Chris 2

Yep - agreed on season 3. I think 2 and 3 are the strongest of the series. Bob McCullough was there running things and it showed. He left after season 3, and his guidance was missing in season 4, which is still fun but veers a little too far off course from the original premise.

I also love Emma, a breath of fresh air when it comes to soap opera characters. And I like how Emma is the one who Angela really has a soft spot for. She’s never vicious to Emma the way she is to Lance and Julia.

Herb was Cassie’s stepfather? Who was her father?

On 3/8/2022 at 11:24 AM, Khan said:

Hey, I never claimed to have enjoyed the Freilich-produced seasons, lol.

LOL. I think we can be friends then.

On 3/8/2022 at 12:02 PM, Soapsuds said:

Yes, that season 1984-1985 Dynasty was #1 beating Dallas by only .03 

The Massacre itself ranked #2  25.9 rating behind Dallas and Bobby's death.

The conclusion/season premiere of the following season it ranked #3  28.1 rating....the numbers actually increased.

Yeah, fall numbers are generally higher than those in the spring, when daylight savings and warm weather kick in.

What’s interesting is that the “Dallas” episode where Bobby died aired several days after the official television season ended in the middle of May. So the rating for that episode wasn’t counted toward Dallas’ 1984-85 average. Had it been, Dallas would have topped Dynasty for the season by the slimmest of margins.

Falcon Crest was never critically acclaimed to begin with, but certainly not the Jeff Frielich years, which were campy and over-the-top, filled with stunt casting. And most of the stunt casting didn’t exactly involve genuine stars like Lana Turner. More like Buck Henry and Ed Mariano from “Sisters”. Bob McCullough was long gone by Frielich’s tenure; Frielich essentially had McCullough’s old job. Frielich had his defenders, but calling his work critically acclaimed is a stretch. 

I remember that quote from Jane Wyman saying that the show had never been better, but I think she was just happy that Foxworth was off the show and she could be the sole focus.

Frielich was shown the door not only because of the budget but also because the ratings plummeted under his watch - the show shed over 20% of its viewers during his tenure, and more during his last year. Frielich went on the produce Lorimar’s syndicated “Freddy’s Nightmares” series, a job more suited to his style.

I get what Michael Filerman was trying to do - return the show to its roots: a father moves his family back to the valley (Ben Agretti rather than Chase) and a family that works the vineyards (the Ortegas instead of the Nunezs). But it was awfully slow moving, and too different from what immediately came before it.

Kathryn Leigh Scott posted about him on Twitter, including some pictures of the two of them. Not sure how recent those pictures are, but she seems to have aged like a fine wine.

If it wasn’t OK for Italian-American Kristian Alfonso to play a Mexican-American, then was it OK for Mexican-American Ana Alicia to play an Italian-American? 

Did Lilimae pay any kind of price for running over Chip?I recall she got off easy.

Diana reminded me of Julie (Mackenzie Phillips) on One Day at a Time. The rebellious, antagonistic daughter who was irritating.

Now, Lilimae, I know you meant well, but that wasn’t the right thing to do.

That said, if you had aimed for Diana, that I could get behind.

I thought they missed the boat with evolving Lance’s character after his relationship with Lorraine and he had experienced true love. Instead, he regressed when he got involved with Babylonia and ran the radio station.

I also think these nighttime soaps would be a good fit for Pluto. True that it’s owned by Paramount, but they license content from other sources. I’ve seen James Bond movies, Addams Family, Green Acres, and other non-Paramount properties on there.

Someone in another thread or board posted that they realize what an ass Chase is when re-watching the series now. The casting for Chase was one of the series real flaws. Robert Foxworth didn’t have the warmth or charm to make a self-righteous crusader likeable at the same time. He just came off as an arrogant jerk a lot, particularly later in his run. And the original Chase, Clu Gulager, had the same problem, so they blew it twice from a casting standpoint.

You really can’t blame Angela too much for fighting Chase, given the way he comes off. Of course, that withered old prune has some charm issues herself, but at least she’s been around for years doing the hard work of building the business.

Season 1 is less a serial and more a collection of standalone episodes, albeit with an overarching, recurring storyline (how will Chase find out the truth about his father’s death). FC was originally conceived as more of a family drama until CBS scheduled it after Dallas. The first season shows those roots, and does a nice job of establishing the main characters. I think it’s worth catching, but I’m also a sucker for a good family drama.

I know they did the same the to the following season premiere, Return to Camelot, which aired as a two-hour episode originally but is on the DVD set as two separate episodes.

I read from a seemingly reliable source on another message board that Dallas is being remastered for HD. This includes the later seasons when it was shot on film, but edited on tape, which requires reassembling the episodes from the original elements (not a small effort). I’m guessing that when this is done, it will show up on HBO Max. You can’t show the current prints on that service - they would just look awful in comparison with the other shows streaming.

Bobby’s funeral was a two hour episode with just one set of credits, though I’m sure it was produced as two separate hours. I remember it aired during Hurricane Gloria when there were a lot of power outages in our area. Our CBS affiliate got permission to rerun the episode in a late night slot the following week when power had been restored to most of us.

1 hour ago, Soapsuds said:

I was stuck on season 4.  Now I'm watching season 5 today.

Me too. I watched a little this morning, and realized how the show kind of lost me in season 4, what with the quick wrap up to the Nazi treasure plot, sexy Connie Giannini going after Chase (note to Connie: you can do way better!),  and new Big Bad Anne Archer delivering every line through pursed lips.

Not sure I can make it through a season with Melissa’s slutty cousin, Emma’s “Dukes of Hazard” boyfriend, and Abalonia.

Oh, lots of stuff during that first full season could have been stretched over multiple episodes: Sue Ellen tries to buy a black market baby, Jock’s heart attack, Lucy is engaged to the gay son of another oil family. The show was mostly serialized by the beginning of the second full season, but they did have a few standalone episodes during that season, like the one that set up Knots Landing where Gary and Val are remarried.

Ha - you’re welcome. I’ve probably spent too much of my life watching that show.

What was odd was that Dack Rambo made it into the opening credits for his final half season. My guess is that he wasn’t under contract to return at all, but the producers knew it would be awkward for Jack Ewing to just disappear from the canvas after getting hold of 10% of Ewing Oil. So he agreed to return to finish out his character’s story in exchange for getting better billing.

Ellie’s family, the Southworths, owned Southfork. They went broke during the depression and Ellie married oilman Jock Ewing to prevent the family from losing the ranch.

Ellie had an older brother named Garrison, the namesake of her son Gary. Ellie considered him the rightful heir to Southfork. He was presumed dead in a boating accident in the late 30s, but then showed up at Southfork 40 years later (why do people on the soaps always let other people think they’re dead?). Ellie wanted to give him Southfork, but Jock and JR were not in favor of it. Didn’t matter, because Garrison was dying and kicked the bucket in the same episode (this was back when Dallas episodes were self-contained).

As originally explained in the early episodes, Jock and Digger were partners in the first oil well. Digger was a drinker and a gambler so Jock registered the well in his name only because he feared Digger would gamble it away, but with the intention of sharing the profits. When Digger found out what Jock did, he interpreted it as Jock was stealing his half. So Digger went after him with a gun, and then Jock decided to keep the whole thing.

Later on, they retconned it so that Jock’s previously-unmentioned brother Jason was a third parter in the company. So Jack and Jamie thought they had a claim on it. But Jack connected the Ewings with a man who had a bill of sale showing that Jock bought out Jason and Digger. In return, the Ewings gave Jack 10% of the company.

It was a typical Spelling show in that the original cast was pretty much spot on, but they really struggled with replacement characters. I pretty much disliked all the replacements: basket-case Valerie (she really should have been a much stronger adversary for Kelly); abusing bumpkin Ray (didn’t help that he was played by a terrible actor even by 90210 standards); cross-eyed Claire (full of herself); dull Joe; Vincent Young’s character who was so boring I can’t even remember his name; copy-of-a-copy Gina.

3 hours ago, te. said:

They should've turned Love Boat into a full-on soap. Imagine the season ending cliffhangers with the boat being threatened with sinking each season!

LOL - best post. Who Shot Captain Stubing? The Love Boat Swimming Pool murder cliffhanger. Who will escape the fire on the Lido deck? Or maybe Gopher and Judy McCoy get together, and he wakes up the next morning and finds her sister Julie McCoy, the ship’s former cruise director, in the shower.

I think ABC was afraid to move Hotel, knowing it was a timeslot hit and would collapse without the Dynasty lead-in. They were hoping that the buzz of having a spinoff of the top rated show on TV, with a considerable number of name actors, would help them establish a beachhead on Thursdays.

Even as a kid, I knew that Sable and Frankie as sisters was just ridiculous given the actors they cast. One thing about Spelling: he didn’t let any accent issues get in the way if he decided he liked a performer for a particular role.

9 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

The premiere episode was so bad. You knew it wasn't going to last. Charleton Heston was horrible in it. And why is Constance with a cowboy? The casting for this show for the most part was awful.

God it sucked. It sucked hard. The characters were so unlikeable and the cast had zero chemistry. Even Dynasty at its worst had interesting performers and relationships between characters.