Even for a soap opera, it was a ballsy move - to bring back a major character who had been killed off, the producers of Dallas decided to write off 31 episodes as a dream, with Bobby Ewing popping out of the shower like nothing had happened.
In the past 38 years, it's become a shorthand for creator laziness. Rather than coming up with a reasonable explanation for the return of the actor - an evil twin, a fake death, anything - they just started over again, as if nothing had happened.
But I've always had a weird, sneaky admiration for the move and the sheer ballsiness of it. You can do anything with fiction - it's all made up, after all - so why not just wipe the most recent slate clean and start over?
Of course it doesn't make any sense, nobody dreams of 31 hours of events during one night's sleep. But it's the endless complaints that they broke all the rules of storytelling that really grinds my gears.
Because despite what all the 'Write real good' self-help guidebooks will tell you, and no matter how many times you quote Robert fuckin' McKee, you really do anything with fiction. There are no rules, not really.
Some things work better than others when it comes to plotting or character development, but the appeal of creating your own stories is that you can do what you want with them, and if you want to make it all a dream, fucking go for it.
After all, we all still remember Bobby's shower, four decades after it happened, so it must have had some kind of a impact. Just fucking go for it.
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