Swellin' for Sue Ellen

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

Editor's note: TV critic Elaine Liner wrote this last May, when it was confirmed Dallas would return to TNT for another season. With the premiere coming up Monday, February 24, we thought it would be fun to revisit her suggestions for season three success.

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 location in North Texas. Filming is expected to start here again this fall, with the show returning to TV in early 2014.

Ratings dipped in season two, with an unexpected boost in viewership after the sudden death of Larry Hagman last Thanksgiving. His character, J.R. Ewing, was finally laid to rest in a March episode that drew the most viewers – 3.6 million – of any this season.

So what can writer-producer Cynthia Cidre (who wrote the great send-off for J.R.) and producers Michael M. Robin and Robert Rovner do to make season three a ratings gusher? Here are some ideas:

More Sue Ellen!
The best thing about the new Dallas is Linda Gray. Now in her early 70s, she’s still smokin’ hot, and her acting has matured in all the right ways. Gray’s performance as Sue Ellen Ewing delivering a bittersweet eulogy over J.R.’s grave was Emmy-worthy, the best moment on this show this year.

Plotwise, her character should keep swinging between heroine and villainess. Sue Ellen did learn some good moves from J.R. during their marriage, and she should use what she knows as she takes control of Ewing Energies and Barnes Global. Also, keeping Sue Ellen’s struggle with alcoholism in the storyline not only gives Gray great scenes to play, but it’s something many viewers can relate to.

Lighten up Josh Henderson
J.R.’s heir, son John Ross, played by the flinty Josh Henderson, was all over the map this season. He had too many girlfriends, too many of the same arguments with do-gooder cousin Christopher Ewing (Bobby’s adopted son), and too few moments of any real dramatic heft.

Hagman’s J.R. was fun to watch because he always had a mischievous glint in his eye, a little hint of a smile beneath the evildoing. So far, John Ross is an angry cipher. That’s boring. Giving him some lighter, flirty moments would humanize the character and let the actor show more range. (We assume he has some.)

Cut the oil talk
If Dallas is really going to get into subjects like fracking and alternative fuels, then it should go big. Rattle Southfork with an earthquake, for instance. But just having Christopher (Jesse Metcalf) spout jargon in yet another Ewing Energies conference room is to TV what a salt dome is to oil drilling — an obstacle to success.

Bring back Judith Light
As the Violet Venable-like matriarch, Judith Ryland, Light snarled like a rabid ferret. She was wonderful! Then a few episodes before the end of season two, son Harris (Mitch Pileggi), pushed his mommy down the stairs and — voom — Judith was shuttled to a rehab facility and never seen again.

Light has just opened on Broadway in the well-reviewed play The Assembled Parties, so maybe they had to write her off. But whatever it takes, get her back to Dallas and a much-wished-for throwdown with Linda Gray’s Sue Ellen. Like, at a party. In a fountain.

Dig up more of those old Dallas veterans for some really gritty storylines
Charlene Tilton, Deborah Shelton, Ted Shackelford and Steve Kanaly got drive-by cameos for J.R.’s funeral, but wouldn’t it be fun to work them in for longer stints as the Ewings continue to battle the Barnes family? It would please longtime Dallas fans and help bridge some pretty deep plot holes that the writers dug for themselves this season. The whole “Is Pamela Barnes Ewing (Victoria Principal) still alive?” deal was a dud.

Let Brenda Strong dry her tears and get it on with Bobby (or somebody)
All Strong’s character, the Second Mrs. Bobby Ewing, did this season was weep. She was one-woman drought relief. With her character’s long-lost daughter Emma (Emma Bell) returning as a slutty, pill-popping teen, Strong was forced to boohoo in scene after scene.

She’s gorgeous and a good actress, so why not give her and Patrick Duffy’s Bobby some middle-aged bedroom smooch-fu occasionally? Dallas in the 1980s had a lot more of the sessy-sessy than the current version. And now it’s on cable!

Jesse Metcalf’s chest is begging for screen time! (He worked out at the Oak Lawn Equinox. Hello.) Less of the tech talk and more of the down and dirty would surely help ratings.

Find a role for Ted McGinley
Hey, if Mad Men could redeem TV’s designated “show killer” with a guest shot, why couldn't Dallas?

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If you need to catch up on season two of Dallas, TNT offers quickie video recaps of each episode.

Josh Henderson (right), who plays J.R. Ewing's heir, John Ross, should lighten up,

Photo courtesy of TNT

Josh Henderson (right), who plays J.R. Ewing's heir, John Ross, should lighten up,

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Movie Review

Remake of Schwarzenegger classic The Running Man stumbles

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Glen Powell in The Running Man.

For all its cheesy ‘80s greatness, the original version of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was a very loose adaptation of the novel by Stephen King. For the new remake, writer/director Edgar Wright has tried to hue much closer to the story laid out in the book, a decision that has both its positive and negative aspects.

Glen Powell takes over for Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a family man/hothead who can’t seem to hold a job in the dystopian America in which he lives. Desperate to take care of his family, he applies to be on one of the many game shows fed to the masses that promise riches in exchange for humiliation or worse. Thanks to his temper, Ben is chosen for the most popular one of all, The Running Man, in which contestants must survive 30 days while hunters, as well as the general population, track them down.

Given a 12-hour head start, Ben earns money for every day he survives, as well as every hunter he eliminates. Since he only has a relatively small amount of money to use as he pleases, Ben must rely on friendly citizens who are willing to put their own lives on the line to help him. That’s a task made even more difficult as the gamemakers, led by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), use advanced AI to manipulate footage of Ben to make him seem like a guy for which no one should root.

Co-written by Michael Bacall, the film is shockingly uninteresting, working neither as an exciting action film, a fun quippy comedy, or social commentary. The biggest problem is that Wright seems to have no interest in developing any of his characters, starting with Ben. Our introduction to the protagonist is him trying to get his job back, a situation for which there is little context even after we’re beaten over the head with exposition.

The situation in which Ben finds himself should be easy to make sympathetic, but Wright and Bacall speed through scenes that might have emphasized that aspect in favor of ones that make the story less personal. The filmmakers really want to showcase the supposed antagonistic relationship between Ben and Dan (and the system which Dan represents), but all that effort results in little drama.

Ben has a number of close calls, and while those scenes are full of action and violence, almost every one of them feels emotionally inert, as if there was nothing at stake. It doesn’t help that Wright doesn’t set the scene well, making it unclear how far Ben has traveled or who/what he’s up against. There are times when Ben feels surrounded and others when he can walk freely, weird for a society that’s supposed to be under almost complete surveillance.

Powell has been touted as a movie star in the making for several years following his turn in Top Gun: Maverick, but he does little here to make that label stick. With no consistent co-star thanks to the structure of the story, he’s required to carry the film, and he just doesn’t have the juice that a true movie star is supposed to have. Nobody else is served well by the scattershot film, including normally reliable people like Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, and Lee Pace.

The Running Man is a big misfire by Wright and a blow to Powell’s star power. On the surface, it has all the hallmarks of an action thriller with a side of social commentary, but nothing it does or says lands in any meaningful way. Schwarzenegger’s one-liners in the original film may have been goofy and over-the-top, but at least they made the movie memorable, which is way more than can be said of the remake.

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The Running Man opens in theaters on November 14.

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