Dallas really had a lot of nerve with its season 9 finale — and it even disgruntled some of the show's own stars.
In the now-infamous 1986 episode, the prime-time CBS soap resurrected Patrick Duffy's character, Bobby Ewing, who had been killed off at the end of the prior season, and retconned season 9 as a lengthy dream of Ewing's wife, Pamela Barnes (Victoria Principal). The decision not only incensed viewers, it also upset some of the cast members whose storylines were rendered completely invalid.
"It was about a 10 percent audience loss, at least from that, because people were offended to see the [death] storyline just tossed," Steve Kanaly, who played Ray Krebbs, told PEOPLE during a recent reunion ahead of the show's 45th anniversary in September.
"I don't want to mention them, but various cast members were pissed because their storylines were lost as a result of that," Kanaly added. "And it had a big impact."
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Bobby was originally intended to be killed off at the end of the first season but was kept around and became the yang to his evil brother J.R. Ewing's yin. Duffy left the series after season 8 to pursue other acting opportunities, but Larry Hagman, who played J.R., convinced him to come back amid the show's sagging ratings.
"I had an answering machine message, and it was from Larry Hagman, saying, 'Patrick, I want you to come out to the house, get drunk in the jacuzzi. I want to talk to you,'" Duffy recalled. "I told my wife that Larry was going to ask me to come back on the show… and I did it because Haggy asked me to."
There was only one problem: Bobby had been run over by a car at the end of season 8 and died from his injuries in hospital. So the writers turned to one of the oldest tricks in the book. It was Duffy's wife, in fact, who predicted how they would resurrect the character.
"My wife said instantly, 'Well, you can't come back on the show unless that whole season was a dream,'" Duffy said. "We've talked about what she said years and years after that, and she based it on just her literary knowledge. Half of Shakespeare's plays have dreams."
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