They missed the boat by not making Frankie an overt bitch...

[Snarky Oracle!]

Frankie was a passive-aggressive, entitled harlot, yes, but the character was mostly pretty boring. Only Sable's resentment made it interesting, her sister's on-again/off-again sluttery with Jason Colby, Sable's husband.

But I just saw a decent 1965 episode of GUNSMOKE (ironically titled, "The Lady") in which Katharine Ross (who, like every young actor on their ascent at the time, guest starred several times on the popular western) played a doe-eyed innocent young ex-heiress traveling to San Francisco with her earnest aunt (Eileen Heckart) when a stage stop in Kansas leads to the aunt becoming engaged unexpectedly to a landowner after her brief stint as a saloon hussy... But Little Miss Ross wants to carry onward to California, and becomes a sudden just-add-water bitch-o-rama and hires an ugly would-be-suiter to murder her aunt's fiancé so the two women can complete their journey to Frisco, leaving Dodge City far behind in the dust.

Katharine Ross was surprisingly convincing as a nasty homicidal cow disguised as a fawn. You totally believed her. Very Kristen Shepard-esque. And you didn't really see it coming.

This is where THE COLBYS may have really dropped the ball: there was never really "a bitch" on DYNASTY'S spin-off... Connie was a tough old bird (sort of); we were supposed to see Sable as a villainess, but she was too layered and sympathetic to really be all that despicable; and while Frankie's blasé entitlement, strolling through her sister's house as if she owned it (and soon would), made her quite hate-able, the character was never kinetic enough to be all that interesting.

So perhaps what we needed to see was The Two Faces of Francesca -- a woman who was sweeter-than-sugar to Jason, Jeff and Constance, but a ghastly c**t to everybody else. Because, as it turns out, Katharine Ross could actually do it.

It might have given THE COLBYS a focus structurally the show never really had. By giving Sable more of a valid adversary other than Connie (too old and not long for the manor).

 

[Willie Oleson]

This is where THE COLBYS may have really dropped the ball: there was never really "a bitch" on DYNASTY'S spin-off...

There was also no resident bitch in classic DALLAS. Judith Ryland was the first.
I, for one, love THE COLBYS' subversiveness of the likeable villainess and the unlikeable heroine and I often find that Sable's villainy is little bit underestimated.
What Sable does and why she does it isn't always cut and dried, unlike Alexis who will take every opportunity to lash out (and from her own point of view she had good reason to do so).
I agree that the appeal of a villain is partiallly influenced by our perception of their victims, but THE COLBYS had this most intriguing narrative of "the wrong things happening at the wrong time" rather than a straightforward "I hate you and I will destroy you" story. In other words, it worked because they didn't do it like DYNASTY.

Furthermore (you know there's going to be much, much more) there's the regular complaint in the DYNASTY fandom that Alexis never had any strong adversaries, she never had to deal with serious defeat except for that hideous moment at the end of season 7).
Frankie is a strong adversary but in a passive, ignorant way. There's a great scene in season one in which Sable tearfully begs her sister to leave California, and I think that should tell us something about Frankie's personality. She's a trouble-magnet without having to make a single effort or to be a gleefully nasty bitch about it.
Her existence is the problem but she really wasn't meant to be in Jason's house. That happened because Connie believed that Jeff would benefit from her emotional support after Sable had tried to "Angela Channing" her nephew out of the mansion. And also because of the problems with Miles and Fallon.
This is exactly what made it so amazingly soapy: one person's action having an unexpected (not to mention, unwanted) effect on a seemingly unrelated issue. And it continued to snowball throughout the first season.

But THE COLBYS did miss the boat, and for two reasons, to be precisely.

1. I wanted a stronger water theme for DYNASTY II and naturally that would include a Disaster Movie style boat accident for a spectuclar season finale (instead of Monica's lame plane crash).
They also dropped the ball with Zach's stepson and the mystery of his mother's watery grave.

2. Somehow they failed to create a strong adversary for Jason Colby hence why they tried a little bit of everything. With the focus on the Zach-Sable romance Zach became sort of Renaldo Marchetta instead of the Cliff Barnes that the soap needed. Or at least in the way it was presented as an "epic feud".
There was a lot of potential in DA John Moretti - imagine all the courtroom battles - but for some reason they lost interest in this character.
Then we got antagonist Lucas Carter with yet another feud rooted in the past and we were simply expected to buy into it, but at least it produced a few great episodes.
Next up is back-from-the-dead psycho brother that had no potential to grow into something bigger.
Perhaps Zach Powers should have been more involved with the IMOS Project - and they should have shown more of the IMOS Project - and perhaps Zach could have been responsible for the alien invasion which, of course, is what happens when Dynasty tycoons want to conquer space.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I wanted a stronger water theme for DYNASTY II and naturally that would include a Disaster Movie style boat accident for a spectuclar season finale (instead of Monica's lame plane crash).

Oddly enough, so did I.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Zach's mansion

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I want to conflate Zack Powers with King Galen (always played by Montalban). Just as I want to combine Brady Lloyd with Daniel Reece (always played by Billy Dee). And Lady Ashley combined with Frankie (played by God-knows-whom) who was once engaged to Blake in the '50s before Alexis pushed her out of the way.

 

[Monzo]

Instead of turning Francesca into a bitch, I would have presented her as a mysterious woman—someone who makes the audience wonder whether or not she can be trusted. It could have become a recurring theme of The Colbys that something from the past kept surfacing to make Francesca look bad.

For starters, Francesca should have told Jeff that she had left him because she was suffering from persistent postpartum depression and viewed separating from the child as her only form of self-treatment. Sable could counter that she never noticed any signs of depression, leaving it unclear who is telling the truth.

Before the planned wedding to Roger, Francesca’s stepson (who could have become a love interest for Monica) was supposed to show up and claim that Francesca had killed his father. It would have turned out that all of Francesca’s husbands (just how many were there?) had died shortly after the marriage. Francesca would have insisted on her innocence, and ultimately, it would have been revealed that the stepson was a psycho who had killed his father himself.

Sable should have recalled how Francesca had been determined to care for her terminally ill mother. Although doctors had given the mother a few more months to live, she passed away within weeks while in Francesca’s care. Sable intended to delve into the past and question the former doctors and nursing staff. Ultimately, Francesca would confess to Jason that her mother had asked for help to die and that she had granted that wish with a heavy heart. This selfless act would convince Jason that Francesca was the right woman for him, and nothing would ever tear them apart—whereas Sable believed her sister had simply been overwhelmed by the task of caring for her dying mother, just as she had been with baby Jeff, and had killed her.

Francesca could have claimed that her father had molested her when she was very young—a notion completely incomprehensible to Sable. Under hypnosis, Francesca would have recalled that it was not her father but her uncle (perhaps Alexis's father?) who had abused her; that would have made Sable even angrier, given that Francesca had falsely accused her beloved father.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Sable intended to delve into the past and question the former doctors and nursing staff.

She could accidentally find out that she had been adopted by the Scotts thus making herself feel second best to Frankie thus given her even more reason to hate her sister.
In the case of Sable it's always "be careful what you wish for". In the case of Alexis it's "be careful what you're wearing".
Come to think of it, she did tell Frankie that she's always been jealous of her. I believe this happened in one of their first scenes (together) in The Colbys.

I have no reason to doubt Sable's love for Jason but she also told Arthur Cates that she "loved being Mrs. Jason Colby". And that's what I meant when I said that Sable's motives are often ambiguous. Did she really want the very best for Miles, or was it way to secure her own position? Probably both, but I'm just saying that Alexis was far more transparent in what she tried to achieve through her children.
When Krystle visits her to inform that Steven is still alive and that she's welcome to visit the house, you can almost hear the machinations playing inside Alexis' head.
I'm sure she loves Steven, but her son was also a precious connection between her and Blake. Just like Scott Cassidy proved to be a very welcome family connection between Sable and Jason. Not only that, Scott being the first Colby grandchild would effect the family hierarchy and that was a great opportunity to defeat Jeff and Frankie.