You Can Stay the Night at SouthFork Ranch of Dallas
Here are my musings on the 80s TV show “Dallas” that distracted me through a year-long global pandemic, ending with one night living like an oil queen for my 30th birthday.
One year ago, a “Who Shot J.R.?” reference would have been lost on me. I knew Patrick Duffy as the Dad from Step By Step. I couldn’t put Southfork Ranch on a map to save my life.
That’s the funny thing about spending a year at home during a global pandemic — you watch one episode of the 1978-1991 Primetime Soap Opera, “Dallas,” and one year later you are spending your 30th Birthday at the real Southfork Ranch in Parker Texas, sleeping in J.R.’s bedroom with a belly full of steak.
So, I’m going to take you on the journey that brought me here.
WTF is Dallas?
Okay, if you found this blog because you love Dallas, welcome. I am one of you now. However, every time I try to explain Dallas to my peers I get a lot of blank stares. In the midst of explanation, the stares get even more vacuous. It’s one of those, “you had to be there” vibes.
If you think everyone knows Dallas by now, you are wrong. Even folks who were alive and well in the 80s, consistently surprise me with their disinterest in the topic. It is the most popular TV show that no one I know has ever actually watched as far as I can tell.
I have taken to regularly listening to the Ewing BBQ podcast to feel less alone. If you love Dallas, it’s a treasure trove of trivia and deep dives episodically.
So you can skip this next section if you already respect and know Dallas as cultural cannon.
Okay, for the rest of you. Buckle up.
Dallas is the 1980s. Dallas is America. Dallas is a first-of-it’s-kind, prime-time soap opera that dominated ratings for years and became one of the most popular, widely distributed television shows around the world — broadcasted in over 90 countries and dubbed in 67 languages. And did it contribute to the fall of communism in the Soviet Union? Larry Hagman and many others thought so.
The show centers around the Ewings, a wealthy Texas family who own a successful oil company and working cattle-ranch. The show starts out as the commonly used TV series setup - who will take over daddy’s company? See: “Succession” or “Arrested Development.” With our main player’s set up in the first season mini-series (fun fact not shot at Southfork but at the Cloyce Box Ranch, but we get there quickly by Season 2);
Jock Ewing (Jim Davis): patriarch and founder of Ewing oil in the midst of stepping down.
Ellie Ewing (Barbara Bel Geddes): matriarch who inherited the Southfork Ranch homestead and cattle-ranch, as the backdrop for the series played by Barbara Bel Geddes, who you may recognize as Midge from Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman): son representing everything we hate and love to hate about capitalism; constantly scheming, cheating and delivering the punchiest one-liners in TV history to earn his title as the rightful heir to Ewing oil. Played by none other than Larry Hagman, AKA Major Nelson, and keeper of Genie from I Dream of Genie but never again to be known as anyone other than J.R. Ewing.
Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy): younger son representing a bit more morality in-between hunky shower scenes of dreamboat Duffy.
Sue Ellen Ewing (Linda Gray): beauty queen turned wife of J.R. Ewing who is the only plausible match for his scheming, but tragically plagued by the trappings of being a woman in a rich man’s world. Played by my ride-or-die favorite, Linda Gray, who gave this character admirable intensity.
Pam Ewing (Victoria Principal): Bobby’s wife and our Juliet — daughter of down-on-his-luck Digger Barnes, who lost his chance to be an oil baron thanks to Jock Ewing cheating him out of both Ellie and an oil-rich plot of land. Admidst a generations-long feud between the Ewings and Barnes, these star-crossed lovers mostly just fight and look hot in the best way.
Lucy Ewing (Charlene Tilton): raised at Southfork, her grandparents Jock and Ellie, daughter of black-sheep brother, Gary Ewing (who fades quickly into the distance of Dallas and central to spin-off, “Knots Landing”). She is less central to the plot but does get herself into hot water on a regular basis; playing a bit naive, always winky sexy face, but falling a bit closer to the J.R. tree when it comes to scheming tendencies.
Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval): we love to hate Cliff Barnes and I think the writers felt the same. Pam’s brother and J.R.’s unfairly matched nemesis perpetuates the family feud by playing the ethical foil and high-minded lawyer to take on J.R. initially, and continues through a series of trials and tribulations to try to beat him at his own game eventually yielding to money as his primary goal, following his desire to take down the Ewings at all costs.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Ken Kercheval had the strangest mid-Dallas headline we found late one night in a Wikipedia hole, Kerchivel was a partner in a popcorn business deal turned sour, resulting in his partner showing up to the LA set of the show with a gun and attempting to unsuccessfully kill him.Ray Krebbs (Steve Kanaly): ranch-hand and illegitimate son of Jock, who started the show by messing around with his neice, Lucy, in the barn loft before being written in as a series regular and blood relative. Oops.
Brad Pitt and Dallas love interest Shalane McCall Credit: Kathy Amerman/Coleman-Rayner
Huge cast of other notable characters throughout the years: Mary Crosby as Sue Ellen’s scheming sister Kristin Shepherd, Priscilla Presley as Bobby’s first and return lover Jenna Wade, and even a breakout role for Brad Pitt.
So…Dallas was more than shoulder pads and people pushing each other into the pool?
We started this show out of morbid curiosity. It can’t be…good…right? We are still new Texans, living here for just shy of three years, so I guess we also thought we’d learn about Texas.
We discovered, that hell yeah, it’s a good show.
Those first few seasons are well-acted for the most part and full of dynamics dying to be written about in liberal arts courses pontificating on capitalism in America. It’s simple, satisfying, and succeeds almost due to its lack of overthought nuance at times. It’s occasionally campy, but somehow still believable.
This show overly pronounces binary after binary. Good and evil. Wealth and poverty. Love and sex. Ewings and Barnes. Matriarch and patriarch. Oil barons and cattle ranchers.
Then, in true soap-operatic fashion it starts complicating those oversimplified binaries; intermingling the characters and their motives. Building them up, knocking them down, shooting them, swapping partners and you’re left with a familiarity that feels more like familial empathy.
The oil business and cattle-ranch binary is built on a theme that was attributed to Edna Ferber’s Giant, and then adapted for film in 1956. Famously shot in Marfa, Texas it stars a feminist before her time Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and the ranch-hand turned oil baron, James Dean as Jett Rink — the rumored namesake of our very own J.R. Ewing.
"Giant” art installation at the filming location in Marfa, TX
The struggle early on in the T.V. show pays homage to the sacred cattle-land built-on good, honest work butting heads with the quick return of drilling for oil, striking gold, and entering a rich world that plays by an entirely different set of rules.
The show itself is informed by historical context I didn’t live through, providing the opportunity to live the late 70s to the year I was born in 1991 through the lens of liberal Hollywood painting an “American” portrait during the reign of Reagan. It flirted with satire but towed the line enough that it inspired many to what the Ewing’s had - even with all the drama, back-stabbing and far too many generations living under one roof within earshot of one another.
On the other side of the show itself, was the eye-opening discovery of every Dallas reference I had ever missed:
Ozzy Osbourne’s The Ultimate Sin music video
The Simpson’s Who Shot Mr. Burns
When Chandler responds to the gunshot sound during his time of unemployment on Friends with “Who shot J.R.?”
Dallas set in motion the next generation of prime-time soap opera copycats, “Dynasty,” “Knots Landing” (also “Dallas” spin-off), and “Falcon Crest.”
Maybe it’s because I am nostalgic for a past I never knew. Hence the namesake Mid-century Millennial. But something about this show transported me into a completely different world that told familiar stories and delivered jokes with surprisingly modern delivery and snark.
Living like an Ewing
Only after dedicating a year of our lives to “Dallas” and literally not leaving our house — our travel budget allowed for splurging on the immersive, Live and Dream like a Ewing package at Southfork Ranch for my 30th birthday.
This package provides:
Access to entire house and pool
Trail ride (sadly rained out as all our fellow Texans should know this season)
Private Tour of the mansion and ranch
Champagne and hors d'oeuvres, JR's Steak dinner
Access to "Dallas" DVD's, late night snacks
Official "Southfork" wine glass souvenir
Breakfast by the pool
Each perk on this list is delivered personally, with care by the Southfork staff.
The private tour included stops like viewing Jock’s Lincoln Continental, the museum with the gun that shot J.R. and a massive family tree that could have entertained me for hours and my personal favorite - lots of interesting details about the ranch itself. One of our first stops was an oil drilling site where the original owner had attempted to find his own Ewing-like success, but like most came up bone dry.
Husb doing a dramatic Dallas pose
THE gun in the “Dallas” museum, which was full of fun relics
Gift shop J.R. action figures regretting that I did not buy these every day of my life
This experience that is designed to treat you like the oil baron you never dreamed of, was sort of like stepping into the T.V. show itself for us. As a born and bred thrifter, budget-friendly hotel shopper and 30-year-old who still feels like a dirtbag in college, this was one of the most indulgent overnight stays we’ve ever experienced.
No this is not the Ewing staircase, but it is the Southfork staircase.
There was an air of “traditional” luxury vacation. It delivered on Dallas-era old-school stay at Southfork. They pop you popcorn and give you DVDs of Dallas to watch. They recreate a Ewing rancher’s breakfast for you. They have a CD that plays the theme song over a stereo on loop. It is immersive and riddled with warmth and nostalgia.
I feel like you’re waiting for a “but.” There’s no but. I loved every second of this. When I posted my video capturing our experience on TikTok there was some outrage that THE INSIDE LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE SHOW. If you want to see what the interiors were designed after, this listing for the Calder House in Dallas might look familiar.
There’s some copyrighting prohibiting this, i’m sure, but that was never the point. They pay tribute to characters throughout the house with themed rooms that feel somewhere in the 80s realm of interior design.
Even with the interior distance from the actual show, the experience at Southfork keeps everything incredibly factual. TV is TV folks, real people lived in this house when the show was filmed and so when they step from the patio into the house, you’re on a soundstage in Studio City. This is a tour of Southfork, not the set of “Dallas.” I think that would have been far less charming.
The outside of the house is the heart of Southfork. Southfork is the pool, the family breakfasts outside on the patio with those yellow and white awnings, the barn and the horses.
I’ll admit, this experience might not be for everyone. I think it’s for the hardcore fans who feel a little flutter when they hear the theme song. With this pandemic turning a corner, even if you don't Live and Dream like a Ewing, Southfork is worth a visit. And after you’ve spent some time outside, Dallas is worth a watch.
Thanks to the team at Southfork Ranch for making my birthday truly unforgettable. This is not a sponsored post, so you know I was really committed to the experience.
Shoutout to my coworker turned friend, Stephanie and her partner Julie who somehow slipped me this note and a bottle of champs during our steak dinner. 30 looks pretty good, folks.