THE COLBYS

[DRW50]

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[GSGfan2017]

The Colbys didn't have a character named Liza Colby, did it?  

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[DRW50]

People's Choice Award winning The Colbys!

 

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[amybrickwallace]

Through the mail autograph success from Maxwell Caulfield aka Miles:

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[j swift]

Hindsight being 20/20, (and aside from the waning interest in primetime soaps by the time it premiered),  I can think of a few structural issues that doomed The Colby's

First, Jason and Sable had too many kids, Monica and Bliss were redundant and neither was given interesting character definitions nor plots.  It was obvious from the pilot that Jeff was going to be revealed at Jason's illegitimate heir, and four kids in one family is way too many.

Second, there were too many Dynasty parallels.  For example, there was no need for the Colby's to also be into oil, when in real life oil tycoon Marvin Davis had just bought a 20th Century Fox, and Jason could have done the same thing.  Also, I think it would have been intriguing to flip the script and have Miles be more of an antagonist, making a male version of Alexis, rather than just repeating the same old recipe from the primary show.

Third, there were no real bitches.  Fallon was completely defanged in the recast.  Connie should have been a cold bitch, but her second life as secret lover of a farmer made her too sympathetic, and she was rarely given any quips or bon mots.  And Sable had much better scenes when she crossed over to Dynasty in the final season because she was finally given some independent agency.  Her two seasons on The Colby's were spent securing her children's positions and trying to hang onto Jason, rather than ever being motivated by self interest like a classic soap bitch needs to be.

Lastly, I think they didn't take advantage of using LA as a backdrop for the story.  LA socialites are protected from the press because the news tends to be obsessed with actors rather than the real people with money in town.  There were some stories that intersected with the entertainment industry, but Monica's foray in to music production was cringe inducing.  Where was the plastic surgery, get rich quick, youth obsessed, aerobics crowd of the 80s?

Edited December 31, 2021 by j swift

[Khan]

Agree.  With everything.

DYNASTY went off the rails fairly quickly, but it was originally built on a solid foundation (Krystal as the working-class secretary marrying into a rich family and clashing immediately).  What was THE COLBYS built upon?  That's always been my number-one question about this show.

[Chris B]

I loved The Colbys, but I do agree they had too many kids, Bliss should've been eliminated entirely. I also feel like they messed up when casting Frankie. Katherine Ross was dreadful in the role and it didn't help that the character was *so* unlikable. They wanted to push Sable as the unreasonable/Alexis type, but the story just didn't match up at all. I wonder how it would've played had they gotten a good actress to play Frankie and maybe give her more layers. It might've pushed the writers to make them both grey characters which could've been fun.

[j swift]

If Jason had died in the pilot, bringing Jeff to town trying to uncover the secrets of his family while trying to manage their business, there could have been more story potential.  At least there would have been some real stakes, rather than the morbid potential that Jason was secretly dying of some mystery disease at some point in the future.

Also, I would have cast Connie slightly younger and more of a California prototype to contrast Sable (Barbara Stanwick seems to be gasping for air in some scenes, making her far too vulnerable and not glamorous enough).  I would have chucked Francesca, made Monica into Connie's daughter, and waited to introduce Fallon until the cliffhanger of the first season. 

Finally, I would have never had Miles rape Fallon, which made him a totally nonviable long term villain,  because he crossed the line into evil too early.  I would have given Fallon more contact with Blake, because it seemed odd that she got her memory back and then totally ignored her father and her brother.  But, I would have kept the alien spaceship because it was such an iconic choice and could have been used to make Fallon into a Shirley Mclaine-type psychic healer, which would have been very LA.

Edited December 31, 2021 by j swift

[Khan]

Actually, I felt Bliss was quite effective as Jason and Sable's emotionally vulnerable daughter, who struggled constantly to fit in with her powerful family.  It would have been fascinating to see her grow over the years from "party girl" to strong woman in her own right -- provided, they had the right actress to portray Bliss, which I don't think they did. (Too bad Nicollette Sheridan was already on KNOTS LANDING by that point.)

At the same time, I would have kept Monica, but as an executive at Colby Enterprises -- same backstory (although, given who was portraying Monica, I might have worked in the fact that Monica once worked as a model and used her earnings to pay for her Harvard education), but unrelated to the family biologically, and someone whom Jason saw as a surrogate daughter, which would have created feelings of enormous jealousy on the part of his ACTUAL daughter.  I also would have put her in a quadrangle with Jeff, Fallon and Miles -- with Jeff constantly torn between Fallon and Monica, and Fallon torn between Jeff and Miles -- thereby giving Bliss and Fallon something to bond over (namely, their mutual dislike of Monica).

Frankly, I didn't care for the Jason/Frankie/Sable triangle, for the simple fact that it felt too much like a retread of Blake/Krystle/Alexis -- right down to the wan actress playing the "good" girl whom the corporate titan was truly gaga for.

As much as I loved Stephanie Beacham as Sable, I must admit that I don't think Sable was needed on the show.  (She would have been much better off playing another one of Alexis' siblings on the mother show). Charlton Heston was a strong enough actor, IMO, to portray Jason as a morally ambiguous patriarch -- sort of like how John Forsythe's Blake was intended to be, before the Shapiros blew up their concept entirely -- so all that was needed was Frankie as his long-suffering wife and mother to his two children, Miles and Bliss; who always adored him, but who wrestled constantly with his need to control and dominate those who were closest to him. 

And, if Katharine Ross just HAD to portray Frankie, then I would have asked her real-life spouse, Sam Elliott, to come aboard for an arc or two as a modern-day cowboy who'd be a romantic rival of sorts to Jason.  I'm just saying.

Agree.  That would have given the series more of a story engine than just, "Oh, look, here's some more Colbys!".

Yeah, as much as I love Barbara Stanwyck -- I feel as if I should say MISS Barbara Stanwyck, since that's how she was billed on "The Big Valley" -- she was much too frail-looking by that point to make Constance truly formidable.  (Plus, even though she was always the professional on sets, I can't help but think that her distaste for the godawful material affected her performance as well.)

But, you know, even if they had to have Stanwyck on the show...I just never liked the fact that they made her Jason's sister.  To me, it was like, "Why does Jason NEED a sister?  Why is she even there!?."  Creatively, making her the sister of the Colby family patriarch was a dead-end.

On the other hand, if they had made her Jason's MOTHER...?

And maybe I'm crazy, but I think it would've been a hoot to get Fred MacMurray to play Hutch Corrigan.  Again, I'm just saying.

Agree.  Although, I think it would have been interesting if Miles had been accused of rape -- not by Fallon, but by another woman, whom he picks up one night at a nightclub or bar, maybe has sex with, or just gave a ride home. 

Miles is arrested and charged with rape; the subsequent trial, with Miles fighting to prove his innocence, and Jason struggling to keep his family and business from being ruined by scandal, becomes a sort of splashy "media circus" on par with the Billionaire Boys Club and the Preppie Killer; and, in the big end-of-season cliffhanger, everyone in the courtroom is stunned when the jury returns with a verdict of guilty.

Of course, you would have needed a good actor playing Miles to pull that off. 

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I'd go along with the idea that Fallon had had a close encounter of the third kind, but only if the big twist was that it was actually a delusion brought on by a (benign) brain tumor.

[Chris 2]

It never had its own identity apart from Dynasty. They cloned some of the characters/situations, intertwined the show with characters crossing over frequently, and even used the same graphics and fonts in the intro. Most people weren’t really thinking, “Hey, let’s check out that pale new Dynasty spinoff.”

[Khan]

And then...?  The spaceship.

[Soaplovers]

I didn't have a problem with the number of kids Sable and Jason had.  I think they should have had Bliss be off screen as being away in school..and introduced later.

Monica was an interesting character in the 80s..she was written how Fallon Dynasty should have been written.  A female operating in a man's world.  I think her season 2 arc with her former flame, son, and Adrienne was strong.  Adrienne seemed more like Claudia in terms of being an outsider.

Sable was a grey character and in season 2 had agency with her job in the arts.

Season 2 of the Colby's seemed to correct some of the errors of season 1...and was focusing more on the arts and entertainment industry..less on the oil industry.

Miles had potential but raping Fallon was a no no.  His relationship with Channing had promise..and oddly I think the actress would have been a better Fallon recast Emma Samms.

[SFK]

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Sable was the star of the show, The Colbys would have been a total snooze without her.

Kate O’Mara said it was down to her and Stephanie to play the Scott sisters but Kate chose to do a play instead and Frankie went to Katharine Ross. Stephanie vs. Kate would have been absolutely delicious and I don’t think the writers could have ignored Kate’s intrinsic qualities when writing for her version of Frankie. Stephanie says it was like going to kill Bambi when she had scenes tearing into Katharine. I imagine Stephanie and Kate would have been like two snakes swallowing one another. Kate could cut glass with those eyes, I just do not see her cowering to Sable. We saw this with Alexis and Caress, but how interesting would it have been to see it on The Colbys instead of this played out “good” sister vs. “bad” sister. How about two scheming sisters vying for Jason (of all people) and Kate playing everything just as written for Frankie but Kate being Kate bringing a dark complexity just behind her eyes. I am sure the writers wanted to stick to the Alexis vs. Krystle model, and certainly too many people think there has to be a clearly defined white hat and black hat so the audience knows who to root for, but alas.

[Khan]

Well, then, it becomes a question of which scheming bitch to root for, which isn't as awesome as you'd think.

Even in a romantic triangle that isn't as simplistic as "good" girl vs. "bad" girl, you still need to be able to root for someone.  The writers don't NEED to telegraph which side to root for, but it still needs to be there. 

If you have two women (or two men) scheming for the love of the same man (or woman), it gets murky.  It makes whoever's in the middle look like an even bigger dope than they would otherwise; and you end up feeling no one in that situation should end up with anyone.  Which kinda defeats the purpose of the love triangle, IMO.

Inevitably, you wind up creating a THIRD rival for the person's affections -- someone who, by default, has to be more virtuous than the other two -- so that that person could, in effect, "steal" the man or woman away from the others.

Could better writing and casting have improved the Jason/Frankie/Sable triangle?  Yes.  Definitely.  Frankie, in particular, could have been a much stronger character, played by a much stronger actress.  Aside from those issues, however, I don't believe there was anything wrong with how the producers devised that particular story.

[FrenchBug82]

Well, of course, I was rooting for Sable through all of this so Frankie being miscast ended up twisting around the usual purpose of the good girl/bad girl dynami imho.

Were a lot of viewers really emotionally invested in Frankie/Jason rather than simply rationally "getting" they were supposed to think of them as the end game? Coz I didn't see chemistry there at all and to be frank I found their behavior to be pretty selfish rather than endearing.

And I'd add that while they considerably softened Sable during her Dynasty run, the bitch vs bitch dynamic was the only saving grace of that last season. So I don't think it is necessarily true a bad girl vs bad girl framework cannot work.
You just need to give the characters a clear thoroughline - my criticism of Colbys Season 2 is that without the same Jason obsession, Sable was drifting more and I am 100% with SFK that Sable made this show - and layers - and Sable was plenty grey with a lot of vulnerabilities - and it can work.