did have a rough life, up to meeting Herbert.

It's a subject I tend to deviate from the DALLAS fandom, being a Rebecca defender. She gets regularly trashed on the DALLAS subReddit. I get it -- abandoning her kids was terrible. But it's not like she ran off with wealthy Herbert. Pam and Cliff did, in fact, have a better childhood with Digger and Maggie than Rebecca could have given them.

I still wonder why all three of her kids turned out to be kind of nutty though.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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The lady did have a rough life, up to meeting Herbert.

It's a subject I tend to deviate from the DALLAS fandom, being a Rebecca defender. She gets regularly trashed on the DALLAS subReddit. I get it -- abandoning her kids was terrible. But it's not like she ran off with wealthy Herbert. Pam and Cliff did, in fact, have a better childhood with Digger and Maggie than Rebecca could have given them.

I still wonder why all three of her kids turned out to be kind of nutty though.

Pam has also been historically trashed for repeating her mother's pattern when she left Bobby & Christopher after being burned to a crisp by an over-administration of fresh melon biomoisturepheres. As if they can't understand her predicament, and she only sustained a mild rash.
 

Rove

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I'd say Kristin was the worst. She had intent on bedding a Ewing or any rich man and it didn't matter to her if they were married or not. Kristin's announcement to JR and Sue Ellen she shot JR was nasty. Here was a sibling announcing, "Yep, I did the nasty with your husband," and if that wasn't enough further announced, "Jock Ewing's grandson, jail baby," was the lowest of the low.

Katherine I felt was initially infatuated with Bobby but that crush grew into an obsession. Regardless I wish the writers had not boxed in the characters like they did. I would have preferred if Kristin popped up in Dallas on occasion with child in tow, making JR and Sue Ellen uneasy. Of course we only have Kristin's word that the child is JR's. Katherine on the other hand should have contested her mothers will, yet still lost, making her a thorn in the side of Cliff and Pam.
 
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Bobby Southworth

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She was an impoverished teenager ("barely a teenager" when she met Digger, according to Van Wormer's official DALLAS history) married to an abusive drunk who murdered her lover. She left Cliff and Pam with Digger -- who, for all his flaws, was apparently a decent father and who had his sister to help out -- to save herself. She would have had no means to support two kids and made the best of a terrible situation. Her own kids forgave her self-preservation so I am not lacking in sympathy for her.
I'm with you, except I fail to see how an abusive drunk could somehow make a good father.. yes, there was Maggie, but,,my bigger issue would be, why didn't Rebecca find Pam and Cliff before Pam found her?? Once she made an okay life for herself, and beyond okay with Herbert, how did she not feel the obligation of reaching out to those two kids she left behind? I get that the excuse used was probably that she was afraid of losing Herbert, but what kind of man would Herbert had been had he not been sympathetic to this past?
 

James from London

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Once she made an okay life for herself, and beyond okay with Herbert, how did she not feel the obligation of reaching out to those two kids she left behind? I get that the excuse used was probably that she was afraid of losing Herbert, but what kind of man would Herbert had been had he not been sympathetic to this past?

Perhaps a combination of Herbert's weak heart, the risk of being exposed as a bigamist (she never divorced Digger), guilt, fear of rejection and thinking it best to let sleeping dogs lie.

For me, a bigger question is why neither Cliff nor the Ewings seemed to know anything about the Wentworths prior to Rebecca resurfacing after Herbert's death. Wentworth Industries, presumably a much bigger company than Ewing Oil, was based round the corner in Houston, yet appears to have flown completely under their radar. (A bit like in Dynasty where Blake Carrington never seemed to have heard of any of the high profile guest-starring business tycoons until they landed in the opening credits, even though they usually turn out to be lifelong pals of Dex Dexter.)
 

Willie Oleson

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Once she made an okay life for herself, and beyond okay with Herbert, how did she not feel the obligation of reaching out to those two kids she left behind?
That's a tricky one. It might have, unintentionally, communicated the idea that Cliff and Pam were welcome now that it was convenient for her, sort of like a fair-weather mother.
And now that Cliff and Pam were adults she couldn't know if the want for their biological mother was still there. It could also have an unnecessary disruptive effect.

For me, a bigger question is why neither Cliff nor the Ewings seemed to know anything about the Wentworths prior to Rebecca resurfacing after Herbert's death. Wentworth Industries, presumably a much bigger company than Ewing Oil, was based round the corner in Houston, yet appears to have flown completely under their radar. (A bit like in Dynasty where Blake Carrington never seemed to have heard of any of the high profile guest-starring business tycoons until they landed in the opening credits, even though they usually turn out to be lifelong pals of Dex Dexter.)
My response is going to be very lame, but I think it's simply a matter of things starting to exist once it was written into the story.
Sort of like, how was it possible that Fallon and Steven Carrington had never heard of the tragic kidnapping of their older brother?
It's very hard to make it logical in a retroactive way.
Even if they had done a flashback story similar to Knots Landing, it still wouldn't explain why it was never mentioned in the first two seasons.
 

Rove

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For me, a bigger question is why neither Cliff nor the Ewings seemed to know anything about the Wentworths prior to Rebecca resurfacing after Herbert's death. Wentworth Industries, presumably a much bigger company than Ewing Oil, was based round the corner in Houston, yet appears to have flown completely under their radar. (A bit like in Dynasty where Blake Carrington never seemed to have heard of any of the high profile guest-starring business tycoons until they landed in the opening credits, even though they usually turn out to be lifelong pals of Dex Dexter.)
What's that old saying? The devil is in the details. From that great bastion of truth, Wikipedia, I find the following explanation..."it indicates that "something may seem simple, but in fact the details are complicated and likely to cause problems"

Well, well, well. Those geniuses (writers) of both Dallas and Dynasty hoodwinked us all. Damn they were good.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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Sort of like, how was it possible that Fallon and Steven Carrington had never heard of the tragic kidnapping of their older brother?

I'm willing to suspend disbelief -- to a point -- on things like that. Blake's explanation that he wanted to "protect" his surviving children from the terror of prospective kidnapping works okay for me as long as he points out that the Carrington name "was less famous then" so it was easier to keep the story quiet and away from the kids... Of course, that doesn't explain why Steven & Fallon didn't get wind of the kidnapping later after the Carrington family name had become more famous (after all, no sunlight can intrude into that foyer as its outshone by all that flatlighting and, hence, the truth is neutralized)... So I say: just address the incredulities in logic, let somebody verbalize them, and then someone else can shrug (in a "yeah, that's weird" kind of way) and then the subject moves on to something else.

It's your only option.

Same with Blake's mother dying when he was only four, and then we learned she died in a horrible house fire when he was a wildcatter. The explanation for the discrepancy?: the Carrington name "was less famous then," and he didn't want his children to have the terror of another prospective fire, nor envision their grandmother dying in one... Why didn't they hear about it since then? Someone shrugs, and the job is done.

Same with Blake being a self-made man, yet we later we learn his father is fabulously wealthy and living in Sumatra or some fabulously glamorous place I had to find on a map. (The American educational system is not what it could be). Explanation? Daddy Tom helped his eldest son with some start-up funds to help Blake's early infrastructure (probably from cash attained through selling off portions of that nazi art collection) and so Blake reciprocates with shares in his new company which eventually balloon into a massive sum as Denver-Carrington surges.

Will there be problems with the details? Yeah, probably. But, once again, acknowledge those problems, shrug, and change the subject.

Same with the inconsistencies in how long Blake's & Alexis' marriage really was. And what year he caught her with Roger Grimes and threw her out of Blake's kingdom forevah -- 1963, 1964, 1965?? Someone mentions the discrepancy, Blake rubs his face and groans that the last few years of their marriage "was a horrible blur -- your mother & I must've blocked-out so many things, forgotten so much of the darkness of those days," his children listen, look at each other, and then shrug. Rinse & repeat.

But all that's harder -- or easier -- with DYNASTY because they gave us so few details to begin with. And yet, far too many.

Were Jock and Miss Ellie married in 1930? 1936? 1938? It's harder to scam the audience with DALLAS because the kinds of details are different. Shrugging and eye-rolling wouldn't really work so easily. So, clear it up with another fight at the Oil Baron's Ball (because Cliff got the wedding date wrong) and the scuffle obfuscates the incredulities because the guys are so tough and manly and stuff. Mission accomplished, and then they all go home to Southfork to complain about how awful the Barnes/Ewing feud has gotten.


"Listen, Barnes -- Miss Ellie is seven years older than you're sayin' she is....!"
OIP.ugFcW6TdOzYS1hOKR6TbDwAAAA
 
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Crimson

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except I fail to see how an abusive drunk could somehow make a good father

People are complex. Someone can be an asshole spouse but a good parent; hell, some parents are good to one child and an asshole to another. Cliff and Pam adored Digger and only viewed him with sympathy. I don't think there's reason to believe Digger was a abusive to them. I'd say Digger did his best to care for them and once he realized he couldn't, he left them with Maggie. Digger likely wasn't a contender for Father of the Year but I like to think his tender side won out when it came to his kids.
 

James from London

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I think it's simply a matter of things starting to exist once it was written into the story.

And I think that's fine. Not everything has to be neatly explained away. in fact, the contradictions, plot holes and paradoxes that inevitably arise during a long-running saga become part of its overall tapestry, and open up new possibilities. That's one of the many things I loved about New Dallas: it gave fresh perspectives to old story elements and characters -- for example, Jock being spoken about as even harder and meaner than he was in the original series.

And you end up with these happy accidents. The Ewings not knowing about Wentworth Industries becomes an unintentional example of how parochial and inward-looking they are -- so obsessed with being the biggest fish in their own pond, they don't even notice what was happening in the next town over (or wherever Houston is in relation to Dallas). And while Steven and Fallon not knowing about Adam might not make much sense logically, it does evoke a childhood spent in an atmosphere of secrets, lies and whispered conversations.
 
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