A pillar of the soap opera genre and a primetime staple in the '80s, "Dallas" still makes lists of best-ever TV series; the series won multiple Emmys, spawned a hit spinoff that ran for over 350 episodes and ran for some 14 seasons, racking up a whopping 356 episodes and becoming one of the longest-running series in its genre of all time.
During the show's 1978-1991 run, its characters, subjects, and settings changed repeatedly, which makes it hard to name one concrete protagonist/antagonist pairing. However, true to the cutthroat nature of "Dallas," no matter which of the contending heroes or villains you choose, the bad guy ends up winning in the end.
The core conflicts in "Dallas" are twofold: primarily, the feud between the Ewings and the Barnes families, two Texas clans made wealthy by their successes in the oil business; secondarily, the many feuds within the Ewings. The protagonist (insofar as there was one for the series run) could be seen as one of two Ewings: either the honorable Bobby, or the conniving yet fascinating J.R. No matter how you slice it, both eventually lost out to their villains.
Bobby, with his simple desire for love and peace, and his more complicated desire to live morally in an amoral setting, fails on both counts. J.R., whose truest desires are wealth and power, also fails on both counts by the time of his death. He loses his beloved Ewing Oil to his arch-rival Cliff Barnes, and in the series finale, seemingly takes his own life — at the urging of the villainous Adam, evidently an actual demon.
