Television
Personal property
Wendy Cope
The first time I watched Dallas, many moons ago, it took me about ten minutes to decide that it was very low-grade gar- bage indeed. I switched off, confident that I would never again feel tempted to waste any time on it. One evening a few weeks later I went to see some friends, who, unusually for them, refused to turn off the television. And so it came about that I was forcibly exposed to a full 50-minute epi- sode of Dallas. I have been hopelessly hooked ever since.
To begin with I felt ashamed but I cheered up when I realised what good company I was in. My colleagues at work, the television critics of the posh newspap- er, a well-known feminist novelist, and my Freudian psychoanalyst, to mention but a few. I asked the shrink why he liked the programme. 'The women are very pretty,' he replied, 'and J.R. is an interesting character.' I could see that if you spent all day listening to neurotics with overactive superegos, J.R. Ewing would come as something of a relief.
In the current series J.R.'s wife, Sue Ellen, has been recovering from one of her alcoholic phases and there has been a great deal of emphasis on her need to be her own person. This expression has always puzzled me and I worry about not being able to grasp its exact meaning. Am I my own person? Anyone who watches American television programmes will appreciate that this is a very important question, especially for women. Is there any hope for a person who doesn't know what being one's own person means? Or is it because I have never been anybody else's person that I fail to understand the concept? I am not sure.
In Sue Ellen's case the quest for own- personhood has meant turning down an offer of marriage from her long-lost love, Dusty Farlow, and taking a job at a glossy new medical research centre. There she has met an even nicer, better-looking, brighter and probably richer man called Dr Jerry Kenderson and now he wants to marry her as well. It amounts to a persua- sive argument for BOOP.
Jenna, too, has been having a difficult time lately. In bedrooms all over Dallas, couples have been telling each other that they are worried about Jenna. They could tell how serious her problem was because she refused to talk about it for four or five episodes. One of the appealing things about this fantasy world, along with the expensive clothes, swimming-pools and ex- pensive restaurants, is the way that anyone who looks a bit gloomy for five minutes is tenderly encouraged to say what is bother- ing them. And if someone announces a need to talk, it is given the same kind of priority that needing an ambulance gets in real life.
By last week Jenna was much better, as she told Bobby when she went to his grave for a chat. Being dead, around Southfork, is not considered a good enough reason for ceasing to listen to other people's prob- lems. There are rumours that Bobby will not be dead much longer and it will be intriguing, if Patrick Duffy does rejoin the cast, to see how the scriptwriters get round the fact that he has been six feet under for several months. I think it is now too late for anyone to notice a faint knocking sound when they change the flowers. My guess is that Bobby came to in the mortuary of Dallas General Hospital and decided to disappear for a while. Or perhaps he will turn out to have been separated at birth from an identical twin brother ('Why didn't you tell us, Momma?'). Either story would be hard to swallow but at least we shan't be asked to accept a new Bobby Ewing with a different face.
The only time I came close to going off the programme was when Barbara Bel Geddes was ill and they drafted in some- one else to play Miss Ellie. What they should have done was to send the Ewing matriarch on a long trip until Miss Geddes was better. Then we could have had a heartwarming scene when she came home, with tears in her eyes, to tell them all that she cared about them, that she needed to talk to them, and that she was her own person now.
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