User Reviews

Revolution in Moldavia which so rudely interrupted the wedding of Amanda Carrington (Catherine Oxenberg) and Prince Michael (Michael Praed) with the odious spray of machine gun fire resulted in a lot of overpaid night-time soap actors hitting the floor of the extravagant chapel perhaps with their characters deceased or merely playing dead.

Steven (Jack Coleman) watches as his beloved boyfriend Luke (Bill Campbell) succumbs to his wounds. Lady Ashley Mitchell (Ali McGraw) bought it too. Alexis, assumed dead was really just incapacitated as Joan Collins remained in extended contract negotiations. Claudia (Pamela Bellwood) ex-wife of a bunch of guys on this show, rumoured to be on the way out suffered no more than a grazed shoulder. Prince Michael was also winged.

The military junta comprised of formerly loyal soldiers aided by formerly loyal bureaucrats pack the surviving wedding guests/filthy imperialists on a one-way jet ride back to Denver.

If one happens to be entertained by watching terrible things happen to rich people (the main appeal of any soap opera I should think) then the shoot 'em up finish to Season 5 of Dynasty was a thoroughly enjoyable extravaganza.

In a season finale, a time when series regulars get killed off the logic suddenly was that you may as well have a cliffhanger where a whole bunch of actors who's contracts are up have a permanent exit from the show. It can be a plane crash or a boat sinking. Whomever has representation reasonable enough to lower salary demands can come back.

The brazen negotiating posture and violent product of it which aired on prime-time was viewed as being in poor taste. Some consider it the "Shark-Jump" (Moment in a series where it begins to decline) of Dynasty though it was the most discussed and watched TV moment on episodic network television of 1985 and had 60 million viewers. It was not the cliffhanger that was the Shark-Jump. It was this episode - the opener to the sixth season, one which saw the show drop from first place in the ratings to seventh.

Ali McGraw, who never should have been added was addition by subtraction. They should have dumped Catherine Oxenberg whom they would end up firing anyway but they wanted to keep the character as evidenced by the fact that they replaced her with a different actress in the same role a year later. Prince Michael could also have been killed off but his exit came later in the season.

As camp and absurd a series as it was one notes no decline or apex - just a lot of nice scenery, expensive clothing, luxury cars, bizarre directing choices and disappointed actors going through the motions of injecting humanity into characters with ruthless senses of entitlement. The original actor to play Steven - Al Corley split early on in the series. He was followed by Pamela Sue Martin - the original Fallon not long afterwards.

The series had deteriorated so much that they fell back on the old standby of a having one of the stars (Linda Evans) play the character she had been playing - Krystle Carrington, as well the role of her evil double Rita. Worse they became preoccupied with launching a spin-off series - The Colbys begun by having an amnesiac Fallon (Emma Samms) wandering L.A. looking for her past life and meeting Miles Colby (Maxwell Caulfield).

It's a wonder there wasn't a run on the grimy corporate squat of abc à la Quo Vadis? (1951) for the drastic disaster of this "reveal," which ended up showing that this show had at last run aground - or went belly up like the Poseidon except sinking to the bottom in the process. I bailed completely on this production afterwards, from that 40th-rate "Fallon" & even worse "Steven," a nasal voiced beadyeyed long nosed pretender whose only ... contribution, to put it generously, following this garbage dump episode was as a laugh festival in the opening credits (suitably muted over the horrendous overwrought "downgrade" to its theme), I can still see it when this pale imitation (no pun) was depicted failing utterly just with that gesture of yanking his tie off ("oooh!" So Not), let alone his water treading performance, to invoke Al Corley's deepset-eyed brooding intensity that had my weekly Dynasty gatherings figuratively flapping our Tara fans & clutching our pearls swooning over that boy. "Not anymore" with these radical bean counter caused changes that took all the grit, all the stuffing out of the scandalicious Carrington clashes & replaced them with uninspiring acting & retread storylines that were like watching a looped Code Blue resuscitation sequence, trying to force life back into a body with too many transplants in it. My outraged group, who if there'd been this communication method back then would have torched the resulting barren landscape where our favorite nighttime show had once flourished, were unanimous in our derision of these un-improvements - along with, contrary to other observations, much anger for that Locklear individual to not have gotten the chop. The roar of "SHE'S still alive?" about cracked the paint on my walls, + the river of invective afterwards would've made a tidal wave jealous. We did not "love to hate" that scheming screeching slip of a baby banshee, as with dear sweet J. R. Ewing; we just plain hated her from the gate as being no more than a dragging anchor on Steven's character, just bare malevolence personified (with far overrated looks & wanna-throttle-her voice) that could not rise to anywhere *near* the sophistication of Alexis in her dirty dealings. Her we of course loved to hate - & if the network penny pinchers had even dared to think of leaving her a bloodsoaked wreck in Moldy Avia or whatever it was called, I know there would have been a full-scale riot to leave them monkey suits shredded amongst the ruins. Whoever this "Samms" person was, aside from sporting a dull colorless name that did not recall Olde Hollywood glamor, her entire slate of eyerolling attempts to be Pamela Sue Martin "deux" didn't measure up to just 1 of the latter's performances - in which she said not a single word but like a classic Method actor unforgettably conveyed, when Daddy killed Steven's man, more powerful amazed shock at what had happened in her face alone (the Background Score in that moment seasoned things up quite well). Those people proved they deserved the money they were asking for. It's really something now to reflect that this production with its anemic replacements managed to stumble along for another 4 years, having started out with this way off the mark attempt to reconstitute "Who Shot J. R.?" - the audience numbers were merely anticipatory, not indicative of an "It's Quality Work!" assessment - but we who hold the original iteration in high(er) regard have much to enjoy before in more ways than 1 a gang of hardly terrifying terrorists laid waste to our beloved "Dynasty."