Dallas Was A Great Show, But Boy Could They Be Unrealistic.

"Introducing the hottest up and coming young model in Texas, the 4'6" Lucy Ewing!"

 

That kind of thing, for me, really wasn't much of a problem. It was the stuff in the last few years, things like the Haleyville storyline, JR being committed to the sanatarium. Those kind of things were so far removed from Dallas at its peak, in my view that was more of a problem in being unrealistic.

Swami

 

Yes, and if you take a look at when they started getting to these absurd, completely unrealistic storylines, it coincided with their ratings falling farther than ever before. They'd had some drops in the ratings int past but were still a relatively highly rated show. Top ten or top 15 until these absurd storylines began. trying to blow up oil fields in Saudi Arabia to get the price of oil higher, Haleyville. the sanitarium, these were things that would never have been even considered back in the time when the record breaking "Who Shot JR" storyline took place, or even in seasons 7 and 8. Season 10 with its resurrection of Bobby Ewing was the beginning of the attitude "We can do anything we want and the people will accept it." Except they didn't accept just anything they did! The more often they ran completely unrealistic storylines, the more sick the audience became of having its intelligence insulted and the more of them quit watching Dallas.

Compared to these types of things, something like Lucy becoming a model was relatively minor, especially when she was doing mainly head shots which we could see based on the photographs Roger took of her and placed in the "shrine." Most or maybe all of those pictures in the "shrine" were only of her face. For that specific type of modeling - head shots - height is irrelevant.

 

But was it the very next day?

 

And yet she screamed "let me go!" Seems like a solid case of harassment to me.

As for the confession, any crazy person can confess to this or that crime, surely that alone doesn't get that person convicted?

 

Conviction isn't the immediate issue, it's that she wasn't considered enough of a flight risk to be denied bail. Of course she did use getting out on bail to disappear.

 

To complicate matters a bit: it's not that they really thought people would accept anything--it's that they thought people would be willing to accept anything as long as it brought Patrick Duffy back. So, why was the cult of personality around a beloved actor (two, if you also count Larry Hagman who lobbied hard for Duffy's return) deemed more important than the show's trust bond with the viewers?

 

How is it unrealistic? It was bail, and Katherine was a very rich woman, and as it turned out rich enough to skip her own bail too. I think we all know that the rich can get themselves special favours from the courts, whereas people without much money are doomed. Had Katherine been working class or even middle class, she would have been remanded for trying to kill somebody like Bobby Ewing. This is more real than you think. We often see Bobby throwing his weight, and wallet, around, when he wants to get something done.

Look at Sue Ellen after J.R. was shot, when she couldn't raise bail money. With money, out she comes. Without money, rot in jail.

 

Then again, Angelica Nero seemed to good to be true, so maybe the viewers should have suspected something.

 

Confessed to a few individuals before a lawyer had seen her and got her bail with the necessary funds, no doubt preparing a case for the defence. Although Katherine obviously had other ideas, i.e. skipping bail.

Barnes-Wentworth is a strong rival to Ewing by that time, and a lot of money. Enough of a financial security from the defendant, and a judge who is open-minded about bail, will mean bail. Katherine's criminal history was also very much in her favour. And it was attempted murder rather than actual murder that was the charge, which is something else in Katherine's favour.

Later that season, Jenna Wade in Laredo had big trouble getting bail after Renaldo was killed, because of a hostile judge, but if it isn't actually murder that's the charge, and the defendant has a lot of money then the chances are that they will get bail.

 

Well, some psycho killers have a big ego and want to take credit for everything bad that happened.
As for the murder weapon, the poisoned needle, she may or may not have intended to use it. But she didn't eventhough she said she did.
And Bobby's testimony, he was kinda blind-ish at that moment so...it's all very confusing.

 

While that's true, I think that part of our legal system should be changed. Why is a person who attempts to kill someone but then because of blind luck, the victim survives, a better person than someone else who tries to kill someone and that victim not getting lucky, dies? To me both criminals are equally bad and deserve the same punishment. The victim being lucky enough to survive the murder attempt does not make the would be killer any better of a person than if the victim had died, does he?

 

There's always a certain amount of 'suspension of disbelief' involved. It's just a matter of how far you can stretch it before it breaks. Patrick's return was eagerly awaited initially. It was only as the implications of the dream became apparent that the backlash set in.