Dynasty’ (Season 1): A soap in search of a villain
October 10, 2017 Drunk TV 1 Comment
As we await the CW’s way more Hispanic, way more gay
Dynasty reboot this October, why don’t we go back to the all-white, just a
tad gay original ABC primetime soap opera that debuted in 1981.
By Paul Mavis
Starring John Forsythe, Linda Evans, Bo Hopkins, Pamela Sue Martin, Pamela Bellwood, Al Corley, Dale Robertson, John James, Wayne Northrop, Katy Kurtzman, Lee Bergere—as well as a veiled stand-in who would eventually become Joan Collins—
Dynasty was considered the wildest thing on network television at that time, so let’s hitch up our outrageously broad shoulder pads and see how its first season shakes out today.
The set-up: oil, that sweet, dirty crude that lubes the wheels of worldwide capitalism. Charming, ruthless jungle animal Blake Carrington (John Forsythe), CEO of Denver-Carrington Oil, is used to taking what he wants…and he wants beautiful, sensitive, poor girl secretary Krystle Grant (Linda Evans) as his wife. Krystle loves Blake, but she’s afraid of his power, his wealth, and his violent temper—elements she doesn’t have to worry about with her former lover, Mathew Blaisdel (Bo Hopkins). Blaisdel, a geologist at Denver-Carrington, fell in love with Krystle while his troubled wife Claudia (Pamela Bellwood) was committed to an institution—which did a big number on their emotionally fragile teen daughter Lindsay’s (Katy Kurtzman) head. Matthew, having been kicked out of the Middle East when local scamps helped themselves to all those Denver-Carrington oil pumps, returns to Denver, Colorado to find out Krystle is marrying his boss—a fact that fabulously wealthy Blake is only too happy to rub in Matthew’s decidedly middle-class face.
Unfortunately, poor little innocent Krystle has no idea what kind of family she’s marrying into with Blake. Blake’s son, Steven (Al Corley), is a constant irritant to Blake, because he’s incredibly sensitive, quite intelligent, drearily humorless, and highly gay—the last one being the real kicker for man’s man Blake, who wants a son who’s as rough and tough as he is, and who will provide an heir of his own for Denver-Carrington Oil. But
is Steven gay? Because as soon as he sees barely-together Claudia, he’s hitting the sheets with her—much to the consternation of former lover Ted Dinard (Mark Withers), who’s again living with Steven.
At least Steven keeps his sex partners down to two. His sister Fallon (Pamela Sue Martin) is like a trip to the deli: take a number and get in line, pal. A perverse, amoral little hustler with some
serious Daddy issues, Fallon wants Daddy to make love to her to take her seriously as a businesswoman, so until he respects her for who she is, she’s going to hump anything in pants, including Blake’s equally scheming chauffeur, Michael (Wayne Northrup). The only thing Blake wants from Fallon, however, is for her to settle down—preferably in a business/marriage merger with Jeff Colby (John James), the boring, ultra-conservative nephew of Cecil Colby (Lloyd Bochner), the owner of ColbyCo Oil, a far-larger rival of Denver-Carrington. Fallon, however, much prefers the older Cecil, because of his money, his power, his ruthlessness (and not at
all because he’s just like dear ‘ol Daddy) while she
despises Krystle, who’s poor, and good, and kind…and who gets to sleep with Blake.
So while poor Krystle is dodging Fallon and c-teasing Matthew (yes, that’s
exactly what she’s doing, driving him crazy with those fuzzy angora sweaters cinched up to show him the double D delights he’s missing) and trying to get Blake’s sniffy, imperious majordomo Joseph (Lee Bergere) to cut her a f*cking break around the mansion, Blake is beset by larger problems: Matthew’s and wildcatter Walter Lankershim’s (Dale Robertson) big oil strike on land Blake had been trying to buy for years; and more imperatively a murder rap, when Blake loses his sh*t and zaps Steven’s lover, Ted.
A few years back, at another site I used to write for (
oy vey what a
verkackte place—they don’t let you live, they don’t let you breathe!), I was given the second season of
Dynasty to review…and then no more (the nerve). Well, I got a different site and a different editor now (“The Man of a Thousand Jobs!”) and from day one his barked edict to me has been, “Hey, you! Review any and all vintage crap you can lay your hands on! And get me some coffee!” (you just want to say, “Ohhhh, Mr.
Grant!” when he does that).
So…
Dynasty seemed like the right show to re-visit, not so much because of the new reboot that’s sporting some significant bought-and-paid-for online hype (although we certainly don’t mind getting carried along in those p.r. waters), but because I had pretty fond memories of the series back in the 1980s, with its first rather serious-minded set of episodes, and then all the glitzy, ever-expanding silliness of the subsequent eight seasons (the costumes and the jewelry, the soapy sexual hijinks, the constant state of hyperbolic bitchery, the gleefully reported Joan Collins/Linda Evans “feud,” all the poorly-choreographed slap-fests). Watching this first season of
Dynasty, however, you can see where ABC almost pulled the plug. This first half-season ain’t the “Moldavian Massacre,” if you know what I mean.
Dynasty was never original; it was a bald-faced attempt by ABC to come up with their own
Dallas, the CBS prime time soap opera phenomenon that was on its way to becoming the number one show on network television. As originally conceived and created by the writing team of Richard and Esther Shapiro,
Dynasty would focus on the oil industry (just like
Dallas), by contrasting and interweaving a powerful, super-rich dysfunctional-yet-loving family with a middle-class dysfunctional-yet-loving family (just like
Dallas), and in the process, exploit and invigorate every hoary old soap opera cliche in the book by amping up the sex and overall tone of viciousness (just like
Dallas), with a mixed cast of familiar-faced veterans and newcomers (just like you guessed it).
And since
Dallas had taken off into the ratings’ stratosphere on the rocket that was the series’ central villain—the evil, rutting, gleefully sadistic J.R. Ewing, brilliantly essayed by Larry Hagman—
Dynasty would have its central “villain,” too: manipulative oil magnate Blake Carrington. However, the Shapiros and executive producer Aaron Spelling did
too good of a job casting Blake for their lavish three hour
Dynasty pilot,
Oil. They hired big-screen has-been George Peppard, who proceeded to be so opinionated, so disagreeable during the shoot—at least
to the Shapiros…
according to the Shapiros—that Peppard was fired and the expensive pilot reshot, this time with agreeable nice guy John Forsythe.
Delayed by the SAG strike that fall, ABC pulled out all the promotional stops in hyping
Dynasty as the crown jewel in their 1980-1981 mid-season schedule. Giving
Dynasty vacationing
ABC’s Monday Night Football’s slot on Mondays at 9:00pm, however, was not what you would call helpful. Its competition was
NBC’s Monday Night at the Movies (28th for the year) and steamrollers
M*A*S*H (4th in the Nielsen’s) and
House Calls (8th) over on CBS (two shows in particular that appealed to the same female demographic
Dynasty was aimed at).
Dynasty failed to crack the Nielsen Top Twenty (the barest minimum needed to justify its inflated production costs), and ABC wavered on whether or not to cancel it. According to Esther Shapiro, when this season’s last episode was shot, with the mysterious, unseen Alexis Carrington appearing at Blake’s murder trial, the producers still didn’t know if ABC was going to pick up the show for a second season (Shapiro admitted they also had no idea of who was going to play Alexis at this point, partly because of the series’ shaky status).
When the network finally did give the go-ahead, an aggressive publicity push from ABC followed, promoting Joan Collins as the series’ new reigning bitch villainess, along with a new night and time slot (Wednesdays at 10:00pm).
Dynasty recovered quite well, to say the least, climbing into the Nielsen Top Twenty its second season, and eventually beating out its hated rival
Dallas (in the 1984-1985 season) as the number one show in the country.
So why didn’t
Dynasty catch on until its second season? Shapiro seems to think it was strictly the Blaisdels that tamped down the numbers. She quotes audience research that said the viewers only wanted to be inside the mansion; they hated the oil fields stuff and all that middle class ennui, she asserts. Those elements of the series don’t work as well as the Carringtons at play in their mansion (the Blaisdels
are a collective bore)…although viewers seemed to love all that same stuff over on
Dallas and eventually,
Knots Landing. Nope; dollars to donuts, that Monday time slot was the main culprit. There were just too many women watching
M*A*S*H and
House Calls and
NBC Monday Night at the Movies for there to be a whole lot left over for a new show that many viewers perceived to be an expensive but derivative knock-off of
Dallas.
Even though I remembered this first half-season as a pretty diverting “adult” drama back in ’81 (it’s remarkable what we thought was “adult” back then on network TV), it
does play far too dour and humorless now when compared to the later seasons’ campy, increasingly outrageous tone—a tone that defines the series in most fans’ minds. Something just feels…“off” with these episodes, and there are plenty of factors playing into that collective bummer.
The Shapiros have frequently mentioned that audience research indicated no one was interested in the oil fields—and thus the entire Blaisdels/Lankershim half of the series. Perhaps more accurately: few people were interested in this element of the series because it was so poorly developed and integrated into the Carringtons subplot. Frankly: the Blaisdels and their petit bourgeouis problems are
booooo-rrrrring compared to the flamboyant, outsized Carringtons. I’m a big fan of Bo Hopkins…when he’s acting crazy. However, he’s mismatched here with a role that calls for a bland, romantic, hero-type leading man (there are a couple of times where he forgets himself and indulges in his bug-eyed/whacko stare shtick, and the results are incongruously hilarious). We just don’t buy his chemistry with Linda Evans (and we need to, since we’re never shown their initial love affair), nor do we feel that he’d be any kind of a match for Forsythe’s powerful, crushing Blake.
Pamela Belwood is good as “mad housewife” Claudia, but it’s a performance in service of an overly-familiar character that was already tired way back then (let’s agree not to even discuss the daughter). As for Dale Robertson’s wildcatter Walter Lankershim…his is such a mannered, hammy turn, it’s impossible to take him seriously in a similarly too-familiar role (for contrast, look at the sultry, always-near-hysteria performance of cheated-on wife Linda Gray, and the steely, nasty, commanding piece from fellow B-cowboy star Jim Davis as patriarch Jock Ewing, both over on
Dallas).
Most importantly: the middle-class Blaisdels are superfluous to the series’ main arc. We already
have the dichotomy between rich and poor at the mansion: Krystle versus the Carringtons. Those scenes where unsure, naive Krystle is getting pummeled by that snooty viper Fallon, or alternatively patronizing/violent Blake, as well as the smug household staff (arch, superior majordomo Joseph is a scream), more than satisfy our own “screw the rich because we’re jealous of them!” yearnings. The Blaisdels just aren’t needed here on
Dynasty.
Dynasty’s gay Steven Carrington certainly generated ad copy for ABC’s promotional efforts, even though Al Corley’s Steven wasn’t the first gay character on TV as some suggested. There had been other one-off characters in the years prior (Archie’s pal on
All in the Family, Phyllis’s brother on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show), as well as TV movies (1972’s
That Certain Summer) and of course, ABC’s own
Soap, with the first sustained reoccurring gay character, played by Bill Crystal (if you want to get technical and picky—as well as bitchy—Crystal was beaten to the punch by Paul Lynde on
Bewitched and
Hollywood Squares and Charles Nelson Reilly on
Match Game). But there was a lot of press generated about Corley’s Steven character, and he did add that “adult” element that ABC thought would make
Dynasty stand apart from
Dallas.
Whatever the producer/writers’ intent with the Steven character was, however, is humorously lost when he immediately starts ping-ponging back and forth between Claudia and Ted. It’s not a matter of whether or not he’s “confused;” we’re not really asked to wonder if he’s gay or not (which of course is avoiding the question…which only further waters down the character). It’s that the producers are trying to use the character as a link between the Blaisdels and the Carringtons and it simply doesn’t work (for instance, we never buy that he would work for Matt and Walter). Everything is so tentative, due in part to the network censorship restrictions of the time, that we can’t get a handle on what the hell Steven is doing…or not doing. His final scene with crying, soon-to-be-murder victim Ted is a perfect example of this: one minute Steven and he are in the depths of a tortured, doomed kiss-off, and the next, they’re both blasé, smiling, and shaking hands like they just ran into each other at Target.
Corley doesn’t exactly help matters, either, with his portrayal; to wit: would it kill you to have Steven crack a f*cking smile just once? I may be remembering this wrong, but I thought Corley was fired for bad-mouthing the show, specifically for complaining about how the producers were mistreating his character. He certainly may have had a point, but it’s
your job as the actor to make the character interesting, regardless of script limitations, and in that, Corley fails big time. His portrayal of a tortured man/child unsure of his place with the Carringtons and with his own sexuality carries about as much weight as one of those scenes where Marcia Brady stormed up to her room to moon about Doug Simpson. As designed and executed, Steven Carrington just doesn’t cut it.
Every 80s prime time soap lives and dies by its central villain, and at isolated moments in
Dynasty, you might think that villain was Blake Carrington. Unfortunately, the producers and writers again mitigate the character’s effect by having him unconvincingly switch back and forth between absolute monster (raping his wife Krystle) and saint (whisking her off to some romantic place or other on his jet). Again, it’s not a matter of complexity. Of course we want a series’ main villain to be layered; otherwise, the show becomes a cartoon. However, there’s “layered,” and then there’s “compromised,” and that’s how Forsythe’s Blake comes off here…and you can probably put the blame on the actor himself.
The Shapiros have never been shy about discussing the origins of the
Dynasty pilot; in particular, detailing the reasons for firing big screen actor George Peppard in the Blake role (with surly, sneering Peppard—both on and off screen—it was never a matter of whether or not you liked him in a role…he didn’t
want you to like him. Period. He would have been a
fantastic Blake Carrington, if someone on the production team had known how to handle him). Nor has Richard Shapiro failed to note numerous times that with the addition of John Forsythe to the cast, the lead of light, fluffy TV series like
Bachelor Father and
To Rome with Love made it very clear he was uncomfortable with some of the things Blake was doing in the scripts. By all accounts, Forsythe very much wanted to be
liked by the weekly TV audience.
How much of that retooling took place during the shooting of these 12 episodes is up for grabs, but Blake does wobble back and forth between good and evil with disconcerting—and dramatically disrupting—regularity. Given a choice between suave romantic and controlling sociopath…I’ll take Blake when he’s nasty as hell. Forsythe may have been correct that for his personal “brand,” if you will, the TV audience would prefer him more romantic, more kind than ruthless. However, he’s such a skilled, subtle actor, I find his “devil Blake” moments far more compelling. Just a year or two earlier, Forsythe had turned in a terrific bad guy performance as a powerful, perverted judge in Al Pacino’s big screen
…And Justice for All, so he has no problem with scenes where Blake must be cruel or heartless or domineering. But…female viewers loved the romance between Krystle and Blake, so I guess it was inevitable that the producers would skew in that direction, and away from a J.R. Ewing-like villain. That, however, doesn’t help the continuity in this first half-season.
Finally, the overall tone of these 12 episodes is miscued. Expensive-looking, with big sets and expensive costumes and props, this first season of
Dynasty expanded even further the already high-gloss house style of ABC dramas of that time. But along with “glossy” came “glassy-eyed,” in
Dynasty, as in everyone and everything seemingly timed at 3/4th speed. Somehow someone equated “classy” with “funereal,” because that’s not only the pacing but the ambiance that permeates
Dynasty’s initial half season. You’re not going to beat
Dallas, that ballsy, crude melodrama, by being classy. You
can be classy, but you have to be grotesque, too, and campy, and thankfully, this season’s courtroom finale finally seems to point the way for future
Dynasty success, what with its cliffhanger, its ridiculous black and white flashbacks to the murder (love those too-obvious stunt guy stand-ins!), and all the silly overwrought close-ups. When Blake’s mystery ex-wife arrives, and each character is individually freeze-framed in startled alarm—with all the men hilariously grabbing their chins—
that’s the kind of stuff we’ll come to expect from the coming seasons of
Dynasty.