3. Dallas Pams Dream (Season 10, Episode 1)
Classic trend setting TV drama, without Dallas we wouldnt have half the shows on this list nor would we have the proverbial Cliff Hanger we have become so accustomed to in modern TV; you cant really utter the phrase Who shot JR? without someone knowing what you are talking about. Dallas was THE show to watch in the late 80s in America and its popularity kept it going for many seasons (in fact its popularity has spawned a reboot in the last year or so, which I am also not counting because it is a reboot not a continuation of the original series). As with a lot of big programs though, especially ones that are known for keeping your audience hooked with shock tactics, you reach a point where you either keep going the way you are and the audience loses interest or you can keep getting bigger and bolder which could either cause fans to stay with you or switch off. Eventually with Dallas the moment came where fans probably thought themselves that they had fallen asleep and woke up from a weird dream. At the end of Season 9, central character Bobby Ewing, dies after being run over by a love-sick Katherine Wentworth when she realised he would never love her (not before breaking up his marriage to his then wife Pamela Barnes via a forged letter). Dramatic story worth enough to make any Soap Opera writer proud, however the beginning of Season 10 literally undid that entire season within the first few minutes; after waking from a deep sleep, Pamela Barnes hears her shower in use and decides to go and investigate who it is; opening the curtain she finds (dramatic music) Bobby Ewing! It turns out the whole of the last season was just a bad dream concocted from the seemingly paranoid trophy wife Pamela Barnes (she should write for Lost). This caused a flurry of backlash from diehard fans, essentially you wasted a year or so of their time just so you could get a cheap pop for the start of the next season, you also wasted a year of production/money to create a season of a TV show that is essentially irrelevant to the continuity, you could actually watch the whole of Dallas and not miss out by skipping Season 9; thats just poor production across the board, whoever gave the go ahead for this should be made to watch reruns of Jeremy Kyle until the end of time for that piece of garbage. This moment, in fact, has become such a joke of a moment that Family Guy even used it to end an episode which was, essentially, a jab at Season 9 of Dallas (the whole episode deviated from continuity so they made it a dream of Pams). At least it made for a good comedy moment in a cartoon then, not a complete waste of money.