Dinastia

Although ABC's "Dynasty" really began as a response to the wildly popular "Dallas" on CBS, the show became so much more over its original U.S. run, from 1981 to 1989.

While "Dallas" had a bit of the earthy element of the ranch and the land and their value (think Miss Ellie) mixed in with the big-bucks oil industry, "Dynasty" was all glitz, all the time. After the show found its way during the first season, and Alexis arrived for the second, the characters went great guns in their portrayal of '80s capitalism and high living. We all wanted to watch. Maybe, in a way, we all wanted to live those lives. But would we, really? Hmmm ...

Being a chick, I enjoyed the **fashions** and the intrigue as I watched the show originally in the 1980s. I was a teen who hadn't yet experienced the big world out there yet, and I think the show appealed to a lot of people my age for that same reason. I'm thankful that the show has been released on DVD now, because I talked to so many fans over the years who desperately longed for the videos (back before DVD)!

When it was in production, I only began to watch Dynasty in the middle of the second season, the night of the big pillow fight, and I was hooked. VCR's were only a week away at that time and there was nothing like this sort of availability. Anyway, I later viewed the first season on FX in the mid 90's (I think) and wasn't very impressed with it at first, but I was taping them and decided to go back and see the occasional episode. May I say the first season not only grew on me, but it was its very best. No outlandish plots, both rich and "getting-by" classes were depicted as actual human beings. No suspension of disbelief, this was a very credible drama, only to later become a very INcredible circus! I was very well addicted to this circus, and it was very amusing and there were a lot of great lines, etc., not to mention the actors and actresses. I didn't like it when we were pummeled by the cast revolving door, so to speak, and upon Pamela Sue Martin's departure, I didn't think I was going to watch it anymore, but I thought, "what the hay! I didn't have anything special to do on Wednesday nights, anyway, so.....".

Very happy to hear there will be interviews with my two favorite Dynasty-ites, Pamela Sue Martin and Al Corley.

Fallon and Steven aren't number 1 and number 2 favorites, more like 1-A and 1-B Can't wait to get this - the digital transfer ought to be a stunner - I'm sure my two-year-old videos from SoapNet are fading just a little. Did I mention I taped all of these in slow speed?

Dynasty was a huge favorite of myself and my friends, and I have many memories of discussing the show with them either over the phone as it was happening or the next day. The Carringtons were created to compete with the highly successful Dallas and Ewings of South Fork, but Dynasty was never a copycat show. While Dallas certainly focused on the soap opera elements common to all these programs, J.R.'s sliminess in business was a focal point. Dynasty was about obvious, over the top luxury and family with some camp elements included that made it special. What I loved about Dynasty was that, at least in the beginning, it was never camp for camp's sake - the camp was part of the show. For instance, when the casting of Fallon changed, the portrait of the old Fallon that hung over the fireplace was quietly replaced with a painting of the new one, Emma Samms, that looked like a paint by the numbers from Woolworth's. And of course, Joan Collins' Alexis had camp built right into the character. And there was Steven's plastic surgery...so many happy moments.

And no other show could boast the wardrobe of Dynasty, or the beauty of Linda Evans. I can still see her, bedecked in diamonds, walking toward Blake in a blue gown slit all the way up her thigh.

For me, once they had Alexis disguised as a nun and the whole Moldavian thing started, the show became self-conscious camp, as these shows often do, and I lost interest. But certainly Dynasty was a bright spot in the '80s and for a time, you couldn't beat it.

Dynasty was in its heyday when I was in high school, so it was inevitable that we'd grow up together. Originally conceived to take on the CBS juggernaut Dallas, the show originally focused on the ultra-rich Carringtons, the middle-class Blaisdels, and the link between them, secretary-turned-socialite Krystle. After half a season, however (it was a mid-season replacement), the creative team decided to take the show in a different direction. They also brought in Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington. Originally intended only to appear in a few episodes, Alexis became such a hit with the viewers that the character quickly became central to the action.

The show, early in its run, was at its best when it nodded to classic Hollywood. The Steven-Claudia storyline, for example, was Dynasty's riff on the film Tea and Sympathy, and the sheer opulence of the show (and some of Claudia's crazier moments) were straight out of Sunset Boulevard. The writing was sharp, incisive, and not afraid to be funny. A brief implosion late in the second season got rid of half the cast, but one role (Steven) was recast, and another (Sammy Jo) would return sporadically for a couple of seasons before finally returning full-time. By the time the show had four seasons under its belt, it was a solid top ten hit that actually showed a lot of quality as the writers tackled then-borderline taboo topics such as abortion and homosexuality.

Then it started to go wrong.

The first blow was the departure of Pamela Sue Martin as Fallon, and the subsequent miscasting of Emma Samms in the role. Worse, the writing took a significant turn for the worse, and Samms had the double handicap of trying to compete against the memory of Martin and having distinctly inferior scripts to work with. Next, whereas previous cliffhangers had involved danger to one or two characters apiece, starting with the infamous fifth season cliffhanger, the producers decided that the majority of the cast had to be endangered in every cliffhanger - the Moldavian massacre, the fire at La Mirage, the siege of the Carrington mansion - which strained credulity to the breaking point. Once-promising characters, like Dominique and Leslie, were marginalized to the point of invisibility and eventually jettisoned with little fanfare.

Worst of all, the writers began to ape ratings bonanzas from previous seasons without seeming to understand why they worked in the first place. Krystle and Alexis' first catfight, for example, came at the end of slowly-increasing tension between the two over the course of the second season. Towards the end of Dynasty's run, the catfights had become almost ubiquitous, as if the writers felt that they weren't doing their job if they didn't include one every season, regardless of whether the scenes made sense from a storytelling standpoint.

The show enjoyed a brief renaissance in its final season, largely due to the addition of Stephanie Beacham to the cast, but with Linda Evans leaving the show in the middle of the season, it was more or less doomed at that point - the triumvirate of Blake-Krystle-Alexis, once broken, could not be repaired or replaced.

All in all, though, Dynasty was a pleasant way to spend an hour every Wednesday (later Thursday), and I'm glad I got to know the Carringtons.

I watched Dynasty from episode one and very rarely ever missed the Wednesday night saga of the Carringtons. Having recently purchased the DVD set of the first season, I've been giving the show a lot of thought... Like many other TV shows both past and present, Dynasty started without a clear focus and eventually matured into something unique and far removed from what the producers originally intended. The show had two distinct eras: pre-Alexis and post-Alexis. No, Joan Collins didn't make or break Dynasty, but she gave it a heck of a fun "flavor." At its inception, Dynasty was a serious, almost somber account of the lives of the super rich Carringtons of Denver, CO. There was patriarch Blake, confused son Steven, spoiled brat Fallon, and Blake's new and very overwhelmed wife, Krystle. Having now watched a little of that first season, I find myself eagerly waiting for Alexis to turn the family on its collective ear! Dynasty's ultimate strength, and also its downfall, was in its becoming campy and larger than life. While some of us may expect the super-wealthy to act crazy, Dynasty added plot lines and characters that were the traditional soap-opera themes magnified with a huge budget, and beautiful people... illicit affairs, long-lost children, traumatic pregnancies, murders, trials, etc... There were frequent mis-steps (the Moldavian Prince, Michael, comes to mind as well as the entire 'The Colbys' series) and there were truly fun characters like Alexis and son Adam whom we loved to hate. But to me, the bottom line will always be that Dynasty was campy and much larger-than-life. It was a lot of fun those eight years, always wondering what would happen next...