te.

Dear Lord you had to get me thinking about the reunion and there's just so much wrong with it, but for starters: - Sammy Jo regressing into Trampy Ho of season five. The direction Sammy Jo was going in season nine would've had her become more and more like early Krystle - a good person with a bite to her. - The obvious attempt at bringing the show into "the 90s" - hello Krystle staring at a ceiling fan! Such a horrible attempt to channel Twin Peaks. - The dumb-ass catfight. In all honesty, Krystle had so many reasons to beat the living crap out of Alexis, yet they chose to have her fight over... jewlery? Really, writers? - Kirby getting together with her rapist and portrayed the relationship with Adam as "tru wuv" - come on. I don't mind Kirby coming back and in fact I'm one of the few Kirby fans, but they really needed to adress the relationship for how messed up it was. If anyone should've come back as Adam's end game it was Dana, but she was in the unsuccessful seasons I guess... - Fallon regressing as a character. - ROBOKRYSTLE. - Recast Adam. Really? - Barely adressing anything from the series finale and the outcome of it. I could go on and on and on about how terrible it is. In fact I'm sure I deserve some sort of financial compensation for the amount of therapy I've needed to properly deal with the trauma of it all...

Just as a side note, the entire series of Paper Dolls is on YouTube for those who are interested. Just search "Paper dolls episode 1" and it should pop up. It has exactly the issues that I thought of it initially - too many characters and an initial lack of focus. How on earth they could continually have failed to do a prime time soap about models is beyond me as it seems like it should write itself, especially in the 80s/90s - beautiful women in a cramped enviroment that act catty. Why this and Models, Inc failed to grasp that basic concept is beyond me. Well, not really in Models Inc part since Charles Pratt Jr wrote it...

Don't get me started on the reunion - there's so much "nope" and crap going on that I just tend to pretend that Dynasty ended with Alexis going off the balcony. In a way weirdly think the season nine finale works well as a series finale - hey, things weren't going to end happily for the Carringtons! Just the fact that they watch home movies of famous scenes in the reunion... who actually filmed that in the show universe? Did Blake have cameras filming all of Alexis and Krystle's catfights for his own enjoyment? What a perv! And that the Shapiros actually thought that it was going to reboot the show is obvious so it doesn't *really* give a sense of closure, so it's just a failure all around.

Amanda was of course not only created to replace Fallon as the token daughter, but also post-Diana. In all honesty, Amanda could've worked as well as Adam ended up doing by giving her a personality. Personally, I liked Catherine Oxenberg's "icey-ness" and they really should've played up that more to contrast her to Fallon's fire. It sort of amuses me how she was completely discarded and forgotten about once they wrote the recast out. I think there's a scene in season eight where Blake even says that it's great that "all his children" are there with him - Steven, Fallon and Adam. It's just brutal! Teri Garber is then introduced as "Cousin Leslie", but also discarded even more brutally then Amanda - literally, we last saw her bleeding to death in a cabin. Did she die? We don't know, because Dynasty writers treated their characters like petulant children throwing away their toys. Personally, I would've had Alexis visiting Amanda in season nine when they had a Joan Collins for a limited amount of episodes rather than having her go on endless business trips. In my head Amanda would've continued to live off screen somewhere and mentioned every now and then. But Dynasty is a lot better show in my fantasy than it actually was in reality. It really only had three solid seasons, one, two and nine. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those that doesn't enjoy the rest of Dynasty (obviously), but it started to falter quite early on and never lived up to what it could've been. Even Dallas was sort-of solid up until Bobby "died", Falcon Crest had a pretty decent run and Knots Landing, overall, is probably the most well-written 80s soap. With Dynasty they became obsessed with the image of the show rather than what was actually happening on it.

Fallon is pretty acid through season 2. It was in season 3 that they progressively watered her down.

They should've kept Nicole until the massacre cliffhanger imho. She could've been desperately hanging onto Jeff and be fodder to add to the mediocre death count. And before anyone says the obvious - how bizarre that they named her Nicole Simpsons. I mean the obvious connection.

Go "Guy Who Was Casted To Prove That We Aren't An Exclusively White Show"! Speaking of race - does anyone remember the episode where Saint Donna went to a black neighbourhood and ordered pizza for the kids of that hard working mom and then gave her [!@#$%^&*] about being a hard worker?

Bliss was on for the entire run of The Colby's, though her storylines were so crap that you'd be forgiven if you forgot that... though it was rumoured if there was a season three of The Colby's she would've been out. Her title card was more interesting than her character.

The best part about that is that you can clearly see that they used Joan Collins' stunt double in the scene where Blake runs to attack her. Apparently things were at their worst between Joan / John so she refused to do that scene because she was "afraid" (ya, right)

Michelle was an odd character - it was like when they decided to change April from a gold-digging skank to Bobby's new love interest, they gave her personality transplant and just created Michelle. Callie and JR were so yucky (sorry - Hagman's age was SERIOUSLY showing at that point) and her introduction storyline was horrible. Sasha Mitchell as an actor was lol. Hot, but lol.

Claudia, I feel, is so underrated as a character. Pamela Bellwood acted the crap out of that and Claudia certainly deserved better than the blaze of glory and the complete shrug off of "she wouldn't want a funeral" - writers, we followed Clauda's life for six seasons! Don't you think she deserved a funeral? But the writing in season seven was so schizophrenic anyway so maybe it was for the best... The Blaisdels seems to have been nixed from this reboot though. That story wouldn't have been *so* bad if at least Claudia was still there - it's like, where's the payoff? Matthew returns, he's magically managed to become a guerilla leader, oh and Lindsay's dead. Then so what? He kidnaps them all and Steven shoots him. Oh. The pointlessness of the storyline is hard to take, even if Dynasty was written by children with ADD at that point.

Season one of Dynasty would still fit on cable today. Season two perfected what Dynasty needed - mainstream appeal. If this reboot is like one of them: I'm in.

But Jeff is an "upstart" in the new reboot. That's another failure for this. They've essentially changed his character in a way I don't agree with, though with the Shapiros involved I should've expected it. Also making the Colby's/Carrington's WASP-y is a point in itself! A very direct one I might add.

But sometimes it does matter. Change Krystle's etnicity? Fine - she's supposed to be middle class marrying into a wealthy family. Change Matthew Blaisdel (who doesn't seem to be in this reboot at all)? Fine - se above. Change WASP-y Jeff Colby? Um... it does change A LOT. It also alters the whole Carringtons vs Colbys storyline. The Colby's were wealthier and more powerful than the Carringtons to start - hence why Blake pushed Fallon to marry Jeff. I could go on and on and on, but I guess I'll have to wait to see the results.

I don't mind it altering the original structure (since it ended up sucking), but I do mind changing the base of the characters

The Colby's are - if anything - even more WASPier than the Carringtons. They are old money. That's why Blake wants Fallon to marry prep boy Jeff.

The point is that they're a bunch of WASPs. Krystle being hispanic doesn't change that. Nor would Matthew Blaisdel being black change it. But the whole point of Dynasty was that this woman from a not favourable background marrying into these... WASPs. And of course Fallon hating her because Fallon has daddy issues.

"You're as welcome as a tsunami after an earthquake" - Melrose has so many quoteables!

The original cliffhanger idea of Kimberly kidnapping Sydney and crashing a plane into Melrose Place make sense post-suicide attempt. "Me and the missus don't like you very much" - watch your back Syd!

I forgot this whole "random bad plot that cop is gay and wants to sex Matt"-plot. It's hilarious. And bad. It's like - "we ran out of plot ideas and had to give him something". Matt is Gay. A Gay is Matt. Jo at least takes control!

There's so much things to build on from season three - Jasmine Guy! Traci Lords returning! Maybe even Alison's sister... yet they never did. The episode title "Boxing Sydney"...

I'm watching season three and this is like soap on crack! Kimberly's going to fail her psych eval! Amanda's suddenly feeling tired (leading to her cancer)! Sydney's about to join a cult with Traci Lords! Alison will survive - she's like a rash I can't get rid off.

It sort of made sense - before Peter, Lexi had only been with Coop, who betrayed her with Kimberly. Peter betrayed her because he was still "in love with Amanda". Then she got with Coop, who again betrayed/left her. From a human point of view, she had to direct her anger at someone so Amanda ended up being on her hitlist. In the first few episodes of the proper season seven she tried to get Peter back / hurt him, but realised she couldn't. I think the scene where she's about to confront Amanda and backs out shows this in the proper 7.03. Edit: watching the custody trial for Jo's baby is hilarious. Especially how all the apartment tentants are grilled about their trashy lives. Yikes!

Amanda and Sydney as roommates were one of those plotlines they needed to do more with - or more scenes with rather. But Sydney as a character? Annoying bug to Amanda. As for Amanda tangling with other females... post-Alison years you can literally just replace them with Alison. As I said - change "Sam" to "Alison" in season six and their scenes become a lot better and logical (well, for Melrose). Change "Jane" for "Alison" in their scenes and it becomes more logical. Jane worked better because she had an history with Amanda, so there's that. I honestly didn't like Alison in the original run and still unsure if I do now, but she was vital to the show.

Bar screwing over Bruce, Amanda actually never crossed anyone who didn't cross her. The "Bruce incident" in season three was as evil as Amanda got on the show. I know Joan Collins likes to tout Alexis as a business woman, when in all honesty, Alexis wasn't. Amanda was a business woman, for better and worse.