Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

calvinnme .. and you have Dynasty! If you want to see a show that is very much about the excesses of the 80s, look no further. The show begins with wealthy but older Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) marrying his younger secretary Krystle (Linda Evans). The love in this marriage (initially) goes in one direction, but Krystle is not marrying for money. Instead she is trying to forget her married lover who is permanently tied to the mentally troubled Claudia.Blake's grown daughter Fallon is a promiscuous schemer. Blake's grown son Steven is sincere and gay. Remember, this is 1981 when this all starts, and twelve years later "Don't ask don't tell" is still considered controversial. The first season is rather a blah Dallas clone. But then at the end of the first season Blake kills Steven's lover - accidentally - and goes on trial for murder. Krystle discovers she is pregnant. And most of all "mama" shows up - Blake's long lost first wife, Alexis,who he divorced years ago - as a witness for the prosecution. This is no other than Joan Collins, and 25 years after her films at Fox she still can't sing, can't act, and can't dance, but wow can she can do evil camp with the best of them. She spends the next eight years being a thorn in Blake and Krystle's side, and this is the main conflict that dominates the rest of the series. Unlike Dallas, siblings Fallon and Steven get along just great and are mutually supportive - no feuding there.There are mysterious disappearances, mysterious reappearances, weird alliances and odd affairs, many of which are one way romances, and of course the occasional hair-pulling cat fight between Krystle and Alexis is always rewarding, but eventually Dynasty works its way into a corner with just too many characters. How do they get out of this and hold on a few more years? For Dallas it was to say that life was but a dream, but for Dynasty it took a massacre! I'll let you watch and see the rest. I have always wondered how formerly dignified actor John Forsythe could keep a straight face and utter some of those corny lines he was given such as "You killed my child!", but it's all part of the fun. And probably nobody would remember Joan Collins fondly today if not for this role that fit her like a glove. Instead she would be remembered as the actress whose box set of awful 20th Century Fox films from the 50s on DVD pretty much killed off classic film on DVD for all time.

ShelbyTMItchell The show started out to being Blake ruthless until his actor, the late John Forsythe wanted to make him sympathetic as you have to feel bad for his character.But the ratings went sky high when the woman you loved to hate Alexis played deliciously by Joan Collins came on as a rival for Blake and for his new wife, Krystal(Linda Evans).As it shows wealth and power. Along with family like the openly gay Steve, one of the first at the time for someone being gay in the 1980s, son you loved to hate Adam but just misunderstood, spoiled brat Fallon who ended up with amnesia and changed from Pamela Sue Martin to Emma Samms.Show showed glitz and glamor. And in a sense was like Dallas to begin with. But really the show stood on it's own. It was the ABC's answer to Dallas in CO.

Jim Longo Dynasty was in its heyday when I was in high school, so it was inevitable that we'd grow up together. Originally conceived to take on the CBS juggernaut Dallas, the show originally focused on the ultra-rich Carringtons, the middle-class Blaisdels, and the link between them, secretary-turned-socialite Krystle. After half a season, however (it was a mid-season replacement), the creative team decided to take the show in a different direction. They also brought in Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington. Originally intended only to appear in a few episodes, Alexis became such a hit with the viewers that the character quickly became central to the action.The show, early in its run, was at its best when it nodded to classic Hollywood. The Steven-Claudia storyline, for example, was Dynasty's riff on the film Tea and Sympathy, and the sheer opulence of the show (and some of Claudia's crazier moments) were straight out of Sunset Boulevard. The writing was sharp, incisive, and not afraid to be funny. A brief implosion late in the second season got rid of half the cast, but one role (Steven) was recast, and another (Sammy Jo) would return sporadically for a couple of seasons before finally returning full-time. By the time the show had four seasons under its belt, it was a solid top ten hit that actually showed a lot of quality as the writers tackled then-borderline taboo topics such as abortion and homosexuality.Then it started to go wrong.The first blow was the departure of Pamela Sue Martin as Fallon, and the subsequent miscasting of Emma Samms in the role. Worse, the writing took a significant turn for the worse, and Samms had the double handicap of trying to compete against the memory of Martin and having distinctly inferior scripts to work with. Next, whereas previous cliffhangers had involved danger to one or two characters apiece, starting with the infamous fifth season cliffhanger, the producers decided that the majority of the cast had to be endangered in every cliffhanger - the Moldavian massacre, the fire at La Mirage, the siege of the Carrington mansion - which strained credulity to the breaking point. Once-promising characters, like Dominique and Leslie, were marginalized to the point of invisibility and eventually jettisoned with little fanfare.Worst of all, the writers began to ape ratings bonanzas from previous seasons without seeming to understand why they worked in the first place. Krystle and Alexis' first catfight, for example, came at the end of slowly-increasing tension between the two over the course of the second season. Towards the end of Dynasty's run, the catfights had become almost ubiquitous, as if the writers felt that they weren't doing their job if they didn't include one every season, regardless of whether the scenes made sense from a storytelling standpoint.The show enjoyed a brief renaissance in its final season, largely due to the addition of Stephanie Beacham to the cast, but with Linda Evans leaving the show in the middle of the season, it was more or less doomed at that point - the triumvirate of Blake-Krystle-Alexis, once broken, could not be repaired or replaced.All in all, though, Dynasty was a pleasant way to spend an hour every Wednesday (later Thursday), and I'm glad I got to know the Carringtons.

Syl Dynasty was the show of the decade. What a cast that included the wonderful John Forsythe playing the attractive, mature, wealthy and lovable billionaire Blake Carrington. His first wife was played deliciously by Joan Collins (Make her Dame please). His second wife was played by Linda Evans who played Krystle. Who could forget those cat fights between Krystle and Alexis? or the other cast members like Emma Samms replacing Pamela Sue Martin as Fallon Carrington. The show explored serious topics like homosexuality and included Steven Carrington as the homosexual in the show. I thought they really did a very good job in explaining homosexuality without overdoing it and insulting the audience. The season finales were always worth mentioning like the shooting at a wedding in Moldova (fictional country).