Did the fracking debate dredge up ‘Dallas’ – the redux – or was this soap opera’s resurgence just another convenient mirror in which to reflect how central the nation’s debate over energy has now become in our culture?

Either way, the show’s creators seem to have found the decades-old plot so evocative of the evolving contemporary debate over oil and gas drilling and the environment that they couldn’t resist resurrecting it. Perhaps they should have.

When Dallas was first launched in 1978, it always covered oil, and, later, a little bit about the environment. But really it was about sex, betrayal, and the infighting that came with running Ewing Oil, the company that had made their family rich. In the end, two brothers – J.R. and Bobby Ewing – fought over whether to conserve their sprawling family ranch, Southfork.

The plot line was an effective analogy not just for the oil business, but for all business. It provided a voyeuristic – and playfully sensationalized – glimpse into the glitzy lives of those who succeeded by it and a fantastically Reaganesque view on what it took to climb to the top of an industry on the backs of your competitors, Texas style.

But the world was different then. Oil was a near singular symbol of business wealth in the US Texas was on top of its game. And environmentalism was still seen by big business as a fringe movement.

Today Big Oil remains as powerful as ever, but wealth, technology and industry have diversified and become more complex. Today’s corporations often seek – and in fact profit from – social responsibility and sustainability. The notion that resources are finite and that environmental protection necessary have become mainstream. They are certainly no longer laughable.

The next-generation Dallas – which still has its aging stars but picks up with a rivalry between Bobby and J.R.’s sons – appears to be all about trying to transcend its old paradigm, seizing on its oil roots as an opportunity to build on the current conversation.

The opening scene glides above a verdant pasture until the camera stumbles on an oil-drilling rig nestled among the trees. It’s more a thing of beauty than an interruption in the landscape. Soon the well is gushing oil – 1880’s style – and two of the show’s young protagonists, who estimate they just found “a couple of billion barrels” are drenched in syrupy crude and kissing beneath the shower of oil.

“This will make us richer than we ever imagined,” croons JR’s son, John Ross, played by Josh Henderson. “It will change everything.”

In the new plot, John Ross schemes to develop the oil on Southfork without the consent of Bobby (still played by Patrick Duffy). Meanwhile Bobby’s son Christopher, played by Jesse Metcalfe, has founded Ewing Alternative Energy and espouses a seemingly anti-oil perspective. Like any good soap opera, everything is incestuous and intertwined. The two men battle over the affections of Elena, a buxom entrepreneurial wildcatter who is also the daughter of the Ewing’s in-house cook, even while Christopher marries another woman. JR – the senior villain still played by Larry Hagman, watches on in bemusement.

The cheese is thick enough to spread on crackers.

“So, I hear you’ve come home with some kind of alternative energy scheme to save the world,” John Ross asks Christopher, in their first major argument around the dinner table.

“Oil is the past,” Christopher replies. “Alternatives are the future.”

“I couldn’t disagree more.”

“Well this country is quickly running out of resources,” Christopher adds.