Between the Lines and Behind the Scenes of "Dallas"
Saying goodbye to “Dallas” isn’t hard because I never got used to the show being back in the first place. Like many fans, I grew up with the original series, watching it with my family on Friday nights for more than a decade. When “Dallas” went off the air in 1991, I kept on watching […]
Will TNT renew “Dallas” for a fourth season? I have no idea, but there’s no shortage of reasons why this show deserves another year. Let’s start with the numbers: • TV ratings. Yes, they’ve dropped. “Dallas” averaged 1.9 million viewers on Mondays this year, down 28 percent from its second season, according to Nielsen. However, […]
“Dallas” fans are heading into next week’s “midseason premiere” with lots of questions on their minds, beginning with this: Will the series return for a fourth year? We probably won’t know the answer until the ratings for the summer episodes come in, but virtually everything else we’ve been obsessing over will be addressed in the […]
Memorandum To: Jeff Bewkes, chairman and chief executive officer, Time Warner Inc. From: Dallas Decoder Re: “Dallas” So TNT wants to start chasing younger viewers, huh? That’s what you told investors yesterday, and it sounds like a smart plan to me. As you pointed out, TNT traditionally targets somewhat older audiences — a strategy that served […]
Did “Dallas” go too far by showing John Ross, Pamela and Emma’s three-way in last week’s midseason finale? I say no. The scene put a fitting punctuation mark on a storyline that’s been building all year while continuing some longtime “Dallas” traditions, including the original show’s practice of pushing the envelope in its depiction of […]
Who misses J.R.? We all do, but the third season of TNT’s “Dallas” still manages to be fun, freewheeling television — even if our beloved Larry Hagman is no longer there to breathe life into his most famous character. Watching next week’s season premiere is a little like attending a family reunion after the loss […]
Linda Gray is Dallas Decoder’s Woman of the Year, but she isn’t the only person who shaped the “Dallas” franchise in 2013. Here are five more. Cynthia Cidre. Larry Hagman’s death forced the “Dallas” showrunner to rewrite Season 2 on the fly, but she proved up to the challenge — and then some. Cidre penned […]
Good actors make you believe. Great actors make you feel. In 2013, Linda Gray made us feel every emotion Sue Ellen Ewing experienced — the disappointment over losing the election, the shame over losing her sobriety, the heartbreak over losing J.R. Gray shone all season long, but especially in “J.R.’s Masterpiece,” the funeral episode where […]
The first anniversary of Larry Hagman’s death is November 23, although to me, he never really went away. Hagman’s old “Dallas” episodes run on a seemingly endless loop in my house. I watch him all the time, and that would probably be true even if I didn’t write and edit this website. Larry Hagman still brings me […]
Emmy has always been one of the few gals capable of resisting J.R.’s charms, so it should come as no surprise to learn Larry Hagman won’t be honored with a special tribute during this year’s ceremony. And yet it does. I’m shocked, actually. I figured if anyone would receive extra recognition during the Emmy broadcast’s […]
