SFK

I liked Jaleesa, but that relationship was very random and not ever developed. I do think they probably should have written her off, which is a shame, because I thought she added a lot to the show, she was a very strong presence. I think she was by far the best thing about the show's first season, along with the various house mothers, Stevie, and the woman Mary Alice played.

I think she was just supposed to be offcamera, still married to Col. Taylor and raising their son (?), in the last season.

Yeah, didn't she have the baby during a snow storm or something? A hurricane? Was it the episode where they had to plug the hole at The Pit with Whitley's coat? Terrence was so painfully geeky, oh my gahhd, that little rat tail on the back of his head.

Ah yes, Mary Alice, Nettie and her obligatory snood. I really liked Walter (Sinbad), I liked his own sitcom too as a matter of fact, and I'll try to forget that Ray-J was on it. I can't stand that guy.

Wow, Phylicia was really buff then! I love the disco atmosphere, I think that music still works so well today.

Did Debbie or Phyl have anything with the Josephine TV movie Lynn Whitfield was in? I watched that over and over when it first aired, her performance hooked me.

Thanks for the Showtime at Hillman clip. I wish they had stopped acting like Whitney couldn't sing, Jasmine Guy had a great voice.

I loved Kim, but her performance of my favorite Natalie Cole song would probably make me do the hand-waving get off the stage motion if I'd been there...

I don't think they had anything to do with the HBO Josephine Baker movie which my family also loved, but why can I totally imagine Phyl being a little perturbed that she wasn't cast? Okay, maybe not though because apparently she's not too keen on people bringing up that disco album. EricMontreal could chime in on that.

And LMAO @you doing the Appollo get off the stage hand wave! Those kids are so creepy the way they're looking at her.

Alisa Gyse (Kinu) played Deena, the Sheryl Lee Ralph (okay, and Beyonce ) role in the big '87 revival of Dreamgirls. I'm sure that's what lead to her casting on ADW. Of course Loretta Devine was in the first season of ADW, and she was in the original Broadway production (Lorell).

Jasmine Guy has aged terribly...

Yeah, I think she has Lupus (?) or something.

Was anyone else annoyed by how they threw Jaleesa and Col. Taylor together? That relationship was so forced, the character of Jaleesa should have just disappeared after Season 3 when she graduated.

I thought Jaleesa was annoying on gp, I guess what I'm really saying is that I find DWTN (Dawnn with two n's) Lewis annoying. I never really cared for her and two annoying points for me in particular are her awful stuffed up nose voice when Jaleesa has the flu in one ep, and her rendition of The National Anthem in the racial Roshomon ep.

...the HIV episode with Whoopie Goldberg and Tisha Campbell.

The moment she read that part in her obituary made my stomach sink to the floor, there were so many dramatic AIDS-related moments like that on TV when I was growing up. It's weird because at that point I think I only knew Tisha from Little Shop, not sure if she'd done School Daze yet.

I have some memory of an episode where Miles talked about riding a dolphin with a gorgeous man...I think I would have preferred that to Corky/Miles...

That was a hilarious episode. I think that's the same one where they're trying to figure out if their new co-worker is gay and Corky says they can find out by telling him that there's something on his shoe. If he lifts his foot in front of him, he's straight, if he goes like *this* (raises hands and kicks pointed toe behind him looking over shoulder), he's gay.

One thing that I loved in particular about ADW and TCS was their use of New York theatre actors. For TCS, that was the audition pool as it taped in New York, but Debbie Allen had had a Broadway career of her own and she continued the TCS tradition by often recruiting talented NY theatre personalities like Anita Morris, Alisa Gyse, Jenifer Lewis, Roscoe Lee Brown, and the mother of ADW's executibe producer Susan Fales-Hill, the late great Josephine Premice. I caught an ep the other week where they did a talent show and Whitley performed a Josephine Baker number "J'ai Deux Amours" that Debbie is credited as choreographing in the credits. I couldn't help but see the additional connection as her sister Phylicia Rashad released a Joephine Baker disco album back in the '70s where she covered that song.

Whitley around the 6:00 mark (embedding disabled by request): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orTj3s-9tNk

Phyl:

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EjW93ttrg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EjW93ttrg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9EjW93ttrg&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

Oh my God, my avatar is so next level with that blaring!

I think that's one of the things which still stands out when you watch the show now, they had a lot of strong black characters and a strong black couple. You don't see that on most shows. At the time it was a little more commonplace but already just about done by the time ADW was winding down. These days, good luck finding that anywhere on network TV.

And people may kind of when Debbie Allen says it, but I think she's right that ADW made going to college "in" for a lot of young black people who hadn't seen it in their future. She has data that kind of supports this. The show made the culture of predominantly black schools known on a national level and a lot of people were drawn to that, as well as the promise of becoming educated professionals with a step ahead.

I don't think it was about ratings losses so much as The Simpsons airing against what had been a big show and managing to eke out some success of its own, and being seen as fresh compared to the stale Cosby Show. Bill Cosby chose to the end show, didn't he? That may have played some part.

I wonder if the ratings went down because people knew it was the last season. A lot of people got tired of Murphy Brown, Mad About You, and Roseanne some years before they went off, but their ratings didn't crash until their last seasons, when people knew the show was ending.

I don't know what exactly accounted for it, schedule change/I got into another show, but I know that Murphy went from weekly must-see TV to me barely seeing a full ep during the final season. I remember the ep where cancer-stricken Murphy had insomnia or something and was up all night with Lily Tomlin's character on the phone as Murphy frantically baked in the kitchen (???), but I did not care for Tomlin's character, I really enjoyed Miles Silverberg. I didn't really mind it actually, but I know that a LOT of people took issue with the final fantasy season of Roseanne. Yes, it got REALLY silly sometimes, but wow, what a downer of an ending. Geesh. Never watched MAY.

I hate it when I get in on a thread like this late. SO much to comment on, don't know where to start.

DOH, my bad, "The Vintage Years", confusing it with Y&R. Yeah, I watched about half of it, and LOL @Dorcas, yup, just how it looks, as in Malorcas.

I don't know why they decided to put La Wyman in a wig, and I'm surprised she even went along with it. Rarely do you see PTB trying to age women on TV, especially ones who are already beyond "a certain age". My how times have changed. Kinda like the grey streaks they put in Stephanie Beacham's hair on "The Colbys".

Wow, I can't believe I've totally forgotten about it, that's what happens when you're spoiled out of the blue with just loads of classic TV, but does AOL still have its video channel? They were airing Falcon Crest, complete with the The Innocent Years pilot with Angela in the white wig, Richard as her son played by Duncan from ATWT, Clu Gulagher as Chase, Samantha Eggar as Maggie, Julia here called Dorcas (LOVE that).

I swear I remember a scene on AMC where Edmund and Maria were about to bone and the camera went out wide and out of focus and Eva La Rue was nude.

<lights a candle for Diahann Caroll>

OMG, LOL with shame. But wow, that is really something, for them both to go within such a short span of time. He also appeared on B&B with Stephanie Beacham a few years ago, they played themselves visiting Jackie's boutique.

Yeah, I saw it on cable a few years back, I'd like to see the heavily recast series.

I thought that was Shayne, Marty West.

The Dobsons only did scripts for two or three episodes which were heavily re-written. Rita Lakin (creator of Flamingo Road, Peyton Place writer) joined as Executive Story Consultant midseason which is probably when things began to improve. When you throw in Michael Filerman (EP of Knots, Dallas and Falcon Crest) as EP, it's shocking how bad this show was all around. It's like no effort was put in at the beginning. I can just see all the promos coasting off of Dynasty.

I just noticed a familiar name in the credits, Susan Howard (Donna, DALLAS) was on the writing team as well ("story by").

DP

He did say that, and maybe he even went as far to say that Blake, Krystle, and Alexis were a spin on Mac, Rachel, and Iris or that was just inferred from what he said, I don't quite remember. But he definitely said that primetime nabbed two of his names, Carrington and Ewing.

SFK about her happily changing form I Claudius to fantasy--I guess she realized what works, and the ratings just simply weren't there before Collins and the Pollocks came in.

And as I said earlier in the thread, if you're doing I, Claudius, you don't wait until the end of the season cliffhanger to introduce your Livia. Well, at least not these days. I guess Fallon gave us a taste of that, but had they not been picked up for whatever reason, we'd have never had Alexis and the '80s would have been a much different place.

He's a hater to, but they were stuck with him. He demanded they clean Blake up, which is why he became such a saint. Also made him a total bore. David Paulsen finally gave Blake some edge back in the final season, but he didn't like it from the interviews I read.

Ugh, I REALLY don't get that. Same deal with Linda Dano and Michele Lee. The heavy on a soap is always so much more fun to watch (and presumably play). What is with actors who are so pressed to be liked?? It's TV.

The Shapiro's were such arrogant hacks who ruined their reputation and future career by their behavior at Dynasty.

I could be very wrong, but why do I feel like that's mostly Esther's doing?

And Dynasty was named via a contest! I wonder why they hated George Pepard (sp?) I always was a fan.. Hrmm

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I've read/heard/SEEN more than one account of him being an !@#$%^&*]. He wanted Blake to be less of a one dimensional villain (John Forsyth's Blake had some nasty lines, but the guy always seemed like such a teddy bear to me). Also, Peppard was driving everyone on set up the wall. Forsyth had less of an "artistic issue" playing Blake's villainy, and the whole situation was not unlike the deal with Larry Hagman and the original choice for J.R., Robert Foxworth.

Right, and daytime (shoot, even primetime) had done glitz before. Look at fortysomething rich neurotic bitch Iris Carrington. She was Lemay's creation but McKinsey said in interviews that TPTB championed the character because the women at home wanted to see the clothes and whatnot.

It's also interesting how Esther (notice she does most of the talking ) talks about the fantasy element when in the beginning she seemed to be going for a more serious show. She often references I, Claudius, she wanted a modern American version of that.

For years I guess I kind of assumed that Dynasty was their one hit wonder, but yeah, I've seen a couple of their other projects. Richard is the real writer, he did that East of Eden mini with Jane Seymour that my mom loved, and I was surprised to see their names pop up as producers when we rented this quirky little indie flick The Motel. I watched the pilot movie for The Colony back in the day but then I remember it going on a loooooong hiatus and I'm not sure if it ever even came back for more episodes to tell you the truth. If so, I didn't catch them. I guess that's what Esther's referring to when she says they did The O.C. first (and besides it being Malibu and not Orange County, I really don't recall the similarities).