Review: Dallas

This is a review of the new revival of Dallas, particularly as compared to the original show. I'm probably one of the few people of my generation to have seen every episode of Dallas. Seventeen seasons, three hundred and eighty episodes.

Obviously I find the show to have some appeal.

I'm not obsessive about it, by any means. Dallas is not the best thing ever. The plot developments are sometimes contrived, and sometimes it's just outright cheesy. But the old show did a pretty good job of holding my attention with its well-developed and well-acted characters. With moments like "Who Shot JR?" and the amazingly ballsy dream season, Dallas deserves its place in television history.

The occasional moment of eighties anachronism is pretty enjoyable, as well. The Ewings have car-phones as a sign of their incredible richness. One industrialist brags that when his computer chips are complete, each one will hold over ten thousand pieces of information. And, for a darker turn, Sue Ellen drinks like a fish her entire pregnancy and nobody says a word about the health of her baby.

This was clearly a show of its time.

The reason Dallas worked was because the characters had clear motivations, and the conflicts developed from their relationships. The Ewings are all family, they all love each other, but they all have different ideas about how to proceed. Same for the Barnes family, though of course it was much smaller. Almost every strange plot twist was either a response to real-world concerns (actors dying or leaving) or a means to give the characters something new to respond to.

The new Dallas ignores all that. When Pam left Bobby, he was months or years before he was ready to move on. But Christopher has gone through two serious relationships that ended badly in the last, what, less than a year of show-time? Plus finding out his mother died, which nobody has reacted to. Yet Christopher is ready to jump right in with yet another new girl. It would be okay if they were presenting it as the action of a hurt person who's reacting to terrible events in his life, but they're not. Heather is just someone for Christopher to bang for drummed-up conflict.

What does Christopher want, exactly? Family? Business success? I have no idea. How about John Ross? Emma? Pamela? Eleana? As far as I can tell, they all want money and revenge. There's nothing holding these people together, no bonds of family that force them into conflict. It would have been much simpler for John Ross to simply leave Southfork. I have no reason to think he cares about it as a place or a piece of his legacy, or about the people living there. JR cared. Why does John Ross?

Now, some characters aren't like that. Bobby and Sue Ellen, they're better, but that's because they were defined characters when the show started. JR was pretty well-done before he died, as well. Cliff, though, is a totally one-note character, which is a disservice to him. Cliff was often deeper than they're portraying him now.

And some of the plot points are just toally unbelievable.

• Christopher supposedly grew up with Drew and Eleana Ramos. But if that's so, how does nobody know who Joaquin is? He was raised as their sibling!
• At the end of the most recent episode, Drew has apparently set fire to Southfork, despite heightened security.
• The entire family has left alcoholic Sue Ellen home alone in a house full of unlocked liquor. After having done the same thing, repeatedly, in the eighties.
• Many people want revenge on the entire Ewing family for something JR did. As if they aren't all individuals who have taken their own actions over time. Most of the bad blood was against JR (or Jock, if you go back far enough), and they're both dead. I could see Bobby or Sue Ellen having enemies of old, and John Ross is clearly a schemer in his own right. But nobody seems to be blaming them for their own actions. It's all about what JR did to Papa Ramos, which is a straight-up copy of what Jock supposedly did to Digger Barnes.
• And these plotters feel a need to repeat their plans and motivations to each other every episode, just so we viewers aren't left behind... "How is it going?" "Wonderful! Soon we will have our revenge against the Ewing family for stealing our father's property and driving him to his death!" "Oh, right, I'd forgotten why we were doing all this..."
• Drew is instantly totally over his guilt at killing two unborn babies, and now back on a revenge kick.
• All these people involved in shady dealings seem totally unaware that everything they do could be recorded at any time.

I'm afraid I'm almost done with Dallas. It's been fun seeing a few old friends, but I'm not making any new ones. That's what it was going to take to make this revival work.