Dallas: Season 10 (1986)

At the tail end of Dallas' ninth season, Pamela Ewing (Victoria Principal) was awakened from her troubled slumbers by the sound of a familiar voice in her bathroom. Investigating, she peeked past the shower curtains -- and was astonished to find her ex-husband, Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy), who had presumably been killed at the end of the series' eighth season, alive and well! How could this be? Well, the opening scene of season ten explains all. Bobby was never killed -- and the entire ninth season was all a nightmare, dreamed up by poor Pamela! Thus, the writers have blithely negated everything that has happened during the previous season, and from this point forward, not even the most loyal of the series' fans will ever be able to take Dallas entirely seriously again. Be that as it may, season ten does offer a few interesting plot developments, as well as a handful of new characters. Having been humiliated time and again by her ruthless oil-tycoon husband, J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) gets even by setting up her own lingerie business, using J.R.'s erstwhile mistress Mandy Winger (Deborah Shelton) as his star model.

Meanwhile, Southfork is invaded by April Stevens (Sheree J. Wilson), former wife of J.R.'s cousin Jack Ewing, who like everyone else in the family is determined to carve out her own piece of the Ewing millions, by hook or by crook. (April will eventually marry J.R.'s brother Bobby, though he is blissfully unaware of this now.) Also making his first appearance is Ben Stivers (aka Wes Parmalee, played by Steve Forrest), who throws a monkey wrench into the connubial bliss of Miss Ellie Ewing (Barbara Bel Geddes) and her second husband, Clayton Barlow (Howard Keel), by posing as Miss Ellie's presumed-dead first husband, Jock. And in another development, the marriage between J.R.'s half-brother, Ray Krebbs (Steve Kanaly), and his ambitious wife, Donna (Susan Howard), totally collapses when Donna attaches herself to the influential Senator Dowling (Jim McMullan). Getting back to Pamela and Bobby, the couple decides to celebrate his "return from the grave" by getting married all over again. Alas, a happy ending is not in the cards: at the end of season ten, Pamela is seriously injured in an auto accident. Since Victoria Principal had announced her intention to leave the series, viewers braced themselves for the likelihood that Pamela has been killed -- and at the same time, they cynically awaited another likelihood, that the whole thing was yet another "Bobby in the shower" hoax! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi