Dallas Devotion

I am a big Dallas fan. TOS (The Original Series). And now, the revamped just as campy version. There is a little connection to personal history, besides. When I was in law school in the late 1970's, I was naturally studying a lot. I went into the living room one day, and flipped on the first episode of this new show. It was about this family, the Ewings, a Texas oil family loyal to one another when it came to the outside world, but conniving and mean to one another, when not mix and matching romantically. Oh, and engaged in this running feud with another family, headed by Cliff Barnes. The hook in large part was the one of the Ewing boys, Bobby was in love with the pretty sister of Cliff. Ok. Close enough to Shakespeare for me. I started to watch, and found the perfect law school reading break. Except that one night Patrick Duffy was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and saying that the show was 62 in the ratings. He was expecting another cancellation, just like his prior show, one I didn't much fancy, "The Man from Atlantis."  So I told my friends to watch it, including Len of Len Speaks, who, at first was skeptical and recalcitrant. In a year or two a bunch of us were at Casa Klatt, Sr.'s kvelling over the "Who Shot J.R." episode. Thirteen years later, in 1991, the series went off the air, except for a couple of ill produced specials better forgotten.

Flash forward some thirty years from that first viewing of mine. It never occurred to me there could be this dynamic reboot. I mean a grab you and keep you at the 42 inch screen (as opposed to the SONY Trinitron I first saw it on) reboot. The career I was beginning when I first saw the show is essentially concluded as I have moved onto other, shall we say, endeavors. Back at the ranch, Jock died in Season Three of the original show, Miss Ellie some years later, Bobby got remarried, J.R. is still divorced from Sue Ellen, who kicked the bottle and runs for governor. And the second generation of Ewings and Barnes cavorting just like the old days, but with more skin showing. Now, the Ewings have added methane as something to fight over. And poor Christopher, Bobby's offspring, just couldn't help doing what daddy did--heck, he married a Barnes, Rebecca, well, really Pamela Rebecca. But he didn't know it. You get the picture, I hope. Intrigue, with tongue firmly in cheek. And it worked.

But the man behind J.R., Larry Hagman, had old health problems come back as the series went into production, and by this second season, he died, with a story arc pretty much up in the air. The three old timers had managed to be the linchpins of the reboot, getting you interested in what happened to the young uns. And maybe willing to watch scenes where only the young folk were feuding and fussing.

Well, somehow, as in Hollywood it often happens, the legend of J.R. and the legendary way that the actor played him, kind of merged. Losing the actor meant having to lose the character, while keeping him firmly implanted in whatever future plans the writers had for the fictional family. And well, those of us who knew Mr. Hagman from his eccentric characterizations on TV and in real life, we felt we sort of knew him and it was a surprising loss for us, the fans (gulp, I have to admit it, I am a fan!).

Len Speaks is a member of the Paley center that has been preserving television programs old and new for future generations, and so, when he said that the cast and the main writer, Cynthia Cidre, would be on a panel for the show, the day before the new "Who Shot J.R." story line was to fully enfold on TNT, I was well, THERE.  And in another example of life imitating art, or art imitating life, I was in tears as the cast on screen, and sitting on the stage, said goodbye to Larry/J.R.

It just doesn't get better than when the now pretty aged Cliff Barnes breaks into the Omni Hotel in Dallas and tells the grieving family that he is delighted J.R. is dead as the proverbial door nail and caint, I mean CAINT, do no more harm to him and now he's going to take down the damn Ewings once and for all.

But there were also moments of the undercurrent of family loyalty, that J.R. really did still love Sue Ellen, and that every so often, J.R. could give uncle like advice to other family members he was bating and battling in business.

When we all stood to give Patrick and Linda standing ovations, we probably were also standing up for ourselves (also of a certain age) for getting through a whole bunch of years, each of us still squarely on our own feet, with lives we built behind us and dreams still for the future. Cue the Dallas theme, please! Da dah da dah da dah dah dah dah.