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....?