Khan

I'm happy for CZ, who obviously relishes being back on daytime. I just wish she had a character with staying power, not a psycho who's already been written into a corner.

ICAM, @kalbir. For awhile, however, he succeeded. Even DALLAS flirted with becoming more like DYNASTY during the "dream season."

ABC would have needed to think outside the proverbial box and hire a HW with little-to-no previous experience in soaps. Or, if we were talking about post-Pat Falken Smith, maybe someone like Susan Bedsow Horgan, since she loves everything related to Gaelic culture.

The most important thing to remember about Bill Bell and his work is how much emphasis he placed on letting his stories unfold slowly and carefully so that we understood exactly what his characters were always thinking. He was never afraid to take his time with stories, and he was never afraid to allow even his "good" characters be seen in less than flattering ways either.

For sure, I think Douglas Marland would have respected Labine & Mayer's vision enough to keep the Ryans and Ryan's Pub front-and-center. He might have been okay with writing for the Coleridges, too. The only question mark in this situation is Delia. In Marland's hands, Delia either would have become boring or overly kooky.

Better yet, name her "Margo," like I said upthread, and bring on Hillary B. Smith or Ellen Dolan as her and Eve's OTHER sister, "Barbara."

I'll just pretend her real name is "Judith."

Josh Morrow acts as if he ate some bad sushi. At the rate Jordan's going, she'll be plunging all of Genoa City into terminal darkness by next week.

"Sisters" fit well with the NBC brand, but I think it would've fit on ABC, too.

I agree. Watching it again on Pluto TV, I think there is much about the final season that I like. The storytelling is more focused, with everything built toward one main goal. Characters have real, understandable motivations. The dialogue isn't as cringey and actors are being directed to ACT rather than just pose and make OTT pronouncements. And while it's obvious that the budget has been reduced - as one poster said in the Primetime Soaps thread, Joan Collins seems to be wearing a lot of Chanel (or Chanel-like) outfits this season - there's still enough glamour there, I think, in the wardrobe and sets to satisfy those who watched mostly for that stuff. I, myself, would have gone further with the revamp, making scenes shorter and switching out the old, orchestrations for synthesized music. Overall, though, I would agree that David Paulsen did a decent job. However, at the same time, you're right, @Chris 2, in that it was a tired show, and not just because Linda Evans was gone and Joan Collins was reduced to nominal special guest star. (Frankly, as iconic as JC and Alexis were, both on the show and in the '80's, I think Alexis wore out her welcome long before the last season). IMO, DYNASTY was tired, because its' excessiveness had taken so much out of the show and its' characters. For all the things that David Paulsen did right with the last season, it still felt like coming down after snorting a yacht full of cocaine. Paulsen probably needed to take a page from Bill Bell's Y&R playbook, phase out the Carringtons and Colbys and rebuild the show around a new family or two, but obviously, that wasn't feasible.

Conversely, Bill Bell and Agnes Nixon hated the hour format, because they felt it required too much padding. I agree. Clearly, Douglas Marland loved to tell big stories with a lot of characters. (He would have killed on a streaming series, by the way). A half-hour soap doesn't lend itself to big "umbrella stories," because the amount of time per episode is so limited.

I agree. Even a brand-new, thirty-minute soap can be a crap shoot. I'd argue, however, that many of the later ones failed for very specific reasons. LOVING failed, for instance, because it never had a strong enough identity or theme. TC failed, because, even though it had MORE of an identity than LOVING, it still was a spin-off of a failed soap opera, and it didn't have a strong story to help launch it either. (Morgan Fairchild and her boots arriving by helicopter is a great scene, but it's not a story.) Both CAPITOL and GENERATIONS were well-structured, but their executions were all wrong. Neither had good writing when they started. (CAPITOL, however, did get better as time went on. GENERATIONS, on the other hand, never got the chance.) And PC, IMO, never got out from under GH's shadow, which is ironic, because it probably was more hospital-centric than GH had been in years. Even when it became DARK SHADOWS: THE NEW BREED, it still felt to me like GH2. B&B, on the other hand, survived, not just because of Bill Bell's skills as a storyteller, but also because it had a real, discernible theme: a family drama set against the backdrop of the fashion industry in L.A.* B&B experienced some growing pains, of course, but I think you could see the potential from the start. (Potential that, I'm sad to say, Bradley has squandered.) You can blame NBC Daytime for TEXAS being an inferior version of DALLAS. The Corringtons and Paul Rauch's original concept was for a soap set in the antebellum South, but NBCD wanted something that was more in line with DALLAS, which had become a massive hit. Personally, I think the Corrington's original idea sounds intriguing, but I don't know how sustainable it'd have been as an ongoing, daily serial. (*I think it would've made more sense to set it in NYC, the home of "Fashion Week," but whatever.)

I know the Christmas episode from that year credits her and JER as HW's.

By the 1988-89 season, ABC had begun to carve out a new reputation for itself as a serious challenger to NBC and its' upscale, quality programming. The network wanted to be known as something other than "Aaron's Broadcasting Company." DYNASTY was seen as a tired, useless relic of that period. Unless the show had miraculously clawed its way back into the Top 10, it was a goner. I agree. Like you said, @soapfan770, DYNASTY was flailing in the ratings. "Cheers" was their main competitor, and it was handing them their ass every week. No way was ABC going to renew DYNASTY for another season. David Paulsen's efforts to turn DYNASTY around and bring it into the post-Reagan era were commendable, but he and the rest of the team should have crafted a series finale that would have tied up all loose ends.

So would Michael.

They say one should never speak ill of the drag, but, dear God, that look is hideous.

I would have named her "Margo."

I agree.

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.