elaynez
I was given theD entire box set of the original Dynasty for Christmas and what a load of drivel it was.Everyone was wooden, John Forsythe especially, Joan Collins screeched her way through it like a demented banshee and the wigs were dreadful, a tsunami would not have made the casts hair move. Will not be watching again I found it strenuous to watch once!
calvinnme
.. and you have Dynasty! If you want to see a show that is very much about the excesses of the 80s, look no further. The show begins with wealthy but older Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) marrying his younger secretary Krystle (Linda Evans). The love in this marriage (initially) goes in one direction, but Krystle is not marrying for money. Instead she is trying to forget her married lover who is permanently tied to the mentally troubled Claudia.Blake's grown daughter Fallon is a promiscuous schemer. Blake's grown son Steven is sincere and gay. Remember, this is 1981 when this all starts, and twelve years later "Don't ask don't tell" is still considered controversial. The first season is rather a blah Dallas clone. But then at the end of the first season Blake kills Steven's lover - accidentally - and goes on trial for murder. Krystle discovers she is pregnant. And most of all "mama" shows up - Blake's long lost first wife, Alexis,who he divorced years ago - as a witness for the prosecution. This is no other than Joan Collins, and 25 years after her films at Fox she still can't sing, can't act, and can't dance, but wow can she can do evil camp with the best of them. She spends the next eight years being a thorn in Blake and Krystle's side, and this is the main conflict that dominates the rest of the series. Unlike Dallas, siblings Fallon and Steven get along just great and are mutually supportive - no feuding there.There are mysterious disappearances, mysterious reappearances, weird alliances and odd affairs, many of which are one way romances, and of course the occasional hair-pulling cat fight between Krystle and Alexis is always rewarding, but eventually Dynasty works its way into a corner with just too many characters. How do they get out of this and hold on a few more years? For Dallas it was to say that life was but a dream, but for Dynasty it took a massacre! I'll let you watch and see the rest. I have always wondered how formerly dignified actor John Forsythe could keep a straight face and utter some of those corny lines he was given such as "You killed my child!", but it's all part of the fun. And probably nobody would remember Joan Collins fondly today if not for this role that fit her like a glove. Instead she would be remembered as the actress whose box set of awful 20th Century Fox films from the 50s on DVD pretty much killed off classic film on DVD for all time.
kitkat_84101
After watching all the seasons and having it end the way it did, really made me MAD! I was never able to watch the complete series until I got it on DVD and watched the series from start to finish. Had I known how it was going to end I wouldn't have wasted my time! Having Krystal's character go out without really seeing her die in Switzerland, Fallon & Kristina being left in the underground tunnels with the lost art, do they die? Blake being shot and Dex and Alexis falling off the balcony....they left this with a huge cliff hanger and leaving the viewers wondering what happened. This was as big of a let down as the ending of the Soprano's was!
Greg Phillips-Hernandez
I watched Dynasty from episode one and very rarely ever missed the Wednesday night saga of the Carringtons. Having recently purchased the DVD set of the first season, I've been giving the show a lot of thought... Like many other TV shows both past and present, Dynasty started without a clear focus and eventually matured into something unique and far removed from what the producers originally intended. The show had two distinct eras: pre-Alexis and post-Alexis. No, Joan Collins didn't make or break Dynasty, but she gave it a heck of a fun "flavor." At its inception, Dynasty was a serious, almost somber account of the lives of the super rich Carringtons of Denver, CO. There was patriarch Blake, confused son Steven, spoiled brat Fallon, and Blake's new and very overwhelmed wife, Krystle. Having now watched a little of that first season, I find myself eagerly waiting for Alexis to turn the family on its collective ear! Dynasty's ultimate strength, and also its downfall, was in its becoming campy and larger than life. While some of us may expect the super-wealthy to act crazy, Dynasty added plot lines and characters that were the traditional soap-opera themes magnified with a huge budget, and beautiful people... illicit affairs, long-lost children, traumatic pregnancies, murders, trials, etc... There were frequent mis-steps (the Moldavian Prince, Michael, comes to mind as well as the entire 'The Colbys' series) and there were truly fun characters like Alexis and son Adam whom we loved to hate. But to me, the bottom line will always be that Dynasty was campy and much larger-than-life. It was a lot of fun those eight years, always wondering what would happen next...