Dynasty Discussion Thread

[SFK]

Ha, I remember Dan Regin (sp?) doing his little, "furs provided by..." at the end of ATWT when I was little. All of my relatives wear skins, I think it's some weird family fetish. You're right though, they would never toss a *good* lynx on the floor like that, it was probably nabbed from the pile of old coats set to become toilet paper for Joan.

That scene is just great campy '80s television fun. Good times! I miss when *dramas* didn't take themselves so seriously, I mean, you never HOWL these days like you would watching a scene like that. We're too snarky and smart for our own good to just have some good old fashioned silliness.

[DaytimeFan]

It is a really amazing scene and it would be an interesting thing to study in a media class. The portrayal of a woman in a 1980s melodrama versus what we have today.

[SFK]

ITA quartermaine fan, I love that post you made. Alexis' avarice in that scene is VERY Livia from I, Claudius, Esther Shapiro's inspiration for the series.

[Mr. Vixen]

I could see Dynasty being rebooted on a major network, thought probably not ABC. However, they could always reboot it and pair it up with Desperate Housewives on Sunday's. A good, soap filled night. And some crossovers between the two, such as Joan popping in here and there, and Eva Longoria's character having some connection to the new set at Dynasty, could really bring DH back to what made it so great in the beginning...A true SOAP.

[Cheap21]

Joan Collins was such a bitch. I loved how she thought she was really Alexis off the set...lol

"Well if she wanted to be Alexis Carrington, she needed to lose a few pounds. Sorry Esther"

Edited September 26, 2010 by Cheap21

[quartermainefan]

I never thought DH was all that great. It's a silly comedy serial, and Dynasty for all its OTT ways at least the characters had no idea they were in something you might laugh at. Blake and company were deadly serious in every statement no matter how outlandish. DH was never really a true soap, with that sing songy woman narrating while comedy music played as Teri Hatcher had a klutzy moment in front of the neighbor.

The first year of DH for all the touting of the women as being what made the show great, it was two men (the dead woman's husband and son) that carried the story. And did they ever have another story as good as that one? I gave up the second episode of season 2.

[Bright Eyes]

THANK YOU for that! And no, Desperate Housewives, since season one, was just that ... desperate.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

The person who runs a soap magazine in the UK called Inside Soap and posts on that magazine's official Twitter said this is the pic they hang in their office so they can all look at it every single day.

[SFK]

That's divine.

What I love so much about Stephanie Beacham's Sable is how wonderfully delicious and unique she is for what was for all intents and purposes to be a clone of a wildly popular character. In Nolan Miller's archive video, he talks about how much they didn't want her to look like Alexis and I believe that, I believe they wanted her to be different, but it's obvious that her function was the same. It's what Beacham brought to the role that from moment one made her an equal to Alexis in my book, you can NEVER say that she was aping Joan, she was 100% her own character, fabulously wry and bitchy. I also wonder if making Alexis and Sable cousins was an afterthought once they'd cast Beacham. There were a few well-known American actresses in contention in the beginning, and Beacham was not a name actress in the states (Joan herself wasn't exactly a household name when she started Dynasty). Maybe making Sable and Alexis kin was a subtle way of strengthening Sable from out the gate? A question for the Shapiros. And if that's true, also makes you wonder if they went, "Oh sh!t!" when they realized they had cousins sleeping with and marrying one another.

[DRW50]

I guess the main difference is that Sable was full of neuroses whereas Alexis was not.

[SFK]

Also, I think Alexis was much more of a free spirit whereas Sable truly enjoyed being somebody's wife and mother. It's harder to believe that Sable would let Jason banish her like Blake did Alexis without one hell of a fight, let alone that she would run on him to begin with. Alexis seemed like she didn't much mind being free of her husband and kids, living it up in parts unknown. Or maybe she just convinced herself of that so it wouldn't hurt as much and her desire to enact revenge on Blake was so fierce because of that. Or perhaps she just resented no longer being "the only woman in the room" when his Krystle was around.

[Sylph]

And, actually, the first season story was atrocious.

[quartermainefan]

all I remember was the son and the husband were the only two interesting characters, and they were the ones I looked forward to. The next year there was this story about a mother and son moving in, but I think I literally lasted two episodes before I decided without a murder mystery the show had almost no merit.

[All My Shadows]

Ladies and gentlemen...I present an embarrassment of bitches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNiDdW9JVro

Stanwyck at the end

[DRW50]

You could give birth during the Dynasty credits. I did love a lot of their shots though. I remember being confused the first time I realized that the shots were taken from episodes because I thought they were done specifically for the credits.

Many of them were just right for the characters. I think the one I always remember most is poor Claudia leaning against the wall.

I wonder why George Hamilton was billed before Diahann Carroll.