Could Krystle being out of the mansion for a time have made her a more layred character?

[Alexis]

After watching a bit of Linda Evans in The Last Frontier I got to thinking that maybe it would have served the Krystle character and Linda as an actress to have her not be Mrs Blake Carrington for a time. I don't mean for her to really leave or divorce Blake. But what if some other circumstance made Krystle feel she must leave Blake and Denver. Perhaps she has a breakdown or is manipulated or blackmailed by Alexis or someone else. Perhaps threatened by mobsters. Or what if Krystle had lost her memory instead of Fallon. What if she just vanished in the night and then was seen in some other state hawking jewellery and settling into a motel and working as a waitress or maybe later as an office temp. Kinda like Val on Knots being Verna Ellers only maybe more nuts. This could have been a good way to have Linda act more, and do things Krystle couldn't or just wouldn't do. She could change her appearance slightly. Maybe her hairstyle and dress more real and less glamourous.

Maybe a scenario not unlike the plot from Madame X where Alexis could be like the mother in law and blackmail Krystle like Lana Turners character. Maybe finding out something about Krystle's past that she could use to make her ashamed or make her feel she needed to get out of Blake's life. What I don't know? That clearly would need some thought... But I do like the idea of seeing Krystle with all her natural elegance and grace have to carry herself outside of the Dynasty world alone. And to see her have to defend herself in the real world. Of course this wouldn't go on that long. Maybe 10 or 12 episodes and eventually Blake finds her and brings her back to Denver in a big romantic scene where their love theme swells around them.

But to see her alone and adapting quickly to the world, waiting tables and dealing with come on's from all kinds of average Joe's and sleazeballs. Pouring coffee for strangers and telling half truths about her life before she arrived in this new town. Explaining to her waitress friend that her huge rock of an engagement ring was only glass so as not to draw attention to herself.

I don't know exactly how this could have been achieved but I love the idea and if it could have been worked out properly then it would have been the real peak of Dynasty. Especially if it were to have happened in season 6 instead of Krystle/Rita. Alexis plotting to steal back the mansion and somehow involved in Krystle leaving Denver. It could have been epic, her ultimate dreams realised. If only very briefly. George Hamilton could still have factored in the storyline too, because I loved him in season 6.
Thoughts?

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

For one thing, simply focusing on Krystle's intelligence would have been enough to salvage the character. But, as we all know, they didn't do this at all.

In Season 4, she was out of the house for a while during the first part of the year, before he lured her back with the job Tracey thought was her own. Both of those scenarios offered possibilities to further investigate different sides of Krystle, but of course they never really did. On DYNASTY, they'd just move people back and forth between A & B over and over, and usually do nothing with it.

Krystle as Blake's S8 campaign manager likewise had potential, yet they did nothing with it once again... I want Krystle to go back to Ohio in the closing episodes of Season 8, having withdrawn as Blake's campaign manager after Alexis publishes photos of Krystle in a compromising (but harmless) situation with another man... While she's in Akron she can visit family, heal the sick with her increasing brain-injury-inspired clairvoyance, before returning to Denver. Seriously. I'd do it. But that's just me.

Anyway, even with DYNASTY's main structure, the raw material was there. But the writers just weren't engaged with their characters, much less that peskily "boring" nice woman.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

For one thing, simply focusing on Krystle's intelligence would have been enough to salvage the character. But, as we all know, they didn't do this at all.

In Season 4, she was out of the house for a while during the first part of the year, before he lured her back with the job Tracey thought was her own. Both of those scenarios offered possibilities to further investigate different sides of Krystle, but of course they never really did. On DYNASTY, they'd just move people back and forth between A & B over and over, and usually do nothing with it.

Krystle as Blake's S8 campaign manager likewise had potential, yet they did nothing with it once again... I want Krystle to go back to Ohio in the closing episodes of Season 8, having withdrawn as Blake's campaign manager after Alexis publishes photos of Krystle in a compromising (but harmless) situation with another man... While she's in Akron she can visit family, heal the sick with her increasing brain-injury-inspired clairvoyance, before returning to Denver. Seriously. I'd do it. But that's just me.

Anyway, even with DYNASTY's main structure, the raw material was there. But the writers just weren't engaged with their characters, much less that peskily "boring" nice woman.

She could start doing spontaneous readings and healing the sick, somewhat tormented by her new gifts, the whole thing played absolutely straight.

And there could be a rock outcropping overlooking the mansion nearby, Krystle's own little Garden of Gethsemane, where she would wander around to recharge her powers.

Late Season 8, Krystle and Blake have more marital problems because of those photos and her increasingly weird behavior, while he draws closer to Alexis after their success in Natumbe and her publicly encouraging her constituents to vote for Blake after the assassination attempt.

So Krystle wanders back to, maybe, Ohio to see the remnants of family and old friends whereupon she proceeds to heal them of their various illnesses and injuries. Duke University asks her to let them run some tests on her and she heals people of major neurological conditions overtly . It all gets into the press and it compromises Blake's continuing campaign for governor. She then returns to Denver by the end of the season and hugs Steven, diagnosed with HIV earlier in the season, as he leaves for Washington, D.C. And you know she's cured him, even though they never come out and say it.

And I want that violence in her Carlton suite at the end of the season to involve the three leads, not just Alexis and dumb Sean Rowan.

My re-imagined versions of the 1987-88 season for DYNASTY and FALCON CREST are dramatically better, and to a degree DALLAS (where the viewer learns Pam crashed into a truck owned by JR already doing illegal oil business in the badlands, JR scrambling to hide that fact from Bobby, and then Bobby himself having to hide that fact from the feds and protect the family and JR once Bobby finds out). KNOTS' 87/88 year doesn't need fixing.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

THE LAST FRONTIER (1986) with Linda Evans and Jason Robards:

This was filmed in the Spring of 1985 and broadcast about a year later, five years into DYNASTY's run. And yet without the endless constraints of DYNASTY, Linda's acting is much more natural like she was at the beginning of DYNASTY -- a natural breeziness in contrast to her vapidly suffocated ("stultified" as Gordon Thomson described it) manner in most of the series.

It was obvious even then that DYNASTY was much, much too controlled. They couldn't move in an unstilted way and were encouraged not to. Having the effect ultimately of neutralizing the good casting.

What in God's name was the point of that?

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Hell, even her perfume commercial was more natural -- and clearly not produced by the people who made the show itself...

 

[Michael Torrance]

I don't know exactly how this could have been achieved but I love the idea and if it could have been worked out properly then it would have been the real peak of Dynasty. Especially if it were to have happened in season 6 instead of Krystle/Rita.

Dynasty unintentionally plays like a Greek tragedy--at the height of its popularity, hubris leads to them falling from their highest position. Just as the show was at the top of the ratings, they were creating the perfect storm to hit them. Moldavia aside, the Rita storyline had disaster written all over it, then they recast Fallon with an actress who was so different from PSM, then they would introduce a bunch of new characters and jettison them off to a spin-off that was really a clone. Meanwhile there were no real arcs for so many characters: among the younger Carrington generation Adam and Steven (since they would kill Luke) had nothing to do in season 6, and Blake, Krystle and Alexis would actually play second fiddle to Sammy Jo, Joel, and Rita. Fallon was off in California, and Amanda was the one left with a highly unpopular and dead-end arc in Moldavia's consequences.

The idea you mention had great potential. Yet it requires a show more like early Dynasty, that was focused on "how does Krystle handle this conflict?" For the life of me I can't fathom what the brass thought they'd achieve with the plotlines they came up instead for season 6 (not that the signs were not there for much of season 5 as well, after the end of Alexis' trial more or less). But they do give me the impression they were intentionally going for incoherent plots, like unpredictable was the highest honor one can bestow on a show, and not just a thin line away from implausible.

On DYNASTY, they'd just move people back and forth between A & B over and over, and usually do nothing with it.

I bet you they opened champagnes every year their characters went through yet another plot and nothing registered with them to change how they were of how they viewed the world. I mean, let's not forget how Blake is moving heaven and earth to find Steven and get a second chance with him in season 3, then takes him to court to take his son away from him in season 4.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

(...)The idea you mention had great potential. Yet it requires a show more like early Dynasty, that was focused on "how does Krystle handle this conflict?" For the life of me I can't fathom what the brass thought they'd achieve with the plotlines they came up instead for season 6 (not that the signs were not there for much of season 5 as well, after the end of Alexis' trial more or less). But they do give me the impression they were intentionally going for incoherent plots, like unpredictable was the highest honor one can bestow on a show, and not just a thin line away from implausible.(...)

In fact, Camille Marchetta -- key writer for Season 5 and who'd been story editor several years earlier on DALLAS -- was quoted in an interview for this website (well, UlimateDallas) that the Pollocks (she didn't name them) thought that sudden plot and character shifts, and the deliberate sabotaging of narrative logic, was the way to keep the show exciting and unpredictable.

Obviously, watching the show, that mindset is more than apparent. And while sudden revelations are just fine, they seemed to think explaining retroactively why the culprit became the culprit was unnecessary.

So whenever they needed a villain and felt Alexis was too obvious, they'd just hand off blame to "that whore Sammy Jo" even when it made little sense. Could she have been responsible for Claudia's lancelot violets in Season 4 and surreptitious photographing of Krystle and Daniel Reece? Well, I guess she could have. The explanations could have worked, potentially. But they felt totally stuck on and therefore unconvincing.

Later, when Joan when briefly AWOL during a salary dispute and missed the first episode of Season 6, her dialogue was handed off to Krystle with few if any changes. And Gordon Thomson years later sneered, "that is some lazy sh!t."

(Although this was far from the biggest or most obvious sin from that episode).

And this was at the series' peak, the first episode of the season, which was going to provide the aftermath for what was obviously going to be the show's biggest moment and biggest cliffhanger ever, and the most talked about TV episode of any show from 1985!

I bet you they opened champagnes every year their characters went through yet another plot and nothing registered with them to change how they were of how they viewed the world. I mean, let's not forget how Blake is moving heaven and earth to find Steven and get a second chance with him in season 3, then takes him to court to take his son away from him in season 4.

Although I can accept that as Blake wanted to get Steven back as something he "owned" and was lost. Same with his grandson.

 

[Ked]

!Although I can accept that as Blake wanted to get Steven back as something he "owned" and was lost. Same with his grandson.

I would have liked Krystle to have called Blake out on that. X)

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I would have liked Krystle to have called Blake out on that. X)

Well, she kind of did, telling him in his office that now that he had a second chance with Steven was Blake just going to throw it away.

And Blake later decided he indeed would. Until Claudia provided her acceptable vagina to the youngest Carrington son and then everything was suddenly copacetic.

 

[Michael Torrance]

In fact, Camille Marchetta -- key writer for Season 5 and who'd been story editor several years earlier on DALLAS -- was quoted in an interview for this website (well, UlimateDallas) that the Pollocks (she didn't name them) thought that sudden plot and character shifts, and the deliberate sabotaging of narrative logic, was the way to keep the show exciting and unpredictable.

Obviously, watching the show, that mindset is more than apparent. And while sudden revelations are just fine, they seemed to think explaining retroactively why the culprit became the culprit was unnecessary.

So whenever they needed a villain and felt Alexis was too obvious, they'd just hand off blame to "that whore Sammy Jo" even when it made little sense. Could she have been responsible for Claudia's lancelot violets in Season 4 and surreptitious photographing of Krystle and Daniel Reece? Well, I guess she could have. The explanations could have worked, potentially. But they felt totally stuck on and therefore unconvincing.

Sadly, I have even seen interviews of the Pollocs who said something of the sort, that prime time soaps had to be bigger and wilder than daytime soaps and that the "same old plots" would not work. It is an utterly specious argument--if Aristotle had declared thousands of years ago that there were no new plots to be done, only different ways of playing them out, the Pollocs were unlikely to come up with some unique ones.

Which is sad, because some plot twists worked wonders. Like when Adam confessed to Blake he tried to poisoned Jeff and Blake runs to Alexis for advice--and to ask that she forgive him for accusing her. But the reason that twist worked, was that the surprise element was how the characters interacted with one another. They made so much of the Claudia and violets storyline back then, and it was the right time for the show to go more gothic (which, played against that mansion, would have given it some gravitas it lacked and would not regain until season 9) but instead the ridiculous resolution was "her mother in law did it."

And let's not forget Neil McVane wearing a wig and cape in the off chance the neighbors would be taking pictures from a balcony across the street...

 

[Ked]

Well, she kind of did, telling him in his office that now that he had a second chance with Steven was Blake just going to throw it away.

And Blake later decided he indeed would. Until Claudia provided her acceptable vagina to the youngest Carrington son and then everything was suddenly copacetic.

Siiiiiigh...

 

[Gatsbyesque]

Why do we need grave machinations in order to pseudo-separate Blake and Krystle for a time being? He could do that all on his own. I say they should have divorced and then remarried.

 

[Gatsbyesque]

Dynasty unintentionally plays like a Greek tragedy--at the height of its popularity, hubris leads to them falling from their highest position. Just as the show was at the top of the ratings, they were creating the perfect storm to hit them. Moldavia aside, the Rita storyline had disaster written all over it, then they recast Fallon with an actress who was so different from PSM, then they would introduce a bunch of new characters and jettison them off to a spin-off that was really a clone. Meanwhile there were no real arcs for so many characters: among the younger Carrington generation Adam and Steven (since they would kill Luke) had nothing to do in season 6, and Blake, Krystle and Alexis would actually play second fiddle to Sammy Jo, Joel, and Rita. Fallon was off in California, and Amanda was the one left with a highly unpopular and dead-end arc in Moldavia's consequences.

The idea you mention had great potential. Yet it requires a show more like early Dynasty, that was focused on "how does Krystle handle this conflict?" For the life of me I can't fathom what the brass thought they'd achieve with the plotlines they came up instead for season 6 (not that the signs were not there for much of season 5 as well, after the end of Alexis' trial more or less). But they do give me the impression they were intentionally going for incoherent plots, like unpredictable was the highest honor one can bestow on a show, and not just a thin line away from implausible.




I bet you they opened champagnes every year their characters went through yet another plot and nothing registered with them to change how they were of how they viewed the world. I mean, let's not forget how Blake is moving heaven and earth to find Steven and get a second chance with him in season 3, then takes him to court to take his son away from him in season 4.

LMAO. Indeed. So long as the character always teems with righteous indignation and tows a mainstream line, John, the writers, and too many of the viewers were all happy. I just have to cringe.

 

[Gatsbyesque]

Yeah, he was possessive. But the shift was far too drastic and falls right in line with what Marchetta said (without saying it) about the Pollocks.

Today: Blake desperately wants Steven back!
Tomorrow: Steven is back. Blake desperately wants to strip him of all dignity by taking his son away!

Lights. Camera. Action!!!

 

[Zara]

Blake sure did snatch her back in - fast.

When she talks to Mark and says she is free and plans to start a life on her own as Grant - I wish she had done that and be a own person with dreams. Blake could see her outside his world and get a real perception of her. More slowly accept the terms of their relationship.

But what was Krystle in Dynasty without Blake (and later Alexis)? Kind of a unique arch.

 

[Alexis]

But what was Krystle in Dynasty without Blake (and later Alexis)? Kind of a unique arch

But this is what is so disappointing. Krystle just became a reactionary character. She just reacted to everyone else's actions. She was there to prop up Blake or Alexis depending on the plot. She didn't really do things herself.

 

[Willie Oleson]

THE LAST FRONTIER (1986) with Linda Evans and Jason Robards

And a bitch-slap within the first two minutes.

 

[Monzo]

THE LAST FRONTIER (1986) with Linda Evans and Jason Robards was filmed in the Spring of 1985 and broadcast about a year later, five years into DYNASTY's run.

The Last Frontier was a huge success in the US. At a time when Dynastyhad already fallen below the 20.0 rating mark, the two-part TV movie initially achieved a rating of 23.8 on CBS in October 1986 (as the lead-out to the then very successful Murder, She Wrote) and two nights later, without a strong lead-in, even a 25.0 rating.

In West Germany, The Last Frontier aired as a four-part miniseries in the regular Dynasty timeslot under the German title "Ruf des Herzens (Call of the Heart)." German magazines reported on it in advance; here is an excerpt:



The article mentions that Linda Evans, in The Last Frontier, has to wear a worn denim jacket that not even a Carrington maid would wear in her free time. According to the article, Linda Evans describes The Last Frontier as the role of a lifetime. Here are some quotes from Linda Evans' interview:

"This role is a long-awaited change for me! It feels closer to me than Krystle Carrington. Part of me wants to do what Kate Hannon did, have a child and a husband, work the land, and be part of nature. I woke up early in the morning, smelled the fresh air, and saw not a single building as far as the eye could see."

"I had to put all that stuff back on (after returning to Dynasty), the jewelry and the expensive clothes, and I felt so out of place."

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Krystle of Seasons 1 and 2 seemed much more like Linda than Krystle subsequently would. The vitality of Krystle was soon gone, the character's suffocation a metaphor for the series itself.

For all of Alexis' outrageousness, fun and gauche glammer, so goes Krystle so goes DYNASTY. (Something the producers never understood).

In 1987, Linda did a TV interview and described a request to the writers that Krystle be allowed to do the kinds of things that Linda had done as Kate Hannon in THE LAST FRONTIER. The writers (one presumes, Eileen Pollock) essentially said "no" and that all that somehow 'wasn't Krystle' -- so back to the frozen Barbie doll crap and shut up!

And there went DYNASTY. The "human vigor" (as Gordon Thomson phrased it) siphoned away -- and siphoned away by design.

But no one would stop Eileen Pollock.

But this is what is so disappointing. Krystle just became a reactionary character. She just reacted to everyone else's actions. She was there to prop up Blake or Alexis depending on the plot. She didn't really do things herself.

At least in Season 5, they permitted Krystle to be a wee bit more pro-active instead of reactive, but that was largely mishandled, with Blake's jealousy and Daniel's fawning after her -- and Krystle's defensiveness over both -- becoming the main story. (I'm not saying Blake can't be jealous or that Daniel can't be fawning, but let's just say they didn't get the balance right... And S.A.D. never helps anything).

Then they stuck her in an attic for several months (right after returning from Australia). And we saw how they clipped her wings during the later gubernatorial race.

Krystle should've been more like Kate Hannon, and she cried out to be --- well, except for slapping that kid at the airport.