Follow TV Tropes

Following

Series / Dallas

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dallas_btcom.jpg
The Ewings of Southfork. Standing left to right: Sue Ellen, Lucy, J.R., Jock, Pam, Bobby, Ray Krebbs (sitting) Miss Ellie

"If I did give you power then you've got nothing! Nobody "gives" you power. Real power is something you TAKE!"
Jock Ewing

Note: If you want to read about the actual city of Dallas, see DFW Metroplex.

Dallas was a juggernaut Prime Time Soap of The '80s (it ran from 1978-1991). For much of its run, it was the most watched show in the world.

As the name might suggest, the series was set in Texas, based around the Ewings, a large Dysfunctional Family of oil barons. Family patriarch John Ross "Jock" Ewing had built up Ewing Oil and married Eleanor "Miss Ellie" Southworth, the daughter of a rancher and together they had three sons:

  • John Ross "J.R." Ewing Jr. was a schemer of the highest order and a chip off the old block in terms of ambition and cut-throat tactics, but with an added dose of charm and infinitely less scruples.
  • Gary Ewing was weak but well meaning and spin-off bound (Knots Landing). The Black Sheep of the family, an alcoholic drifter who dumped his daughter Lucy on his parents and took off.
  • Bobby Ewing was the golden child - the youngest who seemed to possess all the positive qualities of his older brothers but none of the bad - and for quite some time was the only one who sees J.R. for who he is and has the power to stop him.

Gary's daughter, wild child teen Lucy, and Sue Ellen, J.R.'s alcoholic faded beauty queen wife, rounded out the family, at least until Bobby married the daughter of Jock's old rival...

Initially the show focused on Pamela Barnes, Bobby's sweet natured and beautiful new wife as she attempted to fit in with the Ewing family, but the chemistry between Larry Hagman (J.R.) and Linda Gray (Sue Ellen) quickly took center stage. Hagman's J.R. in particular became one of the great characters of television history, his greedy, sleazy yet oddly charming villain becoming an icon of the decade.

The show produced two of the most famous stories in television - both cliffhangers (a staple of the series). The first in 1980-81 was the mystery of 'Who Shot J.R.?', the answer to which was at that time the most watched episode in television history.

The second story was... less successful. When star Patrick Duffy left the series, his character was killed off. But with declining ratings, the return of the original series showrunner after a brief absence, and the cast missing Duffy, the actor returned in the final moments of the eighth season, leading to the ninth season opening with the revelation that Bobby's death and the subsequent Season 8 were all an elaborate dream. Needless to say, reaction was quite polarizing to say the least, with some happy to see the character return but others irritated due to the invalidation of the previous season.

Inspired a glut of failed copycat shows (Secrets of Midland Heights and Texas), the most successful being Dynasty, its So Bad, It's Good counterpart that ended up becoming the show's chief rival during the mid-1980s. It was also given a Spin-Off, Knots Landing, which was based around Gary Ewing, though the dream season ultimately led to both shows severing ties with each other.

There have also been three made-for-TV movies. The first, Dallas: The Early Years (1986), was a Prequel that chronicled the feud between Jock Ewing and Digger Barnes in the 1930s. After the series ended, two reunion movies were produced - J.R. Returns (1996) and War of the Ewings (1998).

A possible movie remake with John Travolta as J.R. Ewing and Jennifer Lopez (!) as Sue Ellen has been in Development Hell for years. Problems include the recent Real Life oil crisis, the increasingly negative views of Americans toward oil companies, and doubt in the entertainment industry that fans would accept another actor portraying J.R..

TNT revived the series in 2012, with a ten-episode run that included some of the original cast members but focused on the next generation of the Ewing family. Larry Hagman passed away on November 23, 2012. He was given a funeral in episode eight of the second season (which aired on March 11, 2013). The show was cancelled by TNT after airing its third season in 2014.

Now has a Character Sheet under construction here.


The original show (1978-1991) provides examples of:

  • Aborted Arc: Several in the Dream Season for obvious reasons. Also the original plot about Ben Stivers/Wes Parmalee (see You Look Familiar below) was set to reveal he was really the missing, presumed dead Jock Ewing. The producers dropped it because they felt the fans would see it as being in questionable taste.
  • All Just a Dream: Like you really need to ask.
  • Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The French dub of the show has an entirely different song.
  • Apron Matron: Miss Ellie.
  • Armed with Canon: Bobby's return to Dallas after the dream season calls into question all references to his death made by the characters of Knots Landing.
  • The Artifact: Once Lucy grows up and calms down by about the fifth season or so, there's really nothing for her character to do except fall in and out of love, and her appearances diminish. They Put Her on a Bus to Atlanta, brought her back, Put Her On A Plane to Italy, and sort of brought her back for the last season. But in the finale they sort of lampshaded her artifactiness by including a throwaway line to the effect that she would never have been born in a world without J.R.
  • Babies Make Everything Better: According to Miss Ellie.
  • Back for the Finale: Sue Ellen, Ray, Gary, Valene (who also came back for the Knots Landing finale), Kristin, and Nicholas Pearce.
  • Bar Brawl: Several times throughout the series, including the television movie J.R. Returns.
  • Bash Brothers:
    • When they aren't fighting each other, J.R. and Bobby fall under this trope.
    • Bobby and Ray do as well to an extent
  • Battle Butler - Sylvia "Sly" Lovegren. Sly spent a decade working for J.R. and he trusted her enough to make her a head of one of his dummy companies - and forgave her for working with Cliff Barnes against him. They end up sleeping together in the final season.
  • Benevolent Architecture: While the Southfork ranch house is certainly impressive, it in no way appears big enough to house the sheer number of rooms on the inside. After Jenna got out of prison, Southfork would have contained a full eight upstairs bedrooms, each with its own bath (Clayton and Ellie had one bedroom, and J.R., Sue Ellen, John Ross, Bobby, Christopher, Jenna and Charlie each had their own).
  • Between My Legs: In "Showdown at the Ewing Corral".
  • Beware the Nice Ones: When a reporter comes calling, Miss Ellie chases him off with a shotgun.
  • Big Damn Heroes: The brothers Ewing got this moment when they saved John Ross from a kidnapper in California. It's the one time J.R. got shot that he didn't deserve it.
  • Big Fancy House: The main house at Southfork ranch. Damn, that thing was nice.
  • Big "NO!": In "Trouble At Ewing 23" an extortionist threatens to blow up said oil field if he doesn't get millions of dollars. Although the security guards kill him, he manages to set the bombs off before expiring, unleashing a slow motion Big "NO!" from Bobby before the field blows up real good.
  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: In fact, the subtitle of the series used in the Japanese dub is named with this.note 
  • Blackmail: One of the key weapons in J.R.'s arsenal.
  • Breakout Character: The show began with Bobby as the protagonist and J.R. as the villain, but Larry Hagman's portrayal was so charismatic that J.R. quickly turned into a Villain Protagonist.
  • Butt-Monkey: Cliff Barnes. He is humiliated by J.R. in almost every episode (ranging from lame insults J.R. knocks down easily, to buying Ewing 6 and finding out it was dry (then having to sell it back to J.R.), to suing the Ewings and having confidential information about his family being revealed during the trial, and much, much more. While he gets a better ending than most by the end of the reunion movies (he sells Ewing Oil back to Bobby, buys stocks in Google and goes to retire with his daughter), it's little consolation in light of the near-constant humiliation he suffers over 14 seasons.
  • Call-Back: The night Bobby died, Pam said she couldn't sleep, because she saw Bobby every time she closed her eyes. Who knew it would end up All Just a Dream?
  • Canon Discontinuity: The Reunion Movies appear to have been relegated to this by the revival.
  • The Cape: Bobby
  • The Casanova: J.R. is a textbook example of this trope, even though he's married most of the series.
  • Cast Full of Rich People: The show is about a family of oil barons and their associates in Texas.
  • Cathartic Chores: April is furiously vacuuming her apartment. One of her friends comes around and wonders what the heck happened. She tells her that she's angry, and when she's angry, she either has to eat or clean. Vacuuming has no calories.
  • Character Signature Song: Audrey Landers (as Afton Cooper) singing "Steal Me Away" early in the show's run.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Dusty Farlow, by accident. The character appeared in a few episodes at the end of the 7th Season, then left town a few episodes into the 8th. Unfortunately the 8th seasonwas also the Dream Season and the producers apparently forgot about Dusty, so that per canon he simply vanished without explanation...until The Bus Came Back in Episode 355.
  • Circling Monologue: Sue Ellen coming home in a chipper mood the night Bobby died (she was out all day, and hadn't found out yet) was J.R.'s breaking point.
  • Cliffhanger: Once a season, but "Who Shot J.R." is largely considered the show's best moment.
  • Cliffhanger Copout:
    • One episode has J.R. and Sue Ellen renew their wedding vows. When the minister says, "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace", Cliff Barnes (who previously had an affair with Sue Ellen) stands up and opens his mouth to speak, at which point the show immediately ends. In the next episode, he closes his mouth and walks out.
    • In the final season's finale, J.R. is seemingly convinced by the Devil to kill himself because of his failure to keep Ewing Oil. J.R. takes out a gun and holds it in his hand, then Bobby hears a gunshot from above. He runs upstairs, opens the door to J.R.'s room... and the show ends right there. J.R. Returns later explains that when Bobby opened the door, he saw that J.R. shot the mirror (instead of shooting himself) and was ranting and raving.
  • Comic-Book Adaptation: There was a comic strip based on the show, running from 1981 to 1984.
  • Continuity Nod: A major part of Gary's backstory is that he is an alcoholic. In the Series Finale "Conundrum", the alternate reality version of Gary from the world in which J.R. was never born says that he doesn't drink and never has. This makes perfect sense since it was J.R. who was largely responsible for driving him to the bottle.
  • Continuity Snarl: In the first season, it is explained that Bobby first met Pam when he and Ray Krebbs visited a bar near the ranch. In The Early Years' miniseries (which was produced during the ninth season), it is revealed at the end that Bobby and Pam knew each other when they were children, and the former was saddened when she was pulled away by her mother during one of the annual Ewing barbecues.
  • Convenient Miscarriage
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: J.R. most notably, but pretty much every other company exec.
  • Creative Closing Credits: Following Bobby's shower reveal, the mystery of whether it was really Bobby or not was kept for a few more months with the season-closing credit of "Also Starring Patrick Duffy as" with no character name listed afterwards.
  • Cut Short: The series finale of the original CBS series - 1991's "Conundrum," where a worker of Satan (Joel Grey) tries to get J.R. to kill himself - for years left viewers hanging. The episode ends with a shot ringing out, seconds after viewers see J.R. point the gun at his head and Satan screaming at him to "DO IT!" ... and Bobby, concerned for J.R.'s welfare, show up seconds later. Viewers do not see what Bobby was referring to when he stands in the doorway and says, "Oh my God!" This is resolved five years later with the first of the CBS reunion movies (J.R. shoots the mirror and vows revenge against those who took Ewing Oil away from him).
  • Deadpan Snarker: J.R. on several occasions.
  • Demon Slaying: In the after-movies – later, the 2012 continuation series when the movies were retconned – the implied fate of Adam, the demonic spirit that tried to taunt J.R. into committing suicide in the original series' finale. J.R. had seen Adam in the mirror and fired the gun... but it's revealed in the later shows that instead he shot the gun into the mirror, killing Adam.
  • Downer Ending: The series finale ends with J.R. being Driven to Suicide by Satan's crony after he loses both his oil empire and his family. Though whether he actually kills himself or not is left ambiguous, it is strongly implied. J.R. Returns retconned this ending by explaining that Bobby walked in on J.R. ranting and raving about the Devil after shooting the mirror, and that he subsequently fled to Paris to hide out for five years.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: J.R. is a heavy drinker even at the best of times, but he really hits the bottle hard after Jock dies (see Heroic BSoD below).
    • Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find any member of the Ewing family who doesn't drown their sorrows from time to time.
  • Drugs Are Bad: Lucy's sudden pill addiction.
  • Dub Name Change: The Hungarian dub renames J.R. to Jockey and Sue Ellen to Samantha.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Most of the first season's episodes featured self-contained plots, before switching mid-season to a story arc format that continued throughout the rest of the show's run. That season also featured a different actor than Ted Shackelford playing Gary and had a subplot involving an affair with Lucy and Ray Krebbs. That affair degenerated into Squick when in later seasons the writers decided to make Ray a son of Jock, which turned it into retroactive incest.
    • J.R. was a secondary background character early on. According to Larry Hagman, he & Linda Gary would ad-lib scenes in the backgrounds of scenes during filming which made them stand out more to the audience & the producers, helping J.R. become a main character.
  • The '80s: Iconically so.
  • '80s Hair: Not surprising considering the then-contemporary setting.
  • Estranged Soap Family: Gary never turned up for major family events at Southfork after Bobby's death in the Dream Season - and seldom did beforehand. His absence from said events was never explained. It ran both ways vis a vis the Texas Ewings' absences on Knots Landing.
  • Everyone Is a Suspect: "Who shot J.R.?" was a big deal not because someone wanted to kill him but because everyone had reason to kill him by then.
  • Everything is Big in Texas: Fully plays into all of the Texas tropes you could imagine.
  • Evil Versus Evil: When J.R. butts heads with Clifford or any other CEO, you can sit back and stop worrying about his moral compass, since the other guy is going to deserve whatever J.R. inflicts on him.
  • Fake Guest Star: The show had a habit of having "fake guest stars" that were often treated in the same capacity as main characters, during the show's fourteen-season run, often under the credit "also starring". Some examples who later became official series regulars were Cliff Barnes, Sue Ellen Ewing, Ray Krebbs, Donna Culver, Clayton Farlow, Jenna Wade, Jack Ewing, April Stevens, Carter McKay, and Cally Harper Ewing.
  • Family Business: Ewing Oil, later Ewing Energies. Also, Barnes-Wentworth Oil.
  • Family Drama: One of the central conflicts of Dallas was the internal problems of the Ewing and Barnes families. In fact, the show was initially conceived as a Romeo and Juliet type drama with feuding families.
  • Feuding Families: The Barneses and Ewings. Leads to Obnoxious In-Laws on both sides.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In The Early Years, during a wedding ceremony, Jock offhandedly catches the bouquet a bride throws, foreshadowing his eventual marriage to Ellie.
    • Two scenes before the accident that disfigured her in the Season 9/10 cliffhanger, Pam got stuck in a game of Chicken on the wrong side of a two-lane road with some punks in a Jeep. She ran them off the road right before she would've crashed head-on into a van.
  • Fur and Loathing: Some early, defining examples of this trope.
  • Gambit Pileup: Just about everybody is scheming and not all of it is about getting the ranch.
  • Go Among Mad People
  • Going Cold Turkey: Sue Ellen, many times. With varying degrees of success.
  • Grandparental Obliviousness; For all that everyone praises Miss Ellie, she doesn't seem to notice or care much when Lucy's in trouble at school or doing drugs, and she doesn't do a whole lot when a pregnant Sue Ellen is going around drunk either. She mentions taking a Hands-Off Parenting approach with J.R. from an early age, which... might explain a lot.
  • Gun Struggle: Carter McKay and his son, Tommy, fight over a gun after the latter tries to go kill Bobby. Tommy ends up dying as a result.
  • Heroic BSoD: For a given value of 'heroic': J.R. has a total breakdown after Jock dies.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners:
    • J.R. and Bobby, when they're not at each other's throats.
    • Ray and Jock were shaping up to become this in Season 4.
    • Sue Ellen and Pam in later seasons.
  • Hollywood Heart Attack: Jock
  • Hollywood Law: Hoo boy.
    • Jenna is forced to marry her abusive ex-husband Renaldo Marchetta, who then turns up dead, apparently by her hand. She is arrested for the murder, meets Bobby in jail, and tells him her version of what happened. During the trial, he is then called to the stand to recount for the jury what she had told him (which would be hearsay and completely inadmissible), asked his opinion of her mental state at several points in the story he's retelling (as he's not a psychiatrist, this would be irrelevant), and finally is asked whether he feels she could have committed the murder (not only was he not even there, his personal opinions are not admissible). The show explains that Bobby was called to the stand to tell Jenna's story to the jurors without her being cross-examined, which is of course why it would never have been allowed in real life. In any realistic scenario, Bobby would never have been called as a witness, as he had no testimony of the events to offer. If Jenna wanted her story told, she would have had to testify on her own behalf, exposing herself to cross-examination by the prosecuting attorneys.
    • Miss Ellie is tired of J.R. and Bobby tearing the family apart fighting over control of Ewing Oil, so she decides to go into court, have her deceased husband Jock declared mentally incompetent so his final will is overturned, then sell the company. During the trial, she is asked if she feels Jock was, in fact, mentally incompetent (again, she's not a psychiatrist). Her answer is (roughly) "I know you need me to say it, so the answer is Yes." Needless to say, this kind of answer would not be accepted in any court and would probably result in a tongue-lashing from the judge.
    • Not to mention the countless times contracts and other financial agreements are signed under coercion, usually due to blackmail and sometimes even at gunpoint, with no third party present to witness the signing. All apparently legally binding, it seems.
  • I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Barbara Eden appeared as rival oil company owner Lee Ann De La Vega(maiden name Nelson) in 5 episodes.
  • Instrumental Theme Tune: Jerrold Immel's blend of classic big screen Western horns and strings with Disco-ish rhythms is still one of the most iconic American TV theme songs.
  • It's A Wonderful Plot: The final episode. Subverted in that A): the alternate reality shown has many characters' lives noticeably improved by J.R.'s absence, and B): the "angel" is a demon encouraging J.R. to kill himself.
  • I Want Grandkids
  • Kavorka Man: Cliff Barnes (early on anyway, before he became the Buttmonkey).
  • Lady Drunk: Sue Ellen totally averts One Drink Will Kill the Baby when pregnant, and spends the entire pregnancy conspicuously staggering around drunk. Nobody really yells at her for this or tries to stop her much until she's near to term. In later seasons, the Ewings automatically assume Sue Ellen is drunk whenever she doesn't return home on time.
  • Ladykiller in Love: J.R. is arguably this to Sue Ellen, even though he has cheated on her many times.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness: By its final couple of the seasons the original run had lost most of its classic era cast with the exception of J.R. Ewing himself, Bobby, Cliff and a few minor supporting characters, greatly eroding the Big, Screwed-Up Family nature of show. The combination of a mostly new and younger cast, different locations, soapier storylines in general and in the finale an outright shift into the supernatural with an It's a Wonderful Plot ending made late Dallas a very different animal to the beast it had been in its prime.
  • Lingerie Scene: Lingerie series is more like it. The 2012 series actively continues this tradition.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: More than once, the family pays for J.R.'s secret schemes. A great example is when Carter McKay bursts into a restaurant with reporters in tow to rant on how an Ewing oil tanker rammed one of his ships to spill oil in the Gulf. Bobby snaps they don't own an oil tanker...then sees J.R.'s face to realize he's been running one in secret for a while and now it's gotten the entire company facing legal and public repercussions.
  • Long-Runners: 13 seasons (14 if you count the original miniseries) and its Spin-Off Knots Landing ran for 14 seasons and a miniseries as well. The Revival ran for three seasons, meaning that there are 17 seasons of Dallas in total.
  • Luke, You Are My Father: James Beaumont announced to the Ewings that he was J.R.'s son. However, in the revival series, he isn't seen nor mentioned.
  • Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: A major storyline in the second and third seasons concerned John Ross' paternity: Sue Ellen, J.R. and Cliff were all convinced that Cliff was the father. All three of them were pretty astonished to discover that J.R. was the actual father after Cliff sued for paternity. The storyline began as soon as Sue Ellen found out that she was pregnant and ended when John Ross was about six months old.
  • The Masochism Tango: J.R. and Sue Ellen (when they weren't actively trying to destroy each other).
  • Misplaced Accent: In spite of the Gung-ho, Texas! spirit of the show, most everyone has a Generic American accent, with notable exceptions being J.R. and Sue Ellen. That's all good and well, she was Miss Texas and he's, well, just J.R., but it's weird that neither of their younger siblings have any trace of that Texas drawl. This is also a case of Truth in Television. Many people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area don't have the stereotypical Texas accent.
    • Larry Hagman grew up in Fort Worth, so he was the only member of the cast who didn't have to try.
    • Steve Kanaly actually did a good enough job with the accent that many viewers assumed he was a native Texan as well (he's actually from California).
    • Bobby began with one, but it slowly disappeared over the years.
    • Jock's was even thicker than J.R.'s.
    • Susan Howard was/is from Marshall, TX (a small town about 150 miles east of Dallas on I-20), so she would very much have the Texan accent as Donna; her character Maggie on Petrocelli lampshades this in the second-season episode "Death Ride," when one of the characters asks her if she knows how to ride a horse (she says, "Born and raised in Marshall, Texas").
  • Morality Pet: No matter what else is said about the man, J.R. is a loving, doting father to John Ross. It's arguably his main (if not his only) redeeming quality.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Pam does not believe in bras.
  • Multigenerational Household
  • My Beloved Smother: Miss Ellie gets way too distraught when her children (now in their 30s and 40s) want to move out of Southfork. Rebecca Wentworth is arguably this to Cliff Barnes, as well.
  • Naïve Everygirl: Pam Barnes, at least at first.
  • Naked in Mink: Kimberly Cryder wore a sable coat with nothing underneath, to show J.R. what he could have had if he weren't such a Jerkass.
  • Nature Adores a Virgin: In The Early Years, it is shown that Ellie is saving herself for Digger, and tells him that he has to "finish what he started" (trying to bed her for the first time) midway through the film. Jock picks up on this, and gets Digger (who is drunk almost all the time) out of the way long enough to make his move on her and take her virginity, which leads to their marriage soon after.
  • Never My Fault: Digger Barnes. And how.
    • Passed on to Cliff. The man can't get a hangnail without it being the Ewings' (specifically J.R.'s) fault.
  • Nepotism
  • Nice Guy:
    • Although Bobby has had a few moral grey moments and occasionally has a really bad temper, he is usually kind and caring.
    • Miss Ellie is a good female version of this trope, and is in fact probably the nicest character on the show.
    • Donna Culver is another good female example.
    • Clayton Farlow and his adoptive son Dusty Farlow.
    • Even though he is unbelievably self-righteous and stubborn, Mitch Cooper fits this trope well enough.
  • Odd Name Out: Boaz, Japhet, and Cally Harper.
  • Off the Wagon: Sue Ellen developed a sort of on-and-off-the-wagon revolving door over the years. She quit drinking at the end of Season 2 after nearly dying in a drunk driving accident while pregnant with John Ross and was considered an alcoholic from that point on. She stayed sober through most of the series, but slipped several times during moments of extreme stress.
  • The Patriarch: Jock.
  • Present Absence: Jock after his death in Season 5 and Bobby after his death during the Dream Season.
  • Pretty in Mink: It wasn't uncommon to see the wives and girlfriends wearing very expensive full-length fur coats.
  • Put on a Bus: Numerous characters, but notably Lucy who left and eventually came back only to be put on another bus.
  • Raised by Grandparents: Lucy
  • Really Gets Around: J.R., of course, who was (in addition to Sue Ellen) with Lee Ann Nelson, Vanessa Beaumont, two personal secretaries, several housewives, Kristin Shepherd, Afton Cooper, his PR adviser, two oil baronesses, models, his cousin's ex-wife and two women named Anita, among others.
  • Rich Bitch: A veritable revolving door of them.
  • Saving the World With Art: A ploy by the communist Romanian government in Real Life backfired when they allowed Dallas to air within the country, intending to show the wasteful, brutal American lifestyle. Instead, it made the citizens wonder why they weren't living such nice lives under the current regime. During an interview, a teary-eyed Larry Hagman recounted when a citizen thanked him by saying that his character J.R. saved their country.
  • Schrödinger's Butterfly / Schrödinger's Cast: Bobby's death wasn't All Just a Dream in Knots Landing; Gary had just fathered a pair of fraternal twins when he found out about Bobby's death, and his son ended up being named after his dead brother.
  • The '70s: Though indelibly linked with The '80s Dallas began in 1978 and had its biggest moment (the shooting of J.R.) before Reagan took office.
    • The miniseries had the infamous "disco scene"
  • Shoulders of Doom: The eighties version.
  • Shout-Out:
    • During an attempt to acquire offshore drilling rights to a region of the Gulf of Mexico, Cliff Barnes claims that he has a nose for oil that is so good that he can sense when a deposit is under water. In response, Pamela exclaims that "now he thinks he's The Man From Atlantis". "The Man From Atlantis" was Patrick Duffy's first starring role, which aired the season before Dallas premiered.
    • In the series finale "Conundrum", J.R.'s guardian angel Adam asks him "What makes you think I came from heaven?" This is very similar to the final line from the The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "A Nice Place To Visit".
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: In The Early Years, Ellie is angered at Jock's treatment of her and Digger, and slaps him across the face after he walks in on her trying to wake Digger up (who is drunk and out cold). The next time she goes to see him, she tries to slap him again, but they both end up kissing each other.
  • Snap Back: In the mid-1990s there were two TV movies, which involved J.R. becoming the chairman of WestStar, Bobby and Sue Ellen co-owning Ewing Oil, and Christopher becoming romantically involved with his cousin Pamela Cooper(!). The new series has retconned everything in those two movies out of existence.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: What Jock thinks women should do. Sue Ellen does it (or at least doesn't work), but Pamela insists on employment.
  • Stepford Smiler: Sue Ellen.
  • Stylistic Suck: In "Proof Positive", Mandy does a screen test for a film, playing the Love Interest of a cop who is based on Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice. The test is very badly shot and both Mandy and the actor playing the cop exhibit Bad "Bad Acting". It also contains banal dialogue such as, "I'm a cop! That's all I know how to be!"
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Also Sue Ellen.
  • Surprise Incest: Lucy and Ray Krebs in the first season. Ray was subsequently revealed to be Jock's son and thus her uncle (eww)! Luckily by the time this was revealed the two had broken up, and no one ever mentioned they had once been an item. When asked about this in an interview, Steve Kanaly just said he hoped the storyline was "prayerfully forgotten" by the majority of the fans.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Clayton Farlow for Jock Ewing.
  • There Can Be Only One: Jock's idea of how Ewing Oil should be run, and what his will does with J.R. and Bobby.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Over several seasons, Jenna gradually changes from a spunky, sassy cowgirl into a humorless, self-pitying harridan. Even worse with her daughter Charlie, who becomes steadily more bratty and obnoxious after Bobby and Pam reunite, as exemplified by her saying "Stupid BOBBY!" at least once per episode.
  • Truth in Television: Unlike Jock's Hollywood Heart Attack, Miss Ellie's breast cancer (and subsequent mastectomy) was realistically and tastefully done, mostly owing to Barbara Bel Geddes' own struggles with breast cancer years earlier. Particularly tear-jerking is a post-surgery Ellie crying "Nothing fits!" when trying on her clothes.
  • The Unfavorite:
    • At the outset, black sheep Gary Ewing is the least favorite Ewing son, being a ne'er-do-well drunk who can't even raise his own kid. Over time, however, Gary grows up and everyone gradually figures out J.R. is a despicable human being, and he takes over this role.
    • The show, interestingly, states flat out each parents' favorite and least favorite child. Jock's favorite is Bobby (for being the most likable and family-oriented) and least favorite Gary (for being weak and irresponsible), Miss Ellie's favorite is Gary (for being sensitive and emotional, more Southworth than Ewing) and least favorite J.R. (for being, well, J.R.) That this puts J.R. in the position of being nobody's favorite and Bobby in the position of nobody's least favorite factors heavily into their identities.
  • Unrequited Love Switcheroo:
    • Bobby/Pam/Jenna.
    • Also Cliff/Afton/Sue Ellen.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: J.R. is this to Jock in early seasons.
  • What the Hell Is That Accent?: Angelica Nero's accent is all over the place. She can't even maintain a consistent accent for a single sentence.
  • Wham Line:
    • Bobby in the shower: "Good morning!"
    • Also from the last episode "What makes you think I'm from heaven?"
  • With Lyrics: J.R., J.R., he's a really bad guy, who lives on a ranch with his mom...

The revival (2012) provides examples of:

  • Aborted Arc: Larry Hagman's sudden death in 2012 affected the second season of the show's successful revival with the plotline of J.R. being murdered in the fifth episode. The producers have said that "90 percent" of the story was saved but obviously not the ending: Finally united after various challenges, the Ewings walk into the boardroom of Ewing Electric only to find a smirking J.R. inform them that he's taken over as sole owner.
  • Action Mom: When Ann (technically she's an action step-mom, since she's not Christopher's biological mother) hears someone breaking into the house, her first reaction is to grab a shotgun and confront the burglar. He tries to run, so she runs after him, shotgun and all. The only reason why he gets away is because he dives out a window.
    Ann: *Cocks shotgun* I don't miss, mister. Not at any range.
    (later on, when talking to a Southfork security guard) Guard: Next time, Ms. Ewing, shoot him.
    Ann: Oh, I will.
    • She gets another moment in the third episode when she hears someone in the stable storage room. Again, her first reaction is to grab a gun (this time, out of her horse's saddle) and confront the intruder. However, this time, it's just J.R., who is quite nonchalant about having a gun in his face.
    J.R.: Bullets don't seem to have much of an effect on me, dear.
    • When Sue Ellen says that she'll have to drop out of the race because she doesn't want to be a party to Ryland's corrupt activities, Ann goes to his office alone, convinces him to give a confession implicating himself by pretending to seduce him, then karate-palms him in the face. She then tells him if he tries anything like that again, he'll be introduced to "the business end of my shotgun".
    • When Harris is revealed to have kidnapped Ann's daughter and raised her to hate her mother, Ann goes to Harris' home and shoots him.
  • All There in the Manual: The show's official Facebook page has a timeline filling in the events between the end of the original series and the revival.
  • Amicable Exes:
    • Ann and Harris Ryland initially appear to be this when she visits in order to request that his company cease moving tanker trucks into Southfork on J.R.'s orders. The "amicable" disappears when it's revealed that Harris is a slimebag. The two of them end up kissing each other during "Where There's Smoke", with Harris' mother Judith watching.
    • By the time of the revival, J.R. and Sue Ellen have become this.
  • And Starring: Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, and Linda Gray get the coveted "And Starring" credit in the main titles.
  • Anti-Villain: In the third season, Harris Ryland is revealed to be working on a CIA operation to protect Ann and his own family from the Mendez-Ochoa cartel.
  • Auto Erotica: In "J.R.'s Masterpiece", Emma seduces John Ross by luring him into the backseat of a nearby sedan.
  • Badass Boast: In "A Call To Arms", John Ross delivers one to Governor McConaughey:
    My father took down three senators, two governors and a vice-president... and he taught me everything he knows. Your head's gonna look real nice above my fireplace... Governor.
  • Badass Family: The Ewings. Individually they are formidable, but when they unite, you better watch out.
    Sue Ellen: You can either be on our side, or you can be among the casualties.
  • Bald of Evil:
    • 'Smiling' Frank Ashkani, Cliff's right-hand man.
    • Harris Ryland, who schemes with Cliff to take down the Ewings in the second season.
  • Bash Brothers: Christopher and John Ross during J.R.'s wake, after getting fed up with one too many insults and diatribes about J.R. and their family.
  • Beard of Sorrow: Christopher gets this in the third season after breaking up with Elena.
  • Becoming the Mask:
    • Throughout the first season, Rebecca supposedly does this when she finds out that she's pregnant and doesn't want to defraud Christopher. Turns out that Cliff's her father, and he sets her back on the path of trying to take the drilling technology from Christopher.
    • John Ross gets this in Season 2. His business arrangement with Pamela against his brother blossoms into full-on love, and he ends up marrying her. He also puts aside his differences with Christopher to stop Cliff and Ryland. Then, at the end of the season, he nonchalantly cheats on Pamela with Emma Ryland, implying that his actions throughout the season were just a front for his true motives.
  • The Bus Came Back:
    • Gary Ewing (Ted Shackelford) returns to Dallas in the second season (after the ending of Knots Landing, some 20 years earlier), and spends time at the Southfork ranch with the rest of the family.
    • Mandy Winger (who was last seen being sent off to Los Angeles by Sue Ellen) returns for a cameo in "J.R.'s Masterpiece".
  • Butt-Monkey: John Ross would really like to be a Magnificent Bastard like his daddy. Unfortunately for him, he falls square into this trope instead. (At first...)
  • Call-Back: In "The Price You Pay", J.R. tells John Ross, "Nobody gives you power. Real power is something you take," echoing Jock's words to Bobby during a famous scene in the original series' fourth-season episode "Executive Wife".
  • The Cameo: Several, befitting a show about important businessmen in Dallas.
    • Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, shows up in a Season 1 episode.
    • Jones, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings appear at the memorial service in "J.R.'s Masterpiece".
  • Canon Discontinuity: The revival ignores the two TV movies of the 1990s, picking up plot threads directly from the original show.
  • Character Blog: The aforementioned Facebook page is written from J.R.'s perspective. After J.R.'s death, the page was picked up by John Ross.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Used frequently.
    • The tape Marta/Veronica makes of her and a drugged John Ross having sex comes back into play several episodes later when Christopher (who has resolved to fight dirty and stop J.R. from drilling) bribes a doorman to get access to John Ross' apartment, and discovers the CD she left for him, which he later uses as leverage.
  • Childhood Friends: Elena was friends in her childhood with Joaquin/Nicolas (when she lived in Mexico) and Christopher (when she moved to Southfork).
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder:
    • J.R., of course, to the point that Bobby blatantly says that he knows J.R. is going to backstab everyone the moment he sets foot in Southfork after leaving the assisted care facility.
    • John Ross is trying to follow in his daddy's footsteps, with somewhat less success.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • With a few minor changes (no cast pictures, the cast isn't listed in alphabetical order, updated to modern-day Dallas) the opening credits are almost exactly the same as the original series'. They even include a flyover view of the new Cowboys Stadium like the original's shot of Texas Stadium.
    • The opening credits show more of the modern city of Dallas, as more buildings have sprung up since the mid-80s, such as the Omni Hotel, the Bank of America and Chase Towers, and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. Dallas has become quite the city in the past thirty years.
    • The original teaser poster for the new series (which has the cast standing around covered with towels, with the words "They're back, and no, you're not dreaming" above it, references the infamous "dream season" from the original series.
    • J.R. (referencing the classic "Who Shot J.R.?" storyline) telling Anne "Bullets don't seem to have much of an effect on me, dear."
    • In "Family Business", Christopher and John Ross play a basketball game at Southfork, and make reference to being skilled enough to play a match against the "McKay boys", a reference to the children of Carter McKay (George Kennedy) from the original series.
    • "J.R.'s Masterpiece" features cameos by Mandy Winger and Cally Harper, two of J.R.'s former mistresses.
    • The third-season premiere, "The Return", begins with Bobby standing in Southfork's graveyard and looking at each of the tombstones - J.R., Ellie and Jock, the last of which is accompanied by a short snippet of Jock's theme from the original series.
    • The third-season finale, "Where There's Smoke", ends with Southfork being set on fire. Again.
  • Convenient Miscarriage: Pamela Rebecca suffers one after the oil rig explosion in "Guilt and Innocence".
  • Criminal Doppelgänger:
    • The woman claiming to be Marta Del Sol is not the real Marta Del Sol.
    • Christopher discovers in "Revelations" that his wife, Rebecca Sutter is impersonating someone who lives in Des Moines, Iowa. The audience later learns that Rebecca is Cliff Barnes' daughter.
  • Cut Apart: In Season 2, Tommy Sutter's body is found thanks to the machinations of J.R. and Frank. In a montage, we see Pamela Rebecca frantically packing as she tries to make a getaway, while the police rush to apprehend the suspect. They bang on the suspect's door. Pamela, horrified, opens the door to...her father, Cliff. Meanwhile, Frank is being arrested - Cliff framed him for the crime in return for his betrayal.
  • Deadly Nosebleed: Rebecca gets this during the first season. It turns out she's pregnant with twins.
  • Death Equals Redemption: Subverted. While most people still remember J.R.'s dirty dealings, the Ewings paint J.R. as a friggin' saint after his death.
  • Destination Defenestration: Marta/Veronica gets thrown out a window (offscreen) by Vicente's goons after a confrontation with John Ross.
  • The Dragon: Frank Ashkani in the first two seasons, and Roy Vickers in Season 2.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: In "Ewings Unite!", Bobby reveals that Katherine Wentworth died during the interim between the two series.
  • Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Rebecca invokes this in the first episode, luring Christopher away from a business meeting by pretending to only speak French so they can sneak off and have sex in the locker room.
  • Expy: It's a minor throwaway character to establish some plot, but J.R.'s buddy in Mexico is worth $60 billion. Carlos Slim, anyone? Interesting, since J.R. is established to be buddies with Jerry Jones.
  • Face–Heel Turn:
    • After Christopher breaks off the relationship with Rebecca, she goes to her father, Cliff Barnes and agrees to fully cooperate in his scheme against the Ewings.
    • After Elena learns from Cliff that J.R. cheated her father out of a lucrative piece of land years earlier, she goes down to Mexico and meets with the Mendez-Ochoa cartel (led by her childhood friend, Joaquin) and begins working on their behalf against the Ewings.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In the pilot episode, Rebecca Sutter says that her father is a very good poker player. Later on, we learn that Cliff Barnes (who was organizing a high-stakes poker game in the first season) is her father.
    • Rebecca and Christopher go to meet Cliff in "The Price You Pay", and Rebecca acknowledges Cliff with a long look and stilted greeting to each other when they first meet. This later gets picked up on when it's revealed that Rebecca is Cliff's daughter, and she was in on the plan all along to take Christopher's drilling technology.
    • The opening credits for "J.R.'s Masterpiece" prominently focus on his signature engraved belt buckle. In "Legacies", a facsimile of said belt buckle is used to frame Cliff Barnes for J.R.'s murder, thus completing J.R.'s "master plan".
  • Gambit Pileup: It would appear there are several machinations afoot regarding possession of Southfork, and many of the strings are being pulled by a Criminal Doppelgänger of the daughter of one of J.R.'s Mexican friends.
    • Plus, the family attorney's true allegiance is in question. J.R. is trying to get him to screw Bobby, but John Ross is trying to get him to screw J.R. at the same time.
    • And then, what is Rebecca and her "brother's" true motives?
    • And who really sent the email that broke up Christopher and Elena? It was Rebecca, but she shifts the blame on Tommy for Christopher to discover.
  • Generation Xerox: Bobby really doesn't want Christopher and John Ross to turn out like he and J.R. did. Unfortunately, by the time of the pilot, it may be too late.
  • Groin Attack: When Ann chases J.R. out of Bobby's room in "Family Business" she threatens to shoot him if she ever catches him near Bobby again, and she says that since J.R. doesn't have a heart, she'll shoot him somewhere more vital, accompanied by a quick look downward.
  • Gun Struggle: Rebecca and Tommy at the end of "Family Business".
  • Hollywood Healing: Bobby gets a second brain aneurysm at the end of "Family Business". In the next episode ("Revelations"), he has surgery off-screen, and is out of the hospital by the middle of the episode. While it's explained that the procedure to remove the aneurysm was non-invasive, he's out of the hospital after what appears to be an overnight stay, and has no bandages or evidence that he was even there in the first place.
  • Hope Spot:
    • In the last two episodes of Season 1, it seems like John Ross and Christopher have finally put their differences aside and are ready to combine their plans into a new business venture. John Ross proposes to Elena and she accepts, and Christopher and Rebecca are patching things up. Even J.R. is ready to bury the hatchet with Bobby and end his pursuit of power. Then Rebecca shoots Tommy after backing out of their scheme. J.R.'s latest backstab attempt is fully revealed to Bobby, causing him to have a brain aneurysm. Elena discovers John Ross' part in J.R.'s scheme and breaks off the engagement. Christopher discovers Rebecca isn't who she says she is and ends it with her. He goes to find Elena and they rekindle their old romance. Rebecca meets with Cliff Barnes who is really her father and vows to help him in their original scheme. Finally a heartbroken and vengeful John Ross vows to steal everything from Christopher with J.R.'s help, proving that neither of them have learned a thing.
    • In "Legacies", the driving forces of the season are reconciled. Bobby finally shuts down Cliff's vendetta against the Ewings for good by framing him for J.R.'s murder, Harris Ryland is arrested for drug trafficking, Christopher and John Ross learn who shot J.R. (it was Bum, acting on J.R.'s orders) and the family finally gets Ewing Energies back for good... except that Cliff convinced Elena to go after the Ewings for screwing over her family decades earlier, and John Ross cheats on his newlywed wife with Emma Ryland, proving that he once again hasn't learned a thing.
  • Hostage Situation: In "Blame Game", Vicente Cano takes the Ewings hostage after they screwed him over in the previous season's finale, "Revelations".
  • Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: In Season 2, Vincente returns to hold the family hostage. He pulls a gun on Pamela to force Christopher to go along with him, naturally assuming Christopher will try to save his wife. It takes John Ross ready to fight him for Vincente to realize the relationship dynamics have shifted since he last saw the family.
    Vincente: Your cousin has to defend your wife? (sees John Ross looking at Pamela and Christopher sharing a look with Elena and then lets out a laugh as it hits him) Wait a minute.. you Ewing boys share after all! I love it!
  • Incest Subtext: Harris and his mother are... oddly close, to the point that in one conversation, Judith puts her arm around her son and mentions how Emma is "our daughter".
  • Ironic Echo: The revival echoes many of the themes and major plots that defined the original series, often very specifically:
    • The original series was kicked off with a Ewing marrying a Barnes (Bobby and Pamela.) Same goes for the new series, with Christopher and Rebecca.
    • The scene in the pilot episode where Elena goes to Christopher (who, in desperation, has found new evidence to help his methane drilling research), finds him asleep in his office and makes him a cup of coffee when he wakes up is used again four episodes later in a different context. Christopher goes to Elena, he sleeps on her couch and she serves him coffee again, while he refrains from showing her a videotape of John Ross and Marta/Veronica having sex.
    • In the original series, Pam Ewing lost her baby via an accident that J.R. is accused of deliberately causing at the end of the first season. Likewise, in the new series' second season, Rebecca loses her unborn twins after an explosion which Christopher is accused of causing. It was actually a plot executed by Elena's brother Drew, following orders from Cliff Barnes.
  • Just in Time: In "Blame Game", Christopher rushes to stop Vicente Cano from kidnapping Elena to use as leverage against the Ewing family. He manages to rescue Elena, but Vicente pulls a gun on him. Christopher pulls himself over Elena to shield her... and then her brother, Drew, shoots Vicente in the chest with a rifle from offscreen.
  • Kick the Dog: Cliff does a number of shady and backhanded things throughout the first season and beginning of the second, but when he allies with Harris Ryland and detonates a bomb on the Ewing Energies oilrig (despite knowing full well that his daughter, who is carrying unborn twins, is on board), he firmly establishes himself as a straight-out villain. It doesn't work, either, as the characters discover the sabotage just a single episode later.
  • Knight Templar Parent: Harris acts this way towards Emma. He constantly tries to steal her back from her mother (even trespassing on the Ewing's property), checks up on her constantly and tells her not to fraternize with any man he doesn't like (to the point of getting his goons to beat Drew up and showing the end result to a crying Emma).
  • Last Disrespects: Cliff Barnes crashes J.R.'s wake to rail at Bobby, Christopher and John Ross for the deceased's actions over the years, before being escorted out by his daughter.
  • Like a Son to Me: Cliff indicates this to Frank after the Dallas police discover the body of Tommy Sutter, and uses that fact to convince Frank to kill himself at his arraignment hearing.
  • Like Brother and Sister: Joaquin/Nicholas regards Elena as a sibling, and states that they are part of the same family, despite being from different bloodlines.
  • Love Dodecahedron: John Ross to Elena and Marta Del Sol/Veronica, Elena to Christopher and John Ross, and Christopher to Rebecca and Elena.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Cliff is this to Pamela Rebecca Barnes and Frank in the first season, then Governor Sam McConaughey is this to Cliff and Ryland in Season 2.
  • Mathematician's Answer: John Ross asks Pamela at their impromptu wedding if she is marrying him because she loves him, or hates her father for killing her children and wants him to suffer. The response: "I do".
  • Mercy Kill: J.R. was dying of cancer, so as part of his "masterpiece", he had Bum shoot him with a gun stolen from Cliff, as a means to frame him for his death.
  • The Mole:
    • Christopher's colleague Eric was in on the plot against Ewing Alternative Energy.
    • The fake Marta Del Sol was working for J.R. and John Ross against Bobby.
    • Pamela Barnes has become this against her father Cliff, because he was responsible for her babies' deaths.
    • Elena becomes this for Cliff Barnes after discovering that J.R. cheated her father out of lucrative land deeds.
  • Moment Killer:
    • In the third-season episode "Playing Chicken", Pamela tries to seduce John Ross after he comes home from work, but the mood is ruined what Pamela reveals her skimpy bustier, which (unbeknownst to her) is what Emma wore when she seduced John Ross just a short time prior.
    • The same thing happens in the third-season mid finale, "Where There's Smoke". Pamela finds out about John Ross' infidelity, and her response is to surprise John Ross and Emma as they're making out in his apartment and begin a threesome with them. They don't get very far before Pamela begins convulsing from an unknown medical condition.
  • Moment of Weakness:
    • In the third episode, Christopher kisses Elena after the weight of everything that's happened (the failure of his alternative energy project, the revelation that his father is being treated for intestinal cancer, realizing Elena left to be with John Ross because of an e-mail he never wrote) crashes down on him. Interestingly, this is immediately subverted when he goes to Rebecca and tells her what happened, resolving to make their marriage work.
    • In the second season premiere, after Sue Ellen is accused of bribery, which destroys her campaign for governor, she pours herself a glass of wine (her struggles with alcoholism having been a long-term problem) but when J.R. shows up and promises to help her, she pours the glass down the drain, followed shortly thereafter by the whole bottle.
    • Sue Ellen faces the same temptation the night before J.R.'s funeral. This time she succumbs.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Emma is a notable example. In the third season, the majority of her scenes involve her in various states of undress, with the camera (and John Ross) often focusing on her backside as she moves.
  • Not Quite Dead: Ultimately subverted in Season 2. In "Ewings Unite!", Christopher learns that his mother, Pam Ewing, didn't succumb to the terminal disease she was diagnosed with the twelfth season of the original series, and went to live in Abu Dhabi with another man, which led to J.R. searching for her before his death. In "Legacies", it's revealed that she was dead all along, and Cliff covered up her death in order to stop Christopher from accessing her shares of Barnes Global.
  • Obfuscating Senility: J.R., at 75, is a lot sharper and more capable than he lets on at the beginning of the first episode. He pretends to be a harmless old man who almost everyone else thinks is senile, and is more concerned with reliving the "good old days" then having anything to do with Bobby's plans to sell Southfork... all while he's pulling incriminating evidence from the family in plain sight.
  • Off the Wagon:
    • Gary is revealed to have done this before the beginning of the series, which resulted in Valene leaving him.
    • Sue Ellen does this in "J.R.'s Masterpiece" (after being tempted several episodes earlier), due in part to J.R.'s death.
  • Oh, Crap!: Sue Ellen has this reaction in "No Good Deed" when the police find evidence exonerating John Ross for the murder of Marta, because she bribed the medical examiner into ruling her death a suicide and, as a result, letting the real murderer walk free.
  • Overlord Jr.: John Ross III. As soon as he realizes Southfork is going to be sold to a conservancy, he goes to J.R. for help and eagerly gets involved in the elder Ross' schemes.
  • Pet the Dog: After close to a whole season making everyone's life miserable in his pursuit of Southfork, J.R. finally relents in "Family Business" after seeing Bobby have a seizure, and ends up signing the deed back to Bobby.
  • Product Placement:
    • Most of the characters drive Chevrolet vehicles, with emphasis on the logo on their hoods.
    • "Truth And Consequences" has a sequence where J.R. talks with the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, and considerable attention is paid to the game being played at the Cowboys Stadium.
    • HP Computers gets one at the beginning of "Guilt By Association".
    • According to Producer Cynthia Cidre, this is why the Southfork ranch (located in Parker, TX) is now set in Dallas proper instead of the (fictional) suburb of Braddock: The show itself is receiving money from the city of Dallas for tourism purposes.
    • At least once per episode during the second season, John Ross would get either a phone call or a text on his Windows Phone, with the camera suitably lingering on its distinctive tile screen.
    • Southfork, previously said to be in the fictional Dallas suburb of Braddock, is now referred to as being inside the city of Dallas proper (Word of God stated this was because the city itself was picking up part of the production costs, as the show makes a great advertisement and Southfork itself is a tourist attraction in real life).
  • Promoted to Opening Credits: Mitch Pileggi (Harris) and Juan Pablo Di Pace (Joaquin/Nicolas) get this in the third season.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: J.R. spends part of the first season on a "business trip" to Las Vegas to take part in a high-stakes poker game organized by Cliff Barnes, with his role largely relegated to a single scene per episode. This was done to accommodate Larry Hagman's treatment after his cancer returned. It also counts as an Aborted Arc, as the storyline was dropped when Hagman recovered and returned to the show for the last three episodes of the season.
  • Real-Person Cameo: J.R.'s memorial service in "J.R.'s Masterpiece" was attended by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, and real-life Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings.
  • Refusal of the Call: Christopher in Season 1. He is more than happy to let Southfork get sold to a conservancy and focus on his methane drilling. However, J.R. and John Ross' machinations eventually force him to start fighting dirty in order to protect his family and the ranch.
  • Remember the New Guy?:
    • Elena Ramos, who was never mentioned in the original series, is portrayed in the revival as best friends with John Ross and Christopher since they were all children. She's also the Ewing's housekeeper, Carmen's (who was never seen in the original either), daughter.
    • 'Smiling' Frank is revealed in "Collateral Damage" to have been picked up from the streets of Islamabad as a young boy by Cliff Barnes 30 years earlier (setting it, in the show's timeframe, around Seasons 4-5 of the original series), and was supposedly brought up by Cliff for most of his life, yet he was never seen or hinted at before his introduction in "The Price You Pay".
    • Heather (played by Annalynne McCord) is introduced in the third season as having worked at Southfork for quite some time, and immediately begins a relationship with Christopher and speaks up for several characters almost as soon as she's introduced.
  • Revival: The rebooted series follows the original surviving characters (J.R., Bobby and Sue Ellen in the main cast; Cliff, Lucy and Ray as guest stars), and focuses on a growing battle between John Ross Ewing (J.R.'s son) and Christopher Ewing (Bobby's son) over the rights to Ewing Oil. The show also follows up on a plotline from the original series - namely, the right to drill for oil on the Southfork Ranch (which was a major source of contention in the early seasons). The series was also internally referred to as "Season 15" by TNT.
  • Rewrite: The show plays fast and loose with some of the past events in the series, which are changed to reflect plots in the new series:
    • In the original series, Ellie owned the Southfork mineral rights, and passed them onto J.R. and Bobby. In the new series, it is said that her father gave the rights to the Ewing brothers.
    • By the end of the original series, Cliff Barnes had soundly beat J.R. and acquired Ewing Oil, which (as the backstory to the 2012 series indicates) he sold off years later, and lived handsomely off the profits. At the end of Season 1, it's revealed that he's much more evil than before. Not only does he want Christopher's drilling technology (using his own daughter to get in close to Chris, who's his own nephew), but he's also willing to cover up deaths - as seen in Tommy's case - if it gets him closer to what he wants.
    • According to "Legacies", Cliff Barnes (having learned of Pam Ewing's death in Abu Dhabi in 1989) arranged for a doctor to create the illusion she was still alive, so that Christopher couldn't inherit her shares of Barnes Global. This is despite the fact that, in the original series' timeframe (Season 12), Barnes Global did not exist yet, and Cliff was at his most sympathetic as a character at that point in the narrative.
  • Saving the World With Art: A ploy by the communist Romanian government backfired when they allowed 'Dallas'' to air within the country, intending to show the wasteful, brutal American lifestyle. Instead, it made the citizens wonder why they weren't living such nice lives under the current regime. During an interview, a teary-eyed Larry Hagman recounted when a citizen thanked him by saying that his character J.R. saved their country.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Bobby gets a court order stopping John Ross from drilling on Southfork land, John Ross tells the workers to keep drilling, but they leave, saying that they "ain't tanglin' with Bobby Ewing".
  • Shipper on Deck: Of all people, J.R. is/was this for Elena and John Ross. It hasn't come up in the show itself but in the Facebook timeline he seems to have been quite keen for them to end up together.
    J.R.: Turns out Christopher and the Ramos girl are getting awfully cozy. Shared their first kiss under the family oak tree. Should've been her and John Ross, if you ask me.
  • Shock-and-Switch Ending: The final episode of the show's 1978-1991 run ended with Bobby walking in on J.R. just as he seemingly shoots himself. The 1996 reunion movie J.R. Returns opens revealing that J.R. actually shot a mirror (he was hallucinating a demon in the mirror taunting him to kill himself).
  • Special Edition Title: The second-season episode "J.R.'s Masterpiece" features a slower, more mournful rendition of the main theme that plays over footage of J.R. walking out of Southfork, to acknowledge Larry Hagman's passing.
  • Spin-Offspring: Although the last generation still has a big part, the revival claims to focus on J.R. and Sue Ellen's son, John Ross, and Bobby and Pam's son, Christopher as well as Cliff Barnes' daughter, Pamela Rebecca.
  • Time Skip: Twice in the show to date. In "Trial And Error", a title card is used to show that a month has passed between Ryland's shooting and the court hearing, and in "Let Me In", after Christopher breaks his unborn child's bed, the action skips forward three weeks.
  • Victorious Childhood Friend: Nicolas capitalizes on Elena's resentment of the Ewings, and their past in Mexico, to seduce her after coming back to Dallas.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • When Sue Ellen tells John Ross she's going to keep pressing Gary to try to get the oil on Southfork pumping again after J.R.'s death, John Ross is livid at her for worrying about business right after his father's death.
    • John Ross gets this from Bum (who rails at him and says not to make the same mistakes as his father) when he begins an affair with Emma.
  • Your Days Are Numbered: Played straight and seemingly subverted:
    • The pilot episode establishes that Bobby has a rare form of intestinal cancer, which motivates his decision to sell Southfork to the Del Sol Conservancy. After a couple episodes of Bobby having dramatic chest pains which cause him to clutch his stomach and waver, he gets surgery (off-screen) and is told that although there's chance of a resurgence, he should be fine if he continues taking treatment.
    • J.R. is discovered to have been suffering from cancer just before his death in "The Furious and Fast" in "Legacies".

Top