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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 444455" data-attributes="member: 57984">Some people complained about the violence, yes, but that was silly. (Standards & Practices, the network censors for television, only existed to control sex and violence when there was little sex and violence on television to control. Once that sex and violence went out of control in the 21st century, naturally Standards & Practices was essentially disbanded).What infuriated me at the time in May 1985 was a). the sheer physical competence of the scene in which they were killing all the actors (in contrast to the klunky dialogue scenes so dumb with idiotic dialogue delivered through S.A.D.) and b). my knowing they would sweep this huge, ominous cliffhanger under the rug in keeping with the way DYNASTY swept all their storylines under the rug. (Years later, Paulsen observed that "DYNASTY never paid off on their cliffhangers").And we weren't wrong.The problem wasn't the massacre; it was the painfully predictable fact that they'd do nothing with it in the fall, despite it being written up in the press for four months during the summer... Everybody got up, wiped their brows, and said, "Pheww! That was a close one!" Yes, yes, Lady Ashley technically died in the next room and Lick Feeler succumbed in a hushed, not-too-bad moment which led Steven at bedside to pass his usual kidney stone. But we otherwise were told little-to-nothing about why it happened, other than Theodore Bikel asking Krystle to help the guerillas and her wadding up a piece of paper unconvincingly. And this lame follow-up is what caused the viewers to realize that DYNASTY was just a show about pretty clothes, stilted verbal face-offs, and melodramatic events, but didn't really tell an actual story. (Something some of us had been grumbling about sourly for two or three years). Having Krystle in an attic for 10 episodes didn't help. Nor did King Galen's boring exploitation of Alexis which seemed to be going nowhere.Season 6 could have been DYNASTY's peak year, one which concluded with Alexis' triumphant takeover of Blake's company, mansion and estate. But it remained just a dull blur of the usual jealousy triangle non-plots highlighted by the occasional evening gown and facial slap.So the massacre was a symptom, not a cause, of DYNASTY's downfall.Camille Marchetta came up with the Moldavian massacre idea (and she probably came up with "Who Shot J.R.?" five years earlier -- although she's reluctant to take credit for the iconic DALLAS cliffhanger, and they're reluctant to give her credit as well). But, as Rita Lakin (a talented scripter who toiled unhappily on DYNASTY's Season 7) said about The Pollocks, "they weren't really proper writers," and Marchetta herself said they deliberately sabotaged narrative logic in order to make the show "surprising."And everything was filtered through the Pollocks, regardless of which writers were on staff at any given time. (Which is why, more or less, Paulsen refused to join the show for Season 6 when originally asked). The Pollocks kept DYNASTY consistently dumb. And dumbness was never something Aaron "Nuns-in-a-stripclub" Spelling ever shied away from, much less superceded. <img src="https://www.looper.com/img/gallery/the-most-twisted-weddings-in-tv-history/dynasty-the-moldavian-massacre-1764013379.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?