Frankie:The thinking man's bitch

[Daniel James Clarke]

Seems to me that Frankie was one of the most devious, clever and manipulating bitches on primetime. You had to admire her. She had her cake and ate it.

Callous, calculating and beautiful, Frankie played on the heart strings of all those around her until they fell for her act. Never was a soap opera character so emtionally void, detached, cold and egocentric. Anything and everything she ever did was for her sole purpose.

She carries on with her sisters husband for years and yet makes Sable out to be the bad person, doesn't tell her son who his real father is and still acts like mother of the year, treats Roger Langdon like dirt and plays him for all he's worth, continues her love affair with Phillip and turns brother against brother. Finally, in the cruelest trick of all, tries to commit suicide. What a slut.:cheers:

[mattwuk]

Awww, poor Frankie!

I always liked her too, she obviously fooled me then.

[Daniel James Clarke]

She fooled everybody Matt. Except Sable.

[LaurenConstance]

don't forget one of her coldest moves---abandoning her child to be raised by his bachelor uncle and having no contact with her son until he was given $500 million. Nice!

[grant jennings]

I always thought they got it wrong making Sable "the bitch" and Frankie "the good girl". Sable was a devoted wife and mother who fought like a lioness to protect those closest to her while Frankie went from man to man.

[AdrianCuldesac]

This is so funny! Growing up and watching this back in the day, I LOVED Sable and HATED Frankie for the same reasons posted here. I think I was biased, because in my teenaged, shallow mind back then, I thought Sable was waaaaay more beautiful than self-righteous Frankie. Go figure. It's about time someone paid Sable her due. Thanks guys!

[willie oleson]

Well, there are 2 different issues that puts Sable in the antagonist corner.
Jeff didn't move to California to CLAIM those shares, they were given to him by Constance, but Sable didn't want him anywhere near Colbyco Enterprises.
You could say that she tried to protect her children's inheritage, but no-one can deny that Jeff was a Colby too.
It wasn't his fault that he was raised in Colorado by Cecil instead of Belvedere.

Jason and Frankie's love affair was rather dubious, they cheated on Sable thus making her the victim.
However I think the writers wanted to justify their actions for no other reason than that they were Jeff's real parents.
Also, Jason was presented as someone who felt trapped in marriage while his heart belonged to another woman - that's not unusual, I've seen it in many other movies and series.
The fact that his current wife opposed his "lost son" for several reasons only added to Sable's troublemaking image.
He wanted out, she didn't. Just like Alexis she'd rather see him in jail than letting him marry another woman, let alone her sister (which in all fairness does make the betrayal more difficult to deal with).

What makes The Colbys less "black & white" is that, unlike Krystle, Frankie wasn't the sweet innocent wife, but the adulteress.
I'm not very familiar with the Colbys background history, so correct me if I'm wrong here:
Were Frankie and Jason lovers before he married Sable?
If Sable had stolen him from Frankie first, tricked him into marrying her, that would make Jason & Frankie "the love couple that was meant to be".
IMO this would have worked better for making Sable The Bitch character.

And I truly believe the writers wanted to portray her that way, but instead of a defined "good vs. bad" point of view it was more like a story of unfortunate events (...)
We can sort of understand Sable's reaction when Jeff's joins the Colby clan but it doesn't justify her outrage and schemes.
Similar with Angela Channing who didn't want to share as much as a grape with her nephew.

[Donna Reed IS Ellie]

Both Frankie and Sable and even Connie had their bad sides, and that is one thing I loved about the Colbys. It wasnt "Good vs. Evil," it was more realistic in that fact that the ladies had many sides. I think originially Frankie was supposed to come across more devious, but something changed along the way. In the same way, Sable became more sympathetic towards the end of season 2. Connie was usually portrayed as the noble matriach, but you can also view her as a compulsive meddler. She was always butting into Jason and Sable's marriage (I remember comments about Connie standing in the bride's place in Jason and Sables wedding photos). She even invited Frankie to California and encouraged her adulturous affair with Jason. Frankie and Connie, in my mind, were just as bad as Sable in their own way.

[Tony. .]

I'm rewatching The Colbys courtesy of LBColby, thanks LB! The cast is good with the exception of Katharine Ross and Emma Samms. They're both horrible actresses! I'm disappointed re-watching Katharine in hindsight.

[Ben]

I watch the Colbys in just the same channel but for the first time. We are now at episode 19. Up to now Frankie is depicted as having had a one night stand with Jason before he met Sable.

Jason and Frankie are very much in love and it seems that for some unfortunate reasons they never got together.

It is though mentioned on several occasions clearly that Jason did love Sable until she turned a bit too much price worshipping in her latter years.

[Brian Carrington Colby]

I never thought of Francesca as a full-on conniving bitch, plotting behind Sable's back, waiting for the chance to strike and destroy Sable's marriage and snatch Jason away. Frankie was just too messed up underneath it all to be that calculating.

The latter half of Season 2 of The Colbys really revealed how fragile Frankie was. I do believe that Jason was the love of Frankie's life, and yet Phillip had a hold on her emotionally as well. It is known that at the time or their one night of passion, she couldn't handle her love for Jason, what with being married to Phillip who was away in the military, and his eventual "death/disappearance" didn't help. She fled the Colbys and made her infamous deal with Cecil to turn over Jeff to him so that Jeff would be Cecil's heir.

And fleeing is what Frankie became good at. All of Season 1 Francesca is trying to escape, to run away, thinking that it will make things better for Jeff, Jason, Sable, etc. Every second episode it seems she's packing a suitcase and hightailing it out of Belvedere. Every decision Frankie makes is always the wrong one, her quickie marriage to Roger a prime example. That marriage was just another form of escape. The more Frankie thinks she is doing the right thing, the worse she makes it for everyone, including herself. This pattern is broken somewhat when she finally stops running from herself and comes to terms with her love for Jason at the end of Season 1. For most of Season 2 Frankie has more of a backbone, is more at peace with herself, able to accept her love for Jason and is more equipped to fight for him against Sable. Of course, this all comes crashing down when Phillip returns from the dead towards the end of Season 2.

I do wish more was explained as to why Frankie fled California when Phillip "died" and what the exact story was behind her pact with the devil/Cecil. I think Frankie says that she fled due to shame, and yet, I can see Cecil finding out about her one night with Jason and using it to his advantage, especially if Cecil was "cut out of the will" and the Colby family at this point in time. Just my surmising what might of been. Another thing I wish they explained is how exactly did Jason meet Sable? Jason states they met after his tete a tete with Francesca. And Sable states she knew Phillip first before Francesca, intimating that they were a couple before he met Francesca and married her. It would of been interesting to know what it was about Sable that drew Jason to her. Was it because he was hoping to find something of Frankie in her, or did he truly love Sable for herself? It's obvious that he never truly got over his feelings for Francesca as the years went by at any rate.

[Colbyco]

I never thought Francesca was the good one and Sable the bad one. They both had their good and bad sides -but Francesca stole away her sisters husband and destroyed the family. I always felt more symphatie for Sable and never liked Franky....

[grant jennings]

Frankie was passive agressive (actually she's close to how Alexis was originally conceived before Joan Collins asked the writers to make her more of a full-on bitch), Sable was much more up-front. I don't buy the explanation that Frankie left Jeff with Cecil and left the country for money reasons, her sister was married into the same family, I can't imagine they would have cut her off. Frankie was a widowed teenager with a newborn, she may have even had post-partum depression. I think Frankie had a nervous breakdown and was clearly unfit to raise a child. The logical thing would have been for her to leave baby Jeff with her sister and brother-in-law (Sable and Jason) to look after until she recovered. Why this didn't happen mystifies me. I can only suspect that Connie, as usual, interfered. I think at that time when Frankie and Sable were still close and Sable was hoping to hae children of her own that Sable would have gladly looked after her nephew. After leaving Jeff with Cecil, Frankie apparently didn't attempt to reclaim him (though we do know that Jeff attended her wedding to Peter Hamilton - he wanted to push Peter's head into the punch-bowl), as always she avoided confrontation.

[Jason!]

They cut off Cecil, Philip and Jeff. Why not Frankie?

[It Was All A Dream!]

Katharine Ross was like Ali MccGraw,good movie actress but wooden on a TV soap,she did get better though.

[patplante]

I didn't like Francessa character. Shes don't know what she wants even if when she get it.