Khan

Once Steven left Denver, Sammy Jo no longer had any real purpose on this show other than she was the mother of one of Blake's grandchildren. Maybe it was Abby Ewing? ("Donna Mills is back - and DYNASTY's got her!")

An online blogger named Jackson Upperco (http://www.jacksonupperco.com) put it best: Talk about a wretched storyline! Where does the show go from here? Either she’s crazy or the show is now supernatural — and true to form, Dynasty refuses to commit to either. I, myself, would have explained it away as a brain tumor.

Ironically, "thirtysomething" was one show I looked forward to watching every week (in bed, because it technically was on past my bedtime) and I was way, way, WAY outside their target audience in more ways than one, lol. I, too, would love to know which couple Gary and Val replaced on KL. I have to assume they were different from Kenny/Ginger, who were the show's designated young couple. Maybe they were a couple who'd been married before but were now giving holy matrimony another try, lol.

What about Wendi, the mixologist during Claire Labine's run? Should we count her, too?

Douglas Marland head-writing RH sounds intriguing, but his track record with half-hour soaps (THE DOCTORS, LOVING) was spotty.

Me, too. I don't think the wig flatters Morgan at all. Nor does her outfit. It's a little too "Rose Nylund" for me. It's really a shame how she has allowed herself to fall into the cosmetic surgery trap. BITD, I thought she was one of the most beautiful women on TV.

This might not count, but I recall actor/playwright Charles Busch playing a modeling agent named "Peg Barlow" on OLTL during a summer storyline where Jen Rappaport had run off to NYC for reasons I can't recall now. In that case, however, Busch wasn't portraying a man who had disguised himself as a woman. AFAIK, Peg was written and portrayed as female.

That's a very good point, @Broderick; and one, I believe, David Jacobs himself recognized when he introduced Abby in the second season. I know Jacobs liked to say that Abby was in the works all along - just as he liked to tell people that he made Karen so aggressive in the pilot, because viewers would have been wondering who was going to be "the J.R." on the show - but I don't necessarily believe his claims, lol. I think he saw that the intended "'Scenes from a Marriage x 4'" concept wasn't working, especially when half the cast simply wasn't up to the challenge, so he decided to bring on a single person - and a recently divorced mother, at that - in order to create more variety in the storylines. I also think one major drawback in KL's initial premise and first season is that the four couples are more alike than they are not. Gary/Val and Kenny/Ginger were ostensibly younger than Sid/Karen and Richard/Laura, but Jacobs and his team didn't make a big deal about that. (For one thing, would the two younger, newly married couples feel all that comfortable hanging out all the time with the older ones?) Nor did they explore the inherent dramatic possibilities in what was probably an interfaith union between Jewish Richard and Irish Catholic/Protestant Laura. I realize that one could push boundaries only so far on network television in 1979, but why not have an interracial couple living in the cul-de-sac? Or (gulp) a same-sex couple? The more varied the couplings, I think, the more interesting they could have been to people watching.

IOW, Jordan feels guilty that she and Eve never had an opportunity to make amends, so she's taking her anger and frustration out on Victor. Again, though, why wait this long? Did she really need to steal Cole and Victoria's baby, raise it and train it to hate the Newmans in order to get her revenge? She had plenty of other chances to ruin the Newmans - hell, she could've been the one who sabotaged that plane that crashed with Nick on it during the MAB era!

Yes. At the outset, David Jacobs envisioned KL to be a sort of American version of Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage." He also drew upon his own recent experience as story editor for "Family" - where, coincidentally, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz had also cut their teeth - in developing the show.

Let's just hope the '90's boy band cover band he's obviously joined works out.

Well, if they were estranged, why is Jordan so intent on avenging her sister's death? And why did she wait so long to set this plan into motion? So many questions.... You know, they could have hired Colleen Zenk to be a recast for Lindsay Wells. I'm just saying.

I would put even the Lechowicks' work on the show up there with "Hill Street Blues," "St. Elsewhere" and other dramas from the '80's that really challenged the audience's expectations of what one could do every week on television. Last time I saw Michelle Phillips online, she looked very frail. I don't know if she would have been up for appearing in this movie, or any movie, for that matter. It doesn't help that she's heavier these days, too. Her extra pounds make her face look heavier and puffier than it should.

I agree. A storyline has to be within the realm of possibilities for that show or else it doesn't work for me. Even a story like Janet/Natalie on AMC didn't work for me, because, one, they were not identical twins; and two, no amount of plastic surgery will ever help you look and talk exactly like somebody else. As Mama Khan once said, "The eyes always give you away." For me, Lumina was like the Princess Gina saga on DAYS. I followed along, not because I thought it was any good (although, I will admit, Lumina had its' moments), but because I wondered just how far the show could go with the bullshit before they were forced to throw in the towel, lol.

"thirtysomething" was what David Jacobs always wanted KL to be, but couldn't pull off. His writing wasn't that deep, and his cast wasn't that good.

To quote Sally Sussman from that article: “To be perfectly honest, as soon as the show went on the air, they were talking about canceling it.” (Brandon Tartikoff might have wanted another soap on NBC's lineup, but the affiliates sure didn't.)

Sadly, I think Mr. Winther was right. GENERATIONS was a show that needed to happen, but everything was working against it. It was placed in a terrible time slot, against a juggernaut like Y&R, on a network whose daytime lineup was itself struggling. Moreover, the theme song and opening titles were like something out of a coffee commercial ("Folgers brand coffee: three generations later, we're still the best part of waking up"), the sets, wardrobe and background music looked and sounded like they belonged on "Saved by the Bell"; the actors were mediocre, with only a handful of standouts among the cast; and although Sally Sussman had a great vision for her show, she was also 100-percent the wrong person to execute it.

Ironically, Lee Rich and Philip Capice got their starts working for Benton & Bowles, an advertising company that counted P&G among its' clients; and Michael Filerman got HIS start, I think, working in CBS Daytime. That probably explains why the Lorimar-produced soaps succeeded where others didn't, too. Ah, thanks, @kalbir.

Interesting point, @j swift. By the mid-'80's, NBC had garnered a new reputation as a home for "quality television," thanks to shows like "Hill Street Blues" and "Cheers." If there was going to be a successful primetime soap on NBC, therefore, it probably needed to do for the genre what HST did for cop shows, or "St. Elsewhere" did for medical ones. "Berrenger's," "Bare Essence," "Emerald Point N.A.S.," even "Flamingo Road" - all those, and others, simply felt like more of the same. In the latter part of the decade, however, ABC was also gaining a rep for doing quality shows that often redefined genres, like "The Wonder Years" and "Moonlighting." DYNASTY had a target on its' back already, thanks to Brandon Stoddard's well-known distaste for Aaron Spelling's shows. Ergo, if DYNASTY had any hopes of surviving into the '90's, it needed to evolve - not just better storytelling, with deeper characters, but also a whole new production aesthetic (less glam, more grit). However, between ABC's eagerness to rebrand itself, years of mismanagement on the part of its' producers and general viewer fatigue, it was doomed to die with the Reagan era.

Say what you will about Ellen Wheeler, but not every actor would agree to audition for their old job, especially if it's for a role or roles that they won an Emmy for! Another actor might have told the producers to [!@#$%^&*] off. IIRC, shortly after Leah Laiman joined the writing staff, one of the soap mags sat down with her for an interview and asked her about the Lumina story. They basically wanted to know what her agenda was, and Laiman responded, in effect, "I had no idea what it was about when I started it, and I'm still feeling my way through it." You know you're in treacherous waters when you're the HW and even you can't explain a storyline as weird and off-putting as Lumina.

I don't deny that, from the start, DYNASTY presented the Carringtons and their lifestyle as a sort of fantasy. After all, theirs was a world that was completely foreign to Krystle, who, as the premise-embodying protagonist, served as a surrogate for the audience. Therefore, it'd make sense for the Carringtons to be larger-than-life, if only to serve as a contrast to the Blaisdels, Walter Lankershim and the other, major characters. As I tried to say in the DYNASTY thread, however, producing a series that aims to give its' viewers fantasy doesn't mean you have to check reality at the proverbial door. You can create, develop, cast, produce and direct a series that provides style AND substance; and in its' first season, DYNASTY did that. In the first season, you had the Carringtons' life and all the trappings that came with it, but you also had the grittier and relatively more down-to-earth world that the Blaisdels belonged to and that Krystle was emerging from; as well as the more nuanced characterizations in both worlds that, frankly, presented a more honest picture of what it means to straddle the two yet never feeling entirely comfortable in either. As I've said several times recently while rewatching the show on PlutoTV, the first season of DYNASTY had the makings of a solid show that still could have captured the zeitgeist. However, all that potential was cut short, and then discarded, because the Shapiros' ambitions for their creation outsized their actual abilities as writers and producers. They doubled down on fantasy, ignored the reality and, in the process, whether intentionally or not, they gave us quintessential camp. True, but I think their first catfight carried more weight dramatically, because it was the only one that was properly motivated. Alexis had caused Krystle's miscarriage and (temporary) infertility. (She also inadvertently caused the brain damage that would result in Krystle leaving Denver and ending up in a coma, but that's another subject). She had done everything she could to re-insert herself into Blake's and their children's lives: moving into her old art studio on the estate grounds, painting Blake's portrait, paying Sammy Jo to leave Steven, etc. What woman wouldn't feel as outraged by Alexis as Krystle felt? What woman in that same situation wouldn't feel driven to rip Alexis a new one? It all might have looked silly on-screen, but from a story standpoint, I totally get it. (Of course, if I were the Shapiros or the Pollocks, I would have saved the catfight for the season finale, but that's just me.)

There has to be a happy medium between the living room and a mockup of Winchester Cathedral, though. Thanks, @Soaplovers, for clueing me in about female serial killers. I really had no idea.

Too bad Doug Davidson (ex-Paul, Y&R) is pushing 70, or else Bradley could give him a call, lol.

Salvaging that storyline was one of the few things, I think, Hogan Sheffer did right as HW on ATWT. Granted, he went the typical, "I must've passed out in between giving birth to twins!" route in explaining how Rose and Lily looked so much.

Ah! I knew there was more to that insane story than what I remembered! Thanks, @BoldRestless! I can see why Bill Bell moved the hell on from that story. Even for a show like Y&R, which could be creepy and gothic on occasion, that story in particular feels more exploitative than your lowest budget slasher movie. "I smell pizza. Does anyone else smell pizza?" "Dude, you are SO high!" "...Wut?"