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Elaine Liner

Elaine Liner

Elaine Liner has been writing about arts, media and pop culture since the mid-1980s. Formerly a columnist at daily newspapers (remember those?), she co-founded TheaterJones.com and the literary magazine Salad. Now a freelance journalist and playwright, Elaine has won awards from the Associated Press, Women in Communications, Dallas Press Club and the Texas Non-Profit Theatre Festival. She earned a degree in theater from Trinity University and a master's in liberal arts from SMU.

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Swellin' for Sue Ellen

7 ways TNT's Dallas could strike oil in season 3

By Elaine Liner

05.01.13 | 5:11 pm

TNT's Dallas will be back for a third season. The cable network has ordered 15 more episodes of the series reboot, which so far has been shot entirely on ...


Guess Who Shot J.R.

J.R. Ewing gets parting shot on Dallas season 2 finale

By Elaine Liner

04.15.13 | 10:53 pm

With blackmail plots, frame-ups and more double crosses than two chimps playing tic-tac-toe, the season finale of Dallas finally answered some big questions. Among them, where’s this show going ...


Scowls and Suspense

Ewings get anxious as Dallas sets up Pamela's return

By Elaine Liner

04.08.13 | 11:07 pm

Everyone’s so tense on Dallas this season. No wonder Emma Ryland, the tarty equestrian played by Emma Bell, is hooked on benzos. When weepy birth mom Annie Ewing (Brenda ...


Ewings Are Losing It

Tarty Emma Bell and shady Steven Weber pump up flat plotline on Dallas

By Elaine Liner

04.01.13 | 10:33 pm

The original Dallas had its Lucy, the tarty little blonde played by Charlene Tilton. The new Dallas on TNT has its version of loosey-goosey Lucy in the character Emma Ryland ...


Majors as Minor Character

Bombshell Audrey Landers returns and Linda Gray gets a major romance on Dallas

By Elaine Liner

03.26.13 | 12:54 am

This season of Dallas on TNT keeps jumping into the Wayback Machine. Destination: late 1980s Dallas, with a side trip this week to 1970s Six Million Dollar Man. We’ve ...


Ewings Go Boom

Oil rigs blow up and people fall down in post-J.R. era of Dallas

By Elaine Liner

03.18.13 | 10:59 pm

So begins the post-J.R. era of Dallas on TNT. This week’s episode, “Ewings United!,” written by Bruce Rasmussen and directed by Steve Robin, had plots and characters tripping ...


Cue the sad songs

Real-life local heavies make wake-scene cameos as Dallas lays J.R. Ewing to rest

By Elaine Liner

03.11.13 | 11:46 pm

This time J.R. Ewing really is dead. Episode 8 of the second season of Dallas on TNT put the character in the ground once and for all, with veteran ...


Methane smethane

Dallas drives in circles as it prepares for J.R. Ewing's inevitable demise

By Elaine Liner

03.04.13 | 11:12 pm

The Texas Motor Speedway was the main location for episode 7 of Dallas, titled “The Furious and the Fast.” Retired drag racer Ricky “The Rooster” Rudd took the wheel of ...


Angry birds, y'all

J.R. flies the coop and Sue Ellen works gold hoops on this week's Dallas

By Elaine Liner

02.25.13 | 11:04 pm

First things first: The Motion Picture Academy left Larry Hagman out of the In Memoriam segment on Sunday night’s Oscar telecast. Hagman deserved a nod, as he was in ...


Blood on their boots

The verdict on this week's Dallas: Guilty of perplexing subplots and not enough Larry Hagman

By Elaine Liner

02.18.13 | 11:36 pm

There was blood on everybody’s boots in this week’s episode of Dallas on TNT. But the spatter that mattered was on the boots of the Second Mrs. Bobby ...


Of countesses and kings

With so many bullets and dredged-up rivalries, Dallas is drilling in the wrong direction

By Elaine Liner

02.11.13 | 11:39 pm

Consider J.R. Ewing the Dowager Countess of Southfork. Quick with a quip even in his dotage (he’ll be eulogized by episode eight), J.R. has a way of ...


Bang, bang theory

Dallas turns to tried-and-tired cliffhanger, but Larry Hagman still gets the best lines

By Elaine Liner

02.04.13 | 11:08 pm

Bang! Bang! Way to go out on a familiar cliffhanger, third episode of Dallas. Annie (Brenda Strong), Bobby Ewing’s second wife, pulled a gun out of her handbag and ...


Sharp knives at Southfork

Dallas season 2 opens big as Texas, with blackmail, boohooing and great hair

By Elaine Liner

01.29.13 | 12:35 am

Blackmail, bribes, money laundering, late-night swims, fixed oil platforms, shots of Highland Park Village, Sue Ellen swilling Pinot Grigio (almost) and a secret baby misplaced at the State Fair of ...


Big voice, big heart

Dallas theater community remembers passionate and beloved performer Jeff Kinman

By Elaine Liner

01.10.13 | 10:30 am

Singer, actor and voice coach Jeff Kinman gave his final public performance last March, knocking out a powerful solo in Uptown Players’ annual fundraising show, Broadway Our Way, at Kalita ...


Night at the Opera

Cairo syrup: Thrilling arias can’t sweeten Dallas Opera’s slow Aïda

By Elaine Liner

10.29.12 | 5:09 pm

Like the Great Pyramids, Dallas Opera’s 2012-13 season opener, Aïda, remains solidly rooted in the sands of time. The production directed by Garnett Bruce and conducted by Graeme ...


Opera Preview

Arias for newbies: Dallas and SMU opera seasons are stacked with sexy choices

By Elaine Liner

10.14.12 | 11:27 am

Opera, said 20th century wit Robert Benchley, “is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.” Stabbed in the back, poisoned, run through with ...


Beatle Mania

Shake it up, baby, in Strauss Square with the faux Fab Four

By Elaine Liner

10.10.12 | 4:35 pm

It would be so easy to go totally Daily Show on a guy who makes his living pretending to be Paul McCartney in a Beatles tribute band. “Have you ever ...


Report from the Fairgrounds

State Fair of Texas 2012: The good, the bad and the sticky

By Elaine Liner

10.05.12 | 5:17 pm

Go to the fair. Go twice before it ends October 21. The State Fair of Texas, now in its 126th year, is still the biggest state fair in the land ...


Soprano spotlight

5 questions for hometown girl and Dallas Opera diva Laura Claycomb

By Elaine Liner

09.30.12 | 12:25 pm

Before her October 7 afternoon recital at Dallas Museum of Art’s Horchow Auditorium, opera star Laura Claycomb had to see the dentist. She lives in Italy now, but the ...


Bright Ideas

Adventures in babysitting: Sitter Central Dallas matches parents with pro child-minders

By Elaine Liner

09.29.12 | 10:26 am

Rachel Logan founded SitterCentralDallas in 2008 as a way to introduce parents needing babysitters to sitters needing better-paying gigs. It’s part of a growing trend in startups that aim ...


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