Milestones.

Dallas Episode Number: 223 Season Number: 10
First Aired: Friday September 26, 1986
Title: Return to Camelot
As Bobby emerges from the shower in Pam's house, she discovers how long her dream was and she can't believe he's not dead.

As a young man I discovered that that I loved making audiences laugh. I wanted to have a career as a standup comedian. I was inspired by TV’s Laugh–In, Tim Conway on The Carol Burnet Show and then later comedians Robin Williams on Mork & Mindy and Steve Martin on SNL. Of course, I did not want to tell anyone that because, oddly enough, I was afraid of being laughed at. Especially when my older sister is an attorney and my older brother is an accountant, you are reluctant to say that you want a career in the performing arts. So I told people that I wanted to be a writer, thinking that it would make my goals more legitimate. The first time I went on was on stage was Tuesday, September 30th 1986. I performed my set at The Laugh Factory in Hollywood on open mike night. TV inspired my first set. I did a routine about Bobby Ewing returning from the dead on Dallas, and mocked some local commercials. It wasn’t that great but at least it was material that I wrote. Lots of the guys were stealing from Eddie Murphy or Jerry Seinfeld. But I played it safe. I was detached from my material. I was still finding myself. Not so easy, remember this was the 1980’s, where you were defined by your car, your cloths, and your job. Over time I would become friends with other comics. Around two a.m. several of us comics would go to a local Denny’s and talk about where we came from, our lives and family. I told stories of my childhood, my parent’s divorce, living with my grandparents in Defiance Ohio, and as a defense mechanism I kept adding punch lines to the stories if I thought they got to depressing. I liked getting into a nosedive then pull up at the last second with a punch line. My colleagues told me that was my act right there, tell my story. In the past twenty years I have had many opportunities as a writer and a performer but you never forget your first love.

To quote Sir Donald Wolfit on his deathbed, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard".

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Tony Figueroa