DVDFile

Coming off of Dallas' ninth season - in which it is revealed that the entire season was a dream (spoilers be damned) - it's hard for Dallas: The Complete Eleventh Season to avoid disappointment. Yeah, there are bigger-than-life plot developments, a handful of over-the-top cliffhangers and more than a little ridiculous melodrama, but none of it gels together to provide an appropriately enjoyable guilty-pleasure pastiche.

The highlight? Well, Victoria Principal eating flame is a big one. Industry rumors circulating during the later years of Dallas made it seem like the beautiful actress wanted nothing more on planet Earth than to wash Dallas right out of her hair, and in this eleventh season of the show, the writers seem more than happy to oblige her. I won't give away every detail of her Dallas swan song, but it involves both huge pyrotechnics AND a sensitive 'good bye' moment. That being said, though, it's unfortunately little more than, well, dumb. Again, this writer is a soap opera/TV junkie of wildly addictive levels - and I've never met a silly plot scheme on TV that I haven't at least somewhat enjoyed - but poor Pam Ewing (Principal) deserves a better out than this.

But the rest of this season is a series of missed opportunities and ho-hum drama. J.R.'s (Larry Hagman's) push-pull between his wife and the hotness that is Kimberly Cryder (Leigh Taylor-Young) is tired and shockingly limp in consequence and dramatic risk, and by the time the season wheezes to a close, J.R. is simply out to hurt everybody around him. Again, I'm all for catty vengeance plots (who isn't?), but these are amateur developments at best. In fact, the season's final episode (the stillborn The Fat Lady Singeth) pales in comparison to every Dallas season finale I've ever seen.

The question is, though, can it get any worse....?

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

These 1.33:1 episodes have identical video quality to that of the show’s previous season-long releases. Color accuracy is good, and while this latest set of transfers is a little cleaner, there is still quite a bit of dirt and grime on the transfer prints. Finely grained detail also isn’t as well defined as it should be, and there’s a degree of muddiness that runs throughout.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

It’s a shame that these Dolby Digital mono mixes haven’t gotten any more finessed, since they’re not as old as the show’s first few seasons. The pitfalls that often accompany older mono mixes produced for television are all here (tinny dialogue, scratchy music cues, and so on), but things have been cleaned up enough that fans won’t be insanely disappointed. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean one can call these sparse mono tracks solid.

Included are English SDH subtitles and English Closed Captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

We get episode recaps and promos, but that's it.

Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.

Final Thoughts

This writer has to know how Dallas turns out, so I'll be watching the next box set with intrigue. As far as stand-alone value here, though, Dallas: The Complete Eleventh Season is nothing more than fanfare for diehard Dallas-heads. If you don't have ten other Dallas box sets on your shelf, you won't have much need for this one.

Comments (0)

Leave a comment

Title
Comment	smaller | bigger
Name
Email
	Add Comment