Dallas: The Complete Second Season DVD review

The second season of Dallas is also available to stream on Netflix.

It’s not often that one can discuss and even recommend an entire season of a television series because of a single episode, which sort of goes to show how special of a TV series Dallas (in any incarnation) really is. But episode 8 of this second helping of the rejiggered soap juggernaut, entitled “J.R.’s Masterpiece,” is such a fascinating slice of TV, from both sides of the camera, that it makes this season must-see.

When Larry Hagman lost his battle with cancer at the age of 81, on Nov. 23rd, 2012, Dallas was smack in the middle of shooting its second season – a season that had already been planned and plotted out through to the end, much of it involving J.R. Indeed, J.R.’s machinations were as essential to the show now as they were back in its ‘80s heyday, and likewise, Hagman was just as committed to the series as ever, and was working on it as recently as four days prior to his passing.

Yes, Dallas is a special series, and J.R. Ewing was more than “just” a TV character (as Hagman was so much more than just an actor). It could be said that J.R. Ewing is the greatest or most important TV character ever created, and few would argue. J.R.’s sudden absence could not simply be explained away with a few lines of dialogue, so showrunner Cynthia Cidre and her cohorts went in a direction that few shows would (or even could) if similar circumstances afflicted their production, and not just devoted an entire episode to celebrating J.R., but also structured an entire mystery that rippled throughout the remainder of the season: “Who Killed J.R.?”

But back to “J.R’s Masterpiece,” which lives up to its title and instantly leaps onto the list of seminal, cornerstone Dallas episodes. In the final moments of the episode prior to it (“The Furious and the Fast”), thanks to slick editing and a bit of CGI mixed with leftover footage of Hagman, J.R. meets his untimely demise. “Masterpiece” traces the Ewing clan traveling to Mexico where the deed occurred, in an effort to learn more of the mysterious goings-on, as well as indentify the body. Does Carlos Del Sol know more than he’s letting on? The body is taken back to Dallas, where a public wake and a private funeral – which together make up the meatiest portions of the episode – are held.

The wake is a lively affair, with numerous faces from days of Dallas past making appearances alongside real life Dallas (the city, not the show) icons, like Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban, playing themselves. Then the fun is put into funeral with the unceremonious arrival of Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval), which leads to a classic, if not slightly abbreviated, Dallas brawl. By contrast, the funeral held at Southfork, is a somber affair, in which family members take turns telling stories and remembrances of J.R. After the funeral comes the twist, which I won’t go into here, because it’s what gives the rest of the season so much of its heft.

What is ultimately so moving about “J.R.’s Masterpiece” is its clever and careful melding of fiction and reality (the altered opening credits sequence alone will move you to silence). It was shot in January of 2013, less than two months after Hagman’s passing. The emotions on display from much of the cast are very real, contemplative, and raw. Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy in particular give some of the very best work of their Dallas careers here. I’m not sure if there’s ever been an episode of TV quite like this, and of those shows that have celebrated an actor’s passing through the demise of the fictitious character they played (the recent episode of Glee that dealt with Cory Monteith’s passing through Finn’s death leaps instantly to mind), few have done it with such class and grace as what Cidre (who wrote the episode) and executive producer Michael S. Robin (who directed it) have achieved here.

Further, “J.R.’s Masterpiece” isn’t just a hermetically sealed one-off. No, what happens in this episode goes on to inform and shape the remainder of the season – Cidre and her team came together to reformat the ongoing plot in order to honor J.R.’s larger than life legacy. While the mystery of “Who killed J.R.?” was certainly not the cultural touchstone its infamous forefather, “Who shot J.R.?,” was, there’s no question that it’s an engaging storyline with a befitting series of endings that culminate in the season finale, “Legacies.” No doubt, Hagman would be tickled pink to know what went down with the remainder of this season of Dallas in his absence.

Of course, there are 14 other episodes on this set (6 or 7 of which feature Hagman prominently, doing the final work of his career). This season, with the success of the first season behind it, fires on all cylinders, despite the behind the scenes turmoil, and the loss of its patriarchal figure. It moves at an almost breakneck pace, offering up one episodic cliffhanger after the next, miring its large cast of characters in the stickiest of situations. What blows me away the most about it, is that even with Hagman sadly gone, I can think of no solid reason to shut this series down, any more so than the original series should’ve shut down over the passing of Jim Davis. This version of Dallas could conceivably go for many more years, such is the sprawling, devious cast of new characters Cidre has brought to life, as well as the nerve-rattling situations she so often places them in. Fine, fine TV, and the rowdiest, most riveting nighttime soap on TV today, just as the original Dallas was in its day.

DVD Extras: “J.R’s Masterpiece” gets an optional extended cut, which runs about 7 minutes longer than the TV cut. To watch it, you must go into the special features menu to activate it. Also present is a commentary track for the extended cut with Cidre and Robin, in which they detail the effects of Hagman’s death on the cast and crew, creating the episode, and how they had to rearrange the entire season - unquestionably illuminating, and much more interesting than your standard, run of the mill TV episode commentary.  

There are at least a half dozen installments of an ongoing series called “Dallas: Fashion Files” which feature costume designer Rachel Sage Kunin discussing her many decisions throughout the season (typically alongside Jordana Brewster). “Dallas at PaleyFest 2013” is a 30-minute panel discussion with the core cast, sans Hagman, as he was already gone. Three more featurettes: “The Battle for Ewing Energies: Blood is Thicker Than Oil” is a sort of season overview; “Memories of Larry Hagman: A Cast and Crew Tribute” is self-explanatory; and “One Last Conversation with Larry Hagman” appears to date back to the first season. Lastly, there are roughly 33 minutes worth of deleted scenes scattered across the four discs.

Special thanks to Harry Thomas of MySA’s DVD Extra blog for passing his copy of this DVD set my way.

Dallas: The Complete Fourteenth and Final Season

By 1990, the ‘80s nighttime power soaps were on the way out, and new types of soapy television, like Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place, were either on the air or on the horizon. Dynasty and Falcon Crest were gone, Knots Landing only had a couple seasons left in it, and the one that started them all, Dallas, was kicking off its final season. What on earth was there left for this show to do that it hadn’t done in the 13 seasons previous? Having successfully revamped the show in the previous year (at least artistically, even if not commercially), the producers now had to find a way to end it all. The core cast had dwindled down to only three characters that had been there since the start: J.R., Bobby and Cliff. And yet, if you’ve got those three guys, you’ve still got quite a bit to work with, and while the final season is never going to go down as a Dallas highpoint, at least it doesn’t go out like a bruised, whimpering puppy with its tail between its legs. Well, not quite.

When last we saw J.R. (Larry Hagman), thanks to his son James (Sasha Mitchell), he was being hauled off back into the looney bin where he’d been conducting some unsavory deeds. In this season, that story continues on for another five or so episodes, as he finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into an unhealthy state, although for perhaps the first time in his life, J.R. finds himself making actual friends. Meanwhile, Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and April (Sheree J. Wilson) are honeymooning in Paris, and no sooner than they get off the plane than they run into Susan Lucci. Now, it’s a shame that soap characters are forced to live in a bubble, because as a viewer you’re yelling at the screen, “That’s Susan fucking Lucci! She’s evil!! No good can come from this. Stay away from her, Bobby and April!!!” Of course, they do not, and terrible, terrible things happen, but since the production has moved to Paris for an extended shoot, at least the proceedings look nice.

Back in Dallas, Cliff (Ken Kercheval) is angling for a government position as Energy Czar of the U.S., while at the same time romancing Liz Adams (Barbara Stock), a lady with a few secrets of her own which revolve around a slick, macho blowhard named John Danzig, a.k.a. Johnny Dancer (Ramy Zada). Sooner, rather than later, Dancer ends up deceased. But who done it? Cliff? Liz? Carter McKay (George Kennedy)? Plenty of people had a motive, but everyone’s got an alibi. Also lurking on the sidelines is Michelle Stevens (Kimberly Foster), and she’s got some serious payback in mind for J.R. after he shipped her away last year. Enter Lee Ann De Le Vega played by none other than Hagman’s old I Dream of Jeannie co-star Barbara Eden. Stunt casting? Perhaps. I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for the duration of the Lee Ann storyline which in the end fizzled out to at least some degree. Credit must be given to the writers for stifling the urge to work in any Jeannie references or in-jokes.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Dallas: The Complete Thirteenth Season

After giving fairly middling reviews to the last several seasons of Dallas, one thing I wasn’t expecting from this penultimate collection of episodes was some of the strongest material the show’s offered up in a good long while. With Season Thirteen, the powers that be managed to create one of the very best seasons of the latter half of the series, although it goes without saying that you can’t please all the people all of the time. There are always going to be folks who’ll instantly dismiss the last two years of the series based solely on how few of the original cast members remain. At this point, the show is down to only five major characters that’ve been around since the show’s inception – J.R., Bobby, Cliff, Miss Ellie, and Lucy. But Clayton’s been such a fixture on the series for a long time now, and it’s only fair to include him as well, so let’s bump that up to a half dozen.

In addition to the new characters of Cally Harper Ewing (Cathy Podewell) and Carter McKay (George Kennedy) that were introduced in Season Twelve, here we’re given an additional two major players in the forms of James Beaumont (Sasha Mitchell) and Michelle Stevens (Kimberly Foster); the former is the illegitimate son of J.R., and the latter is the sister of April (Sheree J. Wilson).

I know, I know – hackneyed phrases like “illegitimate son” make it sound as though Dallas is scraping the bottom of the soap opera barrel. But you can take a well worn cliché and do nothing with it, or you can take that same cliché and do something with it...

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Dallas: The Complete Twelfth Season

It’s always a little sad when a long-running series begins to show its age, yet fights against it tooth and nail, and that’s more or less what’s happening with Dallas in its twelfth season. The core cast that remains is getting noticeably grayer, and so younger, prettier actors have been brought in to help spice things up – a move that seems to work only about half the time. The plots, too, seem to have been given a bit of an overhaul, probably in an attempt to compete with other primetime dramas of the day. This isn’t a show that has by any means “lost it,” but it’s most certainly one that has seen far better days.

After the Nicholas Pearce debacle of Season Eleven, which provided the season cliffhanger, J.R. (Larry Hagman) has once again been shot – this time by Sue Ellen (Linda Gray). His recovery is swift and he’s back on his feet by the second episode, and the entire incident is written off by the authorities as self-defense on everyone’s part, so no charges are filed against anyone. But Pearce is dead, and Sue Ellen wants revenge against J.R., and so begins her story arc for the entire season, which would turn out to be Gray’s last on the series proper. It cannot be calculated exactly how much class Gray brought to this series, and so it’s something of shame that she doesn’t get a stronger exit. As the season moves forward, she meets a screenwriter/director named Don Lockwood (Ian McShane), and hatches a plan that involves bringing the details of her sordid marriage to J.R. to the big screen. (She describes it as Citizen Kane in Texas.) The aim is to produce a work that will humble and humiliate J.R. for good. This entire idea probably seemed a great deal cleverer back when it first aired, but in this day and age it feels awfully quaint, and worst of all, what little we see of the resulting movie makes it looks like a disastrous picture that nobody would ever want to sit through. And to top it all off, J.R.’s viewing of the movie provides Season Twelve with its cliffhanger – surely one of the most anticlimactic this series ever produced.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Dallas: The Complete Tenth and Eleventh Seasons

Waking up from a season-long dream, Pam realizes that Bobby is still alive and well, and it’s quickly back to corrupt business as usual at Southfork and Ewing Oil. Season 10 appropriately sees a return to the less flashy template of Season 8, although there is one major holdover from the infamous dream. Steve Forrest was introduced as ranch hand Ben Stivers in Season 9, and he is reintroduced here as a new incarnation of the same character, only this time his name is Wes Parmalee. (Pam’s obvious psychic abilities go unmentioned.)

Read the rest of the Season 10 DVD review by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

With each new Dallas release, I expect the show to finally start sucking, and this was the first set where it seemed like that might actually be the case. Picking up (as soaps are wont to do) where we left off, Pam has been burnt to a crisp in a fiery explosion, because Victoria Principal wanted off the show. But Pam lives – bandaged up and looking an awful lot like Karloff’s Mummy, inert in a hospital bed. Why not just kill her, fer chrissakes? Apparently, after the dream season fiasco, the producers were simply not going to kill off a major player for good, and the first third of the season revolves around this nonsense. Will she live or won’t she? What will she look like beneath the bandages? Will Bobby ever let little Christopher see his mummy again? Is it possible Victoria isn’t gone after all? The first ten or so episodes of the thirty presented here are some of the silliest Dallas I’ve ever seen. (Even the producers seem to think it’s all a joke – one of the episodes is actually titled “Mummy’s Revenge.”)

Read the rest of the Season 11 DVD review by clicking here and visiting Premium Hollywood.

Knots Landing: The Complete Second Season

Long overdue on DVD is this second season of the long running spin-off of Dallas. The first season was released over three years ago, but due to tepid sales, it’s been a long, dry wait for fans of this immensely popular soap. Thank goodness Warner Brothers is giving it another go, because Knots Landing was a weekly staple throughout the ‘80s, and now that Dallas is nearing the end of its releases, this is as good a time as any to get people interested in what was actually a very different kind of soap. Not just different than Dallas, mind you, but different than most of the other primetime soaps of the period. Whereas Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon Crest were all about wealthy folk, Knots was decidedly middle-class in its points of view. These characters didn’t have a lot of money; they were just average people, living in a coastal suburb of L.A., trying to do their best to make it through all the sticky situations that came their way.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Fifth Season

When I was a kid there was one night and television lineup that surpassed all others: CBS Fridays, which was comprised of The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas. It was hardly a task to plop down in front of the tube and bask in these three entirely different slices of pop culture as they bled from one into the next every week. As an adult I remain a Ewing freak, but the Duke boys have unfortunately gone by the wayside; the adventures of Dr. David Banner reside somewhere in between. It’s not anywhere near as juvenile as Hazzard, yet it doesn’t have the expansive ongoing storyline of Dallas. The real problem with The Incredible Hulk is that it’s an incredibly repetitive series. Banner wanders the country, defending the naïve, weak and helpless against the sleazy, corrupt and powerful.

Read the rest of this DVD review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Dallas: The Complete Ninth Season

There’s one major aspect of Season Nine of Dallas that must be mentioned before discussing it further: the entire season is a dream. Or, rather, the producers retconned it into a dream one of the main characters had.

It’s important to know this going in because I can’t in good conscience recommend it to viewers if they’re going to feel cheated after investing nearly 25 hours into this material. It had to be said at the start. Surprising, though, is that, despite what reputation suggests, it’s actually a really good season of Dallas. The “why” behind the dream I’ll get to later, and if you don’t want to be spoiled further on the issue, then I suggest turning back now. On the other hand, the box art for this set goes out of its way to exploit the season’s final scene. In any case, you can’t say you weren’t warned.

Find out all about the infamous dream season by clicking here and reading the rest of this DVD review at Bullz-Eye.

Dallas - The Complete Eighth Season

One of the great pleasures of a TV on DVD addiction is basking in the ongoing releases of a series that lasted for a really long time. For me, one such series is Dallas, and I’ve been following it season by season since the sets started coming out several years ago. Season Eight is noteworthy for two major reasons: Donna Reed took over the role of Miss Ellie, and at the time, its finale was to be Patrick Duffy’s swan song as Bobby Ewing (literally - the episode is actually titled “Swan Song!”).

Dallas is one of those rare shows that remain entertaining no matter how ridiculous it gets. Season Eight (which aired in ’84 and ’85 and packs a whopping 30 episodes) should logically be the last to deliver solid goods, as it’s the one before the over-the-top theatrics of the infamous dream season; at least that’s what I was expecting.

Find out if Season Eight delivered "what I was expecting" by clicking here and reading the rest of the review at Bullz-Eye.