I think the title of today’s post says it all, don’t you?
The only thing to add is that I am thrilled to bits that Angie agreed to be here today. She’s a very talented and funny lady, and you should definitely check out her blog, Childhood Relived, when you have a spare minute (or sixty). That’s where you’ll find fantastic stories like this one:
Dallas Returns, As Do My Flashbacks
So I’m going to tell you something shocking that occurred in my childhood and you are never, ever going to believe it.
Wait. Scratch that. You are absolutely going to believe it because this was 1982, and Poltergeist was rated PG.
Here’s the thing.
When I was six, I began watching Dallas.
Yes! In fact, I was right about this tender age here:
Except then shave off a few years’ worth of innocence and you’re there.
I know, right?! Unbelievable but yet completely believable at the same time, much like Victoria Principal’s affair with Andy Gibb.
Are you outraged? You are, aren’t you – and you should be. She was completely out of his league.
So here’s where you’re going to say, “Where were the parents?” And here’s where I’m going to say, “Sitting next to me on the couch.” And you’re going to say, “Sleeping?” And I’m going to say, “No,” and also, “Does anyone fall asleep while watching Dallas?” And you’re going to say, “Depends. Are we talking Season 9 or are we talking Season 11?” And I’m going to say, “Exactly” — but not before saying, “Where have you been all my life?”
In my parents’ defense, Dallas was really a family show.
Because Dallas is about a family.
In fact, the Ewings reminded me a lot of my family. We were farm stock, they were oil tycoons. We were Methodists, they were Millionaires.
They even looked just like us.
Except we were more comfortable wearing color.
And they were more comfortable wearing sin.
Despite all the many Fridays I sat there — mouth gaping, eyes bugged, perhaps a lone Cheeto hanging from my nose — on the couch with the Ewing family on the tube, I don’t remember much of anything that occurred on Dallas.
Plotlines? Were there plotlines? What plotlines? I don’t recall. It’s all pretty fuzzy — fuzzy like that time Sue Ellen threw back some Mint Juleps and then staggered into Cliff’s bedroom, ripped off her dress and said, “I hate you! Make love to me!”
I don’t really remember that night either, Sue Ellen.
I remember a few fiery car crashes, a few angry slaps, a few mistresses, a few illegitimate children. I seem to recall some crystal highballs being flung against the wall and a shower scene where Dead Bobby appears with a grin. I seem to remember a feisty girl named Lucy with long blond hair. I seem to remember her chic pantsuits. I seem to remember my mom refusing to sew me chic pantsuits.
And sadly, the best scene of all, the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers – the epic, mind-blowing Who Shot J.R.? scene – is pretty damn vague to me. I don’t know if I watched it or if Pam dreamt it.
For all I know, I shot J.R.
And now, just last week, it all starts over again. Dallas returns to television! With a bang! Can you believe it? I’m hearing that Bobby’s son Christopher is fighting J.R.’s son John Ross! People are having sex with people again! People are really attractive and people are really angry!
And the circle of life continues at Southfork Ranch.
My daughter will be sleeping.
Thank you so much for sharing your love of nostalgic TV Angie! I feel so much better about my relationship with Dawson and Pacey now… and thank you for helping me end our Countdown on such a high note!
And thank y’all so much for participating! The lucky winner of the Pointless Nostalgic Countdown will be announced shortly, so stay tuned!
I never did watch that show,,I was more of a Huxtable kinda watcher.
Sigh,,,I really,,really miss that big beautiful 80′s hair….oh and Angie you sure knew how to wear that velour gurl!!
Doesn’t she though? So awesome!
And I hear you about the Huxtables – I so wanted to be part of that family!
Thanks — back then I also had a pink velour turtleneck that was pretty hot stuff.
I had a green, diamond pant suit,,,next time I go up to my parents I should dig that pic out and then we can have a coolest outfit competition!
As it turns out, I have a “coolest outfit contest” on my blog. It’s called Dynomite! and you can see the promotional photo of the past winner in the right-hand side. Enter if you dare.
I look forward to it,,,,I WILL grace your side bar!
I can’t wait to see you up there Nikki! You go girl
I think I had very nearly that same velour shirt shown in the first photo.
Hi Marney! Thanks so much for sharing – I’m excited to know I have such stylish readers
I checked out your blog and it looks amazing! I’m so glad we’ve connected.
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My husband got to sit with his mom and watch Dallas every Friday night. I, however, was deprived… And my parents did not make up for it by allowing me to watch Knot’s Landing either! In retrospect though, I understand. If the illegitimate babies and flying wine glasses didn’t scare me, I’m sure the shoulder pads would have….
Those shoulder pads were pretty terrifying, right?
Thanks so much for making the visit! And may I say, I think you have one of the greatest blog names in the history of blog names!
Gratzi! I like it, although my husband says it’s far too vague…
It’s a wonder any of those illegitimate babies could occur at all, what with all that heavy padding women wore back then.
Well, I’m told the right padding can help… not that I would know since I never got to watch the show. Wow, it really is hard to write a family-friendly blog about Dallas!
Oh Angie, this was hysterical (and the lead-in from your blog was great, too)! The “where have you been all my life” back-and-forth really made me giggle. I missed out on Dallas (wait! Apparently I didn’t! Score!), but I can relate to this, in that I watched 90210 with my mom and sister when I was 9, and it definitely did something to me. I mean, I believe those kids on Glee could actually be high schoolers.
And Amber, this blog looks faboo, too – can’t wait to check out your Dawson/Pacey post!
Jules!! Coming from you, that is a ginormous compliment. Thanks lady!
And I know they’re not chipmunks, but my Squirrel Nut Zippers and I just love your blog to pieces too. Wait, that didn’t sound right…but you know what I mean!
HA! Oh, it sounded perfectly right to me
Thank you SO much!
Thanks, Jules, for coming over here! I think I was 15 when I started watching 90210 — and I think that was about 15 years too soon. I should’ve never been exposed to velvet chokers at such a young age.
I had a lovely collection of velvet chokers as well – with matching earrings, naturally!
Not only did I watch Dallas (I was a bit older than you then, Angie…ahem…) I watched Dynasty AND Knots Landing. What? You’re not surprised? Really attractive and really angry people all up in the joint on those shows.
Amber–Squirrel Nut Zippers? Sounds familiar…a group from the 90s?
You know it! A SWING group from the 90s, in fact. Thanks for stopping by Darla! Glad you enjoyed.
yes, I love their song about Hell!
I see your Dynasty and Knots Landing and I raise you Hotel and Falcon Crest.
I fold!
(but I also watched daytime soaps Guiding Light, As the World Turns AND Capitol)
One Life to Live and Days for Our Lives, baby!
Capitol? That sounds made up.
Well played ladies, well played.
I watched none of the nighttime soaps. I was way too pre-occupied with important shows, like Bring ‘Em Back Alive, and Tales Of The Gold Monkey. (Anyone? anyone?)
Tales of the Gold Monkey? I’m intrigued… to Google I go… thanks for stopping by, Byronic Man!
I’m possibly the only person on earth who watched it at the time, or remembers it. It was a Raiders of the Lost Ark/Bogart & Bacall noir rip-off.
Stop…you had me at “Raiders”…
Tales of the Gold Monkey! My brother watched that show! I sat through a few episodes too but it’s very vague to me without my googling it. Why am I remembering a compulsive liar sidekick and an old airplane? That’s all I got. What about The Equalizer? That and MacGyver were staples in my house.
By the way, my brother will be thrilled to know someone else remembers the Gold Monkey show!
Dallas was one of my all-time favorite shows as a kid. However, it wasn’t the same once Jim Davis, who played Jock Ewing, passed away.
I love the name of your blog. That is all.
(Not quite – thanks for the visit!
)
Thank you for liking the name. It is a simple statement on life.
I hear ya!
I dig the name too, by the way.
Thank you kindly.
I barely remember Jock — I think he was dead and gone when I started watching. A friend of mine named her dog Jock to honor the Ewing patriarch.
He was a great character. However, one issue with the show bothered me. In the beginning, Lucy was always in the hayloft with Ray Krebbs. Years later, he is her uncle. Guess that’s the problem with long-running soaps.
When I wrote this post and googled Dallas to spark some memories, I read up on Lucy’s affair with the uncle. He wasn’t supposed to be her uncle at first but the actor was bored with his role so the writers wrote him in as a relative….there was a quote about how the producers hoped everyone would forget about the fling with Lucy but they of course didn’t!
This was great. I watched Dallas too. In my bedroom on my black-and-white. Shh. Don’t tell my kids! I also watched Guiding Light and Young and the Restless. I think I turned out OK. Pretty boring if you ask me, but OK.
YES! Another Y&R fan! Welcome, Karen. Excited to have you. Thanks for stopping by!
It’s a wonder any of us turned out normal. And by “normal” I mean the kind of people who don’t throw glasses against the wall to make a point.
Dallas was on after my bedtime, and yet somehow I always knew what was going on!
Crazy how that happens eh? (Can you tell I’m a Canadian blogger?) Thanks so much for visiting TS!
When parents were gathering around the water coolers at the office to talk about it, I’m pretty sure we kids were gathering around the water fountains at school. I seem to remember fighting with a friend over who got to be Lucy.
My first, only, and last time ever babysitting involved a 12-year-old me babysitting a 8-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl. Their parents left and said, “Oh, they like to watch Dallas and Falcon Crest on Fridays.” I had never seen those shows before or after that night. I was bored to tears but they were riveted to the TV for 2 hours.
After that, it was bedtime where I imagined they dreamed of the above mentioned unknown incestual relations.
Now that I reflect back, I remember that they only paid me like $10 for 4 hours of babysitting. I remember not knowing the going rate for child labor (at least in the US) but feeling that this was very, very low. Perhaps it was the fact that I had just been exposed to the black clad, big oil living that would render any form of money inconsequential! Yes, that must have been it. That and they never invited me back.
How is it that I’m married to you and have never heard this story, nor heard that you played Charles in Charge in your former life?
You need to wake your kid up. This is important stuff. I remember we all left the bar early on Friday nights to watch Dallas. We came home EARLY from the BAR! This is storytelling at its best.
No kidding! That’s definitely a sure sign of a show’s popularity. I can’t think of any shows on now that I’d cut my Friday night short for…perhaps if True Blood didn’t air on Sundays…
I love this background about coming home from the bars to watch Dallas! Thanks for sharing that, Nancy. Even better if the bar you were at was Studio 54.
Dallas wore sin as big as their ginormous shoulder pads and I can’t believe your parents let you watch that. I watched it and I can’t remember a dang thing about it either.
I saw part of the new Dallas and JR has the same, cute/evil smirk. But the sleeping around/sinning around part is more graphic now, and the 2 feuding cousins look almost exactly alike, and all the love interest/ex-girlfriends/wives look almost exactly alike.
Wow, you’re really pulling me in to the new show, Peg. Except I think I’d really miss it without the shoulder pads.
I never did watch Dallas, but I was a big fan of the Love Boat/Fantasy Island Saturday (was it Saturday?) night extravaganza. I wish they’d remake Fantasy Island.
Angie, you’re intro to this blog made me Google Just the 10 of us, and I refuse to believe that was a real show. But it is. I’m waiting for that remake too.
I can’t believe you never saw Just the Ten of Us! This might call for a special blog post. I can feature shows that no one remembers, including Day by Day, Tales of the Gold Monkey and Double Trouble.
Totally watched Dallas. I remember a particularly titillating episode where a bunch of angry ruffians came to Southfork, evidently to rape some Ewing women in retaliation for J.R. sleeping with one of their wives, or sisters or something. That is the first episode I remember seeing and I think it unhinged me just a little. I watched every subsequent episode as though each one was a survival and fashion handbook for the modern world. I guess there are worse guides. Maybe. I can’t believe it is coming back! I’ll be checking it out.
I never saw that episode…it sounds more like a medieval warrior series! Awful!
I watched Dallas and don’t remember any of it either. Sort of like Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney novels, fun while you’re in there, but it is impossible to tell one heaving bodice from another. Or heaping bodices, either.
Great. They’re coming back. Doesn’t “dead” do it any more?
Hehe – maybe that explains why I like True Blood so much – at least the dead characters are definitely dead! Thanks for visiting Elyse!
Didn’t Bobby and JR both die at least a couple times in the original series? They’re like the Rasputins of our day.
If only the series had, and stayed there. Oy vey.
But Elyse, think of all the great blog-chats we’d miss out on if the series hadn’t lasted!
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As I’ve read through the comments above…it strikes me…I’ve seen all those shows! I must have done nothing BUT watch TV as a kid. How did I ever get an education? When did I find time to brush my teeth? The post above explains so much about my twisted perspective of reality…I am literally dumfounded. I think I might go watch some TV……
I know what you mean Koco! The TV is basically my 3rd parent.
ha! Laughed out loud there, literally! I might quote you on that one day
Heehee! By all means, please do
When I introduced my family on my blog once, I included our old console TV. He was like an uncle to me. Uncle Jesse perhaps.
“Except we were more comfortable wearing color.” HA! That line just made my day.
Makes me think: Dallas family photos should be a thing – sequins, hairspray and such – like when we all went to places and dressed up in western costumes for photos (or maybe that was our fam…)
I love getting dressed up for theme photos! Still do it with my friends from time to time…and the bigger the hair, the better
Ahhhhh! Dressing up in Western gear for family photos…I forgot about that! Do people still do that? I vote with you that the tradition continue in Dallas wear.
The Dallas continuation got 7 million viewers. Better start dusting off the furniture at Knot’s Landing…
I bet Donna Mills looks exactly the same, so the dusting there has already been done.
Dallas was a family affair (no pun intended) in my house, too. All I remember was thinking that Bobby Ewing had an enormous head and wondering how they fit hats on it.
Big head — are you talking literally?! I’m going back to google his melon now to see for myself (the photo I included here was apparently the season Bobby was “dead”). Do you remember that Patrick Duffy later appeared on a sitcom “Step by Step”? Blasphemy!
I realize this might not make me popular but… I LOVED Step by Step! TGIF on ABC, baby!
I had a huge crush on the dim-witted oldest brother — he was like the cheap imitation of Keanu Reeves on Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
I do remember that. Again, the only thing I remember about it was his giant noggin.
That is hilarious!!! Thanks for sharing!
Isn’t Angie the best? I’m going to stalk her for a guest post annually now
Great idea. I know I got a good giggle.
I’m glad!
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