Don't Ask Me Why, But We Were Talking About Dynasty...

[miss_s_b]

... and we went to look up how much the DVDs were because we all remembered it being so funny, and we came across this description for season one [with added comments by me]:

Alexis Colby is divorced from Blake Carrington, a fabulously wealthy oil magnate who marries his secretary [and her cast iron hair] Krystle Jennings at the show's inception; the jealous Alexis, head of her own oil corporation [aren't we all?], does everything she can to destroy their union. The rest of the cast is comprised of Blake and Alexis' four children: the promiscuous amnesiac Fallon [isn't she the one played by Doctor Quinn Medicine Idiot who gets abducted by aliens?]; Adam, who was kidnapped at birth [WHAT?]; the sexually ambivalent Steven [what you mean he can't decide if he wants a shag or not?]; and Amanda, who has run off to Europe. During the first season, Krystle adapts to her new role as an aristocrat, and Blake tries to work through his problems with his gay son [ah, so ambivalent means GAY! I see...], though he is eventually put on trial for the murder of his son's lover [because murder is the best way of working through one's problems]. Episodes include: 'The Honeymoon', 'The Chauffeur Tells A Secret' [snerk], 'The Beating' [of the bishop], and 'The Birthday Party' [presumably not the one by Harold Pinter, although James suggests he'd like to see episodes written by Joe Orton and Alan Bennett...].

Seriously, doesn't that sound like the funniest TV series EVER? Why don't they repeat it more often? Especially when the DVDs are so bloody expensive.

Comments

[karohemd]

I had to watch Dynasty at the time because my mum was watching it and from what I can remember (this was 30 years ago!) some of it was actually quite dramatic occasionally with Flash Gordon (classic serial) style cliffhangers. I also had a thing for Fallon.
Never watched Dallas, though.
Funny anecdote, Dallas was first (its title remained in German as it was a place name) so when Dynasty came along they didn't translate the title literally but called it The Denver Clan.

ETA: Just checked, it's on lovefilm.

[miss_s_b]

I used to watch it with my mum too. The only things I recall clearly was the catfights between Joan Collins and Linda Evans, and Krystle's amazing unmoving hair.

[karohemd]

I don't remember any details just the "Argh, we have to wait a week to find out what happened." Yes, the hair was impressive. :o)

[miss_s_b]

Had to wait over two years after they cancelled it...

[etoile]

Christ, I thought Sunset Beach was bad o.o

[miss_s_b]

Fallon gets kidnapped by aliens in the spin-off series, and then they drop her back off in the main series. It's bloody hilarious.

I may have put a bid in on a box set of season 1 on ebay...

[etoile]

Bwahaha, I might have to borrow it :D

[miss_s_b]

Apparently it doesn't get REALLY good til season two...

[magister]

I think episodes of Dynasty in the style of '60's playwrights is a bloody good idea. The Pinter episode would involve practically no dialogue and a sense of indefinable menace. The Orton one would involve various people losing their trousers and hiding in cupboards. In then Bennett one, everyone would decamp to Yorkshire and complain that there's a chip in the sugar bowl. Add one by John Osborne where eveyone's very angry and the oil company's a metaphor for Suez and I think we've got something.

[andrewhickey.info]

Of course, you know why Pinter had so little dialogue in his pieces, right?

He got his start writing sketches for revues (his first proper writing credit was for additional material on a show that Peter Cook wrote for Kenneth Williams) and you got paid by the minute, so he got more money by putting (pause) before every line and having the dialogue consist mostly of repetition of previous lines. It's really, *really* odd listening to the soundtrack of those revues, and hearing Kenneth Williams doing Pinter, though when you think about it Pinter's work wasn't that far from, say, Hancock's Half Hour...

[magister]

Thinking about it, you're right, the two really aren't that far apart. It's an interesting thought. It's the sense of misery and desperation, isn't it?

On similarity between stage drama and comedy, I remember reading an interview with Samuel Beckett from the '60's about casting for Waiting for Godot. He was asked about what casting he would have seen as ideal - the journalist was thinking in terms of would he want the new wave o actors like Harris, Burton or O'Toole or the old guard of Olivier or Gielgud. Beckett completely floored him by saying that when he'd written the play, he'd imagined Vladimir and Estragon as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, with Buster Keaton as Lucky and W C Fields as Pozzo. Don't know about you, but I can really see that working.

[andrewhickey.info]

Oh absolutely. People get Waiting For Godot very wrong -- it's an absolutely hilarious play. Keaton in particular strikes me as perfect casting. I always wanted to see the production from the early 90s starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson (back when they were both still funny) myself...

[magister]

My brother saw that back when he was doing A-levels and absolutely loved it. Says it was one of the funniest things he's ever seen. I saw the production a few years ago - Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup. Never having seen anything by Beckett before, I really didn't know what to expect. I was surprised by just how funny it was.

[drunkwriter]

I've only seen it in French, with Roman Polanski as Lucky. I think it was a production directed by Beckett himself, and it was hilarious.

It's very much in the vaudeville tradition, and I wish to bits I'd seen Stewart, McKellen, Callow and Pickup - even the back-up cast when Roger Rees joined would have been awesome.

[bagpuss]

I saw the Mckellan/Stewart version and while they looked to be having enormous fun and there were funny moments I just didn't get it. I think I tend to prefer movement in the story/characters which really isn't the point for Waiting for Godot

[magister]

Well, very true. Someone or other once said that it's "a play in which nothing happens - twice." It's as good a description of it as I can think of.

[bagpuss]

I thought it was the same nothing happening 3 times but I get your point

It was well done by very good actors and I think a very good play just not my cup of tea, I prefer something slightly lower brow like shakesperean comedy

Did Dynasty have many identical twin dramas I can't remember

[sir_guinglain]

Point of information - Pamela Sue Martin and Emma Samms played Fallon - I don't think either played Dr Quinn, who was Jane Seymour...

[miss_s_b]

It IS 25 years since I watched it... Was Jane Seymour ever in it?

[sir_guinglain]

I don't think so. A lot of the stereotypes associated with Dallas by lazy journalists were actually Dynasty innovations; Dynasty, unlike Dallas, never pretended to be serious drama.

oh dear god

[po8crg]

Emma Samms was my first crush. I had forgotten. 1985 (when she was first on) I was 12, which would have been about right.

Re: oh dear god

[sir_guinglain]

There's a writer in a 1980 issue of Starburst magazine who had lusted after Emma Samms in Arabian Adventure, and expected that she would turn up in Doctor Who; but it was not to be. Yet...

[andrewducker]

http://unblockedpiratebay.com/index.php?loadurl=/torrent/5119439/Dynasty.Season.1.DVDrip.XviD

[hunningham]

I was banned from watching it because I spoilt it for others. I was a snotty 17 year old, and spent each episode being very very sarcastic. No one needs sarcasm in their soap, and my father eventually threw me out.

[pmoodie]

Approach Dynasty with caution! I got El the first season of Dallas as a "wild card" Christmas present several years ago, and before we knew it, we were hooked! We've just started watching the 14th season!!! These programmes are a pure hit of grade-A cheese that's hard to resist, so don't buy the first DVD set unless you're prepared to get all of them...

Dynasty = high school and college TV

[(Anonymous)]

Good description, Dallas positioned itself as salacious drama, whereas Dynasty went right for tawdry soap opera. Emma Samms and Alexis' bf in later seasons were main characters in a soap over here, too, which made the link that much more obvious. I'm not aware of Jane Seymour being in Dynasty or any soap operas, but she was the miniseries queen. Pamela Sue Martin was more fun as Fallon because she really brought out the character's reckless unpredictability--and unfortunately that is why she didn't hang around too long.

Items of note: the elaborately staged catfights between Krystle and Alexis, Alexis' quintessential 80s suits and makeup colors (it became nearly impossible for blondes like me to find good lipstick colors) and the romantic scenes between Krystle and Rock Hudson, who turned out to have AIDS early in the AIDS outbreak when no one was sure of all the ways it could or could not be passed.