Just married
What a dark place “Dallas” is when we arrive!
“Digger’s Daughter,” the show’s first episode, was filmed in the real-life Dallas in early 1978, when the city was being walloped by its coldest-ever winter.
The result: The straightforward plot – boy marries girl, boy brings girl home, girl outwits boy’s scheming older brother – unfolds against a backdrop of deadened skies and stark landscapes, making it seem moodier and more metaphorical than the show’s producers probably intended.
For example, when Bobby and Pamela bounce up to the Southfork ranch to announce their elopement, Miss Ellie comes to the door wearing a heavy coat. It’s as if she’s warning Pam: This is a cold house, full of cold people. Enter at your own risk.
Later, J.R. stands on Southfork’s darkened front porch, stewing because he fears Bobby and Pam will soon give Jock his long-awaited first grandson. The camera pans above the porch to Bobby and Pam’s brightly lit bedroom window and we see how the couple is literally overshadowing J.R.
Also, when Ray tosses Pam into the freezing pond, is it not unlike the dangerous situation she has plunged into by marrying a Ewing?
Southfork lends itself to the atmospherics, too.
The ranch we know best – the one real-life Texans call the world’s second most famous white house – isn’t seen until “Dallas’s” second season. In “Digger’s Daughter” and the other inaugural episodes, another estate stands in for the Ewings’ homestead.
This Southfork is bigger and feels more mysterious. It sits in a sea of yellow grass, making it look a little lifeless, if not downright haunted.
Some of the performances in “Digger’s Daughter” are as unfamiliar as the setting. Victoria Principal is more relaxed here than in later seasons, and Larry Hagman’s initial outing as J.R. is more sinister than mischievous.
In this episode’s final scene, when J.R. declares he won’t underestimate Pam again, Hagman smiles – not with his mouth, but with his eyes.
It isn’t the J.R. grin we’re used to, but it still leaves us wanting more.
Grade: A
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Oh, brother
‘DIGGER’S DAUGHTER’
Season 1, Episode 1
Airdate: April 2, 1978
Audience: 15.7 million homes, ranking 18th in the weekly ratings
Writer: David Jacobs
Director: Robert Day
Synopsis: Bobby Ewing, son of a wealthy oil-and-cattle clan, marries Pamela Barnes, the daughter of his father’s enemy. Bobby’s brother J.R. tries to break up the marriage by recruiting her ex-boyfriend Ray Krebbs, the Ewings’ ranch foreman, to seduce her, but Pam turns the tables on Ray by threatening to expose his secret affair with Lucy, J.R. and Bobby’s teenage niece.
Cast: Barbara Bel Geddes (Miss Ellie Ewing), Donna Bullock (Connie), Jim Davis (Jock Ewing), Desmond Dhooge (Harvey), Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewing), Linda Gray (Sue Ellen Ewing), Larry Hagman (J.R. Ewing), Steve Kanaly (Ray Krebbs), Ken Kercheval (Cliff Barnes), Tina Louise (Julie Grey), Victoria Principal (Pam Ewing), Bill Thurman (Phil Bradley), Charlene Tilton (Lucy Ewing), David Wayne (Digger Barnes)
“Digger’s Daughter” is available on DVD and at Amazon.com, iTunes and TNT.tv. Watch the episode and share your comments below.
Dallas Decoder 
I love the moody look of the first season. I wasn’t expecting that. I guess the producers probably weren’t either, but I think they made it work in their favor. Southfork 1.0 doesn’t exactly look like the most inviting place. Sure it’s spacious and lovely, but it can be a cold place too. I think all the characters feel that at times.
I love the first season’s look, too. In some ways, I prefer the first-season Southfork, too. It gave the Ewings a little more privacy!
Wow: 15.7 million viewers for an April mini-series. That is a number the new show wouldn’t have a clue how to react to… I suspect there would be heart attacks all around. I’m too young to have seen these earliest years first run. I started watching right around the introduction of Pricilla Pressley as Jenna. So I really don’t know how this mini-series was billed or what enticed viewers to tune in. I guess much of it can be chalked up to TV being a different animal then with so fewer options. Still, if you compare the 1980 and 2010 census numbers there are roughly 82 million more people today. You’d think that population increase would somewhat offset the more choices issue…
I remember when I first saw these early episodes I just couldn’t believe all the heavy clothes these people were wearing. As a Wisconsin native I found myself wondering if there is a Dallas, WI unicorporated village I didn’t know of. Mother nature just doesn’t always cooperate with the wishes of producers I guess.
Like most first seasons of long running shows this show had a ways to go to get to a point which we’d all recognize as Dallas. Ken plays this early Cliff so straight. I recall reading the character was intended to be a Bobby Kennedy type and you could see bits of that here but Cliff sure wouldn’t end up this way. We also have JR and Ray as allies which is so hard to imagine. I’d say the characters that are most recognizable in a time prizsm sense are JR and Lucy. JR is scheming from the very beginning and Lucy is a useless floozie. (I know there are plenty of Lucy lovers out there. But I was never one of them. The role of rebellious teen just always seemed out of place on this show to me. How many of the core storylines of this show needed a rebellious teen to move the plot forward in any way?) The other thing that just jumps out is Jock and Ray smoking on screen. I don’t think we ever saw another lit cigarette (outside of extras) after this mini-series.
Good analysis, Dan. Thanks. Regarding the absence of cigarettes on “Dallas” after the early seasons: I wonder if Larry Hagman, an anti-smoking advocate, had something to do with that?
He did, I heard Larry mention on a Dame Edna recording how evil cigarettes were. It was too bad b/c only the audio track of that episode survived, I hope I can find it for u.
I remember Mr. Hagman’s appearance on a 1991 Dame Edna special. It was the highlight of the show, of course.
C.B., put the Dame Edna Larry Hagman appearances up on the DALLAS Decoder website. Fans will luv ’em boy!
What amaze me the most in this 1st episode, apart for the very sinister atmosphere, is the stunning beauty of Victoria Principal face. It’s shocking, in later seasons, when shey play crys, her face is completely different. OK, maybe surgery. But why a beauty like that would make surgery ?
I notice too the very classy clothes she wears. I love her look, on this first season, far from ugly looks of mid-80 (ridiculous clothes + ugly++ frizzy hair style).
On the opposite, the beauty of linda grey’s face increase, until its climax in 1986/88. (and she was still sexy at 70 yo)
I regreat we don’t learn more about those two barbecues when Ray date Pam.