te.

5 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

Lawd...the chest....mmmm

 

Let me rest on that chest.

Woah, I said in the prime time soap thread that I finally got my VHS tapes from my parents and just found a tape with an Aremid episode - Austin promises to be there for Sami during her pregnancy (RIP Will), Carrie confides in Marlena that Sami went to the abortion clinic, Stefano has amnesia and Jennifer is saved from a smoke-filled house by Jack (Mark Valley) and look, there's Peter. Why on earth haven't he made a (recasted) comeback?

Remember when we thought these episodes were low-budget? It basically looks like a Hollywood production  now...

I just watched the series finale of Hyperion Bay and it pretty much wrapped up the show. There's some plot threads that could've been picked up in a potential season 2. I also notice that Bart Johnson (who died in episode 14) is listed as being in all episodes on every episode guide despite not appearing since then but I guess that shows how popular this show actually was when it first aired.

The thing that struck me when I watched episodes 14 through 17 it's how weak the casting was. Even Mark-Paul Gosselaar is weak on this show.

I've just gotten a whole bunch of VHS tapes from my parents (FINALLY) and I'm impress myself a bit with how much god-damn crap I recorded during the late-90s/early-00s. I'm currently trying to find stuff that's worthy to attempt to transfer from VHS to my 'puter once I get the technology to do so.

I'm currently watching the Frank Southified Hyperion Bay and it's really lame. Carmen Electra is trying her best to La Locklear it up, but the Go-Go Dancer doesn't work at all in the role. She's absolutely laughable! Add that the show itself is so zzzz. And Cassidy Rae, despite her special billing, is still as interesting as cardboard as she was on Models, Inc.  Oh, a guy fell from a building now and I. Don't. Care. Screw you Nelson (Bart Johnson), football star. I guess he was a casualty of the "retooling".

I also found the CPW episodes 13/14 - apparently the European version of these episodes are different than the ones aired in the US (even as they eventually aired on a small station in New York in the early 00s) as they cut out the Nicki storyline (they were phasing the character out) and added some scenes from episode 13 to episode 14 in an attempt to make the transition smoother from "Central Park West" to the last 8 episodes as "CPW".

Emma and Julia are characters that would work today.

I love how Emma ends up as the more stable daughter. Plot twist!

6 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

Amanda was an underwritten character, which was proven once Oxenberg was fired and recast with that horrid recast.  In essence, Oxenberg has a certain charisma then helped make Amanda more then what the writers provided.

Dynasty is a very weird show in the sense that they managed to be both overwritten and underwritten.

To be fair, that's a form of accomplishment in itself.

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.

On 2017-02-26 at 0:33 AM, Vee said:

Huh: Cress Williams (D'Shawn Hardell) is the CW's new Black Lightning.

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?

3 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

And she was horrible and lasted very little on the show....

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.

2 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

The only other good part is Sammy Jo and Amanda pool scene.  Blake yelling Im going to ....and then choking Alexis was so fake and laughable.

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.

4 hours ago, Khan said:

 

I honestly don't know what they were thinking with that back-from-the-dead story.

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.

16 minutes ago, Vee said:

 

Again: It's not 1983 anymore (nor should it be). Rich people are not exclusively white. The conception of a well-to-do upper crust family is not limited to the concept of the white WASP. And there is nothing wrong with a black family being more powerful than the Carringtons. America has changed, culture has changed, wealth has changed. We're not frozen in stasis based on the concepts of the ancient Spelling soap - I know they were super-popular in Europe as a glitzy fantasy vision of America, but it's not actually accurate.

 

I am not endorsing this reboot in any way as I don't care about Dynasty, but acting like changing the races of the characters over 30 years later is a bridge too far is silly to me.

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.

2 hours ago, Vee said:

Their base doesn't have to be "white".

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.

2 hours ago, YRBB said:

 

That's the 80s DYNASTY. The Colbys were WASPs. Not anymore. Not in this version. Have you read the article(s) regarding the Jeff casting? Blake and Jeff are rivals. I doubt he wants Jeff around Fallon. In fact, as already revealed to us, Fallon may use Jeff as revenge against her father. Therefore, what I said -- that the Colbys being black doesn't hinder a feud -- stands.  

 

Does it alter the original structure and history? Sure. But I think it's pretty obvious this is an all-out remake.

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

1 minute ago, YRBB said:

 

I understand what the point is. What does that have to do with what I said about the Colbys?

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.

39 minutes ago, YRBB said:

I don't really see how making the Colbys black stops them from carrying out the Colby vs Carrington feud.

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!