Khan

Anne Howard Bailey was a dreadful writer.

I realize I'm in serious danger of losing my gay card for saying this, but...the more I watch (or, rather, re-watch) Alexis, the more she bugs the [!@#$%^&*] out of me. (This is not a knock against Dame Joan Collins, by the way. She's doing the best she can with this role. But...ugh, lol.)

That was always my number-one issue with DYNASTY: characters on that show almost always behaved in ways that defied logic or common sense. Your own niece conspires to have you locked up and have a lookalike take your place so she can get her hands on her inheritance, and you don't even give her a good thrashing after it's all done and over with? GMAFB.

And Alexis, in that ad, is looking at Rita, like, "That old gag!?," lol.

I know, lol. Actually, @Soapsuds, I think Joan Collins inadvertently handed the producers a gift when she refused to appear in the season premiere. I know that contract issues were resolved by the second episode, but if the producers had been smart(er), they could've stretched Alexis' disappearance a bit longer, really get viewers excited about seeing her again as Dex, Adam and Steven search for her in Moldavia. The producers could have capitalized on BTS events in a big way - but, of course, they didn't.

No.

Actually, @Franko, I think DALLAS copped out a bit with the "Who Shot J.R.?" reveal, too. Kristin was a poor choice of culprits, who never faced real consequences for shooting and almost killing her brother-in-law. That ad makes it look as if Rita, as Krystle, was attempting to seduce Blake, which I don't recall happening. (IIRC, Blake kept after "Krystle," but Rita, afraid of getting caught, kept putting him off through various means, including making him deathly ill, lol). But it's too bad I didn't write it, because if I had, I would've had Blake and Rita hit the sheets, then had Blake admit to Krystle down the road that he actually enjoyed making love to the woman he thought was her, lol!

It might have been the combination of those three factors that damaged GL in the mid- and late-'80's. Now, I'll admit that I'm in the minority when it comes to my opinion of that era; I loved watching every minute of it! But, I can see how someone who'd watched GL longer than I had at that point (for the record, I was born in '79) might feel resentful toward the show, because the Bauers had long been eclipsed by other families. As a matter of fact, I KNOW I would have felt the same as they did, lol.

Like @Gray Bunny said, it wasn't so much the massacre that caused the ratings to slide as it was its' aftermath, or lack thereof. Yes, Ali MacGraw was pretty awful as Lady Ashley, but by that point in DYNASTY's run, you, as a viewer, just accepted wooden acting from the cast as being par for the course. What WASN'T acceptable, however, was the producers' teasing the viewers at home with all that build-up over who might live and who might die, only to learn the next season that only two characters, both guest stars, didn't survive, even though the final shot (no pun intended) of the previous season was virtually the entire cast laying lifeless together in a heap at the front of the chapel. If you're going to end your season with a bunch of terrorists storming a wedding and gunning down all your principal cast members, you really need to make it count, lol. I think one online blogger said it best: the Krystle/Rita storyline might have worked if it hadn't run so long. The longer it went on, the dumber the other characters looked for not catching on. Believe it or not, though, the storyline was scheduled to run even longer, with Blake chasing Joel Abigore and Rita through the jungles of South America, or some such nonsense. However, when the ratings fell, the producers decided to wrap it up quicker than they had planned.

I agree. S1 isn't perfect. Listening to the dialogue is like listening to the worst of late-'70's TV drama; and even though I think the "rich vs. poor" concept with the Carringtons and Blaisdels, with Krystle as the central character uniting them, had "legs," I also think the Shapiros unintentionally sabotaged their own vision for the show with the poor casting and writing for the latter family - and for Lindsay, in particular. On the other hand, S1 offers characterizations and plotlines that are, IMO, more nuanced and real than everything that comes after (including Alexis). If ABC had exercised more patience with the show as it was, or was meant to be, I think, with some fine-tuning, DYNASTY might have shaped up into the kind of show that wouldn't have needed a Joan Collins in order to save it or keep it going. However, because DALLAS was such a massive hit, and because ABC (and Aaron Spelling) wanted very badly to copy that success, they chose to amp up the glamour and play down or do away with what actually worked - namely, the characters' moral complexities - never realizing that DALLAS was DALLAS because it offered both style AND substance.

I think the problem with Brad Hollister - aside from the fact that they absolutely cast the wrong actor for that role - was that he was too gray in his motivations. On paper and on-screen, Brad was supposed to be this opportunist who nevertheless had genuine feelings for Dee that, in time, would have redeemed him to the audience. However, from what I've seen, it's not entirely believable that Brad isn't anything but an amoral creep. IIRC, too, Brad finally bedded Dee, but sunk his chances with her for good when he admitted to why he had bought the silver mine that the Hugheses and Stewarts co-owned; then, he left town. To me, that's pretty much an admission on the part of TPTB that Brad was a very limited character who'd run his course.

I agree that the show's focus could be too narrow, especially in its' earliest years, but probably not in the same way you thought it was. For me, the issue had nothing to do with the setting, but more with the fact that Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer just seemed so reluctant to stretch the canvas even a little bit so that it didn't feel as if every Ryan sibling was always hooking up with another Coleridge sibling, and vice-versa. I mean, you expect every soap to be incestuous to some degree, but my God! That's why I welcomed new additions to the cast like Rae and Kim, Michael Pavel, the Kirklands, Bess and Maggie, the Greenbergs, even Joe and Max Dubujak; because, at the very least, their arrivals potentially meant new story opportunities for the core characters.

In a way, it probably was for the best that ABC didn't give her that schedule. As I've said elsewhere, LOVING was always mediocre to me. It's one thing to land a cushy time slot between two tentpole shows like AMC and OLTL. To keep the audience from tuning out when neither was on, however, you needed a show with good writing; and LOVING, IMO, never came close to being that. If anything, placing LOVING at 1:30 would have jeopardized OLTL; and as it was, even when OLTL was besting AMC and even GH in the ratings, ABC *still* regarded it as the proverbial red-headed stepchild. If I had had my druthers, AMC would have led off the day's lineup, followed by RH, OLTL, GH and finally, LOVING or another half-hour soap at 4/3c.

Now would be a good time to sneak (recast) Phillip back onto the show.

Unfortunately, I think everyone involved in the future of AW - the network, the sponsor, even AW's audience - had grown apathetic. The show could have had Agnes Nixon back head-writing with someone like Doris Quinlan EP'ing, with absolutely no interference whatsoever, and it wouldn't have mattered. Many people outside of AW's hardcore audience just didn't care anymore.

I could be wrong, but I've always had the impression that Claire Labine held her nose when it came to writing the Michael/Kimberley/Rae and Seneca/Kimberley/Rae storylines. They might have been the kind of salacious "boilerplate stories" that ABC had wanted, but they weren't at all the kinds of stories that Labine & Paul Avila Mayer had envisioned for their show.

You mean Judi Evans could have landed on AMC instead of AW? Damn. Seeing her on AMC would have been amazing.

I think sponsor and/or network interference is mostly to blame for the difference between the Dobsons' work on GL and their later work on ATWT. By the time they had joined ATWT, pretty much all of daytime was chasing after the same demographic that had flocked to GH in the wake of Luke and Laura's success. The rules of the game, as they say, had definitely changed.

I don't think Joseph Hardy was untalented as a producer - and I don't think he was wrong in wanting to "open up" RH either. (As I've said in the past, I think my biggest issue with RH is that its canvas was just so dang claustrophobic.) But I do think he was an EP who needed a real HW with real vision to be effective.

I think that is my overall opinion about LOVING as well. It had so much potential, especially at the beginning, when Douglas Marland was head-writing. But it just never seemed to progress beyond being generic and mediocre.

IMO, Roscoe Born's shining moment as an actor in ANY medium were his first two stints playing Mitch Laurence. He took what could have been a standard-issue, easily disposable antagonist and infused him with so much sex and sensuality that you, as the viewer at home, could never get enough of watching him, even as he wreaked havoc on the lives of so many people - Viki, Tina, Dorian, Cassie - you cared about. And no offense to John Loprieno OR to his (or Cord & Tina's) fans, but I don't think Andrea Evans ever had a better onscreen sexual partner than Roscoe. As Mitch and Tina, those two were FIRE.

You've got Linda Gray, from DALLAS; Donna Mills and Nicollette Sheridan, from KNOTS; and Morgan Fairchild, from FALCON CREST, FLAMINGO ROAD and PAPER DOLLS; but you know who or what's missing? Someone from DYNASTY!

Good question. I don't know what the soap press thought, but I would say that the first four (or more) months of SB were worse. From what I've seen of TEXAS, its' beginnings weren't great, but it had "good bones," to use HGTV lingo. It just needed better writing. SB, on the other hand, had problems in its' structure from the get. The Dobsons clearly wanted a canvas that featured families from all walks of life, but two of the main families, the Perkins and Andrades, didn't work at all; and the two families that DID work - the Capwells and Lockridges - were hampered by some bizarre casting decisions, such as both actresses who played Laken and Judith Anderson (grande dame of the theater she might've been, but she was clearly not suited for daytime). Also, tried as they might, but I don't think the show ever found the right actor to play C.C. Capwell, which is VERY unfortunate when you consider that C.C. was essentially the show's patriarch.

Yes! And Hillary B(ailey) Smith would have made a good Siobhan recast, too, now that I think about it. Oooh! Another good one! It's one thing to bring on someone like Robin Mattson because of the following she had enjoyed on GH, but anyone with even a passing knowledge of her and of Delia would have known immediately that she was all wrong for that role. Should RH still have brought her on? Absolutely. But not as Delia. She could have played Sydney Price instead, or even Maggie (not that Cali Timmins was horrible in that part). But not Delia.

Wait, what? Nikki gave birth to Nick off-screen? Oh, the head writer in me just got a terrific story idea, lol.