These are The Pollocks

[Snarky Oracle!]

What is it about married couples and these shows? Esther and Richard, the Latham-Lechowicks, Huson & Bast, Stern & Black -- and, of course, The Pollocks, Eileen "Mike" and Robert Mason Pollock.

The Pollocks... Esther calls them "brilliant constructionists" (which doesn't appear to be true, although their best work seemed to be from hunger in Season 2, and the last half of Season 6 wasn't bad); Doug Cramer bragged that DYNASTY had 40+ minutes of music per episode while DALLAS only had 20 minutes, claimed "no one remembers" Al Corley or Pamela Sue Martin, and then attributes DYNASTY's success to Joan Collins (fair enough), Nolan Miller (also fair) and the Pollocks. Season 5 writer-producer Camille Marchetta felt that narrative logic was sabotaged on the altar of ill-conceived surprises (apparently by the Pollocks), Season 7 story editor Rita Lakin said the Pollocks weren't really proper writers, and David Paulsen said he had no idea what the Pollocks were trying to do with the narrative just before he took over in Season 9.

Who is right?

During Season 7, Linda Evans admitted that she wanted to do stronger things as Krystle (like she'd done in her THE LAST FRONTIER mini-series in 1986) but was told that such things wouldn't fit the mousier Krystle that the Pollocks had turned her into. Yet when Linda refused to allow Krystle to have affairs, Eileen "Mike" Pollock said publicly that she thought Krystle was "boring" and then had Alexis saying exactly the same thing in the script. When Linda had to miss a meeting with the producers about the mid-Season 6 retooling because she had a contract Clairol hair color commercial to shoot in France, Mrs. Pollock sneered in the press about Linda that "some people think of DYNASTY as a part-time job," even though the mid-year meltdown was the fault of her and her husband. Around the same time, John Forsythe said, "the bosses weren't minding the store" and later that "the producers didn't know what they wanted" for the show. One of the producers (probably a Pollock) admitted to Kate O'Mara that they make the stories up "as we go along" (a deadly error for a serial). And when Linda hesitated to sign on to do the 1991 Reunion because the script was bad, someone (probably a Pollock) lied by saying that Evans was holding out for more money (which Linda's rep publicly called "a bald-faced lie").

What were the Pollocks to DYNASTY? They seemed to be goodish "idea" people, decent with casting (they reportedly found Oxenberg, Beacham and O'Mara). But narrative construction didn't seem to be their forte. And one has to guess that the wholly-destructive static acting directive of Season 3 through 8, may very well have been the Pollocks' idea. But whatever valid contributions Bob and "Mike" Pollock may have made to DYNASTY, should they have been the end-of-the-line show-runners? Because there seems to be a lot of evidence that perhaps they shouldn't have, so tone-deaf and perversely focused on so many of the wrong things they were.

For anybody who hasn't yet seen this video (and thanks to @colbyco for posting it in another thread) the Pollocks pop up at ~5:00 ... and in just a few moments they reveal, rather absurdly, their true natures:

They were already in their sixties and seventies when they were ru(i)nning DYNASTY, and Bob lived to be almost 100.

Little Horoscopic Detail for our more special readers: Bob Pollock, Laurence "is-she-really-dead?" Heath, and Dsvid Paulsen are all three Sun in Pisces/Moon in Aquarius -- I wonder which one probably has the Scorpio Rising....?

 

[ChrisSumner]

There's a US daytime soap called The Doctors that aired from 1963-1982. Retro TV has been airing reruns and streaming the show starting with the 1967 episodes. From 1970-1975, The Pollocks were the headwriters of the show and much like Dynasty, they were very successful in terms of ratings. I knew them from Dynasty so their popularity here confused me, but they lasted long enough I was very curious about the quality of the show.

I've just reached their final month in 1975 and they were AWFUL! Much like Dynasty, they can come up with good story ideas and the casting is great, but they can't pace a story to save their lives. It's like they come up with one good idea and stick with it long after the story makes sense, because they can't come up with anything else. They had a woman pregnant for like 15 months and most recently had a crazy story where they brought a character back from the dead and took 8 months to reunite him with his family. It took them so long to reunite him that he went through two recasts in the process.

The even crazier thing is that they seemed to keep getting jobs despite their work not being great. I believe what helped them is that they can pitch a good story idea, I just wish they could execute them.

 

[Mustard]

I agree about the narrative when it comes to the Pollocks. It's weird with Dynasty. I'm on Season 7 at the moment, and I still think Season 1 was the best as an engaging drama, before Alexis had even appeared, when Blake was largely a ruthless villain and when Matthew Blaisdel was a central character and former ally turned rival of Blake's. Fallon was at her best that season, Steven was probably written at his best, and Claudia, and the relationship between Steven and Claudia was a deep emotional bond then.

Season 2 was great as well, with Alexis living in the studio, Cecil still there, Fallon still great, and Nick Toscanni as a big character. I would also have liked Krystle to continue on for years like she had been when she beat up Alexis in that cat fight in the studio, the streetwise girl/woman from Dayton, Ohio, not for that to see as unbecoming of "good girl" Krystle compared to "bad girl" Alexis.

Since Season 2, I'm still enjoying it and it is always strangely captivating, but I'm not feeling the deep connection narratively like I did in Season 1, or like I would with Dallas and Knots Landing. John Forsythe as Blake, and Gordon Thomson as Adam, I find excellent. Brilliant characters. Blake's energy and exasperation at his age is a marvel, and Adam's resentment and conflict between utter deviousness and wanting to do the right thing grabs the attention. And I do love the irony of a real life closeted gay man at the time playing a casual homophobe, while his on screen brother is sexually attracted to men in an era when it was socially taboo.

LOL at Douglas S. Cramer saying that nobody remembers Pamela Sue Martin. In Season 1 especially, most of 2 and even parts of 3, she was hilarious and Tallulah Bankhead like with the witty comments and sexual promiscuity.

The Lechowicks in Knots Landing, from Seasons 7-12, divided opinion among the cast. Ted Shackelford, Kevin Dobson and Michele Lee really liked them, but Joan Van Ark, Donna Mills, William Devane, and especially John Pleshette (who was by now directing and agenting more than acting as Richard Avery) disliked them. Van Ark said that the Lechowicks had turned Valene into the "village idiot" with the brain virus storyline in Season 12. Devane would often take it upon himself to change a lot of his character Greg's lines, even though the Knots cast had much more creative input than the actors on other big US soaps of the era. The Knots cast really liked Peter Dunne, who left for Dallas in early 1985 when Season 6 of Knots was in its late stages, and it seems Joan and Donna in particular really missed him being around.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

The Knots cast really liked Peter Dunne, who left for Dallas in early 1985 when Season 6 of Knots was in its late stages, and it seems Joan and Donna in particular really missed him being around.

Joan van Ark predicted a "quality change" on DALLAS in 1985 with their little military team of writers from KNOTS going over to commandeer the parent series.

Well, there was a change alright, but wasn't entirely positive.

It's really odd that Peter Dunne's work on Season 9 (the dream season) of DALLAS was so bloated and rambling, and many of us (but not all) didn't think it worked. Obviously, Dunne was a competent dramatist. Perhaps the problem was the loose narrative structure that worked so well for KNOTS, an experimental show not centered on a nuclear family, was more problematic for a program like DALLAS where, if the story structure wasn't tight and on point at all times, the whole thing fell apart.

Simultaneously, when David Paulsen -- who'd helped bring us the Jock's Will season (where every single scene for a year fed the narrative effectively) and managed to keep the show focused even during the "morning after" period of Season 7 (dvd) DALLAS, with far more divergent plotlines once the battle for the empire was concluded -- took over Season 7 of KNOTS (1985/86), it didn't quite work as well. (And it's well-established that I'm a big defender of Paulsen). Yes, it worked better than Dunne's year on DALLAS, in my opinion, but there were still problems and things that didn't entirely work during Paulsen's one year at the helm of KNOTS LANDING.

Although, to me, all four of the nighttime soaps felt drab and cluttered and beige-y during the 1985/86 year. And some of the other writers who'd resented Paulsen, a relative outsider, and his introduction into KNOTS, scared the heck out of the actresses -- and apparently co-executive producer Michael Filerman -- with the idea that Paulsen was going to masculinize KNOTS LANDING and turn it into a west coast version of "male chauvinistic" DALLAS... So there was, as there so often is, a political dynamic on the KNOTS set which Paulsen wanted to escape and, logically, probably affected his work. But even Paulsen admitted he didn't think he was particularly good at writing the kind of "over the fence" chit-chat that so permeated KNOTS and helped define the show.

Paulsen then went back to DALLAS for two years and did much better in that environment, even though Katzman's decision to use The Dream scenario wit which to revive Bobby, tossed out in a single three minute scene, damaged anything that followed for the remaining five years of the show. And when Pam left and then, a year later, Katzman seemed inclined to take an increasingly overly-facetious tone to DALLAS, Paulsen wanted to leave and so took the job as show-runner for DYNASTY, despite that show being in more trouble and sinking even faster that DALLAS by 1988.

Paulsen picked up the pieces from the Pollocks' fractured and messy narrative, the creative state it had been in for years, and did an admirable job of pasting it back together -- as much was as was humanly possible -- to give DYNASTY one final decent year, despite the fact that the audience was already gone. And the actors didn't all appreciate the upturn in the writing under Paulsen in Season 9. Linda Evans loved her exit story, and Heather Locklear said they "had a blast" that final season. But Joan Collins who'd originally-praised Paulsen and his team for writing DYNASTY "with a much greater sense of fun" (as she told Oprah in the fall of 1988) soon changed her tune when she saw she was being cut back to only 13 out of 22 episodes for budget reasons, and it sounds like she went around whispering into the cast's ears to poison their views of Paulsen. And it also sounds like that worked. Many of them still diss his work, and Joan still publicly blames him for DYNASTY's cancellation -- all of which is ridiculous given the creative freefall and resulting ratings tumble, things that all the cast were acutely aware of, going on for several years before Paulsen ever got there.

I mean, Jeez.

One of the little ironies is that, in 1985, Esther Shapiro tried to get Paulsen for DYNASTY (after Duffy, Katzman, Art Lewis and Paulsen left DALLAS for a year) but only in the capacity as a lowly writer-producer over whom the Pollocks would have dominion. Realizing Spelling, Cramer and the Shapiros wouldn't yet give him autonomous creative control, Paulsen wisely turned the offer down and instead went over the KNOTS for one year. But had the brass granted Paulsen's demand for carte blanche when he'd first asked for it, our collective memory of the last half of DYNASTY would probably be a far more pleasant one than it is today. But they only agreed to give him the control he'd requested three years later once ABC was perched to cancel the series, the Pollocks having been given that interim three additional years to continue ruining it.

Esther later claimed that "the show was taken away from us" and that "the network wanted the original team back" -- which apparently wasn't true at all. And while I can understand the public relations impulse to circle the wagons and professionally defend your team from sometimes valid criticism, why then dump blame onto the one guy who came in at the eleventh hour and heroically patched the DYNASTY mess back together as well as anybody could've, under the circumstances?

Pearls. Swine. You all know the drill.

In any event, post-DYNASTY, Paulsen and the Shapiros became the best of buds. While the Pollocks, centenarians even when working on DYNASTY, simply died.

Would the Pollocks, who did makes genuine contributions to the program, have left the show entirely if someone had been placed in a position of authority above them to counter their mistakes and creative perversities? Maybe or maybe not. Weren't they gone during the first three or four episodes of Season 5 until the Shapiros realized those episodes, under the new team (Marchetta, etc..), weren't quite jelling? --- which is true, they weren't.

It's hard to believe the Pollocks would have left without being asked.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Little Horoscopic Detail for our more special readers: Bob Pollock, Laurence "is-she-really-dead?" Heath, and Dsvid Paulsen are all three Sun in Pisces/Moon in Aquarius -- I wonder which one probably has the Scorpio Rising....?

Which one has the Scorpio Rising?? No, not the wife killer, Heath... The Scorpio Rising has to be Paulsen -- it's the creative clarity and the fact that he didn't want to tell us his birth time (Scorpio Risings never want to give up their birth times).

There's a US daytime soap called The Doctors that aired from 1963-1982. Retro TV has been airing reruns and streaming the show starting with the 1967 episodes. From 1970-1975, The Pollocks were the headwriters of the show and much like Dynasty, they were very successful in terms of ratings. I knew them from Dynasty so their popularity here confused me, but they lasted long enough I was very curious about the quality of the show.

I've just reached their final month in 1975 and they were AWFUL! Much like Dynasty, they can come up with good story ideas and the casting is great, but they can't pace a story to save their lives. It's like they come up with one good idea and stick with it long after the story makes sense, because they can't come up with anything else. They had a woman pregnant for like 15 months and most recently had a crazy story where they brought a character back from the dead and took 8 months to reunite him with his family. It took them so long to reunite him that he went through two recasts in the process.

The even crazier thing is that they seemed to keep getting jobs despite their work not being great. I believe what helped them is that they can pitch a good story idea, I just wish they could execute them.

That really does sound exactly like their work on DYNASTY.

 

[colbyco]

Joan van Ark predicted a "quality change" on DALLAS in 1985 with their little military team of writers from KNOTS going over to commandeer the parent series.

Well, there was a change alright, but wasn't entirely positive.

It's really odd that Peter Dunne's work on Season 9 (the dream season) of DALLAS was so bloated and rambling, and many of us (but not all) didn't think it worked. Obviously, Dunne was a competent dramatist. Perhaps the problem was the loose narrative structure that worked so well for KNOTS, an experimental show not centered on a nuclear family, was more problematic for a program like DALLAS where, if the story structure wasn't tight and on point at all times, the whole thing fell apart. (...)

-I´m not a big hard Dallas fan or expert but I liked this season ...the women seemed stronger and it had this nice over the top drama and outfits (stolen from Dynasty) ... but I also like TNT´s Dallas ...

Paulsen picked up the pieces from the Pollocks' fractured and messy narrative, the creative state it had been in for years, and did an admirable job of pasting it back together -- as much was as was humanly possible -- to give DYNASTY one final decent year, despite the fact that the audience was already gone. And the actors didn't all appreciate the upturn in the writing under Paulsen in Season 9. Linda Evans loved her exit story, and Heather Locklear said they "had a blast" that final season. But Joan Collins who'd originally-praised Paulsen and his team for writing DYNASTY "with a much greater sense of fun" (as she told Oprah in the fall of 1988) soon changed her tune when she saw she was being cut back to only 13 out of 22 episodes for budget reasons,(...)

- The first time Joan wasn´t used for Dynasty was episode 3 ... so didn´t she know from the very beginning that she would be reduced? If your theory is right why did she praise Paulsen when she already knew she was reduced?

You did a really great post with all the writer/producer changes the shows had during the mid 80´s!!!!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

-I´m not a big hard Dallas fan or expert but I liked this season ...the women seemed stronger and it had this nice over the top drama and outfits (stolen from Dynasty) ... but I also like TNT´s Dallas ...

Some people liked both, it's true.

- The first time Joan wasn´t used for Dynasty was episode 3 ... so didn´t she know from the very beginning that she would be reduced? If your theory is right why did she praise Paulsen when she already knew she was reduced?

I've thought of that myself. And I don't know the answer. Perhaps she didn't yet know how much she would be cut as the season progressed. She also remains surly to this day that Forsythe wasn't cut at all. (She calls it "misogyny"). She and John had to sign a contract extension a few weeks into the season in order to finish out the year, and Joan didn't want to do so.

So her anger may have grown, especially as she saw Forsythe allowed to do (and be paid for) every episode. Both Paulsen and Esther have opined that these shows "need a Big Daddy" (which one wouldn't dare say today) but it might have had something to do with The Collection plotline about which Blake knew most of the secrets, but nobody else did, including Alexis.

But it's not just a theory -- Joan's been pretty direct over the years about her anger over being reduced to only 13 episodes in Season 9. And it affects what she says about Paulsen's work even today, becoming irresponsibly gleeful (when she accuses him of "causing" the series' cancellation) as she always does whenever she says something publicly she knows isn't true.

But that's just Joan.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Didn’t the Pollocks come up with sort of a new soap opera in season 2 writing in the characters of the previous season.
The majority consensus is. Season 2 was the best overall.
it was the Shapiros show they created it and was responsible for the success and the decline in quality as early as season 3.
Blake was the villain and Cecil was a good guy no Cecil is now the villain
Alexis was a sociopathic socialite painter no she’s a skilled business woman
They had 2 no 3 no 4 children
Maybe it was just a fluke a combination of casting and hype yes with some good writing that created a sensation that fizzled out by 1985-86 when there literally was nothing left but hype that died down and peaked.
Cast change of the main character before the show aired maybe foreshadowed the mess it really was and just got lucky with season 2 cast and scenarios coming together to create a sensation that couldn’t last.
Dallas seemed a lot more grounded and consistent in the same time frame, when Dynasty came along I thought Dallas was beginning to become repetitive and they lost their Jock Ewing, how many times was Sue Ellen going to leave and come back and take a drink, while in Dynasty we had these characters that were fresh and exciting, Blake Krystle Alexis Fallon that we hadn’t seen before on tv
Blake turning into Carey Grant was boring and not realistic, the last we saw of the real Blake was early season 4 when he was trying to take his sons kid away from him.
He really must have been in love with Linda Evans not wanting make believe characters to cheat on each other but by season 4 they were boring and so dumb that his ex wife who he was so easy to write off now outsmarts him in business over and over.
I’m going to destroy you
Ok you did it now how many times are they going to play that out and he rebounded each time, what was left to do, after she took everything away and he got it back and you’re still writing that she’s going to destroy you is just stupid. Maybe killing Alexis off during her hostage negotiations in season 6 would have at least forced new scenarios

looking back Dallas had much better writing
Kept their core cast together longer and had great characters come in Valene , Gary, Kristin, Donna , Katherine wentworth, Rebeca Wentworth etc while with the exception of Adam we got pointless characters like Kirby, Mark, Tracey yes Dex,
Peter Devilbus, lady Ashley, Dominique on and on .
It was the Shapiros that destroyed their own creation then making sure it was dead forever with that horrible reunion then that mess of a remake, not the Pollocks

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Didn’t the Pollocks come up with sort of a new soap opera in season 2 writing in the characters of the previous season.
The majority consensus is. Season 2 was the best overall.
it was the Shapiros show they created it and was responsible for the success and the decline in quality as early as season 3.
Blake was the villain and Cecil was a good guy no Cecil is now the villain
Alexis was a sociopathic socialite painter no she’s a skilled business woman
They had 2 no 3 no 4 children
Maybe it was just a fluke a combination of casting and hype yes with some good writing that created a sensation that fizzled out by 1985-86 when there literally was nothing left but hype that died down and peaked.
Cast change of the main character before the show aired maybe foreshadowed the mess it really was and just got lucky with season 2 cast and scenarios coming together to create a sensation that couldn’t last.
Dallas seemed a lot more grounded and consistent in the same time frame, when Dynasty came along I thought Dallas was beginning to become repetitive and they lost their Jock Ewing, how many times was Sue Ellen going to leave and come back and take a drink, while in Dynasty we had these characters that were fresh and exciting, Blake Krystle Alexis Fallon that we hadn’t seen before on tv
Blake turning into Carey Grant was boring and not realistic, the last we saw of the real Blake was early season 4 when he was trying to take his sons kid away from him.
He really must have been in love with Linda Evans not wanting make believe characters to cheat on each other but by season 4 they were boring and so dumb that his ex wife who he was so easy to write off now outsmarts him in business over and over.
I’m going to destroy you
Ok you did it now many Times and he rebounded each time, what was left to do

Well, Season 2 -- the first year for Joan and the Pollocks, was probably from hunger. And the show wasn't yet a hit, so the Pollocks were under pressure to help make it one. (Just as they were to "save" DYNASTY when they were tasked with getting it back on track during late-Season 6, and their work improved briefly). With a gun to their heads, they could do some decent work, but apparently only then.

Aaron Spelling was good with casting and basic concept, but he was a cynical shlock-meister who always seemed to ignore his hit shows after the first couple of seasons because he was off onto the next series idea so he could one day build the biggest private home in California. But the Shapiros had a better reputation for quality dramatic product and critically-acclaimed, socially relevant material. As such, they were busy developing movies for the studios and mini-series for ABC. And you can see their hands all over the first season of DYNASTY: fairly high-quality scripts and characterizations, if slightly too slowly-paced to grab as large an audience as they wanted.

On ABC orders, reportedly, the Shapiros stepped away from the show during Season 2, Spelling-Cramer became more directly involved, Esther's assistant Elaine Rich became her eyes and ears on the floor, and the Pollocks came in to guide the plotting. (Ed Ledding was co-line producer, and the only key staffer there for sparkling Season 2 who was gone for more illogical Season 3; his contribution is anybody's guess and he got pushed out). The tonal shift between the final episode of Season 2 and the first episode of Season 3 is pointed, if anyone cares to pay close attention.

In spring 1982, Warren Beatty, no dummy, called up Aaron Spelling the night the Season 2 finale aired and enthusiastically told Spelling, "You have the best show on television!" But Aaron called up the Shapiros and asked that they come back for Season 3 because the show was "out of control." Surely, Aaron being Aaron, "out of control" likely meant money. But the Shapiros indeed came back, the physical production became very organized, Ed Ledding was out, but narrative cohesion was also out and the static acting directive was in.

Why didn't Esther catch and corral the burgeoning problems? Was she too enamored of suddenly having a hit show that she turned a blind eye and a tin-ear to the weird mistakes, tonally and script-wise, that the Pollocks were ushering in? Esther Shapiro wasn't a stupid woman, and when forced to eventually address the program's issues during interviews, she had this frustrating knack for saying exactly the right thing about what they needed and how creative problems could and would be solved --- and then the show did none of those things.

Her skills from her youth working for Louella Parsons' office were fully on display, but control of the series' story structure were left fully in the hands of the Pollocks. (Leniency should not be granted to head scripter Ed de Blasio, however; his career pattern, from my observation, was that he started out writing good or goodish scripts for a series, with that "operatic" dialogue which caused Spelling to recommend his hiring, and then he'd quickly get lazy -- very lazy -- and strange lapses of logic would slip into his writing).

So perhaps it was a ground zero, 9/11 style dumpster fire in the writers' room with DYNASTY. So much potential in terms of casting and concept -- that potential quickly recognized by critics, audiences and the press -- but a writing team who just didn't know what to do with it other than toss in splashy ideas and events here-and-there, but otherwise seemed leaden and creatively dead in some ways. All that potential further wasted by Spelling who demanded 24/7 flat-lighting on the set, and was convinced "no one gives a damn" when you recast secondary characters." And by whomever made the decision to implement S.A.D. circa 1982 and stick with it, that yoke on the actors' necks not lessening until somewhere in Season 8, and may have done more tonal damage to DYNASTY than anything else, giving a self-conscious, dumbish feel to even well-written scenes.

Again, why didn't Esther step in and fix these things, and why did she rarely follow through on corrections she'd conceded were of optimum importance?

But the "success" generated from DYNASTY quickly seemed to overwhelm them, and the actual show itself slipped into something akin to an afterthought, an obligatory, tiresome duty that had to be grudgingly maintained in order to continue manifesting all the goodies the brass were enjoying. The actors, the characters (and the viewers) a necessary irritation at best.

It's funny how time changes things, however, and how one adjusts to disappointment. I no longer have as hard a time sitting through the shifts of Season 3, Linda's encroaching acting issues seem to develop more gradually as the series progresses than they once did, and now Seasons 7 and 8, often viewed as the dreckiest of the DYNASTY dreck, today merely come off as a little dull and only-slightly incompetent in execution (in large part because the incredibly grainy, ruddy, washed-out broadcast prints that went out across America and to the world from mid-Season 6 thru Season 8, have now been all but corrected -- at least on the Region 1 DVDs.... It's hard to overestimate the damage those cost-cutting film lab visuals did to the watchability of this series occurring exactly when the narrative was at its most apathetic and confused... Yes, Spelling chose to not utilize the lousy new video-editing techniques employed by Lorimar and other shows in the late-'80s, but what Spelling wound up allowing instead looked every bit as awful, albeit different).

Once the show was dead and even the producers no longer seemed to be paying attention to it (hence, the series relaxing in Season 8 insofar as S.A.D. was reduced and the excessive musical score was curtailed) Esther and Aaron finally decided they could bring Paulsen to sweep up for Season 9, and then turn out the lights when he was finished... Did they bring him in to take the blame for DYNASTY's imminent cancellation? Paulsen says no. But blame him they did anyway.

But finger-pointing, along with the merchandising, was always the main product.




The "original team" was reconvened in 1991 for the four-hour REUNION. And while it predictably stunk, especially in contrast to the sublime Season 9 which preceded it, it's amazing how good THE REUNION looked visually. For one thing, they had a new production designer (Elayne Ceder) but, despite the same cinematographer, Michel Hugo, the film lab-work was nearly perfect, so I guess someone decided not to cut corners in post-production.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

I’m sure the spin off didn’t help matters when coming back in season 6 from the high of being # 1 a few months before but obviously there was more attention to creating a new show when they really should have concentrated on coming back with a season opener that justified the summer wait.
Of course they needed to kill off some core cast members after that finale, who would seriously think killing 2 minor and I mean minor characters would justify the fans after that finale when everyone looked dead.
Michael, the king, Claudia, Dex, Jeff , Dominique who was useless should have been killed off maybe Adam or Amanda as well and if Joan Collins wouldn’t return for filming then do some serious rewrites at the least.
Say Alexis had died it takes a few minutes to write that Alexis died and they couldn’t find her body, maybe that would have helped with their negotiations with Collins. If she returned then have her seriously hurt not in a dungeon it was so incredibly lame
There was zero drama in the season 6 opener and even back in Denver Sammy Jo was still plotting that stupid switch, the news never reached her that everyone got shot it made no sense.
Start fresh, killing core characters after a scene like that is a must, why do it then except for the shock value but you need a payoff.
If they insisted on a spin-off then season 3 was the logical time or even 4
Colby’s could have been introduced during the Will reading for Cecil but all of a sudden there was an extended family out of nowhere.
1985 they saw that soaps were declining and comedy’s were coming back it was bad timing
Those Fallon scenes in early season 6 were cringeworthy, didn’t she call Peter Devilbis to come get her (which was stupid) the year before but now she’s suffering from Ammesia and just happens to run into a Colby. Then starts crying hysterically when she sees her house.
She left because she couldn’t come to terms with sexual feeling for Adam it was so lame
Didn’t she suffer a head injury and then the headaches came and I cannot see Pamela doing any of it.
They actually rewrote the wedding scene where she goes cray cray but inserted a scene where Adam comes into her bedroom to hug her, so horribly done.

If they couldn’t get her back then leave it alone.
The only thing and I mean only thing good about the Colby’s was casting Stephanie Beacham but also making Jeff and Fallon cousins was creepy to say the least.
Fallon wanted to be screwed by her daddy she had serious daddy issues
That’s why she wanted Cecil and Krystal’s left overs making her character fall for Miles didn’t make any sense character wise
Even making Jeff her endgame before PSM left didn’t either, Peter Devilbis was more of a match than either of them but the recast made the character younger as well

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I’m sure the spin off didn’t help matters when coming back in season 6 from the high of being # 1 a few months before but obviously there was more attention to creating a new show when they really should have concentrated on coming back with a season opener that justified the summer wait.
Of course they needed to kill off some core cast members after that finale, who would seriously think killing 2 minor and I mean minor characters would justify the fans after that finale when everyone looked dead.
Michael, the king, Claudia, Dex, Dominique who was useless should have been killed off maybe Adam or Amanda as well and if Joan Collins wouldn’t return for filming then do some serious rewrites at the least.
Say Alexis had died it takes a few minutes to write that Alexis died and they couldn’t find her body, maybe that would have helped with their negotiations with Collins. If she returned then have her seriously hurt not in a dungeon it was so incredibly lame
There was zero drama in the season 6 opener and even back in Denver Sammy Jo was still plotting that stupid switch, the news never reached her that everyone got shot it made no sense.
Start fresh, killing core characters after a scene like that is a must, why do it then except for the shock value but you need a payoff.
If they insisted on a spin-off then season 3 was the logical time or even 4
Colby’s could have been introduced during the Will reading for Cecil but all of a sudden there was an extended family out of nowhere.
1985 they saw that soaps were declining and comedy’s were coming back it was bad timing

Everybody blames the spin-off but I'm one of the few that disagrees with this assumption. DYNASTY was ripe for collapse exactly when it happened, and the seeds were sown two or three years earlier.

The stars with great Q-ratings, Nolan Miller's wardrobe, and a Spelling/ABC PR machine helped push DYNASTY to the top by the 1984/85 season. And when actors complained about the writing, they were told "but just look at the ratings" and/or given lip-service and dismissed...

In early-1985, Esther Shapiro and DALLAS/KNOTS creator David Jacobs were asked by TVGUIDE what they would do differently if they could produce each others' shows. Esther predictably said she make Miss Ellie "a much stronger character" and would generally strengthen all the women (did that mean have them get raped and have extra-marital affairs even more often?) while David Jacobs, pretending to swoon over DYNASTY's blue chip couture merchandising successes, said that DYNASTY'S fatal flaw is that it eventually "has to start concentrating on story," (because, obviously, despite being #1 by this point, the writing was still incredibly creaky).

William Bast & Paul Huson were apparently told that they could do whatever they wanted with THE COLBYS -- which is amazing, if you think about it. So the attention to detail on DYNASTY wasn't as usurped as some seem to think. In fact, the Pollocks seemed so creatively perverse, a little negligence probably would've helped... THE COLBYS was better-produced than the concurrent seasons of DYNASTY, but that was because of the presence of Huson & Bast on the spin-off, not the absence of the Pollocks on the parent series.

DYNASTY was headed downward even if THE COLBYS had never been conceived.

 

[Matthew Blaisdel]

Michael, the king, Claudia, Dex, Jeff , Dominique who was useless should have been killed off maybe Adam or Amanda as well

There was zero drama in the season 6 opener and even back in Denver Sammy Jo was still plotting that stupid switch

New York.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Apologies New York.
I guess the coup in Moldavia wasn’t news worthy since nobody died or maybe Sammy Jo didn’t watch the news or read news papers except the National Enquirer

 

[Tony]

-I´m not a big hard Dallas fan or expert but I liked this season ...the women seemed stronger and it had this nice over the top drama and outfits (stolen from Dynasty) ... but I also like TNT´s Dallas ...

- The first time Joan wasn´t used for Dynasty was episode 3 ... so didn´t she know from the very beginning that she would be reduced? If your theory is right why did she praise Paulsen when she already knew she was reduced?

You did a really great post with all the writer/producer changes the shows had during the mid 80´s!!!!

I remember watching the Oprah interview in October 1988 and Joan did praise the new sense of fun the show had - including going up in a balloon with Dex.
She also said that she was happy with the first two episodes that she filmed, and that the producers didn’t know there would be a season 10 though she’d be willing to guest star for them.
My guess is that as the season wore on her number of episodes were reduced with the contract extension.
In the first half I think the producers gave her time off to promote her book Prime Time as she was doing the round of talk shows then.
But when the episode order was increased to the standard 22, she probably felt she had lost out and that David Paulson was trying to replace her with the cheaper Stephanie Beacham.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

she probably felt she had lost out and that David Paulson was trying to replace her with the cheaper Stephanie Beacham.

Joan apparently did think that -- and Paulsen admitted to it. But that didn't make much sense because Beacham didn't want to be there and was only contracted thru a prospective Season 10 (which she hoped there wouldn't be so she wouldn't have to do it).

Collins' contract was up and, obviously, she had a much larger salary than Beacham. But Stephanie didn't plan on sticking around any longer than she possibly had to, so why transfer all of Alexis' wealth, power and stature to Sable?

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Odd that it even made it to a ninth season.
Stephane Beacham was incredible in 9 , a bit retooled from the Colby’s but gave Joan and Alexis a run for her money finally
Put it down after season 7 and that fiasco with everyone becoming nice
in the 2nd half and horrible recast of Amanda then dropping the character completely, after season 6 and that one it didn’t deserve
any more chances and the ratings couldn’t have been much better than what they got with 9.
I think the first big wtf moment n the series was making Joseph the arsonist. The first of countless moments.( were they all ideas the Pollocks put through.)
He was willing to murder Krystle as well to kill Alexis and everyone saying what a nice guy he was even Krystle and Blake, she went through a near death trauma and he almost lost his wife because his butler locked her in a cabin and set fire to it( decent man) . It made zero sense and clearly it wasn’t him in the cliffhanger wearing jeans.
Mark Jennings should have done it and intended to kill both women.
That character should have been a complex individual decent but who was unstable, a combo of Matthew and Nick ,a one season character that did a lot of damage, in the end not being able to get Krystle back and losing Fallon because of Alexis, instead of a bum deadbeat bad actor and no chemistry with Evans, and that cliffhanger resolve would have worked perfectly. Rejected by Krystle and blaming Alexis for lying to him uprooting his life with her lies about Krystle needing him.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Well, the "the butler did it" trope is a thing, and I guess they wanted to use that for --- I dunno, laughs?

Joseph had once detested Krystle for much the same reasons Fallon originally did. And I accept his motive to kill Alexis -- to prevent her from revealing to Kirby scandalous truths about her dead-but-not-dead mentally deranged mother, Alycia. Especially if we found out later that Alexis had carried the child she'd conceived via a tryst with drunken Joseph when Blake was out of town --- a story idea the CW's nuDYNASTY used and probably read on (and stole from) this very website, and where the hell are my residuals???

Damn you, EMPIRE and nuDYNASTY. Damn you all to Hades!

 

[Mustard]

The Colbys would have caused a feeling of burnout to settle in, however good or bad that you felt The Colbys or Dynasty of that era to be, especially as The Colbys remained very linked to Dynasty all the time, not like Knots Landing becoming its own thing away from Dallas for the most part. It was basically 55 and 53 episodes respectively combined over the 1985-86 and 1986-87 seasons of Dynasty and The Colbys, when it was previously 29 or 27 etc. episodes of Dynasty alone.

The Batman TV series. It was very prolific and very successful yet burned out quickly (just over 2 years), due to a combination of a 60 episode Season 2 (compared to 34 episode Season 1) and the largely repetitive formula, not to mention the slightly different format of Season 3 not catching on as well.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

In spring 1982, Warren Beatty, no dummy, called up Aaron Spelling the night the Season 2 finale aired and enthusiastically told Spelling, "You have the best show on television!" But Aaron called up the Shapiros and asked that they come back for Season 3 because the show was "out of control." Surely, Aaron being Aaron, "out of control" likely meant money. But the Shapiros indeed came back, the physical production became very organized, Ed Ledding was out, but narrative cohesion was also out and the static acting directive was in.

Site member @Gabriel Maxwell once said this about the shift:


"Season 2 production values successfully depict the (Sky Crest) ranch as a sprawling, breathtaking property brimming with activity — abundant extras playing the mountain resort staff and the guests, long stables with horses, cottages and even a busy swimming pool in Krystle's background.

Sadly, season 3 places Krystle into a Ranger's HQ cottage for her sedate opening scene and later in what might or might not be her own cottage at Sky Crest. But, Sky Crest as we had seen it in 2x22 is nowhere to be seen again. I wish we had actually seen Blake and Krystle enjoying a cup of that hot buttered rum he was talking about in an impressive hotel lounge with high windows and a crackling fireplace, right after their ordeal."

And then added:

"I do have to note, while watching the scenes from 2x22 and 3x01 today I could really see it. Whatever happened behind the scenes in the summer of 1982, it's there the second Krystle opens her mouth in the season opener — she sounds so stilted and fake. She's not even looking at the ranger when she talks to him.

Whereas only in 2x22, in her leisurely scenes at the ranch with Blake and later asking Toscanni, with worry in her voice, if he'd managed to find Blake — she's so natural and believable.

There were some nice touches in 3x01 — Alexis talking to Cecil through that hole was a hoot and I loved the ominous music while the wind covers Blake's lifeless body in filth — but there's an undeniable jarring shift in the overall tone."


Were the Pollocks responsible S,A.D.? Because Heston refused to allow it on THE COLBYS.

 

[GillesDenver]

But the Pollocks were executive producers of "The Colbys", like they were in "Dynasty" from seasons 6 to 9 (they were executive consultants in season 5).