DVD Review: Dallas: The Complete Third Season

The third and final season of TNT’s Dallas reboot hits stores today, and the three-disc set features all 15 episodes from the 2014 season. The box text says it “packs even more dramatic and emotional wallop than its predecessors,” which means it clearly didn’t see the original third season of Dallas back around 1980.

But I digress.

Dallas Season 3 had a lot of ups and downs. On the bright side, aside from a horrible midseason cliffhanger which didn’t really keep us wondering what’s next, there was some intrigue that kept me anxious to know what’s coming next. On the down side, the family aspect of the Ewings was often pushed aside for drug cartel storylines and diversions that never quite clicked as being Dallas to me. The third season led to an explosive cliffhanger that would leave the audience curious what happens next, but also annoyed that Dallas yet again would forget its 35+ years of assets in the process.

Full disclosure: I love Dallas. I’ve watched a lot of the original series, which means continuity stuff will get to me. I’ll handwave comments like “when Jock did this in 1945” because I’ll assume John Ross just didn’t know. But when Sue Ellen is treated like a drunken, inconsequential old lady, or when Bobby is being self-righteous, or when family members are created out of nowhere when there are plenty that can be used from the original show, I’ll be annoyed. I’ll wonder how land can be given away that doesn’t still belong to the Ewings in the first place. And, sadly, I’ll also question the conceit of one of Season 3’s biggest plots – Elena’s thirst for revenge – when all it would’ve taken, really, would be to tell Bobby what J.R. had done.

There are things that Dallas Season 3 gets right. The new opening titles created for the third season are amazing. The notion that John Ross is a scoundrel just like his father was interesting, and I loved that Sue Ellen was on to him. Nicolas Trevino could have been an interesting and great addition to the cast. But there was a lot less of the “family” which is what makes Dallas an enduring concept, and way more of the drug trafficking storylines and such that really were never a Dallas thing. Let’s see some oil deals. Heck, despite their big guns, Marilee Stone, Jordan Lee and her “cartel” scared me a heck of a lot more than the folks gunning after the Ewings this time. Where is Marilee, anyway? There are threats like Judith Light’s Judith Ryland, which is played more for camp than anything, and sadly, not the good kind of camp. I adore Judith Light, but to believe her as someone old enough to be Mitch Pileggi’s mother, chewing the scenery that much? No. That just didn’t and never will work for me, and I have a sad feeling that if Season 4 had happened we’d have more of that, and more drug cartels. Bleh.

Dallas attempts to be provocative and titilating with a midseason cliffhanger that made me go “huh?” rather than anything else. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait months to resolve the cliffhanger, as TNT did with the audience. Dallas should have always been a summer show exclusively – as it stood, Season 3 premiered against heavy competition earlier in the year, and then came back in August to no fanfare, right as awards shows and network schedules were starting up again. Even if it had been perfect Dallas, the show never really had a chance in its third season on TNT, sadly.

Which is too bad. I would’ve liked to have seen John Ross more coming into his own, even if his final scenes in Season 3 were underwhelming. (Hard to stand up to Bobby when Bobby is a foot taller than you). The last explosion of Season 3 pushed forward what could have been a very interesting arc in Season 4. Now we’ll never see it, which is too bad. Sadly, especially now that Larry Hagman has passed, it is probably unlikely we’ll ever see the Ewings again, at least in this continuing story. Would anyone tune in to watch a 60-year-old John Ross thirty years from now? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Dallas: The Complete Third Season as a DVD set has nearly an hour of deleted scenes, which is nice. A lot of these scenes are things that I would have liked to have seen in the show itself – those family moments that I talked about, and a lot of Linda Gray who will forever be brilliant as Sue Ellen. Even Miss Ellie is talked about more which makes me happy. There are still continuity gaffes that annoy me – there’s a deleted scene where Bobby mentions “my first day as a public servant” when Bobby had been a Senator 35 years ago – but there are also great moments, like when Sue Ellen compares Emma to her sister Kristin, in a scene that I know TNT used in their promos but is seen in its full form on the DVD set.

I’m disappointed, though, that deleted scenes are all there is. No interview with Cynthia Cidre about where the show would have gone? No behind the scenes story about the decision to do those great opening titles? No featurette about the end of a 35-year run? Nada. I guess we should all be happy that in the 21st century we got something like 40 new episodes of Dallas, and that a good handful of those brought back Larry Hagman as the legendary J.R. Ewing. But it’s a shame that the show, and now this DVD set, went without a proper resolution.

Dallas: The Complete Third Season hits stores today. Order yours from Amazon.com and support this site!