As a huge fan I thought I'd put his reviews of seasons into a single post each. Making it easier to find the episode your looking for.
First; season 3.
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In "The Plea", the first episode of the third season, there is one really beautiful, haunting scene that takes place in the nursery between Jeff and Claudia. "No one's gonna sleep in this house tonight," she tells him. She talks about Matthew and Lindsay, two long gone characters that hardly anyone cares about anymore, least of all Jeff whose new born son is missing. He is repulsed by Claudia's grief and her suggestion that they might now in the same position. She begs him to hold her, to kiss her, but he fends her off. It's possibly DYNASTY's last genuinely emotional moment until Season 9. Every other scene is tinged with camp. Blake and Krystle's rainstorm reunion on Shoulderpad Mountain is quite sweet, but also laugh out loud funny. Even better and more bizarre are the scenes at Denver Memorial --Alexis's oxygen tent speech to Cecil is hilariously acted and filmed. Then there's the cliffhanger pile up as Blake is admitted to the hospital and news of Little Blake's kidnapping reaches them. Alexis's direct to camera speech about Adam's kidnapping, and Kate Torrance's deathbed wailing as she watches DYNASTY on TV, then take the action to an even more shamelessly ridiculous level
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Episode 2: "The Rooftop". The writers do a clever job of smuggling Adam's kidnapping into the existing backstory--Krystle suggests the reason Blake was so hard on Steven is because he knew his first son would have turned out differently, and Blake describes how he built Denver Carrington into an empire as a tribute to his first born. This is also a sneaky way of sentimentalising the motives for some of Blake's crueller behaviour during the first two seasons. There's an interesting scene where Fallon tells Jeff that, if she'd known about the kidnapping, she might have gone through with the abortion rather than risk her own child suffering the same fate. Slowly but surely, the Carringtons as a whole are being redefined as victims, simply because they're rich and successful and other people--envious people--aren't. (A very American mentality.) As the show ventures further and further outside of the mansion (thereby losing that swirling sense of claustrophobia it had during Season 2), there is an increase of secondary characters, most of whom--the gravedigger, the motel manageress who turns Claudia into the police, the hostage negotiator, the hillbilly mourners at Kate Torrance's funeral--are depicted in a crude, even grotesque, manner, increasing the sense of the Carringtons as beautiful people surrounded by a bunch of freaks from Central Casting.
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"The Wedding". Claudia's last scene: Pamela Bellwood is touching to the end, but I can't escape the feeling as Claudia reaches the bottom of the stairs and identifies Blake as "Matthew's friend" and Krystle as "always so kind to me, even when I wasn't kind to her", that they've won"--whoever "they" are--the revisionist 80s, perhaps--the "goodbye, integrity; hello, Jack Coleman" years. Pamela Sue Martin is especially beautfiul in this episode but the heart sinks when Fallon talks about finding herself and wanting to be worthwhile, although her "Steven's the boy, Fallon's the toy" speech is cute. We get our first glimpse of what will become La Mirage, although I prefer it in its original La Mirada state. There's an intoxicating sense of bigness in Adam's first scene with Blake where the father denies the son and of a new era beginning in the kitchen scene between Alexis and Krsytle where Alexis leaves the keys to the studio behind, but already the status of her character has been diminished--as she whines about being the last to know that Little Blake had been found, the humourless, self pitying, "eccentric aunt" version of Alexis begins to surface.
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"The Will". It's part bemusing, part amusing to see how overwrought Alexis becomes after Cecil's death. Jeff being at her side during a hospital related tragedy echoes a similar scene with Blake after Krystle's miscarriage. In each case, a lasting bond is forged and Jeff becomes the surrogate son. Here, he and Alexis introduce their sweetly ridiculous gardenier anecdote, altering their back story in the process. Jeff and Blake also have a bizarrely intense scene, in which Jeff declares he loves Blake "from my soul" and for a second you think he's gonna kiss his face off. How appropriate that Fallon should hire a theatre designer (Simon McCorkindale--jeez, what a tight arse he is) to design her hotel, as it never succeeds in convincing as real location anyway. Fallon wants La Mirage to be "a fantasy land", but DYNASTY's already a fantasy--we need something of substance within that to hold onto! "Can Fallon be a good mother and run a hotel?" is a debate that runs through this episode. Blake is apparently deeply concerned over the question, but it has no substance. It's like skimming through a glib magazine article about 80s women "having it all". Fallon's new found earnestness is quite disturbing--Cecil is dead, but their once strong bond has been deleted from her memory banks. The final scene between Alexis and Adam is terrific, and beautfully set up. Really, Alexis is a dependent--she needs Adam to be her son, all the more so when she hears that Blake has rejected him.
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"The Siblings". At the top of the episode, Alexis appears in Jensens, then in Blake's office, then in Jensens again, all in the space of five minutes. Time and space becoming nonexistent. Blake and Krystle fly to Billings and back in less time that it takes me to nip out to the corner shop for a pint of milk. Alexis and Adam are electric together. It's fascinating to watch the power shifting in their relationship. In the last episode, he was looking for her acceptance, and now when he threatens to return to Montana, she becomes desperate. "Why did you stop looking for me?" he demands. Blake is at his best when halo slips and so it proves during his brusque interrogation of Dr Edwards ("Mr Carrington, you're very hostile!") The scenes involving Adam's identity are treated with a kind of swooning, operatic gravitas. Adam during dinner at the mansion, quoting Oscar Wilde. Sneering at Blake. His instant contempt for his brother: "Steven. I've heard about Steven.". Snarling homophobia--that's what's been lacking from this series! Blake and Alexis--scared of their own son. Fallon and Adam playing kissy face. Presumably, these are the scenes that will somehow lead to her face-changing, amnesia-inducing incest rape fantasies. Two new locations that become fixtures till the end of Season 6: Fallon's office at La Mirage (boring) and Alexis's penthouse (sure, it's big and it's eighties, but it lacks the character and atmosphere of Season 2's Petit Trianon). Alexis, dressed in flapper girl mourning: "Welcome, Krystlesfirsthusband!" Geoffrey Scott doesn't get a chance to speak, and it's probably his best scene of the series.
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"Mark". Mark's total lack of interest in Alexis's scheme and Geoffrey Scott's dead behind the eyes performance means that his storyline gets off to a lame start. The total lack of character motivation and subtext creates a vacuum which is filled with flashbacks of Mark and Krystle's marriage and apparitions of Krsytle dressed as Billie Jean King. In spite of copious amounts of KY Jelly being smeared on the camera lens during these flashbacks, Krystle ends up looking far older than she does normally (I guess it's the hair), thus the scene in which Mark deflowers this middle aged woman on their wedding night is totally bizarre and not a little sqeamish. Thse montages and visions propel Mark to Denver and La Mirage where Fallon, fresh from snogging a man without realising he's her brother, offers a job to a tennis coach without realising he's her father's apparent wife's real husband. Oh, by the way, does it matter that Mark's entire backstory has changed? In Season 2, he was an insurance salesman called Sam who remained in Ohio after splitting with Krystle; now he's an international tennis bum. The gloves are off between Jeff and Adam, after Jeff learns about a deal Adam is cooking up with the Ahmed brothers. Adam boasts about his and Fallon's brush with incest, and accuses Jeff of having "a kinky laugh" about it. Adam turns down Blake's offer of a bright red penis mobile, preferring to talk about the beauty of Jeff's skin and how pretty he is. Blake's sphincter contracts, almost imperceptibly. Fallon slaps Adam, and Krystle shouts at Fallon for "causing Blake pain". This is one of the last times we see Krystle and Fallon in conflict, and Pamela Sue Martin zones out halfway through the scene. We learn Joseph has a daughter, which must mean that: [a]Joseph has working genitalia, [b]Joseph has had sex, and [c]Joseph has had sex with a woman--none of which sit very comfortably with what we already know about the character. Ironically, this attempt to humanise the character has the opposite effect, as Lee Bergere becomes increasingly robotic when called upon to exhibit emotion. Jeff decides to come work for ColbyCo, which creates a fab little triangle between Alexis and "the two most important men in her life." I could imagine her with a whip riding on their backs like Madonna did with those gay boys in her marvellous book (not the one with the children's stories in, the other one).
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"Kirby", (although I'd have called it "McVane", as Senator Neil also makes his debut in this episode and he's not as punchably insipid as Kathleen Beller), and it's an incesty instalment indeed, with Adam suggesting to Fallon that they pick up where they left off when they found out they were related, and Alexis flirting with son-in-law Jeff. Now that he has gotten as far as La Mirage, Mark's motiveless storyline once again grinds to a halt, when he decides not contact Krystle after all. (So why is he there?) Alexis gives things a kick start by luring the Barbie Doll to Mohammed (or La Mirage) instead. Upon catching sight of her ex, Krystle instantly starts having exposition-heavy flashbacks (the real cause of her Season 9 brain tumour, if you ask me), but despite these, we're no closer to understanding her and Mark as a couple. One wordless look between Krystle and Matthew back in the pilot told us more about that relationship than any amount of flashbacks do here about this one. Krystle then does more some shouting at Fallon, whose eyes once again glaze over as she mentally tries to figure some way out of her contract with Spelling Productions. Blake does some moaning about the government, and it's quite hard to follow, but it's something to do with oil shale extraction research, the same maguffin used in Season 2 when Cecil blackmailed Claudia into spying for him. The best moments in this episode all involve Alexis and food, either eating it (a paranoid power breakfast with Adam), offering it (trying to distract a suspicous Fallon with chocolate covered strawberries), making innuendos about it (talking suggestively to Jeff about pouring champagne over her kumquats, before inviting him to move into the spare bedroom; the poor boy practically runs for the elevator), or making a serving suggestion to Adam, seething with hatred for Jeff, of prime rib, blood red.
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"La Mirage." This is the worst episode to date. The first two DYNASTY party episodes, "The Dinner Party" in Season 1 and "The Party" in Season 2, (where do they come up with these titles?) were rich with character and story, emotion and atmosphere. The opening night celebration at La Mirage lacks all those elements. Watching a bunch of choreographed extras in fancy dress costumes doing the Charleston and smiling blandly is oddly depressing. The producers seem to be going for an F. Scott Fitzgerald vibe, but the attempt to infuse 1980s TV trash with the grandeur of a 1920s literary classic doesn't work. In fact, the combination is awful. Dressing a dumbass like Mark Jennings up as Jay Gatsby isn't enough; he remains a dumbass, only now he's wearing a ridiculous hat. (Fancy dress parties were never DYNASTY's strong point. Season 7's Ye Olde English Fayre springs to mind.) The party looks like what it is: a group of extras crammed onto a soundstage. It feels cramped, fake and oddly cheap. Fallon reprises her impromptu swim from the first Carrington party, but what was genuinely audacious then now seems more like smug exhibitionism (even if Pamela Sue Martin still looks lovely). Jeff's indignant reaction to her and Mark's display seems random and unspecific, and carries none of the dramatic weight of Krystle's discovery of the swimmers back in Season 1. Like that episode, this one climaxes with Krystle on the receiving end of a "dramatic" revelation, as Mark, for no stronger motivation than being a bit drunk, tells her the truth about her marital status. The audience have been waiting for this moment since midway through the previous season, but because we have absolutely no sense of Mark as a character or he and Krystle as a couple, it's a major anti-climax. At least Alexis is pleasingly sordid at the party, hoisting her flapper dress over her waist so that portly Congressman McVane can give her a quick one against the wall without dislodging her strangely greyish hairpiece. It's an attempt on her part to sabotage Blake over some government funding, but Blake manages to trump Alexis's "boudoir charms" by blackmailing McVane over something vaguely sexual. The party sows the seeds of the Adam/Kirby/Jeff triangle (Adam practically molests Kirby on first meeting) and, interestingly, there are indications that Kirby has been leading a double life in Europe. Kirby's back story (dancing on tables in Monaco when she was supposedly cooing over some kid on a yacht) sounds more interesting than anything she ever does on screen. Line of the episode comes from Alexis: "Go on, Krystle, swear. I'd adore to hear you say something colourful and foul."
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"Acapulco". This is an oddly shapeless episode, listless and surreal, with no real sense of time or space. Krystle's gone flashback crazy. In previous episodes, she has flashed back to events that took place long, long ago on a soundstage far, far away. Here, she starts by having a "previously on DYNASTY" type vision of last week's cliffhanger, and by the end of the episode, she's having flashbacks to events that have occurred within the same episode. This cannot be healthy. If her flashback acceleration continues at its current rate, she will soon be having flashforwards. Just imagine--all those horrific miscasts: Helmut Berger, Jack Coleman and the rest. Speaking of La Coleman, he makes a brief appearance here as Al Corley, his face shrouded in darkness like a THUNDERBIRDS version of Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW. After a clandestine meeting with Mark, (which is very nearly almost quite a good scene) Krystle, looking fetching in man drag, flounces off to Mexico. About fifteen seconds later, she's in a low cut blouse going loco in Acapulco, having made an invisible split-second pitstop in Guadalajara. By now, Blake, having left for Washington at the beginning of the episode, is somehow back in Denver without actually returning. He dashes to Krystle's rescue, sorts out her divorce and suggests a second honeymoon in Hawaii. Krystle declines this generous offer because, she explains, she needs to talk to Mark. (The possibility of talking to Mark and then going to Hawaii does not appear to be an option.) Suddenly, Blake gets angry and storms off. This makes little sense, but who cares? Whenever there is friction between Krystle and Blake, both characters instantly seem more alive and real. Jeff moves into his freshly decorated office, now a pleasant shade of psychotic blue, and is soon displaying the effects of poisoned paint. These are invariably accompanied by the sound of cymbals crashing and vaguely ethnic wind instruments, which one imagines being played just off screen by some of Matthew Blaisdel's Peruvian disciples. Kirby's simpering advances (coyly turning up at Jeff's office with a bouquet of flowers, regaling him with cutesy-wutesy tales of what his son, the "Young Master Colby", has been "saying") continue to nauseate. The one interesting thing about Kirby is that she lies, continually and about everything. After looming gothically at a window, Joseph has an intriguingly out-of-character experience when he tells Kirby that the Carringtons are a bunch of users. He then robotically orders his daughter to return to France. Sadly, she refuses. Hardly any Joanie in this episode, but there is first of about a billion strangely sexless scenes in which a beefy man (in this case Mark) answers the door of his La Mirage hotel suite wearing only a towel and proceeds to snog the face of whatever woman happens to be standing there (in this case Fallon). It's all very random. Oh, and Steven explodes.
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"The Locket". The news that Steven is missing immediately places all of the characters' conflicts in a larger emotional context: No sooner has Krystle offended Blake by refusing his help in dealing with her divorce from Mark, than he does the same thing to her regarding his search for Steven. He also snubs Fallon, who in turn snubs Jeff, which prompts Kirby to intervene, which upsets Joseph. Jeff then tries to break the bad news to Alexis, only to be intercepted by Adam, and Alexis blames Krystle for bringing Sammy Jo into Steven's life in the first place, thus driving him away from Denver to his death. All of these confrontations have an emotional charge that hasn't existed since Season 2. Fallon's brutal honesty also makes a welcome return, as she taunts Krystle for hanging with her ex while Blake is searching for "what's left" of Steven, and reminds a sentimental Alexis that Steven "told us all to go to hell" the last time they saw him. Adam is shockingly duplicitous--impressing Fallon by telling her how much he would have liked a younger brother in one scene, then dismissing Steven as "just a name" to Kirby in the next. There remains something resolutely blank about Kirby and Mark--like they both wait for the plot to tell them how they're meant to react to what's going on around them. This passivity becomes quite interesting in Kirby's scenes with Adam, for while she does not welcome his advances, she does little to stop them. Because of what we already know of her duplicitous nature, it's as though she senses he can see through her innocent facade to the "real" her underneath. The weirdest scene in this episode, if not the entire history of television, takes place when Joseph visits Jeff in his poisoned office to discourage his relationship with Kirby. Jeff, bless him, is doing delirious, swirly, I'm-being-poisoned acting, while Joseph, incongrously, addresses him with the kind of casual contempt he normally reserves for one of the servants. In addition, Lee Bergere delivers his lines in a kind of Shatneresque staccato, as if he were being anally probed just below camera level but trying not to think about it. The writers prove they can still make coherent drama when they so choose by resurrecting Frank Dean, Sammy Jo's first father. On the hunt for his daughter's inheritance, he ends up playing a key role in the growing rapprochement between Krystle and Mark. In the process, Frank is changed from the flawed but most likely good-hearted character he was back in Season 2 into just another greedy, grasping grotesque, i.e a non-Carrington. Matt Clark is still very good in the role, though. There is one recognisably human character introduced in this episode--Cassidy, the pilot who agrees to help Blake in Indonesia, but who refuses to take any s**t from him. As Blake tries to freeze Alexis out of the search for Steven, their relationship and Alexis's anger (not to mention Joan Collins's acting) instantly become more interesting and specific. There are some interesting parallels here with earlier episodes: On the flight to Bali, Alexis's insistence on barging into first class to join Blake echoes Steven and Matthew's scenes in the very first episode, and Blake stuck in a foreign location with a vulnerable Alexis while Krystle remains isolated in Denver with a tall, dumb stranger is very reminsicent of events in Season 2.
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"The Search". Alexis, bizarrely clad in khaki shorts and knee socks, tags along with Blake and Dan Cassidy to Tobago as they goes in search of Steven. The discovery of a blood-stained jacket is enough to convince everyone but Blake that his son is dead, and the search is called off. All Alexis wants to do is to grieve, but Blake refuses to indulge her. There's a great scene on their flight home in which their differing reactions mirror what happened when Blake closed himself off from Alexis after Adam's kidnapping all those years ago. "I gave up once on Adam, I'm not going to give up on Steven." Alexis isn't convinced: "Do you hate me so much you can't even share your grief??" Joanie plays this scene without her usual twenty-five coats of make up and is all the more emotionally real for it. "All I feel for you now is pity ... You've cracked, Blake." Indeed, Blake's next move is to move a psychic into the mansion in the hope that he will pick up some of Steven's vibrations from his record collection, or something. (The sleeve of a Chicago LP can be glimpsed in Steven's bedroom--What? No Sylvester?) That the psychic Denhar is portrayed with such grave sincerity only adds to the absurdity of the proceedings, and yet it fits Blake's MO for him to try to buy answers, just as he paid for Nick Toscanni to "fix" Krystle after her miscarriage. Krystle passes no judgements on Blake's actions, yet he senses her doubts and becomes defensive. He is also disturbed by the locket she has retrieved from Mark. Coldness, suspicion, paranoia, hostility--these are traits that John Forsythe plays very well.
The rest of the episode is heavy with Kirby, who continues to irritate and intrigue by turn. On one level, she stubbornly remains an interloper in the series--who is this total stranger intruding on Fallon's grief with these made up on the spot (whether by Kirby or the writers, the effect is the same) idyllic childhood memories of rainy days spent playing in the attic with Steven and Fallon, or climbing "dozens of trees" with Jeff. Unlike Adam's backstory, which complements so well what we already know of Blake and Alexis's marriage, the idea of a major domo's daughter as democratically equal playmate to the pampered Carrington and Colby kids continues to grate. So does the overwritten, clunkily formal dialogue Kirby continually spouts: "If I've learned one thing along the primrose, if not entirely prim, path I've been forced to travel sometimes ..." -- who the hell talks like that? Also, Jeff's cross-eyed hallucinations that take place in his office, in which a prattling Kirby keeps morphing into Fallon via some BUCK ROGERS lighting effects, are laughably awful, and yet ... Kirby's humilation when he kisses her and calls her by the wrong name is really quite affecting. Of course she then runs away and immediately accepts Adam's invitation to dinner. And this is where the character threatens to become really interesting; Kirby's bitterness is far more compelling (and believable) than her coyness. What happens in the penthouse seems falls into the grey area between a traditional case of rape and lousy sex, a gap (partially) plugged since this episode was first broadcast by the concept of date rape. Nevertheless, Kirby seems to belong to an even earlier time. Both the writers' purple prose (her reference to the penthouse as a tower) and the character's fantasist tendencies (that stupid Rapunzel hair) conspire to cast her as a princess in some gothic fairy tale--more 1782 than 1982. Add to which her description of Jeff as "Fallon's Hamlet of a spouse", her dismissal of her ordeal as "a comedy of errors" and her complaint that Joseph "thinks I'm Sabrina", and you've got a jumble of period references, which, in the absence of any real cohesion in the series itself, can only (much like the half hearted GREAT GATSBY homage a few episodes earlier and the absurd attempt to depict Fallon as a representative 80s working mother) float around and come to nothing. How do Kirby's feelings about the rape, (for which she blames herself) or her social position, or indeed anything at all, measure up against the reality of her situation? It's impossible to say, because there is no reality in DYNASTY any longer. Not even a fictional one.
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"Samantha". Effective use of time passing--Blake's been locked in Steven's bedroom with the psychic for how long since the last episode? We don't know. Maybe not the full six weeks he spent raging against the dying of the light after he was blinded in Season 2, but long enough for he and Dehner to listen to the complete works of Chicago, and for he and Krystle to grow seriously estranged again. You know when they're estranged because he becomes icily polite towards her. He's all unshaven and hoarse. He and the psychic aren't getting anywhere, so he goes to Matthew's old rig "because that's where Steven was happy". It feels vaguely sacreligious to make such a direct reference to sublime Season 1 now that the show has become so ridiculous, and besides, I'm not sure you could even say Steven was that happy at Lankershim/Blaisdel No. 1, unless being tied by your ankles and held upside down by a group of burly men consitutes happiness. Then again ... Krystle, spotless in white despite scrambling up a muddy hill, looks on in horror as Blake talks into thin air as if Steven can hear him. It should be an alarming moment--the patriarch of the show losing his marbles, but really so many characters are currently behaving irrationally and/or demonically--Jeff, Adam, Mark--that Blake's behaviour doesn't seem especially out of place. Mr Psychic holds Steven's jacket and declares him to be alive, blind and covered in cloth--a nice twist when Blake assumes that to be grandson Danny. Yes, Sammy Jo's back! And just when Alexis can bring herself "to think that name, let alone say it", the Lockleared One announces that she now answers only to Samantha. The scene between her and Blake feels like the prodigal daughter returning, even though it's their first real scene together, and we know that she is really after a million bucks. At least, that's what she grumpily informs the gas attendant who recognises her from being shipwrecked in "one of those girly girly jobs". Alexis organises Steven's memorial service--it's a quiet affair, opening credit players only. That includes Mark who, after playing Mr. Reasonable to Krystle's Lady Wounded over the past few episodes, suddenly turns irrational and needy, turning up at the church whining because she hasn't called him--after all, he's her husband, babe, not that old guy she's been living with for the past three years who's just lost his son. Why this total lurch in character (I use the word loosely)? Well, Mark needs a reason to turn on Alexis and accuse her of screwing up his life, in order to give her a motive to go to his hotel room and act all vulnerable, (Joanie gives very good contrite) and them an opportunity to start snogging (sex and death, you know how that goes). Mark excepted, it's business as usual at the memorial service--Fallon bickers with Jeff and flounces off, he stands woozily in her wake, a concerned Kirby tries to console him, a jealous Adam taunts her, a constipated Joseph looks on sternly. Worst of all is The Dreaded Scene: Fallon and Krystle hugging! At first Krystle resists: "Don't be nice to me, Fallon. You'll just turn on me again." No, Krystle, she won't. Never again. Not the slyest jibe nor the subtlest put down. Never again. Now that's a loss worth mourning.
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"Danny". With a new grandson to add to their portfolio, Blake and Krystle are reunited in wholesome goodness. "God help her," they murmur benignly when Sammy Jo threatens to sell her baby. "I don't know what you're talking about!" Sammy Jo snaps when they speak to her of concepts like morality and motherhood. "I asked for sausage and bacon," she reprimands a maid at the breakfast table (guess a fatted calf wasn't enough for this prodigal niece, she wants slaughtered pig too). This is followed by a strangely gratituous close up of her piling sausage into a bun, as if to imply Sammy Jo's lack of morals and lack of class are of equal significance and somehow the same thing. (Locklear then rather spoils the effect by nibbling delicately at her dog rather than devouring it whole as if it were a member of Motley Crue.) But even Samantha's spite melts in the radioactive glow of Blake and Krystle's serenity and she tearfully agrees to leave Danny with them rather than Alexis. Kirby also touches on the theme of class during an interesting conversation with Joseph. "As child, I thought I was an equal to Steven and Fallon, [then] I found out that that wasn't so, that I was some kind of second class citizen." I wonder where she got that idea? Not from the benevolent Blake, surely, or Joseph the concerned father. Joseph the impotent voyeur would have regarded Kirby as a second class citizen as he did Krystle, but that Joseph--the one who existed during Seasons 1 and 2--was childless. (In fact, that's Kirby's real problem: she shouldn't exist, and, according to Sunshineboy's intriguing theory, she doesn't.) I can't shake the feeling that it's the programme itself that views Kirby as second class, and as she vows to her father to do whatever it takes to become an upstairs girl, she joins an ever increasing list of envious, grasping mere mortals, i.e. non-Carringtons. Three episodes after the apparent death of her beloved son, Alexis is galloping admirably through the grieving process. And it's all thanks to a restorative rogering from Moustachioed Mark. Now she's showering him with gifts and mauling his man breasts, proving it's not just middle-aged men who can appear lascivious and desperate. Emily Pankhurst would be so proud. She (Alexis, not Emily) drags herself away from all that body hair long enough for a confrontation with her dead(ish) son's wife. "Now listen to me, you little tramp!" she barks, in spite of Sammy Jo being incongrously dressed as Mary Ingalls for most of the episode. Fallon also has a spat with Sammy Jo, during which her spark briefly returns only to be extinguished by the question, "Do you even know who you are, Fallon?" The eyes of the once nimble-minded Fallon swim with confusion, unable to manage even a response of "I run a hotel! That's who I are!" Meanwhile in Singapore, an unrecognisable Jack Coleman stirs from behind a papier mache mask as Ambassador Long Thon explains that he was found in the Java Sea clinging to the wreckage of Al Corley's career. Coleman blinks a few times, groans, and then falls back to sleep. Undoubtedly, it's his finest performance of the entire series.
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"Madness". It's the early hours of the morning and two small babies are teething and crying, yet Blake, Krystle, Fallon and Kirby exhibit no sign of fatigue, frustration or anxiety. They are in a state of domestic bliss; it's all love, love, love. This can only mean one thing: the Carrington household is now populated almost entirely by replicants. "Thank you for bringing our family back together," the recently completed Fallonbot tells the Krystlebot with blank-eyed sincerity. One almost expects a shot from the Fallonbot's point of view--Krystle in groovy negative accompanied by the sound of electronic whirring. Poisoned Jeff is the sole remaining housemate who exhibits anything approaching recognisable human behaviour. Annoyed and exhausted by his child's 2am wailing, snapping in response to his step-mother-in-law's unasked for platitudes, questioning his wife's "I run a hotel, therefore I am" approach to parenting--no wonder the Carrington Collective think he's malfunctioning. Marky's made the point previously that, by Season 3, all the characters appear to know each other equally. There is a perfect example of this during a scene between Krystle and Kirby. Despite joining the family a little over two years ago, Krystle has now total recall of the minute events of Steven's tenth birthday (it rained, Jeff's Little League game was cancelled, Kirby wore make up for the first time). Krystle's explanation, "Fallon told me all about it", doesn't make much sense; Krystle and Fallon been on speaking terms for precisely one episode and this is what they've talked about?? Even odder, Krystle--who wasn't present for Steven's tenth birthday--is relaying this information to Kirby, who supposedly was. Clearly, Krystle, having been implanted with the same memory chip as the rest of the Carrington Collective, is now passing on the information to Kirby. Add to this Sunshineboy's theory that Kirby is a figment of the Carringtons' collective imagination, and I'm reminded of nothing so much as BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER's kid sister Dawn appearing on that show after four seasons of never having existed and the rest characters suddenly all knowing her intimately. The main difference is that BUFFY writers came up with a brilliantly supernatural and sinister explanation for that anomaly, while the DYNASTY writers ... don't. Thank God, then, for Alexis and Adam, who stride from set to set conjuring up conflict and confusion. Like an especially competitive BIG BROTHER contestant, Adam slithers from Blake's ear to Jeff's, dripping poison regarding Jeff's supposed involvement in the Logan Rhinewood affair and Blake's apparent suspicions thereof. (Like the original Rhinewood story, I don't recall this actually going anywhere, but it's interesting while it lasts.) Alexis confronts Blake over his and Krystle's plan to adopt the spawn of Steven and Krystle's "garbage niece". Alexis's threat to sue for custody prompts Blake to recall "your delicious maternal history" regarding Steven and Fallon: "You left and never contacted them." Blake and Alexis's continual bickering over the exact circumstances of Alexis's banishment from Denver is one aspect of DYNASTY that never gets old. Like the Digger/Jock feud in DALLAS, it's the mysterious heart of the show. "You forced me to stay away from them," says Alexis. "You blackmailed me into it." "All right, if that's what you want to call it. I had reasons, damn good reasons." Is that an admission from Blake that he really did blackmail her? It's a rare ambivalent moment in a show that has grown increasingly, weirdly literal. While the motivations of characters like Kirby and Mark remain muddy and unfocused, plot points are spelled out in bright 80s neon: a visual shorthand, through the aid of props, flashbacks and visions, has replaced subtext to ensure that even a retarded monkey with cataracts watching the programme through a sheet of gauze would be able to grasp what's going on. For instance, to convey that Jeff is suspicious of Fallon's relationship with Mark, it isn't enough for us to read the expression on his face (such as it is) or hear him make verbal insinuations to Fallon. No, we must also see him flashing back to Fallon frollicking in the pool with Mark, whilst simultaneously stomping on a 10x8 photo of Pamela Sue Martin. In Hong Kong, Dr Ambassador realises that Jack Coleman's claim to be Burt Reynolds is a lie not just because no toupèe or chest wig was found floating amongst the wreckage, but also because of a sci-fi belt with a convenient "C" on the buckle that was found on his person. No matter that it's the kind of belt the real Steven (along with any other human being outside of a BUCK RODGERS episode) would never have worn. Similarly, the Fallonbot is suddenly and uncharacteristically wearing a long silk scarf. It's as if her programming has informed that she is to be strangled later the same day and will need something to hide the bruises. In order for the strangulation to occur, the Fallonbot goes to Mark's empty hotel room (which is, conveniently and without explanation, unlocked), sits on the unmade bed, takes off her shoe and waits. Jeff, who has been staggering from soundstage to soundstage for most of the episode, stops by the set of his son's nursery to be informed by Kirby of Fallon's precise itinerary for the day. He then jogs over to the set of Mark's hotel room, (again, there is no explanation given as to how Jeff would know Fallon would be in that particular room) in time to see the shoeless Fallonbot, the unmade bed and a red mist in front of his eyes. He strangles her accordingly. This attempt to erase all ambiguity, all non-linear behaviour (and the humanity that lies therein) from the series results in a Carrington-inhabited world that is spacey and surreal. To be fair, there are still some moments of genuine drama to be found. When Blake tells Krystle there will be some delay before they can adopt Danny--due to both Krystle's marriage to Mark and the requirements of private adoption--there is a strong sense of foreboding, ("This frightens me, Blake") as if Krystle is destined to have her dream of motherhood shattered once again. Also, the final scene is delicious. Concern over Jeff's condition leads Alexis to declare she is sending him on vacation and moving into his office. This, in turn, prompts a confession from Adam over the poisoned paint on the walls. Alexis listens in horror: "What kind of monster are you?" When Adam explains how turning a blind eye to Jeff's worsening condition could allow Alexis to seize control of both Denver Carrington and ColbyCo, we see how tempted she is. However, her regard for Jeff wins through and she refuses to go along with Adam's plan. Adam explains that she has no choice--if he goes down, he's taking her with him. It's a powerful soap noir device: embroil the villainess in the schemes of an associate even more dangerous and ruthless than she (and invariably male), then watch her sweat and squirm. KNOTS LANDING did it with Abby several times and DYNASTY will repeat it with Alexis, to increasingly diminishing returns, through her involvements with Ben Carrington, Sean Rowan and Jeremy Van Dorn.
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"Two Flights to Haiti." Nice title. Sounds like a Boney M LP or that song by Madness. Adam's scenes with Alexis in this episode are excellent, Season 2-tastic. Following his double whammy at the end of last week, ("Mother, I've poisoned Jeff! And I'll blame it all on you!") Adam continues to skilfully manipulate Alexis, playing on her greed, her maternal guilt, and her Achilles' heel: "You can say, as you have, that you and Blake did everything, turned over every rock, to find me after I was kidnapped, but somehow and somewhere you didn't look hard enough, did you?" "I have told you a hundred times, Adam, that I never wanted to give up the search. I begged your father, I pleaded with him ..." "But he wouldn't listen, would he? And so he gave up the search sooner than he might have. Tell me something, wasn't it partly because of his lack of feeling? Feeling for you? Wasn't your marriage already beginning to disintegrate?" "No it was not! Our problems came after that!" protests Alexis, clinging to the consoling belief that it was the external factor of Adam's kidnapping, rather than any previously existing flaw in their relationship, that heralded the beginning of the end of her marriage to Blake. "After that, you had Fallon, then Steven," persists Adam. "He lavished a lot of love on them and sent you away." This, Adam reasons, makes he and Alexis equal outsiders in The House of Carrington and therefore entitled to their piece of the pie, even at the expense of Jeff's sanity. It's a first class example of how an exploration of backstory can enrich what is happening in the present. Alexis's behaviour is equally fascinating. Sometimes she's Mildred Pierce ("I believe you, Adam. You're my son, so I have to believe you," she coos in her best Joan Crawford nightgown), sometimes Livia in I, CLAUDIUS or Anjelica Houston in THE GRIFTERS. (Oh, listen to me with my gratuitously Kirbyesque cultural references! Speaking of Bambi in human form, the major domo's daughter manages to refer to both Mary Poppins and Margot Fonteyn in the same sentence, and behave with her customary contrariness throughout the episode--first accepting a dinner invitation from her rapist, then urging her true love's wife to shelve her divorce plans. One could surmise and analyse as to why Kirby does what she does, but why bother when the complexities of Adam and Alexis's relationship are far juicier to observe?) "My son. My first born child," says Alexis from behind Adam's chair, her voice thick with ambiguity. She takes his head in her hands, and for a second you're not sure whether she's going to cradle it to her bosom or twist it and snap his neck in two. While a dazed and tormented Jeff sweats in his office, Adam lounges in the corner the room, gaily toasting his own success. Alexis, full of frantic concern, bursts through the door and rushes straight to Jeff, launching into one of her "Ever since you were a little boy" speeches. No white gardenias this time, just "Do you remember? You used to ask me about all the wonderful trips I'd been on, the wonderful places I'd seen and the movies I'd made, the one with Richard Burton where I was a nun and the one with the giant ants, and those episodes of BATMAN and STAR TREK where I ..." until Adam's voice brings her up sharp, as he boastfully announces how Jeff has signed over his son's shares in Denver Carrington and his own in ColbyCo ... to her. Giddy with victory, Adam gloats on and on, manically quoting Disraeli ("'We make our fortunes and call them fate!' or was it, 'We make our fates and call them fortunes!'? That wasn't it, but I think I like that better! Ha ha Ha!") before throwing an extravagant lunch at the penthouse ("Isn't this a bit lavish?" "Oh mother, I never thought I'd hear you use that word on the downside! Ha! ha! Ha!"), where he breaks randomly into Italian before segueing into some pointless anecdote about his time at Yale. Yet when Alexis chides him over his lack of remorse regarding Jeff, he coolly shifts gear: "Yes, I've seen the hours you spend weeping over costing Krystle Carrington her child ... You and I are two of a kind. It's just that I'm more honest about it." After hearing that Jeff has lost consciousness during a scene with Mark Jennings (and who wouldn't?), Alexis dashes to the hospital with a dead cat on her head to be informed by Krystle that the doctors are performing tests on him. "Tests??" she responds. "TESTS?! What are they doing TESTS for???? Adam, they're doing TESTS!!!" "Yes, Mother, they're doing TESTS. You don't like TESTS, do you? Let's wheel you home and get you a sedative ..." he blabbers for the benefit of Krystle, who is as baffled by this outburst as her hair is gravity defying. And then Alexis freaks out in the elevator. It's insane stuff--camp, hilarious, and yet rooted in character and motivation. (It's slightly disconcerting to see Krystle consorting so freely with her former enemies in this episode, as she dispenses parenting advice to Joseph, and makes fun of Mrs Gunnerson and her "Swedish holidays" with Fallon. How soon she forgets ...) Meanwhile, Fallon's on her way to Haiti for the first of those instant divorces that the DYNASTY writers grow increasingly overfond of during the series. Off hand, I can't think of any major character save Blake and Krystle whose marriage didn't end in Haiti or Acalpulco, or another of those divorce resorts where our singleton-to-be will invariably order a brightly coloured cocktail before being accosted by some sleazy non-Carrington full of world weary relationship advice. (Surely, this is the true pain of a Carrington divorce: having to briefly tolerate one of these barflies who mistakenly believe themselves to be of the same species.) In this case, Fallon gets her ear bent by a permed woman whom she fails to recognise as the too-perky receptionist from the clinic where she had her aborted abortion back in Season 2. So that's one flight to Haiti accounted for, what about the other? Well, having tried Mr Indifferent, Mr Gallant and Mr Inappropriately Needy on for size, Mark seems to have settled into a new persona, that of Mr Hey, I Have Feelings Too. After eased Alexis tenderly through her bereavement only to learn she's interested in nothing more than a little Corn Grinding In the Afternoon, he has turned his attentions to the other Mrs Colby in distress. Having rescued the Fallonbot from Jeff last week, he now turns up at her hotel door to offer her a shoulder to cry on, before nearly bursting into tears when she implies he's only after a quick shag. Hey, Fallonbot! Sides of beef have feelings too.
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"The Mirror"--not a reference to Alexis's newspaper, or even to the surface upon which Helmut Berger chops up his lines of coke oh so neatly, but to the thing Jack Coleman looks into to see his crappy new face. He's started talking as well, in that constipated monotone of his, and so he will continue, complaining about everyone and everything, in every single episode for the next five years. Elsewhere, Jeff and Fallon might be on the brink of divorce, but their fates remain strangely interlinked as each are bored to distraction by one of the show's irritating new(ish) characters. First Kirby visits Jeff in the hospital and launches into a strange and endless monologue about love. "You know, the loving kind of lovely love with which you love to lovingly love the lovely person you love ... love, love, love ... nearly drove me to suicide .. love, love, love ..." Her insane ramblings invoke a fantasy flashback (or forward) of she and lovable Jeff lovingly making lovely love. Jeff responds tactfully by lapsing into a coma. This sends Kirby pirouetting recklessly back into Adam's arms, the way she does after every perceived rejection from Jeff. ("You wanna bend me over the pool table, Adam? Fine! Stick the red ball in my mouth while you're at it? Go ahead! Who wants to be a noble lady in the House of Carringtons anyway?") Meanwhile, Mark corners Fallon on the Costa Del Divorce and launches into an odd diatribe on the pain of being beautiful. "There was a teenager who actually wrote a poem about my legs once. I was embarrassed by the truth of it," he tells her in total seriousness. Fallon, clearly growing nostalgic for the good old days when all she had to put up with was a husband trying to choke her to death, listens as he explains what he means by the truth: "That lots of ladies are ready to judge a book by its deep tanned cover," he replies. "Deep tanned cover"? Now even the tennis bums are dipping into the purple prose! Hilariously, back in Denver, Alexis has clearly had enough of the overly florid dialogue.
Adam: "How does that plain but pithy old adage go - ?"
Alexis: "Oh, shut up, Adam! Just shut up!"
Alexis has replaced last week's hysteria in favour of her customary superciliousness, which makes for a fun scene when she drops by the Carrington kitchen to chat with Mrs Gunnerson, who nervously greets her as "Mrs--cough--Colby". Alexis is thirsty so a fresh bottle of champagne must be opened. "Quiet little thing, like a mouse," Alexis observes of the mute servant who presents her with it. An adlib by Joanie, I'll wager. Just as Adam's plan to "destroy" Blake and Jeff is paying off, a face from the past appears to remind him that he can never outrun who he once was. ("Hello, Michael--" "It's Adam!") Yes, it's Dr Edwards, on the first of numerous visits to Denver, completely oblivious to how unwelcome he is and bringing with him tales of Adam's teenage dirtbag years. It's an effective scene, but a pity in the long run that the seeds of Adam's villainy can be explained away so neatly (i.e. a drug-induced breakdown). It answers a question posed sarcastically by Alexis in the episode's final scene, in which Blake refuses to believe Jeff was in his right mind when he signed his shares over to her: "Why not?" she asks. "Because anyone who turns against Blake Carrington must be insane?" Yes, according to the writers, anyone who turns against Blake--toxic Jeff, acid casualty Adam, Claudia in Season 6--is clearly insane.
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"Battle Lines". Alexis plans to get Jeff out of Blake's clutches by taking him to a clinic "just outside Gtsaad" so fantastic-sounding I wish somebody would paint my walls with mecuric-oxide. She'll be gone for less than a week, which would explain the two enormous trunks being wheeled into the elevator when Adam returns to the penthouse. He also finds his mother dressed entirely, from fluffy hat to kinky boot, in white, and (possibly as a homage to the Swiss Alps) resembling nothing so much as a human snowball. He disapproves of her making the trip when she should be marshalling her forces against Denver Carrington's counterattack. "Spare me the military metaphors. Isn't it enough that you played Cesare Borgia? Must you play Napolean too?" He queries her motives for going away with Jeff: "I've seen the way you look at him. Could it be there's a bit of a yen there?" Alexis demands an apology without actually answering the question, and then exits the scene to "throw some cosmetics into a bag." At the hospital, Blake scuppers her plan and the two come almost to blows, prompting The Human Snowball to utter the puzzling but exciting line, "God, how I hate to see you choke on your own bloody arrogance!" Jeff returns to the Carrington mansion instead, as though continuing to live in the same house as your ex-wife and former in-laws is the most natural thing in the world. Kirby, after the rip-roaring failure of last week's "I Love You Love Me Love" speech, tries the same monologue-while-Jeff's-asleep trick, only in reverse. She again professes her love to Jeff, but this time thinking he's asleep, only for him to open his eyes and yank her into bed with him. Ahh: insufferable as she often is, there is something quite sweet about Kirby finally getting her heart's desire. Fallon, or whomever that perfect stranger is who now inhabits her body, returns from Divorceland with Mark, and they have one of those perfectly positioned kisses in the Carrington hallway where someone crossing the landing, in this case Krystle, can look down and see them, and they can all appear in a nice three shot. Up in the nursery, Fallon steps into another potentially-but-not-very interesting triangle when she comes face to face with Kirby, who is now humping her ex. Kirby twitters annoyingly and Fallon once again exhibits her frighteningly laid back approach to motherhood: "His temporarily forgetting me is no big deal." At La Mirage, Alexis catches Mark on his way to a tennis tournament and is surprised by his coolness towards her. "Aren't we suddenly circumspect?" she wonders aloud. Hardly; I doubt he'd be match fit if he'd just had that done. (Cue one of Adam's manic laughs: "Ha! ha! HA!") There are a few firsts in this episode: the first view of Alexis's new toxic-free office decor (tusks included), the first reference to Dexter, Sam (one of several board members Blake has sent into hiding to avoid a quorum--whatever that is) and the first mention of the China Sea oil leases. Oddly, for a series that does not share DALLAS's fascination with the minutiae of the oil business, the China Sea leases are a maguffin that run for years and years on DYNASTY. This view round, it'll be interesting to see how well it holds together. The final scene ends almost identically to last week's: Blake and Alexis are across from one another in his office, arguing fiercely over the proposed Denver Carrington takeoever, when they are interrupted by a shock telephone call that unites them in concern. Last week, it was the hospital with news of Jeff's diagnosis; this week it's that nice Dan Cassidy chappy calling from Singapore to say that he's just seen something lying inert and charisma-free in a hospital bed that might just be ... the Stevenbot.
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"Reunion in Singapore." Blake's reluctance and Alexis's eagerness to believe that Steven is alive once again mirrors their behaviour in the aftermath of Adam's kidnapping. Just before he jets off to Singapore, Blake has the first of about a million airstrip confrontations with Alexis. I like these; they always feel especially dramatic, full of planes and limousenes and threats. Meanwhile, the Stevenbot describes the lovely doctor who has both saved his life and transcended medical science to give him a new face with his customary generosity : "He's a pain". In a karaoke style flashback, we get to revisit Al Corley's final (and possibly best) scene of the series in which he tells his family to go hell. Taking his place, Jack Coleman skilfully drains all the poignancy and life out of the original, leaving a clenched, strained husk in his place. The only real emotion in the scene comes from the rest of the Carringtons staring in horror at how not very good he is. With six episodes left before the end of the series, Alexis starts work on giving people sufficent motive to set her on fire. She rehires an offscreen Hess to dig up enough dirt to destroy Neil McVane, grows jealous of Fallon's relationship with Mark, ("I don't think there's anything sweet about you having a 'thing' with a tennis pro," she tells her daughter with admirable hypocrisy) and, even before Steven's resurrection is official, starts playing Adam off against him. "I understood him," she boasts. "His perversion, you mean," responds Adam with refreshing homophobia. South China Sea oil leases alert: Adam enlists "our lovely Sorbonne runaway" as translator at an offscreen dinner to discuss the deal. The highlight of the episode is his subsequent motel room rant at Kirby: "I have revealed more to you of my feelings than anyone on this spinning earth of ours because you and I are alike and we belong together but instead of trying to understand me you're playing some kind of stupid game, the Hard To Get Special." Along comes Jeff to the rescue. ("The ice man cometh ... You're welcome to her, Jeff. Somebody has to look after the dirty diapers.") Lord knows why Jeff then proposes to her. The after effects of mercuric-oxide poisoning perhaps?
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"Fathers and Sons." In Singapore, Blake catches the Stevenbot up on everything that's been happening in Denver since Al Corley left town to shack up with Carly Simon--the deaths and divorces, the kidnappings and mysterious poisonings; oh, and the long lost sons that have shown up, including Steven's own. "Anyone west of the Rockies could be the father," replies the Stevenbot, not unreasonably. Meanwhile, Krystle and Fallon are enjoying a late night game of Runway Models, where they walk up and down the Carrington hallway in perfect unison dressed in their shiniest nightgowns, when they are interrupted by a call from Singapore telling them the crappy, I mean, happy news: that Blake has located his "son". The Stevenbot comes on the phone: "Fallon, I've had some surgery done and I can't act." "That's OK," she replies through fake tears. "I stopped trying months ago!" The call leads to two really good, emotionally ambivalent scenes: first Krystle visiting Alexis the same night to tell her the bittersweet that Steven is alive but can't act, and then Jeanette trying to console Krystle over her loss of Danny. Before marrying Jeff in a rinky dink ceremony performed by the same judge who declared Jock Ewing legally dead five months earlier, Kirby asks if he is on the rebound from Fallon (Jeff that is, not the judge). Jeff, demonstrating the same total lack of self knowledge and emotional insight that will sustain him throughout the next five years and two series until Dex finally points out in Season 9 that he doesn't have to marry every woman who gives him a semi (or words to that effect), insists that he isn't. Back in Denver, Mark and Fallon get kissy again. When they pull away and his moustache isn't stuck to her lip, you know it's serious. Alexis celebrates the second resurrection of one of her sons in recent weeks with a pedicure, while Mrs Gunnerson interrupts Krystle's workout to discuss the menu for Steven's homecoming dinner. While Krsytle's trainer goes in search of a balancing stick (the mind boggles), Mrs G recalls how fond Steven always was of meatballs (ya don't say) before asking, "Is it true? He can't act?" Krystle nods sadly. "In a way," concludes Mrs G, "it's like that Steven [the multi-layered one with a taste for meatballs, I guess she means] has gone from us forever." Krystle, who has already acted in a flashback scene with Meatball Steven's wooden sunovabitch replacement, knows only how true that is. Subsequently, the Stevenbot's homecoming reception has all the emotional depth of a Ferrero Rocher advert, except for the moment when Krystle descends the stairs with Danny and hands him over, which is genuninely touching. Over lunch at La Mirage the next day, Alexis winds the Stevenbot up like the clockwork doll he is with the revelation that Blake bought Danny for "his beloved but barren Krystle ... your baby for bucks!" This leads to a father/son confrontation in the Carrington. "You used your lousy money to persuade my wife to give you my son," bleats the Stevenbot delivering his dialogue in a singy-songy monotone reminiscent of the worst kind of Shakespearean amateur dramatics. Needless to say, this scene is a travesty of the original library encounter between Steven and Blake in Episode 1. That scene was rich with ambivalence and complexity, with Steven condemning Denver Carrington's foreign policy and Blake reminding that it was the profits of this policy that allowed Steven to live so comfortably, before the breathtaking whammy of Blake's "Steven Carrington Institute for the Study and Treatment of Faggotry" remark. In this scene, Blake has been recast as the blameless and maligned victim while the Stevenbot is a whiny and irrational Thunderbird puppet. The episode ends the replicant announcing he's off to find Sammy Jo. Give him hell, Locklear.
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"The Downstairs Bride." What's the first thing Jeff does when he and Kirby return from Reno as man and wife? Declare his undying love for Fallon. Trust me, there are things in the Carrington fridge that will last longer than this marriage. Having already adopted the DALLAS conceit of having the whole family living in the same house, DYNASTY now stretches it to the snapping point by having Jeff and Kirby co-habit with his ex-wife, his ex-wife's entire family and her disapproving father, employee of said family. This has the effect of turning the Carrington mansion into an extension of La Mirage; it's now less a home and more a series of generic bedrooms and meeting places gathered under the same roof. It does provide one interesting parallel, however, as Jeff's attempts to rationalise the situation to Kirby--"Finding the right house will take time"--sound an awful lot like the excuses Fallon used to make to him for not moving out back in Season 1. There is much speculation regarding Kirby's adjustment from life downstairs to upstairs, but as DYNASTY has shown us nothing of Kirby's downstairs life, this holds little dramatic interest. What is her relationship with all those mute servant girls, for instance? Were they her equals before she married Jeff? Did she eat her meals with them? Or did her status as LB's nanny and Joseph's daughter preclude mixing with the commoners? Do they secretly resent her, or does her sheer adorable Bambi-ness inspire the same kind of intense devotion that Claudia did in that maid who sobbed so weirdly when she (Claudia) was being carted off to the Cecil B de Mille funny farm? Who knows? Joseph and Adam's reactions to the marriage are predictably hostile. Kirby corners her father and finally asks him why he is so against her marrying into this family he reveres. The writers allow Joseph to dodge the issue by having him murmur something about no longer knowing how to address her, whether as "Mrs Colby" or "madam". Adam, meanwhile, accuses her of marrying for money rather than love: "You are so dumb, Mrs Colby ... You'll be back with me, married or not." Alexis's concerned reaction is interesting. ("Why does it matter so much to you?" Adam asks her. "I think you know something I don't.") She refers to Kirby with a degree of familarity, even though they have yet to encounter one another onscreen. It might have been more interesting if they had already met, thereby introducing the idea of Alexis knowing A Dark Secret about Kirby's background much earlier in the season, but most likely the writers have only just dreamt up the idea in anticipation of the finale. For once, Fallon's zonked out demeanour is the ideal response to the newlyweds' elopement. She has some vaguely bitchy lines, but delivers them so flatly, it's as though she's looking at the happy couple thinking, "What the ****?" However, she loses points for uttering the most vacuous line of the episode when she says to Mark: "You're one of the few people I know who's really himself. Like my brother Steven." What does that even mean? Rather sweetly, Adam makes a sincere attempt to reach out to his newly acquired brother ("You don't think I like Steven, but I do," he tells Alexis. "I just hope to God Steven likes me"), but makes an inevitable balls up of it by using their first ever conversation as an attempt to counsel him about his sex life. "Get lost, brother!" whirrs the Stevenbot before gliding off in the direction of SJNY. It's always fun catching up with the Continuing Adventures of Sammy Jo, and here we find her installed in a swanky New York pad, courtesy a middle-aged married man who has promised to turn her into a spokesmodel for a cosmetics company. So besotted is he that he brings her breakfast in bed, along with a copy of The Enquirer that boasts, below a front page headline about Steven's resurrection, a photo of the DALLAS cast, rather cheekily implying that the Ewings exist as TV characters within the DYNASTY universe, thus making them more fictional than the Carringtons. In a conversation with Sammy Jo, the Stevenbot refers to his homosexuality in the same way a reformed junkie would talk about needles: "I haven't touched a man in a long time, a very long time." So much for Al Corley's "Steven is gay" epiphany at the end of Season 2. Sammy Jo is delightfully cruel, accusing the Stevenbot of fantasising about his dead boyfriend while in bed with her. "You wanna do your thing with other guys? Go do it. But if you really give a damn about your son, let him grow up with a straight family. Don't stick him with you for a father." This introduces the idea of a custody fight between father and son over Danny. Superficially, this storyline is about gay parenting, although what the Stevenbot is really fighting for is the right to raise a child while suppressing his own sexuality. Mmm, healthy. I'm with Sammy Jo on this--let the straight rich folks have the kid. (At least they can act.) Elsewhere, Sam Dexter, who will later jump into the body of Francesca Colby's 37th husband, makes his first appearance.
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"The Vote." Jeff and Fallon are foxtrotting in the nursery, reminising about how they used to date when Jeff was in college and still wore a racoon coat. "There were fun days," says Jeff. "Whatever happened to them?" asks Fallon. They never existed, that's what happened to them. Fallon and Jeff are merely altering history to give an eavesdropping Kirby sufficient motivatation to rush downstairs and fling herself all over the piano, where she can mime sensitively to Chopin (although, cleverly, the camera cuts to Kathleen Beller's actual hands playing the easy bits). Krystle stops by to offer her considered musical opinion--"lovely and sad"--before continuing with a segue any hospital DJ would be proud of: "You're sad too, aren't you, Kirby?" You bet your sweet shoulderpads she is, step-mother-in-law-once-removed! "Here I am, the New Princess," bleats Kirby, downsizing her customary purple prose to a more manageable lilac, "living under the same palace roof with my husband's ex-wife, the All Time Princess, with a baby son to keep them in close contact." There can be very few people in this world able to relate to this particular problem, but Krystle is one of them, and she proceeds to remind us of the days when Alexis lived in the shed at the bottom of the garden because she couldn't let go of her obsession with Blake. This introduces the main theme of the episode (sorta): Alexis and the men whom (she believes) done her wrong: Neil McVane ("miserable scum!"), Mark ("male tramp!") and, of course, Blake ("I hate you, Blake! Oh God, I hate you!"). In possibly DYNASTY's campest moment to date, Joanie, clad in sailor's hat and monochrome shoulderpads as if she were about to voyage forth on the HMS Joan Crawford, sits behind her desk and delivers a solemn address into the middle distance, as drag hag Adam looks on appreciatively: "A woman begins her young adult life being soft and gentle and giving, and what it all comes down to is use or be used." (In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess that the high campery of this scene compelled me to dig out my dusty vinyl copy of "Lovin', Livin and Givin'", Diana Ross's joyfully shameless "I Feel Love" rip off from 1978.) Alexis spends the rest of the episode wreaking her paranoid revenge upon the hairier sex. The odds are stacked in her favour at the Denver Carrington board meeting which, Sam Dexter aside, has been stocked with doddering, fearful old men, whom she can easily intimidate into voting in favour of her proposed merger with Colbyco. The vote inspires one of Blake's impassioned "I was raised in a plastic bag and worked 72 hours a day drilling for oil with my bare teeth to build Denver Carrington into the vaguely sci-fi looking empire it is today, and I'll be damned if etc." speeches. Morgan Hess presents Alexis with a report that not only details Neil McVane's various rendezvous with "his Capitol Hill Lolita", but includes literary references to Xanadu and Kubla Khan. "How learned you are," chuckles Alexis, "and how devastatingly interesting this is." As a token of her appreciation, she grants Hess access to her back exit. Adam, meanwhile, does some amusing name calling: "Woa, get off your bronco, Mercedes cowboy!" he warns Jeff, before going on to describe Kirby as "one sexy doll ... I oughta know." In another sincere attempt to reach out to his brother--"I truly want to be friends with you"--he makes a sad speech about how isolated he has been all his life, but the Stevenbot remains unmoved: "Just because we're brothers doesn't make us friends." Alexis enters the scene just as Steven is brushing away Adam's attempt at a brotherly embrace, and immediately takes Steven's side, accusing Adam of antagonising him. "But mother -" protests Adam, but she refuses to listen. Meanwhile, Steven just sits there like the latex **** he is, saying nothing. Boy, I wish Adam would paint his panels. Instead, he retreats to his office and talks to himself in the mirror ("You tried. Still alone.") before doing some trembling-hands-trying-to-open-a-bottle-of-pills acting. Steven justifies working for Colbyco as a way to finance his divorce. (Enter the simian-featured Chris Deegan). Blake spends much of the episode trying to arrange a meeting with Alexis in order to confront her over some phoney evaluation of something or other. She agrees to meet him after hours at her apartment. Word gets back to the mansion, where Fallon once again wins the award for the Stupidest Line of the Episode: "I can't shake this feeling that my mother just came back to Denver to get revenge." Well, duh. She follows this up with the embarrassing suggestion that she and Krystle take over the kitchen and "make something goofy like hot dogs and baked beans and sauerkraut." (1) This is now Fallon's idea of a good time? and (2) "goofy"?? While Blake paces impatiently, Alexis changes out of her sailor suit and into something more pink and floaty (which actually makes her look short and fat). She then makes her annual pass at Blake, he walks out on her as usual (calling her "a rank amateur"), she picks up a martini glass, hurls it in his direction, and ... freeze!
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"The Dinner." Three weeks have passed since events of the previous episode. During this time, the Stevenbot has become an executive at Colby Co. "You're doing an absolutely dazzling job of analyzing the potential of those Far Eastern leases that we're bidding for", coos Alexis, making it sound as though he's being glueing sequins onto the company stationery again. Blake is less impressed. "Apparently, you've changed your view about the oil business from the days when you refused to be an executive with me," he observes of his android son. "Views change, Dad," replies the Stevenbot in that emotionally botoxed way of his. "End of discussion." Views change. Sigh--that's all the explanation we get for the reversal of a major character's entire belief system and ideology. Clare Maynard, the roving reporter (and Gordon Wales forerunner) with the Pulitzer prize and the tabloid mentality, pops up from behind one of Alexis's cheese plants to harangue Steven over Claudia Blaisdel, "that poor, troubled woman" whom everyone in Denver has completely forgotten about. His memory banks rebooted, the Stevenbot goes to see her at the Nick Toscanni Home for Ex-Cast Members. Claudia, clad in hideous pastel jogging bottoms, recognises him immediately: "Your eyes, they're still the same." Maybe they are, but I'll bet this Steven can't quote Emily Dickinson. Try feeding "Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye" into the Stevenbot's data banks, and you'd most likely get "Does not compute! Views change! Views change! End of discussion!" Krystle has been to see Claudia "quite a few times", apparently. She has? Gee, what other meetings have been taking place that the show hasn't seen fit to tell us about? Does Fallon go line dancing with Walter Lankershim on a regular basis? "God, I wish I'd been with you on the roof with the doll," whirrs the Stevenbot to Claudia. Why? He wasn't with her following her overdose, or her shooting, or when she had amnesia and lost the ability to speak, or any of the three times she found out that Matthew and Lindsay were dead, and that was when Steven and Claudia were (mostly) living in the same house. And that's because their relationship was o-v-e-r. Despite the weird fakeness of their exchange and the draft excluder on her head (to hide the lobotomy scars?), Pamela Bellwood still manages to inject some poignancy into the scene: "You didn't mention your son ... You still pity me." Kirby, Claudia's successor in suffering, is also quite good during an argument with Jeff at La Mirage--it's like she's suddenly realised the ridiculousness of their situation: not only do they live with his ex-wife, but they go to her hotel for lunch. The shock of not being overly coy causes Kathleen Beller to feel faint and Jeff immediately suggests a visit to Dr Wingfield. Alexis tries to buy Mark off, but he insists he's serious about Fallon. "Love? Come off it," Alexis scoffs. "You're nothing but a second rate bum in tennis shoes." This leads to the scene in which she arranges for Fallon to find her in Mark's bed. Even by DYNASTY standards, this is absurd; the scheme's success depends entirely on Joan Collins having read the script beforehand. Had Fallon knocked rather than walked straight into Mark's room, or had Mark not been taking a shower at exactly 5pm, it would have failed. "What do they call a woman like you?" Mark asks Alexis as her daughter flees in tears. Desperate and unbalanced, perhaps? No, "Smart and intelligent," according to Alexis. Ah, but of course; how does the old argument go? If a man were to climb into his son's lover's bed and pretend to be naked, everyone would applaud him for being a good businessman, but if a woman does it, she's immediately a mad old bitch. Much of this episode centres around lovely Krystle's determined attempts to effect a reconciliation between Blake and Steven over a posh dinner at the Carrington house. This creates all sorts of ripples amongst the characters. Alexis, believing with her customary mixture of justification and paranoia that Blake has always done everything possible to separate her from her son, is threatened by Krystle's involvement: "How dare you interfere in my son's life?" "I love your desk. The tusks--they're so you," replies Krystle, getting the last word for once. In order to sabotage the dinner, Alexis arranges for Adam and Steven to be stranded while on a business trip. "On one hand, you want me to be friends with my brother," protests Adam. "On the other, you make it impoossible by involving me in your schemes." "My poor little innocent Adam," she sneers. "What other wonders are in store for us?" He grabs her by the arms; she calls him violent and sick, adding, "Just make sure I don't get sick of you," as if he were her prison bitch. Adam tries to warn the Stevenbot of her plan, but he is too arrogant to listen. "I am a hired hand. I follow mother's orders," Adam shrugs, defeated. Steven's absence from the dinner table sparks a row between Blake and Krystle. Like Alexis, he accuses her of interfering. "What should I be concerned with?" she snaps, echoing the Krystle of Season 1. "The dinner menu? What dress to wear?" The final shots of each of the last two scenes are high angle views, first of the Stevenbot alone on the airstrip and then Krystle alone on the Carrington staircase. There is something potentially rich about this Krystle/Blake/Steven/Alexis/Adam situation--Adam and Steven's traditional bad brother/good brother roles are reversed, the heroic Blake's behaviour is flawed and unreasonable, and both Alexis and Krystle's motivations are rooted in character and backstory. Unfortunately, the central focus of the story is Steven, and it's into Jack Coleman's black hole of a performance that a lot of the drama disappears.
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"The Threat". The penultimate episode of the season and time for two of DYNASTY's annual traditions--the Alexis/Krystle catfight and the obligatory scene in which Krystle marches bravely out of the Carrington mansion, suitcase in hand. Interestingly, these two events are interlinked, with the lilypond fight directly impacting Krystle's decision to leave. Given the nosedive in quality (not to mention narrative logic) during Season 3, it's surprising how much depth there is to the characters' motivations here. The events leading up to the fight are manifold and encompass several different storylines. Alexis has come out to the mansion in an effort to patch things up with Fallon following her one woman performance of "Whoops, There Go My Shoulderpads!" in Mark's hotel room during the previous episode. Fallon wants nothing to do with her mother, having now crossed over to The Blonde Side. ("I hate myself for not realising sooner what a decent woman Krystle is," she says.) Alexis then marches over to the lily pond that previously belonged to Richard Channing on FLAMINGO ROAD to blame Krystle for turning Fallon against her. Krystle in turn accuses Alexis of turning the Stevenbot against Blake, which has led to the Stevenbot taking Danny away from the house. "I know what's wrong with you," says Alexis, seeing an exposed nerve and grinding her metaphorical cigarette into it. "The empty armed Madonna, mourning the baby she couldn't have and the baby she almost got to adopt, gone now. That's it, isn't it?" Throughout their exchange, she addresses Krystle as "Mrs Jennings", just as she did during their first bitchfest back in Season 2, only now it's a direct reference to Krystle's marital status. The fight itself is funny and silly, (particularly the sight of a waterlogged Joanie staggering away, hair matted, one shoe on and one shoe off) but what's particularly impressive is that the scene isn't simply camp for camp's sake; it isn't an end in itself. Blake comes upon the two women brawling and reprimands Krystle in front of her nemesis: "I won't have my wife acting this way." This is a betrayal too far for Krystle, and out come the suitcases. She gives several reasons for leaving, which touch on storylines not just from this season, ("I'm not legally married to you and I'm not sure I want to be") but ones that stem from Season 2, ("Maybe if I hadn't lost the baby, maybe if I could still have one, we'd be closer ... Alexis ... she's never really left you, Blake ... She's more involved in your life than I am") and even further back ("What am I in your life? ... I was closer to you, closer to the core of your life, when I was your secretary. And don't bother calling one of the servants, I haven't forgotten how to carry my own bags.") Suddenly, there are layers of history to Blake and Krystle's relationship; they have recurring, complicated problems in the same way that real people do. There is another repercussion of the pool fight--seemingly minor, but with major consequences. Kirby and Alexis almost have their first scene together when Alexis, vexed about an earring she lost during the fight, overhears Kirby mention her mother to Joseph. "I wonder how she'd feel if I ever told her the truth about that woman?" wonders Alexis. "You wouldn't do that," replies Joseph twitchily. "Have the pond drained immediately and we'll see." Much of the rest of the episode is spent setting Neil McVane up as the chief suspect in the upcoming cliffhanger. Clare Maynard has splattered his "Capitol Hill Lolita" scandal all over the Chronicle, and Alexis celebrates with some chocolate covered croissants. "I had them specially flown in from Paris," she tells Adam. "I'm very concerned about you, Mother." "One delicious croissant? Don't worry, darling. I'll work it off. I always do." But Adam is referring to McVane's wrath, and sure enough, McVane bursts into her office and terrorises Alexis in a fab final scene which resembles something out of a Joan Crawford movie. Blake arrives in time to save Alexis, so that he can have the pleasure of throttling her himself almost exactly three years later. Elsewhere, Kirby tells Jeff she's pregnant and it's all very sweet for about thirty seconds until he mentions the F word, i.e. his ex-wife's name, and Kirby storms off in a huff. The Stevenbot scales new heights of revoltingly pious martyrdom when he refers to heterosexuals as people "on the other side" who don't understand how he has suffered. Poor Steven, we're meant to think, forced by the social pressures of those "on the other side" to entering into a sham heterosexual marriage and live a lie. That's not the way I remember it: in Season 2, the real Steven couldn't keep his hands off Sammy Jo; the marriage failed because she was a greedy poor person, not because of his secret stash of Jeff Stryker videos. Chris Deegan then comes out to him in an awkward, joyless scene: "Do you want to hear the story of my life? ... It's the same as yours." Really, Chris? Were you having a brilliant time shagging Heather Locklear as well? "Life in the closet is life in the closet," he says, suggesting that all homosexuals are equally dull and conservative and emotionally constipated. Heck, maybe they are, but do they all have to be as lifeless and totally devoid of humanity and individuality as Coleman and Deegan? It's as though the writers fear that if they dare to write a gay character with a spark of personality, he'll instantly morph into Divine, wearing a bouffant wig and crawling along the ground eating dog ****. Hence we're stuck with these tense, tight arsed, humourless, sexless characters talking through gritted teeth about how proud and well adjusted they are. As the coming out scene continues, Deegan and Coleman stare tensely at each other and pray silently for the director to shout "Cut." Their discomfort is palpable and contagious.
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"The Cabin." Just like the end of Season 2, the finale of Season 3 isn't as good as the episode(s) leading up to it. Three days have elapsed since Krystle moved out of the house, and in the first scene, the Stevenbot tells Fallon that "Chris [a homosexual man] moved into my apartment last night." No explanation of their sleeping arrangements is forthcoming. In fact, the writers seem determined that Steven should keep his balls in the air, so to speak, as he receives a letter from Claudia (a heterosexual woman) in the same scene. (Equally, while he is visiting heterosexual but invisible Claudia at the Nick Toscanni Home for Badly Written Characters later in the episode, he receives a phone call from homosexual but celibate Chris.) "If you're being defensive about anything there's no need to be," ventures Fallon. (Except that if the Stevenbot wasn't being defensive, what on earth would he be doing?) Now that the Carrington mansion has become an extension of La Mirage and vice versa, not only is Jeff living under the same roof as his ex-wife, but Krystle is doing the same with ex-husband Mark, who is settling into his new persona of Mr Hard Done By: "How did two nice guys from Ohio end up here in Denver mixed up with these very rich and very rotten people?" he asks her, before suggesting they leave town together. Krystle's reply is odd but interesting: "I'm a free woman ... and I'm going to stay here and make a life for myself as Krystle Grant." Mark then mumbles something about a score he has to settle "with Blake's ex-wife." This one of a series of threats made by second tier characters against Alexis that leads up to the fire at the end of the episode. Obviously, the inspiration for this whodunnit is "The Shooting of JR", but there are crucial differences. While DALLAS's cliffhanger was a last minute brainwave on the part of the writers, it nonetheless tied a season's worth of pre-existing characters and storylines into one explosive climax. Moreover, there was a sense of inevitability about JR's shooting; it really felt as though someone had to stop him. With DYNASTY, the cliffhanger feels tacked on, the suspects and motives newly contrived to serve the whodunnit convention rather than the attempt on Alexis's life arriving organically out of what has come before. For instance, Alexis and Morgan Hess have enjoyed a largely cordial relationship up until this episode, where her hostile reaction to his request for a $45,000 loan appears to stem more from her humourless, crabby mood (which might also explain her less witty than usual dialogue throughout this episode) than anything more rooted in their relationship. Nevertheless, Hess gives good threat: "How you're going to regret this, lady." It's certainly better than Neil McVane's soundbite. Having shot his vengeful load in the preceding episode, he manages only a drunken "I have business to take care of," delivered to Blake as he staggers out of his office. Joseph offers a C3P0 line reading of "If you ever seriously meant to do that, I should be forced to stop you," in response to Alexis's repeated threat to reveal all about Kirby's mother. "Stop as in murder?" she scoffs in reply. "I can just see the headlines now, 'THE BUTLER DID IT!'" How much more interesting it would have been had this whodunnit arrived as a result of Alexis's actions in Season 2, when the characters closest to her and most important to the viewer--Blake, Krystle, Steven, Sammy Jo, Fallon--each had a compelling motive for wanting her out of the way. (And while it's a neat twist to have Alexis's nemesis trapped alongside her in the burning cabin, I think it would have ultimately been more interesting if Krystle had been a suspect rather than a victim). As it is, the suspect list is rather dull and surprisingly unglamorous. Adam is the arguable exception, but the key scene he is given in this episode--Alexis, having caught the tail end of an argument between him and Steven, misreads the situation ("What did you finally call him - a faggot?") and decides to cut him out of her will--feels pretty tame compared to the compellingly twisted mother/son relationship they have enjoyed all season. The introduction of Alexis's will, never major dramatic factor previously, as a plot point at this late stage only adds to the finale's "tacked on" feeling. There are also a couple of scenes that feel like watered down versions of earlier encounters. Blake's visit to Steven's new apartment, where he encounters Chris Deegan (who introduces himself as "Steven's lawyer. And friend." "I see.") is a less interesting variation on the Season 1 scene in which Blake drops by Steven's apartment with a housewarming gift only to find Ted Dinard there. Ted pretends to be a college friend of Steven's and a tense game of cat and mouse ensues as Blake, oozing insincere charm, attempts to catch Ted out. The scene with Chris Deegan has none of the earlier one's subtlety. When the Stevenbot returns home to find his father attempting to throw Chris out of the apartment, it turns into a rehash of Ted's death scene, only with John Forsythe acting opposite a couple of shiny haired mannequins. Meanwhile, Alexis taunts Joseph over his impotence ("A man who's nothing but talk") as she did during their studio encounter at the beginning of Season 2, but where that earlier scene was filled with dark shadows and gothic atmosphere, this one takes place in Alexis's blandly lit, pastel penthouse. "Do you still keep a scrapbook on my comings and goings, Joseph?" she continues, in a direct reference to that first conversation. "Well, why don't you crawl back to the house, creep into you room and flick through it, because you're boring me." Dr Edwards must have a scrapbook of Adam's doings hidden under his mattress, for he has total recall of the first case Adam worked on as an attorney in Billings. Fallon's subsequent regression to her Nancy Drew origins as she sets out to investigate mercuric oxide and Blake's feud with the Stevenbot ("I'll be damned if I'm going to let two gays raise that baby!") are two of three mini-cliffhangers set up in this episode. The other is Kirby's discovery that Adam is the father of her baby. A couple of groovily edited flashbacks to that fateful night in Alexis's penthouse leave no room for ambiguity--for future narrative purposes, Kirby was unequivocally raped by Adam. There's a cute splitscreen effect when Alexis calls Krystle to lure her to the Stevenbot's cabin (the same cabin where Al Corley's tenderness transcended gender back in Season 1). Once there, Alexis attempts to indoctrinate Krystle into "the sad sisterhood of beautiful women", but again there's a sense of old ground being covered as the two adversaries trade insults: "a master of disgust"; "an ex-stenographer". Krystle rallies with a nice speech recounting some of Alexis's crimes ("Money: your leitmotif in life--how's that for an ex-stenographer? ... You married Cecil for it, you tried to buy Danny with it and you bought off Sammy Jo with it. And now you're trying to use it to get Blake") which echoes a similar rant given by Sue Ellen on the morning of JR's shooting, only the DALLAS confrontation packed more of a dramatic punch because (1) it took place in front of JR's parents and (2) JR was a more dangerous opponent for Sue Ellen than Alexis is for Krystle. The problem with Alexis's role as show villain is that, for all her wealth and power, none of the Carringtons seem to take her very seriously. They are certainly not frightened of her. Cut to Joseph's perky bottom outside and soon there are flames everywhere. "This is all your fault! Every time you come into my life something happens to me!" shrieks Joan Collins from the safety of a dubbing studio, while in front of our eyes, Krystle turns into a man in a wig you could mop floors with. Like most fires in prime time soaps, it's sort of dramatic and undramatic at the same time. It's exciting, but despite lots of editing, no one ever really looks like they're in danger. Again, DALLAS did it better: the Southfork fire, which originally aired two weeks after this episode, was more dramatic, but that was as much to do with events leading up to the climax as the fire itself. Generally speaking, fires on British soaps have been far more impactful, possibly because the sets themselves (the motel reception in CROSSROADS, the pub interiors in CORONATION STREET and EASTENDERS) are even more iconic than the characters, and so to see them destroyed in front of your eyes, often after decades of screentime, is weirdly powerful. Nevertheless, the final shot of the season, which seems to travel away from Krystle trapped inside the cabin, pass through the fire and then ending on a freeze frame of the cabin's burning exterior, is a clever and effective one.
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Last edited by kenneth; 09-29-2007 at 12:32 PM.
Oh my, how flattering!!
"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance"
Awesome! more?
Thank You So Much Jason! For This Lovely Banner
I second that, but please James finish season 4! Only one more ep to goOriginally Posted by Alexis Marissa Morell
Yes, he's always deliciously readable. The only post(s) of James' I occasionally dont read is if it's about a show I've never seen and likely never will--- and sometimes I still will because it's always so true and/or funny.
Oh everyone's being so nice--it's like I'm dead!
"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance"
But--- we'll be so lonely...
"The Arrest." An unusually pared down episode, featuring only the regular cast, Dr Edwards and a detective, in a succession of mostly two hander scenes, in which no one rushes up to the camera and says, "Look at us, you SCUM! We're RICH!" Having been rescued by Mark, ("The cabin door was deliberately locked from the outside; somebody deliberately set that fire!") Joanie spends the entire instalment in bed (insert own Joan Rivers gag here), thus dramatically reducing the amount of sweeping-in-and-out-of-offices action. "My face! What's happened to my face? Get me a mirror!" she exclaims upon waking up in hospital (Cheney, alas; I'm more of a Denver Memorial man myself). Down the hall, Krystle is getting existential on Blake's ass: "If I'd died in that fire, who would they have buried? I don't know who I am." If it's identity issues you're into, honey, wait till Season 6. There's an interesting shift in dynamics between Adam and his parents. Shocked that Alexis would suspect him of setting the fire, ("You think it was me, don't you?" "After what you did to Jeff, I wouldn't put anything past you!") Adam gravitates towards Blake, who is feeling equally rebuffed by Krystle and the Stevenbot. (I can't quite recall the state of play between Blake and Adam immediately prior to this episode. I know that Adam snubs Blake's offer of the penis-mobile midway through Season 3, but after that it gets a little vague.) This development aside, there's a somewhat by-the-numbers feel to the whodunnit storyline. An investigation is launched by the original Gary Ewing, with even sadder looking eyes than usual, ("Damn that Louisa May Alcott!" he's doubtless thinking. "If it weren't for her, I'd be doing jacuzzi acting with Donna Mills insteading of sleepwalking through this shlock") who interviews Alexis and Blake, then arrests the most (and therefore least) likely suspect--Mark, who has now started dressing like the Milk Tray Man. Krystle watches helplessly and Blake smugly as Mr Hard Done By is led away on Blake's say so. A similar scene takes place the following year in DALLAS between Pam and JR as Cliff is arrested for shooting Bobby, but is staged a lot more dramatically than this one. Blake and Mark are suddenly being pitched as arch enemies, but this is really the first time they've had any direct contact. And how was Blake able to inform Gary Ewing of Mark's motive for wanting Alexis dead? We have been given no indication that Blake knew anything about Mark's affairs with either Alexis or Fallon, or Alexis's subsequent bedroom set up. The episode's generic vibe is mitigated by an unusual visual flair, particularly in the scenes involving Kirby. Kathleen Beller's actually very good--all the coyness and purple prose have gone. Instead we see her in dark shadows, arguing fiercely with Jeff and tearing Jeanette and Tony each a new bottom hole. The highlight of the episode is the dream sequence between Kirby and Adam--all Victorian gothic with candles and billowing curtains and swirling camera work. It's very artfully staged for DYNASTY and strongly atmospheric (quite Season 9 in that respect). The final scene, in which Kirby attempts to re-enact Krystle's miscarriage by deliberately getting thrown from her horse has a similar feeling of old fashioned, masochistic melodrama. Unlikeliest line of the episode comes from Mark to Krystle in hospital: "You know, when I left here last night, I broke down like a kid." Now that I would have liked to have seen.
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"The Bungalow." Gosh, this was boring. Or maybe one episode of DYNASTY a day really is my limit. Fallon tries to help Kirby after her fall, but has become so devoid of individuality she could be anyone now. "Tony, put your shirt on, will you?" is a very disappointing thing to hear Fallon to say, especially when one remembers how much fun she had taking Michael's shirt off back in the first episode. ("It's called handling the servant problem."). That said, DYNASTY has now become such a strangely un-erotic programme, it's probably for the best if Tony, along with everyone else, does keep his shirt on. The most memorable scene is the one where Alexis (almost) gets suffocated by a pillow, groovily shot so one can't be sure if it's really happening or something out of a nightmare. Back at the penthouse, Alexis sheds her turban to reveal her new mullet. "Mother, I think your hair looks terrific like that," whirrs the Stevenbot. However, while this is Joanie's quintessential 80s look, something is definitely lost along with her longer wigs. Alexis just isn't as much fun anymore. Adam clearly isn't keen and immediately moves out of the apartment to join the rest of the cast at La Mirage, thereby breaking up the show's most compelling double act. Blake goes to great lengths to prove to Krystle that he's "not railroading Mark Jennings", when it would be more interesting if he was. So we get Blake checking the alibis of Morgan Hess, whom he finds covered in sub-Philip Marlowe bruises, ("I was in the emergency room of the Denver Memorial Hospital getting put back together," Hess tells him) and Neil McVane, ("I was passed out in a cheap bar.") before magmanimously posting Mark's $100,000 bail--all to prove that "I am a fair man", when no one is really bothered if he is or not, not even Krystle. Joseph reappears, having been missing for an episode and a half. He is now almost entirely machine. When he speaks to Kirby, it is as though he is reciting some strange robotic poem: "I never want you - to be hurt - by anything or anyone you - must know that yes?" By the time he calls Blake at his office, he appears to be talking backwards. Then it's a race against time for Blake and Jeff as they drive dramatically through those generic streets that are always used to denote Povertyville. Despite their best efforts, they arrive too late to prevent the most boring case of suicide in television history. "Why, Joseph? Good God, why (are you such a weird actor)?"
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"The Note." Concerned about Joseph, Kirby finally says what everyone else has long been thinking: "He's acting very strange." Tragically, it's too late to get him to an acting coach because, as Jeff explains, 'e's gawn and topped 'imself. Kirby rushes outside to hyperventilate by the lilypond and whimper the first cliché to enter her boney little head--"I didn't get a chance to say good-bye!" It seems petty to quibble over the contents of Joseph's suicide note at a time like this, so let's do it: "I tried to stop that evil woman from ruining another life and failed," he writes. But Kirby's life wasn't ruined by Alexis, as Joseph saw for himself shortly before committing the act (i.e. blowing his brains out) that probably has ruined her life. "Are you accusing me of being the evil one in that note? There were two of us in that cabin, you know," protests Alexis amusingly to Blake and Sgt Gary Ewing. A whiff of hypocrisy permeates the episode as the Carringtons gather together and pretend to give a sugar about Joseph. Fallon concocts some idyllic childhood reminiscence ("I remember the look on his face one time on his birthday. Kirby had given him a card that said, 'I love my daddy'") while Blake pays tribute to the old weirdo in front of a bunch of assembled extras, I mean, servants: "He lived by principles that a lot of people don't subscribe to these days ..." (such as bribery, perjury and voyeurism) " ... He was an unusual man." (Amen to that.) Alexis is the only character whose memory of the man seems to stretch further back than Season 3. "Joseph, a decent, moral man?" she scoffs at Blake. "What he really was was your paid house spy. It's a pity he didn't tell me about you and that sexy young wife of his. 'The Attic Nympho'--wasn't that her soubriquet?" In a bizarre attempt to ease Kirby's suffering, Blake makes the following request: "I don't want you and Jeff to move out of this house ever." Jeff proves equally sensitive and understanding towards his new wife's pain: "She's got to get over it sometime," he grumbles impatiently to Krystle on the day of Joseph's funeral. Overwhelmed by both grief and too many storylines, Kirby is apparently unable to choose between a veil or a bowler hat for the funeral, and so wears both at the same time. Afterwards, she finally mentions the R word when she talks to Krystle about her baby: "It's Adam's. He raped me." Chris and the Stevenbot spend a fun-filled evening in their apartment confirming their status as the kind of homosexuals who only engage in sex with women (unless backgammon is some kind of televisual equivalent of rimming) by chanting "We're friends not lovers! We're two guys who live in the same house with separate bedrooms!" at each other. The Stevenbot's invisible gayness established, he is free to collect Claudia from the Bo Hopkins Home for Emotionally Disembowelled Characters. Claudia demonstrates her new found sanity by thanking the building "for helping me to trust who I first distrusted", and then her realistic expectations for the future by announcing, "it's just going to be beautiful and great!" before driving off the hotel where she will shortly set herself on fire. There are flowers from Fallon waiting in her suite with a note that presumably reads, "Gee, haven't seen you since the day you made me think you'd thrown my baby off that roof! Dial 9 for extra towels! Hugs xx" Claudia and the Stevenbot reminisce about the first time they made love, recalling incorrectly that Claudia told Steven to "make this night last forever, make the stars wonder 'Where is the sun?'" which sounds a touch demanding given that it was Steven's first time, and far more Hallmark than Emily Dickinson. Besides, what Claudia really told him that night was, "There's a beautiful gentleness about you, Steven, a tenderness that transcends gender," but I guess that's a bit too gay for Season 4. The Stevenbot then starts unbuttoning her Nolan Miller straitjacket. "I haven't touched a woman since Sammy Jo," he murmurs. (Oh listen to you, trying to sound like the cop out of the Village People--like you've touched anyone since Sammy Jo.) "And I haven't touched a man who mattered since you," replies Claudia (which is one in the eye for Jeff, and makes her sound like the biggest **** in the loony bin.) When Blake offers her a job at Denver Carrington, Claudia turns him down. "I've got to move out on my own," she insists. This is the same behaviour previously by exhibited Fallon and Krystle. They make a big show of "being of my own person" when Blake offers them a job or a place to live, but their independence only takes them as far as La Mirage--as though living off Blake at his hotel is somehow more of a feminist statement than doing so in his house or his office. Just as she did a year earlier, Alexis makes Mr Hard Done By (now making the smooth transition into Mr Self Destructive, after a boozy pass at Krystle) a business proposition: "I want you to use those rippling muscles for one reason and one reason only, to protect me." And Mr Self Destructive, just as he did a year earlier, turns her down out of sheer indifference. My favourite line of the episode comes from Adam, and is as dramatic as it is meaningless: "I wonder how one says 'Forever Fallon' in Latin? It ought to be inscribed on a corner of the family seal in red. Blood red." In the final scene The Stevenbot joins Blake in the library for one of those reconciliation attempts that usually ends up with Steven floating face down in the swimming pool or, in this case, Blake yelling, "I'll see you in court!" before storming out of the room. The Stevenbot flares his nostrils, knits his brow and waits for the freeze frame.
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"Custody Hearing, Part 1." In a grotty dressing room in New York sits a bikini-clad Sammy Jo, reading The Collected Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Kidding. She's looking at the pictures in the National Enquirer, aka Carrington Weekly. "DENVER OIL TYCOON SUES GAY SON FOR BABY'S CUSTODY," screams the front page. (More intriguing is a smaller headline that reads, "THE FISH AND CHIP DIET SWEEPING ENGLAND." Sigh. Why couldn't they make a two part episode about that?) Her crusty yet benign boss (you know the type) chivvies her back to work with my favourite line of the episode: "Listen, you got mixed up with the wrong guy and your baby's up for grabs. I'm sorry, but you do your hurting on your own time, OK?" (Second favourite line belongs to Andrew Laird: "Steven's lawyer may be gay but he isn't stupid.") Over at La Mirage, Fallon has perused Claudia's resume and decided that her experience as a waitress, part time book seller, file clerk, semi-prostitute and two time mental patient makes her the ideal choice to assist her in running the most exclusive hotel in all of Christendom. In fact, Claudia's already figured out a way to squeeze ten more tables into the restaurant! "You're kidding!" exclaims the Stevenbot when he hears the amazing news. After a kiss from her homosexual android boyfriend, Claudia canters off, marvelling at how peaceful life becomes once all your subtext has been surgically removed. Fallon talks approvingly of how much progress Claudia has made in the seven days since she left the Katy Kurtzman Home for the Formerly Interesting. Indeed, the change in Claudia has been remarkable--almost every shred of individuality has disappeared, and she now talks in the same rhythm and dresses in the same style as every other woman in Denver. How to explain, then, the strange English accent she appears to be cultivating? A quiet rebellion on Pamela Bellwood's part, perhaps, or the result of a drunken backstage bet with Linda Evans, or even, as has previously been suggested, a bizarrely circuitous attempt to gain employment from the BBC? (Or could it possibly have something to do with the fish and chip diet sweeping England?) Whatever the reason, Claudia's vowel movements take a decidedly fruity turn, pronouncing the line "I told the architect" as "I tohld the ah-citect." Fallon's thoughts, meanwhile, turn to the court fight between Blake and Steven. No matter who wins, she reflects, somebody she loves will lose. So why doesn't she just tell Blake that Steven is shagging Claudia not Chris? Come to that, why doesn't Alexis, who is also aware of her son's heterosexual relationship and is desperate for Blake to lose the case, stand up in court and tell her ex-husband to get his facts straight before he starts accusing their robot son of bumming lawyers in front of innocent children? Then we can get on with hearing more about the fish and chip diet sweeping England. Good old Andrew invites Krystle to lunch so that he can deliver a faux version of the cross examination that he won't be able to deliver in court--in which he depicts her as a gold digging ****--because Blake nobly (i.e. boringly) won't permit it. The Stevenbot arrives home with his heterosexual vaginal lover and reacts to an unexpected visit from Mrs Pomegranate the social worker with his usual grace and dignity, i.e. by retreating into a self righteous sulk: "My right to raise my son as I see fit is at stake here! I won't change the way I live or my beliefs just to make things easier for Blake Carrington!" Let's see, the two things the Stevenbot keeps whirring on about are his son and his principles--yet he is willing to jeopardise the custody of his son (for if the drama is to work--which it doesn't--we are meant to believe that Blake has a very real possibility of winning the case) for principles he doesn't even live by; unless the right to be attracted to men but have sex only with women is the principle he's fighting for. During her testimony in court, Mrs P comes up with a couple of zingers: "My opinion is that a child raised by two gay indivduals will, in all likelihood, become gay" and "He became antagonsitic and over-emotional, but based on my experience with these people, they all seem to be that way." (Hmm, that last one does have a ring of truth about it.) "Objection!" cries Chris Deegan dutifully, after each statement. "Overruled!" replies the judge. Apparently, "as this is a hearing not a trial" Mrs P is entitled to her opinion. Fair enough, but what seems very odd is that she is not then encouraged to elaborate on these opinions in any way, when surely it would be in the prosecution's best interests to pursue them? And so the show gets to be provocative and lazy at the same time. If I cared enough, I might suggest it was also being irresponsible. No matter; the entire storyline is hollow and bogus, an excuse for the characters to tread water for a couple of episodes, rehashing old arguments ("He exiled me!" "You're a liar!" "You're a stenographer!") in a different context--or at least a different courtroom. The unfavourable comparisons between this storyline and that of Blake's trial at the end of Season 1 are unavoidable, but so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning. All that said, there are some good moments here--John Forsythe's ice cold contempt as he is cross examined on the stand, and I never tire of hearing him blame Alexis for Steven's faggotry: "You had seven years to turn him into what he is. I've been trying to turn him into a man ever since!"; Krystle's sweetness as she recalls her scenes with Al Corley in the first episode (a minor quibble--Krystle gives the impression that this was when she and Steven first met, when it was clear that they knew each other before the beginning of the series), her Season 2 miscarriage and the near adoption of Danny; and there's even a moment when Jack Coleman is not actively terrible. "You hate me. You always have," he says quietly to Blake at the end of their first day in court. He doesn't bark or bleat the line, he just says it.
Elsewhere, Alexis visits Little Blake in the mansion nursery and comes face to face with a violent Kirby. The first scene between the two women, it is badly dubbed (we're asked to believe Blake can clearly hear their argument from the downstairs hallway, even though their voices are barely raised) and ineptly staged. Kirby attempts some ridiculous looking strangling, while Alexis has only a stuffed giraffe with which to defend herself. The attack has a strange effect on Alexis's mullet. Short and spiky in the nursery, it is voluminously bouffant as she and Blake argue in the garden moments later. Interestingly, in an increasingly rare example of one incident having lasting consequences, Blake chooses this moment to ban Alexis from the house completely: "If I have to post an armed guard at the front gate, you'll not see Little Blake under this roof again!" "Take your hands off me, Blake. I loath being touched by trash!" Both scenes are flat and humourless, lacking Joanie's customary zing. Kirby is undergoing so many different torments--her father has committed suicide for reasons unknown, she is carrying a child that her husband thinks is his but is actually her rapist's, she carries the guilt of an aborted self abortion, she is living under the same roof as not only her husband's ex-wife, (with whom he is clearly still in love) but from this episode on, her rapist, about whom she has nightmares and who is still trying to get into her knickers--that it becomes impossible to empathise with her. Go on, try--all you'll end up with is a head full of white noise. Consequently, any scene involving Kirby in which she is not huddled in a corner, smearing her naked body with peanut butter and/or using her French braid as a noose while singing "Frere Jacques" in fluent Chinese is a scene I can't believe in.
The best hope for "Custody Hearing, Part 2"? The final scene, in which Sammy Jo, wearing her best Paddington Bear raincoat (a response to the fish and chip diet sweeping England, perhaps?), calls Blake from New York: "Just put me on the stand and I'll guarantee you'll get Danny."
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"Custody Hearing, Part 2." This is more interesting than "Part 1". One gets a better sense of the new alliegances and estrangements within the family. Adam has replaced Joseph as Blake's new pool partner, minus the homo-horrific subtext. "This moment that we're sharing is as special to me as it is to you," announces Blake. "The kind of father/son relationship that I could never achieve with Steven.... Alexis made him her hostage when he was a little boy." Adam also has a new office at Denver Carrington, but Alexis, whose apartment has been trashed, wants him back with her: "Adam, I'm alone. I'm completely alone in that enormous penthouse, and last night I could have been murdered." Adam is unmoved, and so Mummy tries a tougher approach: "Be smart, Adam, and drop the hostility." The custody hearing livens up considerably when Andrew Laird calls Sammy Jo to the stand. Her testmony combines elements of the two surprise witnesses at Blake's Season 1 murder trial. Like Alexis, she is the defendant's vengeful ex-wife, out to impune his reputation whilst wearing a big hat. She also fulfills a similar function to Claudia, in that she is called to the stand to cast a new light on Steven's sexual history--the difference, of course, is that Claudia was used to boost Steven's heterosexual credentials, while Sammy Jo does her best to prove that he's a big fat gayer ("I left Steven because all I ever wanted was a man I could love who could love me back normally," she sniffs, wiping fake tears from her eyes). What a strange position for Andrew Laird to find himself in; there can't be many attorneys who have tried to prove the same man heterosexual in one court case and then homosexual in another. One of the few actors on the show that still has a genuine character to play, Heather Locklear is fab on the stand, lying her head off and then retreating behind faux country gal ignorance. Sammy Jo recalls and distorts the Season 2 scene in which Al Corley tracks her down to a photography studio in Los Angeles. "Steven made a pass at Ace," she says. ("Lying tramp!" yells the Stevenbot.) She then describes "the restaurant he dragged me to" in Season 3. "It was a gay restaurant." (The mind boggles--I'm seeing phallic shaped vegetables, salads the customers are encouraged to toss themselves, and gay coffee--which, according to Graham Norton, is the same as straight coffee, only it goes down better.) "Steven began to ogle a man," Sammy Jo continues. "He sent me home by taxi so he could stay and, like he said, 'do his own thing'." "Liar!" whirrs the Stevenbot again. OK, Sammy Jo is lying, but force feeding her dildo-shaped asparagus aside, what exactly is she accusing Steven of? Propostioning one man and cruising another; in other words, of doing what gay men conventionally (and legally) do to meet other gay men. While the Stevenbot's courtroom overreaction to these accusations is to be expected, (I'm reminded of his response later on in the series--during Season 7, I think--after a guy casually comes onto him at a party; he is so traumatised, it's as though he'd been raped) what is far more revealing is the reaction of other apparently liberal minded characters to Sammy Jo's testimony. During his cross examination, Chris Deegan refers to her allegations not just as lies but "these vile untruths." If Steven were a heterosexual man separated from his wife and accused of chatting up a couple of women, would the accusations still warrant the description of "vile"? I think not, Your Honour. And tragically it is Claudia, of all people, who says later to Sammy Jo: "You painted a picture of Steven as not a man, but I happen to know that he is." So, "not a man" translates as a homosexual who acts upon his attraction to other men, while "a man" is someone who can give a woman a good seeing to. So much for "Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye" eh, Clauds? Over at the mansion, Kirby is boogie woogying away on the piano, banging out those "My Daddy's Dead, I'm Carryin' My Rapist's Child And My Husband's Stayin' Overnight in Montana With His Tramp Ex-Wife Moonlight Sonata Blues." Sing it, Beethoven! Yes, this is the episode with Jeff and Fallon's much flashbacked-to reconciliation love scene. Emma Samms even does her own karaoke version (unless I've got it mixed up with The One Where They Go To A Ski Lodge After Fallon Gets The Use Of Her Legs Back). This means Jeff is cheating on his pregnant, recently bereaved bride. We should hate him for it, I suppose, but as Kirby's pain is so high pitched only dogs can empathise with it, we don't. Meanwhile, back in the courtroom, good old Andy Laird has called the Stevenbot to the stand. After paying tribute, with wondrous sarcasm, (God bless Peter Mark Richman) to the witnesses who have spoken on the Stevenbot's behalf, "warmly, oh so warmly, singing his praises as God's young gift to total goodness," he attempts to finally get to the heart of this storyline: "The one distinctive area missing, intentional or otherwise, has been testimony shedding any light whatsoever on the one key issue of this case, and that is the sexual preference of Steven Carrington ... Is Mr Deegan your present lover?" The Stevenbot dodges the question: "What he's asking in effect is if I'm guilty of being gay ... There is no guilt in this issue ... Everybody has the right to do what they want." Oh my arse there's no guilt. The Stevenbot, as played by Jack Coleman and as written by writers who bestow liberal characters with lines like "vile untruths" and "not a man", wreaks of guilt and shame. He's scared and closeted, but too scared and closeted to admit it. He is, in fact, in the closet about being in the closet. All of which is fine--I mean, I enjoy a spot of internalised homophobia as much as the next freak of nature--but let's not dress it up as something noble and courageous (and here I'm not talking about the character dressing it up but the series). Climbing down off my hobby horse, the Claudia/Sammy Jo confrontation is really good. Pamela Bellwood comes to life for the first time since Claudia's return; it's like she's been acting underwater until now. And Sammy Jo's just so nasty, addressing Claudia as "the woman who taught Steven about sex, but obviously wasn't good enough at it to land him" and observing that "Steven sure is a gutless wonder to send you here to fight his battles." The three bitch slaps between the two women aren't just campy fun but, like Krsytle and Alexis's lilypond fight, arise naturally out of the scene. Claudia and Sammy Jo have further run-ins throughout the series, but none are as specifically written or as good as this one. Claudia turns up at Steven's apartment later that night: "I can stop Blake. I have the answer--let's go have sex in front of him right now!"
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"Tender Comrades." Wow, a non-literal episode title! I'm impressed. You know, for a while there, I was starting to think they were gonna resort to using character names for episode titles! Shame on me for being so cynical. The episode begins with Claudia delivering one of her floaty rationalisations aboard the Lankershim/Blaisdel private jet: "Oh Steven, if you're so worried about what you feel strongly about, what you talked of in court, your principles ... you're not abandoning them, you're just realising that at any given moment in life there are priorities and at this moment in your life your priority is bringing this storyline to an end before everyone loses interest." You can feel it happening already--scenes that start out being about the android and his son invariably end up speculating over the future of Blake and Krystle's relationship. There's a really good scene where Sammy Jo, still smarting from her slap-a-thon with Claudia, receives a late night visit from Krystle. I love the running joke of how Sammy Jo still can't get anyone to call her "Samantha. Your sister gave me that name when I was born. You can at least respect it." Because Sammy Jo was busy playing nice in Season 2 and Krystle was carefully treading on eggshells around her in Season 3, this is the first no holds barred confrontation between aunt and niece. It's interesting, now that the gloves are off, how they each use Iris--the woman who connects them--as a weapon to hurt the other. Krystle: "Your mother never called you anything but Sammy Jo." Sammy Jo: "I don't care what your darling Iris called me. All I really remember about her was her coughing, coughing, night and day." "She was very sick." "Was she ever!" Following Adam's insinuations about Alexis's true feelings for Jeff in Season 3, Sammy Jo adopts a similar tack when talk turns to Steven: "He sure has a fan club in you, Aunty Krystle. Is there something about him that turns you on?" (I love Sammy Jo's '70s swingerish sex talk--"turns you on", "do his own thing"--she sounds like a lower IQ version of Jane Fonda in KLUTE.) Ultimately, it's Krystle who delivers the lowest blow: "Thank God your mother isn't here to see how you turned out." We can see that this wounds Sammy Jo, but the writers are thankfully in no hurry to reform her just yet. Somehow the conversation turns to Krystle's marriage, with Sammy Jo delivering a somewhat mixed message of "get off your high and mighty Carrington horse" and to go to Blake "instead of pickin' on me." Similarly, the following scene starts out with Blake reprimanding Andrew for Sammy Jo's lies against Steven on the witness stand, but they soon get bored of that and start talking about Krystle instead. "She left because you were treating her like a possession," says Andrew. "Why don't you find another way to treat her? Not as a wife, but as a partner." The Stevenbot and Claudia are married in Reno. (You know the old saying, 'Marry in Reno, repent in Denver'.) In honour of the occasion, the Stevenbot has managed to access some of Al Corley's old poetry files that have somehow not been deleted from his databank: "'Teacher, tender comrade, wife.' Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that on his wedding night," he tells Claudia. "Was he as handsome as you?" she replies, which tells us all we need to know about what the Season 3 lobotomy did for her artistic sensitivity. Imagine the reaction had the original Steven recited his Emily Dickinson poem to this version of Claudia: "That's beautiful. My tits are bigger than hers though, right?" After making beautiful, heterosexual love, the newlyweds reminsce about the days when he was human and she was believable: "The first time I knew that I loved you was when you dropped that dish on my kitchen floor." Sigh. At the end of this intimate post-coital scene, we see that Danny has been watching them from across the room the whole time! I'm guessing the newlyeds felt, even though there's no scientific proof that watching two constipated homosexuals play backgammon night after night can turn a kid gay, that to be on the safe side, they should expose him to some beautiful heterosexual lovemaking as well. Outside the courthouse the next morning, it's clear the reporters could give less of a fig about the outcome of the custody battle. "Mr Carrington, do you still have a thing for Krystle Grant?" is all they really want to know. (Let's face it, isn't that all anyone wants to know--about the love lives of oil company directors?) Krystle walks into the courthouse like she was walking onto a yacht, her hat strategically dipped below one eye. (Strategically dipped is such a good look for Krystle--in fact, I'd like her never to take this hat off, even when she goes swimming or gives birth.) Reporters cluster around her. "Miss Grant, Miss Grant," they caw--for an edict has been passed that no one in Denver may refer to her as Mrs Carrington or Jennings any longer, under punishment of death by public hanging--"I bet you think this song is about you, don't you? Don't you?" They jostle her, pressing their microphones into her face. Blake, coming over all Michael Hutchence/Sean Penn at the height of his/his paparazzi-tainted relationship with Paula Yates/Madonna, rushes to her protection, fists almost-but-not-quite flying. The Stevenbot fails to arrive for the hearing. "Flight delayed by weather problems" is the official excuse, but he and Claudia are probably busy demonstrating further heterosexual positions to their impressionable child. Eventually, court is adjourned for the lunch hour--that magical DYNASTY hour when anyone can travel anywhere in Denver they wish and still be back in the courtroom before the clock strikes 2. Krystle is summoned to the mansion by Kirby whom she finds packing while modelling the latest in Von Trapp maternity wear. "I'm leaving a place I should never have come back to," she tells her. "The only life I ever had in this castle was over when my father sent me to Europe. When I came back, I thought I could leave the downstairs world and move upstairs. Well I did, except the fairytale boomeranged. It didn't work ... I'm going to Paris." (Let's just take a moment to savour the phrase, "The fairytale boomeranged". Ahh. And again: "The fairytale boomeranged." It gets better each time, doesn't it?) This is the most sense Kirby has ever made, but sadly Krystle talks her out of leaving until she has told Jeff about the rape. Alexis, meanwhile, goes from the courtroom to her office to Blake's office to tell Blake that she has received "an official telegram stating that the government has no objection to the proposed merger between ColbyCo and Denver Carrington". She then says something important about "this board meeting, that quorum, those board members, these shareholders" that I didn't really follow. The Stevenbot and Claudia finally make it to court. "I hereby move that the court drop this case as the basis on which it was raised is totally invalid", says Chris Deegan handing Judge Frank Costanza the wedding certificate that proves Steven is officially a woman shagger (and therefore, by Claudia's definition, "a man"). "Is it your intention to live with your wife as man and wife and together share in the rearing of your son?" asks the judge. "Yes sir," replies The Stevenbot. "That is my intention, from this moment until he's fully grown and no longer needs our attention, or until a cute office boy in a bow-tie gives me the come on--whichever comes first." "Yeah, whatever, case dismissed," declares the judge before rushing off to a dinner meeting with the Soup Nazi. Krystle, still strategically dipped, hugs both Claudia and the Stevenbot. "I wish you so much penis," she says (I swear to God) and you know she means it. Custody crap sorted, she and Blake are left alone in the courtroom: "I can't say I'm sorry you lost your case, but I am sorry for all you lost with it." Nicely phrased, Krystle. Have you ever thought about a job in PR? Krystle protests that she has no experience. Experience, shmerience! "It's all instinctive with you," Blake tells her. Doesn't Rock Hudson say something similar when he offers her that horse job? If they ever did DYNASTY IN SPACE, there'd probably be a scene where Krystle says, "But I've never even flown a kite, much less an intergalactic battleship at warpspeed through the Ming Mong Galaxy," and Blake or William Shatner or someone would reply, "But it's all instinct with you, Krystle. Just trust your inner force, my darling." This being the 80s, when the surest way to a woman's heart is to give her an office to glide in and out of, Krystle begins to warm to the idea of a job at Denver Carrington even though, if the merger goes through, she would end up "working for Alexis." (A shame this scenario never panned out--early MELROSE PLACE is currently airing on JamesNet, and the fact that rivals Alison and Amanda are forced to co-exist in an office environment instantly makes their scenes more tense and interesting than DYNASTY's two ex-wives occasionally running into each other at the beauty parlour.) Over at La Mirage, Mark, tiring of his weekly rejection by his ex-wife, decides to mix it up a little and get rejected by his boss instead. Wearing his tightest tennis shorts, he pays a visit to Fallon's office and positions his crotch at eye level. Fresh from sleeping with her ex-husband, Fallon spells it out one more time: "You came into my life briefly at a really bad time ... and now you're out of my life." Having done their detective work in Montana (while indeed wearing their best Ewing barbecue outfits), Fallon and Jeff share their suspicions with Blake. "Adam trying to poison Jeff?" he responds. "I can't believe it. Not until I hear it from Adam's lips. False accusations cost me Steven. I will not lose my other son the same way." There is potential for some nice dramatic irony here. Adam, meanwhile, is busy tricking Alexis into signing some papers that will somehow get him off the hook with the whole mercuric oxide thingy. For the second time, he uses the China Sea oil leases as a Maguffin to cover his true motives (last time was as a pretext to lure Kirby to a motel): "The paper you're signing is a statement of interest [in the leases]", he lies to his mother. What a naughty boy he is.
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"Tracy." Ah, Tracy. It's weird, when you hear that name in American you thinks of classy women like Katherine Hepburn in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY or Diana Rigg in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, while over here it just means Deirdre Barlow's devil daughter and the fat one out of BIRDS OF A FEATHER. This episode picks up more or less where the last one left off, with Jeff and Fallon standing in Blake's office in their Ewing barbecue outfits and Blake telling them to keep quiet regarding their suspicions of Adam's role in the poisoning. Fallon's so incredibly frustrated that she shouts "Dammit!" at her father, which is the Carrington equivalent of masturbating with a crucifix and projectile vomiting over the upholstery. Alexis, meanwhile, is at the Stevenbot's apartment basking in the glow of his court victory and, more specifically, the role her own testimony played in Blake's defeat. "Do I seem to be gloating, Claudia? I'm not very good at reading your looks." Alexis's exhanges with Claudia are always fun. In a show full of increasingly homogenised characters, the two women maintain very different personalities and, even though their relationship never develops beyond the patronising ("I think that Claudia's pulled herself together beautifully") and their best scene remains their original poolside exchange in Season 2, it's amusing to observe Alexis's reaction to one of her daughter-in-law's herbalised homilies. "I'm sure you spoke the truth as you saw it," murmurs Claudia in that mystical monotone of hers, "but there's always more than one side to the truth..." "I like specifics, darling," she interrupts crisply. "Be specific." As Claudia starts banging on yet again about Lindsay's relationship with Matthew's mother, Alexis's eyes glaze over and she starts plotting a way to whisk the Stevenbot off to San Francisco for a Motherboy honeymoon. It's Rough Sex Night in Denver! (but not in Claudia and Steven's apartment obviously; it would take a fully-clothed game of backgammon to really get his engine running.) Mere hours after propositioning Fallon and getting turned down for the 134th time, Mark, aka Mr Needy-Beefy, shows up at Krystle's door inviting out her out for drinks and dinner. Encouraged by her total lack of enthusiasm, ("You just don't wanna spend the time with me, right?) he then proposes they spend the rest of their lives together, "not as friends but as lovers. I'm asking you to marry me again and get out of Denver for good." While Krystle mulls it over, he rips the sleeve off her blouse--rather neatly, it must be said--and tries to rape her. ("You don't want me to stop, you never wanted me to stop!") However, Mr Needy-Beefy's animal urges are no match for Krystle's Amazonian biceps. (This hunky tennis pro she can fight off, but not that old lilac haired drunk in Season 1? Looks like girlfriend's been doing some serious workin' out the last couple of seasons; I credit that balancing stick her personal trainer went in search of in Season 3--did he ever find it, I wonder?) Rape aborted, Krystle, following Kirby's healthy example, continues to live under the same roof as her attacker. Across town (or possibly in the room next door, it's hard to say), Adam is humping some hooker like there's no tomorrow. "Lately it seems you just call me when you need to work out whatever's been bugging you with rough sex!" she complains. (Umm, sounds like someone hasn't quite grasped the dynamic of the prostitute/client relationship.) "There's a lie I have to tell," Adam replies by way of explanation. "So what else is new in this real truthful world of ours?" snaps the hooker. (Aw, bless the inept attempt at cynicism!) "I'm going to have to tell a lie to a man who lives by the truth, but if I tell him the truth then I'll lose what I've been starved for my whole life--belonging." He sneaks back to the mansion at 2am, to find Blake waiting up for him in his jim-jams. Now that he's switched the original purchase orders for the poisonous paint with the papers he tricked Alexis into signing, Adam can safely lay all the blame at Mother's door: "I told her about my first case, the poisoning ... I didn't even know for sure that she'd done it or how ... I was following her orders. She personally chose the colours, ordered the paint." Naturally, Blake buys the whole story: "You're my son and you've been through hell trying to protect that woman." I've always found Tracy Kendall a deeply irritating character, but having just watched the same actress play the likeable Lucy on the first season of MELROSE PLACE, I now feel more kindly disposed to her, and am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt--at least until I start to feel my aneurysm coming on. Bill Rockwell, Denver Carrington's long-standing head of PR, whom needless to say we have never seen or heard of before, is relocating to California, where he plans to change his name to Arthur and become Sable Colby's attorney. (According to imdb, Arthur-***-Bill was in the original production of BOYS IN THE BAND and has never been married. That's all I'm saying.) Tracy, who has been working for Denver Carrington for two whole months, assumes the vacant position will be hers (in the same way that Sammy Jo stepped in Lucy's job on MELROSE--it's the circle of life!). Then she finds out Blake Carrington has promised the job to his dumb bitch of an ex-wife. "Elevator just went up without me," she smiles bravely, before tearing a picture of Blake's face into tiny little pieces. Krystle is still labouring under the illusion that her total lack of previous experience might just prove a teeny, tiny disadvantage when it comes to heading up the public relations division of a vastly huge international corporation. "I never wrote a press release in my life," she admits to Bill-***-Arthur who insists she has nothing to worry about: "You're good. You've got more going for you than you realise. You understand people. It's vital. That's why they call it public relations." I like to imagine this same scene playing out on DYNASTY HOSPITAL: "I never made an incision in my life," admits Dr Krystle. "You're good," insists Dr Bill. "You've got more going for you than you realise. You understand people. It's vital. That's why they call it open heart surgery." Oh, and here's another job where all you have to do understand people--hotel manager! "I think I'm doing a terrific job for this banquet Saturday night--who sits with whom and why," enthuses Claudia. (See, it's the why that matters; Claudia's been to the dark side so she really gets the whole boy-girl-boy-girl table arrangement thing.) Krystle arrives at work to Tracy simpering like a prison bitch: "I know this may sound corny and a bit cliché, but I can't tell you how happy I was when I found out I'd be working for you." She presents Krystle with a welcome gift of a fancy plant ... in a ming vase. I sh*t you not. A ming vase. I can feel that aneurysm coming on already. Oddly, just as Tracy starts simpering, Kirby stops. She's mad as hell over the amount of time Jeff and Fallon have been spending together and she's not gonna take it anymore. "Go on, say it," she yelps. "'Whatever happened to that sweet servile girl of yesteryear, the major domo's daughter?'" She marches out to the stables to confront Fallon: "Everything is so secretive ... his going up North with you, his being solariumed in the closet this morning with you." (Or was it "closeted in the solarium"? Whichever.) Given the fact that she and Jeff were shagging like bunnies only two episodes ago, Fallon is remarkably unapologetic, telling Kirby that she's the one with the problem and that she should talk to Jeff about it. Alas, there's no subtext to the scene that suggests Fallon even remembers sleeping with Jeff two episodes ago. (Compare this scene with the achingly good one in the first season where Claudia confronts Krystle in the art gallery over her affair with Matthew and Krystle tells her to talk to her husband about it.) Kirby then pulls off a first for DYNASTY, possibly even for television, when she flashes back to Krystle telling her, "You have to be strong enough to tell him ... Is it something you can live with?" before returning to the present to reply: "I can live with it. I have to." It's a Q&A across time!! What strange, otherworldy qualities must Kirby possess in order to pull off such a feat? Perhaps a clue can be found in an unintentionally amusing late night bedroom scene between her and Jeff. "I know how horrible I've been to live with lately," she says to him as they lie next to one another in the dark. "acting like a demon" (a-ha!) " ... Make love to me." Jeff's reaction is very funny--he sighs, rolls his eyes, sighs some more. "It feels like you're demanding something," he finally mutters. Then they lapse back into silence. "Scenes from a DYNASTY Marriage": hilarious! Alexis and the Stevenbot's return from San Franscisco is delayed when they unexpectedly make it through to the semi-finals of the Motherboy talent contest. They dust off their old Sonny and Cher routine for the occasion, but there's no word on who's wearing which costume. No matter. The important thing is that Alexis be out of town while Blake investigates Adam's accusations against her. He wants Alexis tried for attempted murder, but Andrew says there isn't enough evidence and, besides, they've just had one courtroom drama, do they really want to do another so soon? ("Dammit, Blake--this isn't FALCON CREST!") To pacify him, Andrew stages one of his enjoyable faux cross-examinations in the Carrington library, this time of Adam. "You know, I find it hard to believe that in all the hours you spent with her, she never once dropped her mask!" he barks. "Alexis Colby doesn't take off her rouge for anyone!" protests Adam vehemently. A victorious Alexis returns from Motherboy dressed as Cruella de Ville and in no mood for a buzz-killing private meeting with Blake. However, the magic words "mercuric oxide mixed with paint" gain him access to her office. He shows her the purchase orders with her signature on and instructs her to call off the Colby/Carrington merger "at the next board meeting ... or I'll leak details to the press about an unnamed rich widow who was prepared to murder to get what she wanted. There'll be enough clues in the story to destroy your reputation for good here in Denver and in the oil business as well." Merger shmerger--the fun stuff was Alexis getting Jeff's shares in the first place; the actual takeover has dragged on so long that it's hard to care much either way. What we really want is to watch Alexis confront Adam over his betrayal. To that end, she summons him to a meeting: "You know damn well what this is all about and your days of getting away with it have just ended!" Oo-er ...
***************
"Dex." There's something horribly smug and airless about fictional characters continually congratulating one another on their fabulousness and this episode's full of it. Alexis and the Stevenbot are among the worst offenders, fawning over each other in the opening scene ("Now, Steven, you've been working very hard! I want you to go home tonight and have an early night. That's orders from your mother and boss!" "How about a trade-off? I'll go home if the boss lets me drop her off first. You've been putting in some pretty heavy hours yourself!") and addressing one another cloyingly as "Mrs Colby" and "Mr Carrington". Get a room already. This air of sychophancy extends to Denver Carrington where Blake bestows his warm approval on some piece of fluff submitted by Krystle: "This presentation is just fine!" Of course it's fine. How could it not be fine? Krystle intuitively understands people. The only way for it not to be fine would be if Krystle had been replaced by an imposter, which won't happen for another two years, by which time Krystle will have abandoned public relations in order to do something else she is intuitively perfect at. And of course no character in the history of DYNASTY (and possibly the world) is more sychophantic than Tracy Kendall, whose attempts at wrinkly-nosed cuteness continue to grate. She sighs about the people in Denver--"just nice!"--and coos over Krystle's romance with "a certain Mr Blake Carrington? ... There's just this sort of a glow about you that comes out whenever he's around!" The most toe curling moment comes, once again, courtesy of Alexis and Steven, when she summons him to her penthouse late at night, convinced she has had an intruder whom she suspects might be Adam. "You're the lady who gave birth to him!" protests the Stevenbot. The lady who gave birth--eww. The implication that Alexis somehow managed to excrete a mewling blood-stained infant from her vagina in a ladylike fashion is slightly queasy-making. That the characters seem so detached from their own bodily functions (and even their own bodies in the case of Alexis, whose powdered face is invariably a different colour to her cleavage) adds to the artifical, sexless atmosphere of DYNASTY. Striding manfully into this neutered environment is Dex "Dex" Dexter. One can see why the producers thought to introduce someone as lean and mean as Michael Nader to the cast. John James and Jack Coleman are too baby faced, and Gordon Thomson too vampirically camp to qualify as "men's men". While Nader may lack the bruised soulfulness of Bo Hopkins or the simmering dementedness of James Farentino, at least he's not as hairily moronic as Geoffrey Scott. Dex has flown in from Wyoming, wielding "my father's power of attorney. I'll be representing him in all of his business interests including tomorrow's board meeting," he tells Blake in his introductory scene, a breakfast meeting at the Carrington house. In an attempt to generate drama, some conflict arises between Dex and Blake, but it is conflict without substance, manufactured out of thin air. "Your differences with Alexis Colby, your ex-wife, I trust they have no influence on your business sense?" asks Dex. "As a member of your board of directors, I feel the merger to be of benefit to both companies." Why Dex feels the merger will be of benefit is not explained; he could just as easily be against it. He then claims to be as experienced in the oil business as Blake which, given the difference in their ages, is clearly a load of bollocks. He also accuses Blake of manipulating his father: "You could bend him as you wished. Well, don't confuse the father with the son." Again, there is no basis, no evidence for this accusation. (Chalk it up to yet another example of Blake being unjustly maligned.) It exists soley to provide Dex with the opportunity to strut his macho stuff. Dex's statements describing himself--"I rarely bend and I never break"--and Alexis--"I've never met the lady, but I hear she deals in high cards"--typify much of the Lex/Dex era of DYNASTY, in that they are pompous, egotistical, and essentially meaningless. In spite of this, Dex somehow remains one of the show's more likeable (or at least tolerable) characters, which is more a testament to Michael Nader's charisma than anything else. We also learn in this episode that Dex was a Rhodes scolar (after which, needless to say, he "graduated suma-***-laude from the School of Mines") and that Tracy spent a "few years on Madison Avenue before I came to Denver". As with Kirby and the Sorbonne, these titbits are an attempt to align the characters with a genuine and prestigious landmark or institution, thereby imbuing the series with an aura of authentic sophistication and excellence. However, with everyone being equally excellent at everything they do, these references start to lose their meaning. They lack the specificity of, say, Michael's Season 1 speech to Cecil Colby's secretary about his favourite restaurant on London's Fulham Road. The long-awaited (at least by me) confrontation between Alexis and Adam is a bit of a disappointment. There are a couple of nice lines, ("Good evening, Mother. I've been waiting quite a while for you and the firing squad. Where is it?" "After I signed my name to those papers, what dingy little corner did you sneak away to to write 'mercuric oxide compound' on them?") but it lacks the zest and wit of Alexis and Adam's finest Season 3 confrontations. (There's a scene between Alexis and Jeff which gets quite dramatic when he grabs her and says, "Neither of us is leaving this office until you pay me back in full all of my interest in Colby Co that you stole by poisoning me." However, I never fully understood the reasons why Jeff chose not to demand his shares back at any time prior to this episode, except for the fact that it would have buggered up the takeover storyline.) "Sometimes I think I don't even know you. Who are you?" Alexis asks Adam. After flashbacking back to the day he approached her with his silver rattle and she was wearing that rather fetching hat, she flies to Billings, Montana to ask Dr Edwards to recount the same story he tells every time he appears on the show: "I was there when Kate brought the baby back from Denver ... Adam was a loner here. He never fit in and never knew why ... etc." (Imagine the actor's agent calling him each season saying, "Yep, they want you back to deliver the same speech again.") "No genuine son of mine could betray me so viciously," maintains Alexis, and that's really the point, isn't it? No genuine Carrington could behave as badly as Adam has, just as no genuine Carrington could ever be comfortable growing up among the ordinary folk of Billings, Montana. Cos Carringtons is different from the rest of us, see; they're better. Fictional, but better. So if Adam is a Carrington, he needs a get out clause to explain his behaviour. Step forward, Doc Edwards. "It was the drugs he took. Those damn drugs" are responsible for Adam's "distorted judgement, paranoia, episodes in which he might do things that in his responsible mind he'd never dream of doing." All the facets, in other words, that made Adam a fascinating character, which are now explained away in an instant. "If he were physically disabled," Dr Edwards asks Alexis, "would you turn your back on him?" You bet your sweet shoulderpads she would! Oh, and the horrified expression on her face as she hears about "those damn drugs"--as if she and Rashid never dropped a few acid tabs during The Kaftan Years. In the midst of all this falsity, the episode's most authentic voice belongs to, ironically enough, Kirby, as she tries to get Jeff to admit the truth--that Fallon's the one he really loves: "I can feel it, Jeff. Every time you look at me I know I'm not the only one you're seeing." Jeff's indignant denials are followed by one of Kirby's hilarious attempts at seduction. "Love me now! I want you now!" she yelps, clawing at his shirt. "I can't," Jeff mumbles, clearly repulsed by his pregnant wife. "Love means more to me than just performance!" he yells, making a dash for the door. Over at La Mirage, he declares his love for Fallon: "No matter how hard we fight it, tell me we don't belong together." Her response suggests that the Fallon who existed before Season 3 isn't quite dead yet: "I can't belong. I need to be free...I can't be reined in. I need somebody who doesn't need me, who's in control of his own life, where everything is possible." "A young Blake Carrington," suggests Jeff sadly. Promising stuff, until one remembers that "a young Blake Carrington" will soon translate as "an Austrian Liberace". The old Blake Carrington and Krystle now seem to be drifting back together. ("You didn't lose me, Blake," she explains. "I just had to find myself first." As with Fallon, finding oneself on DYNASTY seems to entail using one's family connections to take a job one is not remotely qualified for.) This allows the writers to recreate the couple's original courtship, thereby cleverly pandering to the "Blake'n'Krystle" fetishists in the audience. (What remains of this subgroup now tends to congregate on the alternative DYNASTY internet forum, where screencaps of Blake and Krystle's fireside love scenes are poured over in the hopes of finding evidence that John Forythe actually put his tongue in Linda Evans' mouth during filming. Seems Jim Morrison was right: People Are Strange.) Here, for example, Blake and Krystle relive their first date; not only the same restaurant, but the same table, the same wine, the same entree, the same waiter. It's romantic and creepy! Elsewhere, Krystle and Mark come face to face for the first time since he tried to rape her. Krystle's response is chilling: "Mark, I'm not angry with you. There can be nothing between us but friendship," she tells him. My God, can you imagine what would have happened if he actually had raped her? She might have crossed him off her Christmas card list. Devastated by Krystle's cruel and unusual treatment, Mark finally accepts the post of bodyguard to Alexis, who provides him with his weekly fix of sexual rejection: "The job is yours, Mark, but I am way beyond your reach, as obviously is Krystle." The day of the board meeting arrives and there is an amusing hallway exchange between Alexis and Krystle. "Krystle, the typing pool's on the first floor. Are you lost?" In reply, Krystle gestures to the door Alexis is about to open. "That's the ladies room. Are you lost?" (Finally, a non-nauseating use of the lady word.) Alexis's board room speech, in which she calls off the merger, ("the sad evidence that even I can make a mistake") operates on three different levels. On the surface, she is blaming Blake for the collapse of the deal ("Colby Co is a giant, Denver Carrington by comparison a mere dwarf whose management has shown no potential for creative growth"). Blake and Krystle, however, know her to be lying, apparently to avoid her poisoning of Jeff being exposed. (Krystle: "Congratulations. That was one of the best performances I've ever seen.") But underneath that surface, lies the real reason--to protect her son. "You said that day that you walked out on me that I didn't love you," she tells Adam after the meeting. "Well, you were wrong ... Love has many forms, many pains, and sacrifice is one of them." All of this should be fascinating (and, in fairness, I remember the scene as more significant on first viewing), and yet, and yet ... I can't help feeling there's something missing from Joanie's performance--it's the hair, it's the hair! We've talked about this before: You can't flounce with a mullet and it's almost as though all of Joanie's humour (which includes her wit and timing) was contained within that flounce. What's left is a tediously self-aggrandising, slightly mannish looking woman without much of a sense of humour. One could imagine being sat next to the Alexis of Season 2 at a dinner party and being entertained with witty references to Shaw and Coward, whereas this season's Alexis would bore you to death with how tales of how brilliant she and her company are. "Now that we know we have something in common, we can do business together," Dex tells her after barging into her office and snogging her face off. "I don't like the word 'common', Mr Dexter," she snaps, with what passes for wit in Alexisland these days. While she reapplies her lipgloss, Dex declaims pompously and uninterestingly: "You spoke of an empire ... I'm forming one ... Tar Sands in Canada ... There's believed to be more oil locked under those sands than there is in Saudi Arabia." Alexis is intrigued by his meaningless, rhetorical flattery: "Alexis Colby has never turned anything down because it was expensive! ... You're a fantastic woman to kiss, fantastic." (Of course she is, this is DYNASTY--everyone's fantastic at everything!) Nevertheless, she grumpily sends him away and then touches her lips, before cocking her head to the side in that way of hers, as if she were an inquistive spaniel in drag.
"Pee Wee de Vilbis." Midnight in the Carrington kitchen. In waddles Kirby, wearing the frumpiest dressing gown known to man, to find her husband and his ex-wife giggling intimately in their night-clothes. Refusing to acknowledge the strangeness of this situation, they invite her to join them but she cannot participate in the pretence. She runs upstairs and locks herself in the bathroom. Jeff follows, berating her from outside the door: "You're not a child, dammit!" How strange that DYNASTY's most unlikely character is now the only one left to acknowledge the absurdity of the world in which the series now exists, and thus is made to feel that she is the irrational one. ("Assent and you are sane, Demur--you’re straightway dangerous, and handled with a chain.") The next morning, Jeff makes a yet another pass at Fallon on the stairs. What an unrepentant **** he is! Yet, strangely, the show does not depict him as having anything to repent for. He betrays and belittles his grieving, pregnant wife, yet there is no sinister music, no lingering close up to suggest the darkness of Jeff's soul. One could make the argument that the show's refusal to make a judgement on Jeff's behaviour is a sophisticated storytelling technique, a way of treating the audience as adults who do not need to be spoon-fed their own moral response to his actions. Yeah, right. When Fallon asks if she can hitch a ride with Blake and Krystle, who are off to California for some vague sounding oil conference-***-horse race jamboree, a sense of cold, clammy dread descends upon the viewer. Yes, the time is fast approaching when we must meet Fallon's new and hideously miscast love interest. But not yet. First it's time to re-establish her credentials as a single (i.e. gagging for it) woman. Adam questions her antipathy towards him: "Is this excess of hostility on your part due to the fact you're simply going through a period of starvation, a kind of sexual anorexia?" Sexual anorexia--eww--sounds like one of those websites that gets Richard Madeley all hot under the collar. "What you really need is some guy to help you out," he suggests--and for one teasing moment it looks like he's going to offer himself up for the task. "I understand you used to be a free spirit in various beds. Maybe you should revive an old talent. It'd probably make you a helluva lot more fun to live with." She goes to slap him but he grabs her wrist, just as Andrew Laird did in Season 1 after telling her, "Most little girls grow up and realise they can't marry their daddies." "You scum," she snaps at Adam. "You're no better than Mother!" A whiff of incest can also be detected when Jeff confronts a leotard clad Alexis in her apartment. (Not a good look for Joanie, it must said, or indeed any human being who isn't Victoria Principal. As the wise Cilla Battersby Brown once said on CORONATION STREET, "You'll not get me in one of them leotards. Don't matter how good your figure, always looks like someone forgot to say 'when'. Even Geri Halliwell looked like half a hundred weight of nutty slack.") "I've been kidding myself for the last week that I could find a way to live with you," Jeff tells her. "Oh?" she responds, raising a quizzical eyebrow. "In business," he clarifies. "Oh," she replies, eyebrow descending in disappointment. He proposes an exchange--his shares in ColbyCo for hers in Denver Carrington--to which she agrees. Curious as to whether this change in management will have any effect on the merger, Dex starts fishing for information. Just as his first scene with Blake was randomly hostile, so Dex’s first meeting Jeff is full of random bonhomie, as if the actors have been directed to treat one another with a kind of twinkly knowingness, but haven't been told why. "You'll be receiving a memo about my joining Denver Carrington along with the other board members," Jeff smiles. “I must be sure to open all of my mail from now on,” Dex responds, almost flirtatiously. Mark’s incarnation as Alexis’s bodyguard-***-prison bitch gets off to a promising start. As he is moving in to the penthouse, he meets Dex for the first time. They sniff each other’s bottoms for a while, and then Mark eavesdrops on one of Dex’s impromptu encounters with Alexis, which are already settling into a familiar pattern--after he kisses her spontaneously and she responds in kind, she makes a withering remark ("Is this some sort of compulsion of yours or an old Wyoming custom?") and checks her make up in a mirror, he compliments her on her "fantastic mouth", and then she sends him away. "Wyoming--like in 'Ride 'em, cowboy'?" asks Mark, making his presence known after Dex has gone. "I'd like you to fix me a Martini,” orders Alexis. “Vodka, a whisper of Vermouth, two olives and make sure that the glass is properly iced ... In future I suggest that you remain in you room till I call for you." "'Just a whisper of Vermouth.',” murmurs Mark under his breath. “Maybe next time, cyanide." It’ll all end in death, I tell you! Death! There's a potentially interesting scene when Claudia, after hearing from Mrs Gordon that Alexis “came into our apartment and went through the bedroom closets like a tornado,” visits her mummy-in-law’s office to demand an explanation. Their exchange starts promisingly. "I just wanted to surprise you and buy you a few new chic things," Alexis tells her. "That's very kind of you," replies Claudia, clearly bemused. "Not at all. Would you like a biscuit?" However, it soon dwindles into non-specific generalities: "... I thought it's what's inside a person that's important ..." "... You have to accept that the world and society [not to mention Joan Collins] judges us by the way we act and dress ...” This conflict exists solely to set Alexis up as a possible suspect in Lancelot-gate, but I wish the relationship between these two women had been explored more--what if Alexis had succeeded in making Claudia over in her own image? Meanwhile, at a race track in California: While Blake and Krystle are amusing themselves f**king with the mind of Jason Colby’s butler by claiming never to have been married even though he remembers attending their wedding, Fallon is in the process of placing a bet when she is interrupted by a weirdly bouffanted man. "I hate to see beeyoodybubble woman ogoo their money away," he says, his voice resembling nothing so much as a camp Transylvanian ventriloquist who has left his dummy on the bus. He recommends she bet on Allegree instead, “a beeyoodybubble famous oz from South America.” Fallon tells him to beat it. Later that evening, she opens the door of a her hotel suite to find him wielding a beyond tasteful floral arrangement of roses and dollars. "Hullo," he says, with the all the seductive allure of Lutka from TAXI. “Iss first class hottub, yes? ... I'm pleased you like the hottub since I own it, and by za way my name is Pee Wee de Vilbis." "Pee Wee de Vilbis, the infamous playboy," explains Fallon helpfully for our benefit. "Thaz a terribubble thing to say about a man who verks as hard as I do in fourteen countries," says Pee Wee without moving his lips. The Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra play valiantly in the background, as if to compensate for the zero amount of chemistry in the room. "I vont you and you vont me," Pee Wee informs Fallon coldly. One can sense that it’s taking every ounce of Pamela Sue Martin’s self control not to steal a glance into the camera and silently mouth: HELP ME!! However, Fallon realises she’s gonna to have to have sex with someone in this episode and it’s either her brother or this guy, so ... After a night of unimaginable penetration, Pee Wee awakes, bouffant intacta. "Iss unforgivabubble zat anyone could be so beeyoodybubble ven she vakes up," he says to Fallon. "Allegree is main oz and I flew it ere in my jate to raze in the States." "Your jet, your horse, your hotel, do you own everything?" Fallon asks. (Oh, hotel; I honestly thought he was saying hottub!) “You remind me of another man I know,” she says. "Someone I've adored since I was a little girl." Hmm, let's guess. Truman Capote? Gerard, the Carrington butler who you just know skips about like a baby fawn to Doris Day records when he returns each night to his cramped servants quarters? Shari Lewis (not strictly a man, but still ...)? Wrong, wrong, wrong: "My father," she says, refreshingly open about having just had sex with a parental substitute. Pee Wee is also at home with the notion of quasi incest. After all, this is the man who shot to fame after raping his own mother in Visconti’s THE DAMNED (a film which catapulted me through puberty after I watched it accidentally at the age of ten with my mother.) Later, we find Pee Wee in his hottub suite, racking up a couple of lines of talcum powder while dressed as Noel Coward. He receives a visit from KNOTS LANDING record producer extraordinaire Jeff Munson. “I just got a telegram from Italy,” Munson tells him. “Your friend wants the $6,000,000 you owe him and he wants it now.” Pee Wee’s Transylvanian nonchalance (“Tell him to vait”) prompts the Line of the Week from Munson: “I’m your lawyer; I don’t wanna be your undertaker!” “I am melting a fascinating girl whose father has millions,” Pee Wee explains. “I had her last night.” (His weird emphasis suggesting that having her father was also an option.) Back in Denver, Adam accuses Tracy of "tooting her own horn" and tries to put his hand up her skirt. ("Why don't we discuss me helping you up the ladder, so to speak?") "I do not mix business with pleasure," Tracy replies unexpectedly. (Presumably, what she meant to say was "I do not mix business with pleasure ... on Tuesdays.") Without warning, things suddenly get quite exciting at the end of the episode. While at the doctor’s office to arrange Kirby’s lobotomy, Jeff learns that she is in her fifth month of pregnancy, as opposed to the third month, as he had previously supposed. He storms back to the house where Kirby has intuitively been playing Those “Oh **** I’m Just About To Get Found Out” Blues on the piano. Jeff tells her he wants to talk and she knows she’s in Jade Goody-sized trouble, but doesn’t know why. There’s a long shot of them walking down the hallway and then up the stairs away from prying ears, Kirby asking what’s wrong and Jeff not answering. It’s a rare example of the size of the house being used to heighten tension. Up in the marital bedroom, the sanctimony starts hitting the fan. “I wanna know how a girl I love and trust could lie to me,” snarls Jeff. “You knew and you planned to go on living with a lie, right? Ending, how? How, Kirby? By pretending your full term baby was premature?” “...I love you too much for that,” Bambi wails. “As much as you love the other guy?” “I don’t love him.” “Oh, I see you just slept with him, right? ... Like an ordinary tramp!” (Oh listen to Mr I Cheated On Both My Pregnant Wives!) “Jeff, don’t. I was raped!” “Who raped you? Who raped you?” “Adam.” Then there’s a pause as Jeff tries to figure out the implications of Kirby falling pregnant as a result of being raped by Adam. Finally, the realisation: “Oh my God! You’re carrying Adam’s baby!” As pissed as Jeff is now, imagine how annoyed he’d be to know he’s going to have to relive this exact same story line on THE COLBYS two years later. Karma, baby. Karma.
***************
“The Proposal.” “I don’t want you anywhere near me!” Kirby yells at Jeff, running down the Carrington staircase. Then she has to climb back up it because she’s forgotten something. (Double good byes--don’t you just hate them? You’ve said all you needed to say, you make a dignified exit, then you walk into a broom cupboard.) Jeff is waiting with a clipboard full of questions: “How many times have you run away from me and thrown Fallon in my face? How many times have I had to soothe your wounded pride and all the time there was Adam? ... Did he rape you or is this just a sick little game? If you’re so damn fascinated with him, why did you marry me? If he did rape you, why did you insist on going to that conference and why did you end up in that motel room alone with him? ... Did I see something you wanted me to see, is that it?” “You saw nothing!” Kirby finally gasps. “I loved you, but there was always Fallon. I’d watch you pass by in the hallway, I’d watch you come and go from the house unaware that I was even alive. I was alone all the time.” “Except there was Adam ...” “Yes, and that’s why I accepted his invitation to dinner! I needed someone to be with, to treat me like a woman. I swear, I never gave myself to him. He took, and he tried to take me over and over again, and there was no one I could turn to. My God, there still isn’t!” All of a sudden, Kirby and Jeff seem interesting and poignant. Suddenly they have a history. True, they’ve had a history--a back story--since Season 3, but it was always a cloyingly cutesy one full of lovelorn little girls and tortoises named Jeffrey. Now they’ve accumulated a history on the show which, weirdly, is more interesting to hear talked about in retrospect than it was to watch unfold. (Is this a good moment to mention that in Jeff and Kirby’s bedroom, there’s a framed photograph of John James on the night stand ... on Jeff’s side of the bed?) Jeff takes off for the Carrington Plaza construction site to look for Adam. The Plaza didn’t exist before last week, when Tracy wrote one of her irritating little press releases about it, and was clearly invented specifically for the scene in this episode where Jeff confronts Adam on top of the building. “Still climbing to the top,” observes Adam drily as Jeff joins him on the roof. “Where you’re concerned, I’ve had to lower myself,” counters Jeff. There’s a strange inevitability about the scene that makes it eerily effective. Adam doesn’t at all seem surprised to see Jeff; it’s as though he’s been waiting for this moment. “You raped her.” “Did I?” he replies mockingly. “You forced yourself on her just like you forced yourself on the rest of us.” “Unlike the rest of you, Kirby welcomed me with open arms.” A fight ensues, which by DYNASTY standards is a good one. It arises naturally out of the action, even if it ends bizarrely with Jeff on top of Adam, his hand between Adam’s legs, sort of levering him by the crotch towards the edge of the roof. As Adam dangles dangerously close to the edge, we see the traffic down below. (Every other episode of THE COLBYS seemed to end this way; it appears they took the term “cliff hanger” literally.) “If Kirby’s child is a girl, I hope she never has to meet scum like her father!” seethes Jeff through gritted teeth. And finally Adam’s surprised: “I didn’t know. Oh my God, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was my baby.” Jeff lets go of him: “That’s it, crawl. That’s how you’ll get through the rest of your life.” There is something undeniably fascinating about Helmut Berger’s portrayal of Pee Wee De Vilbis. His face is devoid of expression--he appears completely detached from the words he is saying--while the way he delivers his lines is so removed from any meaning they might have, it’s almost as though he were somehow dubbing his dialogue into another language at the exact moment he is actually saying it. Whether acting in front of a horse (“Fa’n, I thought you sade you never heard of Ah-leg-gray”) or lying naked in bed eating strawberries, (“I lak what most men lak ... power, strength, speed and of course beeyoody, especially young, lathe creatures from Denver Colaraydo”) he exudes a corpse-like calm; a strange mixture of serenity and contempt. Perhaps this is what it is to watch a performance by an actor who truly, utterly doesn’t give a f**k. Fallon asks Pee Wee about his family. “Ma mother is an Austin bowness,” he tells her. She speculates that his father might be a titled Mediterranean. “Portuguese, but not a c*nt,” he replies a tad defensively. Dex continues his pursuit of Alexis as both a business and bed partner. She reprimands each of his advances with a grandiose, rhetorical statement about herself, (“I never buy anything on sale, Mr Dexter!” “Turquoise is a semi-precious stone--again, you underestimate me, Mr Dexter!” “Nobody takes me to the cleaners and to bed on the same day, Mr Dexter!”) leaving him to pay her convoluted, almost incomprehensible compliments (“With your eyes and your body, you would absolutely thrive in New Mexico!” “The charm does come easy when there’s a woman like you close by!” “Next to you, any stone would be semi-precious!”) Elsewhere, Claudia has also caught the cloying compliment bug, shoehorning a reference to Alexis making “the ‘Best Dressed List’ two years in a row”, (the show is now inventing fictional accolades for its own clothing range!) into a scene in which she smugly announces that “I am married to Denver’s Most Attractive Executive.” (Oh Claudia, Claudia! Have you really come so far for so very little?) Alexis leaves Dex alone in her office with a confidential file marked CONFIDENTIAL in big letters so he’ll be sure to know it’s CONFIDENTIAL when he picks it up and reads it. She then takes off on a mysterious business trip leaving Mark behind. Strange as it is to say, I’m beginning to almost like Mark! Amidst all the swirling, choking sycophancy on the show, (Blake on Krystle’s idea to issue a press release: “I like your fighting spirit, champ!” Blake on Krystle’s idea to take out an ad: “I like it! It’s good! I’m proud of you!”) Mark’s increasingly jaundiced outlook is a welcome relief: “Off to do something dirty, Alexis?” he smirks. Once she’s out of town, Mark does what surely all of us would do if we had the run of that penthouse--he raids the liquor cabinet and puts his feet on the furniture ... which is how the Stevenbot finds him when he drops by to pick up some papers. Prior to this scene, the closest these two had come to sharing a scene was the time Mark hit on Krystle at Steven’s memorial service, but for some reason (Jack Coleman’s lack of imagination, perhaps?) the Stevenbot appears to despise Mark anyway, refusing to even look him in the eye. “We have a lot in common,” slurs Mark. “like that piranha we both work for, Sonny Boy ...” “The name’s Stevenbot,” huffs the Stevenbot, “and if you don’t like working for my mother then get the hell out of here!” “Before I’m nothing but a heap of bones at the bottom of her tank?” (Foreshadow alert! Foreshadow alert!) says Mark. He plays with Steven’s tie (flirty!) before the Stevenbot pushes him away. “Let me tell you something,” whirrs the grumpy gay robot. “My mother has accomplished more, lost more and fought back harder than anyone I know, and I’m sick of her being attacked by the likes of you!” God, he’s such a diva lover. Mark mumbles an apology. He’s now sated, having got the fix he needs--his weekly rejection from a Carrington. There are couple of potentially interesting scenes that seem less about plot than character ... only they’re not really about character either. Following his run in with Mark, the Stevenbot turns to Krystle. He asks her why Mark would choose to work for someone he hates. Surely a more pertinent question is, why would Alexis, who can afford the best security money can buy, entrust her safety to a broken down tennis bum who clearly detests her? “Alexis is a very complex woman who seems to inspire passion in people,” is Krystle’s sing song reply. “You either love her or you hate her, and she seems to enjoy it either way.” Jeff, meanwhile, decides against rushing home to warn his wife that her rapist now knows she’s carrying his child in favour of stopping by La Mirage for a few drinks. This is where he runs into Claudia. Given how haunting their last scene together was (at the beginning of Season 3), this could/should be an interesting encounter. It starts out that way, (“I’ve seen that look before,” Claudia observes, “only last time it was Nick Toscanni”) but just like her scene with Alexis last week, it soon devolves into all purpose platitudes. (“You need to talk it through ... You have to do what’s right for you.”) Alexis and Blake have one of their many airstrip encounters as he returns from California with Krystle and she sets off for Calgary. “Do you have a copy of your press release?” Alexis asks Krystle. “It was the best fiction I’ve read in months. I’d love you to autograph a copy for me.” Krystle gives as good as she gets: “Have a nice flight. Are you taking a plane?” Adam also has a nice line when Tracy asks about the bruises he acquired during his fight with Jeff: “You rejected me. I threw myself off a sky scraper.” Jeff eventually returns home to discover Kirby has gone. However, just as Alexis left a confidential file marked CONFIDENTIAL for Dex to read, so Kirby just happens to have left behind a neatly written account of her flight details. One one hand, this is just lazy plotting; on the other, both Alexis and Kirby subconsciously want to be found out. For all their shoulderpads, they want to be chased after by men and they want to be dominated. So there. Jeff does indeed pursue Kirby to the airport, just the way Blake did Krystle in Season 2 (which was the very same night Jeff went to bed with Claudia). Jeff gets there too late. The plane has taken off. Only Kirby didn’t board it. Oh, you stupid cow, Kirby! But then she makes a sweet speech: “Seems my whole life I’ve been running from one place to another and never arrived anywhere ... My father was right. As soon as I started pretending to be someone I’m not, I lost the person I needed most--me.” Jeff’s reply--“I’m your husband and that’s not going to change. Not until after that child is born”--is the first definite acknowledgement that their marriage is over. Kirby doesn’t object: “We never really belonged to each other ... The first time you kissed me, you closed your eyes and called me Fallon ... The fact that you held me and said you loved me was enough, but it isn’t anymore ...” “The baby deserves a name,” Jeff tells her. “There’s nothing wrong with mine,” Kirby replies. Bless. When they return to the house, Adam is sitting on the stairs in the dark. He repeats to Kirby the words he said to Jeff on the roof: “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was my baby. I didn’t know.” She silently passes him on her way upstairs (again--how many times has she been up and down that staircase in one day?). “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Jeff tells Adam. “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t exist.” God, Adam must feel like Jade Goody. (She’s not eating, you know.) And so to Calgary, and the uninspired offices of North West Tar Sands Bla Bla. As Alexis has subconsciously prearranged, Dex is waiting there for her. “I’ll be damned if I’ll deal with you!” she declares. “You’re as hungry as I am!” he insists. “I’ll never take a lesser percentage!” she vows, but then she does. Oh, who cares? Later that night, Alexis comes to Dex’s hotel room where it’s all chilled champagne and fresh salmon. For once, she kisses him first. They get a bit smoochy, and then she delivers her “Nobody takes me to the cleaners and to bed on the same day, Mr Dexter!” line before making her exit. Dex isn’t frustrated or embarrassed at being left high and dry, of course. Oh no, that would be far too human a reaction and therefore inappropriate for so smug a scene. No, he laughs and shakes his head in admiration of Alexis, as if to say “What a woman! What a character! What writers to have created such a character! And what writers to have created the adoring, charmingly good natured reaction I am now having to that character!” Blake and Krystle’s re-courtship continues. “That generic movie with no specific title was terrific!” enthuses Blake when they return to the mansion after an evening out. He then makes a big thing of having given the servants a night off so that Krystle can cook an omelette. The episode ends with a scene that must have had menopausal women all across the world sobbing into their cleavages back in 1983. You’ve got the rug in front of the roaring log fire, you’ve got the champagne, you’ve enough enough lit candles to burn down a hotel, the sweet nothings (“My joy, my pain ... my friend, my partner ... stay with me”), the ring, the “Yes, I’ll marry you” and finally ... the kiss. By now, of course, all the Blake and Krystle fetishists across the land are blinded by their own tears and as they dry their eyes, the end credits come up all too quickly. Desperately, they turn to their nearest and dearest on the couch and ask, “Was there tongues?”
**************
"Carousel.” Still in Calgary, Alexis answers the door of her hotel room with yet another unequivocal statement: “I never discuss business in the middle of the night, Mr Dexter.” “I’m scratching the 60/40 deal I forced you to take,” Dex tells her. “I want ours to be a true partnership, Alexis--50/50.” He then gets very nauseating very quickly: “I don’t take advantage of women. Men, yes, but not le femme. Call me a romantic in the Lord Byron, Gable and Dexter tradition ... Do you want and do you need proof of that, Alexis?” After listening to all that crap, she’s either gonna kiss him or barf in his face. He then heroically picks her up and carries her to bed (a journey of approximately three inches). On the post coital plane ride back to Denver, he explains the complex thought process that went into naming their corporation Lex/Dex. “That’s your name and mine, Alexis and Dexter,” he explains with the aid of slides and wall charts. “You’ll note that you get top billing.” “Of course,” Alexis replies, smugly and predictably. “And not just in our company, but in my life.” Oh God, he’s off again. “Dex, listen to me,” Alexis says hastily, realising there are no sick bags aboard the Colby Co jet. “Last night will always be a wonderful memory ...” “It’s perfect between us!” he raves. “How many times in a man’s life does he meet a woman like you who’s beautiful and bright and exciting? ... I don’t give up fortunes or precious jewels or spectacular women! ... I give a damn about one thing: you!” Once again he wears her down with his unrelenting, egotistical sycophancy.
Upon landing in Denver, Alexis introduces Dex to the Stevenbot. When Dex compliments him on his “sound evaluation” of the Tar Sands project, the Stevenbot responds with silent contempt. We get a close up of the Stevenbot’s disapproving face as he watches Alexis and Dex kiss. The way Steven and Alexis’s Motherboy relationship is depicted is directly opposite to how Fallon’s incestuous feelings for her father were conveyed in Season 1. Whereas those feelings were subtextual--rarely articulated yet clearly motivating most of Fallon’s actions--Steven’s possessiveness towards his mother is super-imposed on top of the action, and hangs there clunkily, the writers not knowing what to do with it.
Skipping delicately over the sight of Blake and Krystle naked under the covers, we move on to the breakfast table announcement of their engagement. Jeff, Kirby and Adam are too preoccupied with their own story line to muster much enthusiasm. For no particular reason, Jeff and Kirby decide to keep their break up a secret until after Blake and Krystle’s wedding. “I’ll move back into your room until we tell them about the divorce,” says Jeff. Kirby is particularly anxious that Blake not find out the truth. “Why not?” asks Krystle. “Ever since your father died, you’ve become another daughter to him.” (She has?? Have Blake and Kirby even spoken since the day of the funeral? I think not.) Meanwhile, Adam’s anxious interest in his unborn child (“Are you telling me I have to go through the rest of my life with Jeff pretending to be the father? Is that it? Is it?”) feels dull and contrived. There can’t be many rapists desperate to claim their illegitimate offspring, but male soap opera characters (Greg Sumner excluded) are invariably obliged to regard fatherhood, with all its dynastic implications, as A Big Deal. Still, a broody Adam is of no more interest here than he is during the surrogacy story line of Season 8.
Over in California, Fallon’s beauty sleep is disturbed by the sound of puny Pee Wee arguing over the telephone. “Eskooz me, I voke you darling,” he apologises. “I offer him a fantastic chance to buy a half inch chest in Ah-leg-gray fower meen dollars. He fuses.” Hoping for a translation, Fallon brings Pee Wee back to Denver and introduces him to her father. “So you’re that mystery stranger who advised my daughter to bet on that horse in LA,” says Blake expositionally. “No wonder you’re such an expert tipster, Mr de Vilbis.” “Pee Wee, please,” says Helmut as if he were ordering a drink. Pleasantries exchanged, the conversation turns to Pee Wee’s oz: “Your dottah has induced me to hah fahbloos faddah. Now ah will induce you to mah fahbloos aneemal.” A bewildered Blake looks over at his daughter who shrugs her shoulders as if to say, “I don’t know either.” In reception, Pee Wee and Fallon run into Jeff. “We were related to each other by marriage,” says Fallon by way of explanation. “Nazi to meet you, Mr Coloby,” snaps Pee Wee before immediately shagging Fallon in the elevator.
ONE WEEK LATER (in big yellow letters, no less), Krystle meets Allegree. It’s the hottest screen chemistry she’s had with anyone since Bo Hopkins. “Blake, he’s beautiful!” “He’s your wedding present!” Happy, happy, nice times.
And then it’s time for the Carousel Ball. “The party of parties!” Tracy conveniently gushes for our benefit. “Denver’s night of nights! ... I may be the new kid on the block, but I’ve read all about the Carousel Ball. The first one was in ‘78, a benefit for the Children’s Diabetes Foundation bla bla bla ...” The only fly in Tracy’s cleavage is that Adam, her date for the evening, is not his usual rakish, raping, poisoning self: “The charmer’s lost his charm, I’d say,” he tells her. “My life, it’s changed. My goals, my values, my purpose ...” God, this party’s gonna be dull. Cheers, crowds, flash bulbs! Why, anyone would think the Carringtons were Hollywood stars with their own hit TV series! But no, they’re merely rich, and within the world of DYNASTY that is enough to be celebrated, worshipped and adored by the plebeian public. There’s a legion of honour, a red carpet, Alexis and Dex and Blake and Krystle flanked by drag kings in tuxes, Joanie wearing a dress made out of baco-foil ... it really is quite grotesque, and that’s before we’ve even got through the door. Inside, via a succession of awkwardly shot scenes, we’re given a display of opulence that somehow manages to be gaudy and drab at the same time. And let’s not forget the Christmas tree (this party footage is the Carringtons’ festive gift to you!) or the maudlin looking rocking horse suspended from the ceiling to remind us that this is all for the queasy kiddies. Barbara Davis, a robotic Chihuahua with Donna Reed hair, greets the Carringtons: “Thank you, Blake for your most generous contribution to the Children’s Diabetes Foundation. How can I ever thank you?” “Well, a child is a precious gift, Barbara,” replies Blake as chattily as John Forsythe can muster, “and all of those kids are depending on us to find a cure.” The Barbarabot then suffers a gratitude overload and starts to malfunction: “Thank you so mu--we’re going to make very good use of your ch--thank you so mu--” “The jewellery is ravishing!” coos Joanie dutifully as A Person From Real Life called Nancy approaches. “You know, Nancy,” says Dex with all the spontaneity of a presenter at the Oscars reading some light hearted banter off the auto cue, “I have an admission to make: I’d much rather be looking at antique cars!” Kirby and Jeff put their many torments to one side to ooh and ahh at a vintage mustang. Ahh, charity auctions--they’re such a balm for the soul. (In Britain, we raise money by sponsoring people to stick their head down the toilet for 36 hours straight--frankly, it’s much more dignified.) Blake and Krystle endure an exchange with Gerald Ford and a Nancy Reagan Lookalike Competition winner which, in fairness, is probably as meaningless and buttock clenchingly awkward as it would be in real life. Alexis meets Henry Kissinger. “Good to see you,” he says, embarking on a limp, nervous handshake that goes on for too long. It’s only when he hears Joanie say the word “Portifino”, as in “I haven’t seen you since”, that he stops shaking her hand and instead freezes in confusion. “It was fun,” adds Joanie pulling her hand out of his and flouncing out of shot. Dr K looks nervously towards the camera before wandering off aimlessly, Mrs Overall style. All these exchanges serve to do, aside from send a message to the audience of “Look at all the rich and powerful people we can get to be on our show! Aren’t rich and powerful people just the best?”, is confirm what we’ve already known for some time--that DYNASTY has now been seduced and neutered by the very section of society it once wickedly satirised. We’ve come along way from hearing Fallon whisper in Krystle’s ear about Bradley Milburn strangling his wife with her own panty hose (“cost him half a million to get him off”) to watching the Carringtons and Davises indulge in some mutual arse licking. Happily, the plight of children with diabetes is put into perspective as Marvin Davis introduces Blake from the podium so that he can make an announcement of “the utmost importance to you ... Krystle Grant has consented to become Krystle Grant Carrington once again ... I’ve never felt more blessed than I do at this very moment.” Everyone claps self consciously at the proclaimation of this fictional joy. The writers are so caught up in the grandeur of the event that they have evidently decided that dramatic conflict is now surplus to requirements on DYNASTY, and that the only thing better than watching rich people be rich is watching rich people be rich and happy. To that end, three of the most enduring and/or watchable Carrington family feuds are brought to end during the Ball. At Claudia’s urging, and overriding Alexis’s objections, the Stevenbot finally makes up with his father. “I’m very happy for you, Dad.” “Welcome back to the family, son.” They hug. It’s a nicely acted moment, but still kind of hideous--as though the programme makers are saying to the audience, “Still care about Ted Dinard and Matthew Blaisdel? Good, because none of us do.” Meanwhile, Alexis tells Adam that she knows about his drug history and forgives him for framing her: “I will never turn against my son.” Another hug. Even Adam and The Stevenbot shake hands. “I just want you to know I’m truly happy you’re back in the family,” says Adam before launching into some tedious reflection on fatherhood that almost causes Kirby to give birth prematurely out of sheer boredom. Krystle dances with her doctor, (one of Lucy Ewing’s potential fathers-in-law) and explains that now she and Blake are Officially Ecstatically Happy, her only chance of a story line is to foolishly endanger her life by trying to have a baby.
Thanks to the dramatically deadening atmosphere of Happy Families, (even a powder room exchange between Fallon, Krystle and Alexis is dull; Joanie is obliged to spray herself archly with perfume to compensate for the lack of memorable dialogue) we are now totally dependent on the minor characters to generate some kind of conflict. A frank (i.e. contrived) exchange of views between Blake and Dex allows Dex to do what he does best--pontificate: “Blake, I know what I’m talking about! I have made half my fortune in joint ventures and they weren’t based on whether I loved or hated my partners!” In response, Blake utters the correct amount of syllables to lead the scene up to something vaguely resembling a dramatic crescendo: “No deal is a good deal with that woman and if you go behind my back just once more, just once, I don’t care if you are Sam Dexter’s son, I won’t think twice about kicking you the hell off my board!” Quite why the audience should care whether or not some man they barely know is removed from Denver Carrington’s board of directors isn’t explained. Praise the Lord, then, (well, Marvin and Barbara for inviting him) for the return of Neil McVane! His enjoyably ridiculous exchange with Alexis is the highlight of the Ball, if not the episode itself. “I’m glad you’re still among us,” he hisses. “I’m not really glad, you understand, but it is the civilised thing to say, isn’t it?” “Tell me something,” Alexis snaps. “Is it civilised to sneak into a hospital room and try and kill the patient? They said it was a nightmare, but I wonder ...” She then introduces him to Mark, her bodyguard-***-mortal enemy. “You were the suspect who tried to murder that witch,” says McVane conversationally. “Well, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Another scene with Mark, another reference to death .... Meanwhile, disaster strikes when a waiter bumps into Pee Wee De Vilbis. Pee Wee’s mad as hell and he’s not gonna take it anymore: “Idi-ot! ... It happened because your fool! ... Sorry for vot? Go back and learn your verk!” Jeff watches, appalled by the display. Evidently, cheating on your pregnant wife is nowhere near as bad as shouting at the help in a foreign accent.
Jeff then follows Fallon and Pee Wee out to the airstrip and watches some stunt footage of a small plane looping the loop as Pamela Sue Martin goes “Whoo whoo!” on the soundtrack. (Helmut Berger remains eerily silent.) Back on the ground, Jeff isn’t best pleased. “You could have killed her!” he shouts. “She’s not your wahf anymore, Coloby,” sneers Pee Wee. “She’s the mother of my child and that’s never gonna change and anyone who puts her in danger is gonna answer to me now and for the rest of my life,” snarls Jeff impressively all in one breath, before ruining the effect by turning around and walking off in that slightly girlish way of his.
**************
"Reaffirmation." The episode opens with Alexis reading aloud from the morning newspaper: "Denver Carrington oil magnate Blake Carrington will remarry the former Krystle Grant Carrington tomorrow. The wedding is to be a small intimate affair [transl: not as impressive as the Season 1 original]. The couple will honeymoon in Rio de Janeiro at the Barry Manilow Hotel." It might just be coincidence, but for one episode only, Joanie has flatter, softer hair and dang me if she isn't funnier and less pompous than she's been all season. Dex is AWOL for most of the episode, (presumably on some MISSION IMPOSSIBLE meets RAMBO assignment with Rock Hudson, Clay Fallmont and Cousin Ginger the hooker) which also helps. Little Blake comes for a visit and Alexis plays with him devotedly for approximately 1.5 seconds, during which time everyone is careful to avoid any reference to her being his grandmother. After he is spirited out of the scene, Alexis gets down to the nitty gritty with Fallon: "I notice from the gossip columns that you've been something of an item with Pee wee de Vilbis. I do hope you realise that he's nothing more than a playboy ... I have seen this man on several occasions. I've seen him in Marbella, Moritz, in Monaco ..." (and Milton Keynes and Middlesborough no doubt) "... He's not for you, darling. He's decadent, he's burnt out. He's had too much of everything ... He's bad. He'll hurt you." How exciting! "If this is more of your jet set gossip, Mother," replies Fallon, "I'm not interested. Pee Wee de Vilbis may spread his life around six continents, but he's very hardworking and incredibly sensitive." "And evidently not too shabby in bed." Very funny. It's odd that neither Alexis nor Fallon's descriptions of Pee Wee bear any resemblance to the walking, talking cadaver we see on screen. Mark, after listening in on Alexis's conversation, says to her: "Sometimes I think you really do believe that bull you toss out!" I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think Mark's in danger of becoming my favourite character. Meanwhile, Pee Wee is at La Mirage checking out Claudia's ass. "Yer ver beeyoodybubble Clowdia, ver lahvly, ver tractive," he tells her. Claudia, all sexy red lipstick and plummy vowels, threatens to tell Fallon and he dares her to.
Alexis's attempts to upstage the wedding are so pathetically desperate, they're actually quite endearing. "When I married Cecil, I deeded the studio to Little Blake," she says to Blake in his office. (Ah, the studio!) "Wouldn't it make an adorable playhouse ... So why don't you tell your guards that I'll be sending my workmen over today?" "This of course has nothing to do with the fact that Krystle and I are getting married tomorrow," replies Blake. She then tries to get under his skin by raking up first their honeymoon in Corfu and then Krystle's infertility, but Blake deflects her jabs with ease ("It's a pity that when we were on Corfu that I couldn't see the facade--your greed, your selfishness. If I had, our marriage would have ended a helluva lot sooner believe me ... Krystle may not be able to give me a child, but she does fill a void in my life that you are incapable of understanding.") Down the hall in Public Relations, Tracy is all perky, perky, perky. "Krystle, you're going away on your honeymoon! No work, and that's an order from me! ... By the way, whenever Bill went away, he usually gave me the credit cards ..." Krystle, who as we are continually informed, really knows people, replies "Sure!" "Oh yeah, and I might need the keys to the confidential files?" Tracy continues. Krystle hands them over trustingly. "Oh, and if I could just get your fingerprints on this murder weapon? Thanks!"
There's lots of Blake and Krystle looking in each other's eyes accompanied by swoony music, and Kirby being grumpy in front of Jeff and then bending over in pain whenever she's alone in a room, and Adam pontificating about his unborn kid: "When that baby is born, he's gonna know who his father is. That's my right!"
Blake and Krystle's big day starts as it means to go on with some recycled footage from the pilot episode of catering trucks arriving for the original wedding. There's a horrible scene where Fallon glides through the kitchen, surveying the servants' work and dispensing condescending good cheer as she goes. "You know the last time they got married, Joseph did such a wonderful job," sighs Mrs Gunnerson. "We all miss him," Fallon replies breezily before Jeanette asks if it's true that Peter Someone has flown in from Somewhere to play at the wedding? Fallon replies that yes, it is true and then turns back to Mrs G and says, "You know this is all so beautiful, we could easily lose you to the court of St James!" (What does that even mean?) Mrs G practically turns inside out with pleasure. Then there's the moment where Fallon sees the little bride and groom atop the wedding cake. Each time I reach this bit I shout at the screen: "Bite their heads off! Bite their heads off! It's not too late, Fallon! Do it this time!" But she never does. Instead she smiles and says, "One for the good guys!" And another little piece of me dies inside.
There are comparisons aplenty to be made between this episode and Blake and Krystle's first wedding, but none are favourable. Four years on, the Carringtons are TV rich trying desperately to look Movie rich, and the harder they try, the pokier and more studio bound everything feels. The difficulties of trying to conjour up scenes of limitless riches and glamour on a weekly schedule are beginning to show, and DALLAS's decision to emphasise character over splendour seems more than ever the smarter, more practical choice. As well as the style, Wedding No. 2 also lacks the substance of B&K's original big day. "Has she gotten you to sign the pre-nupital agreement?" jokes Andrew Laird to Blake, reminding us of the impromptu pre nup Krystle was obliged to sign in Episode 1 and Fallon's biting precis of same: "It reads a lot like the Bible; you brought nothing into this world and it is certain you can carry nothing out." Now Fallon's razor sharp wit has been replaced by gushing ("You look beautiful, Krystle ... the dress is spectacular!") and hugs. Instead of that blistering father/son library confrontation where Blake spoke of establishing "The Steven Carrington Institute for the Study and Treatment of Faggotry", we have gushing ("I never wanted to be anything less than the best father you could possibly have") and hugs. Last time Claudia spent the day of the wedding quoting Dorothy Parker and discussing the mating habits of snails before informing a couple of Jehova's Witnesses that she wouldn't be going to Hell because she'd already been there; this time round she smiles benignly and chatters mutely with the extras. The only dramatic point of interest comes from Adam's outrageous reaction to the news of Kirby and Jeff's marriage break up. "The minute your divorce from Jeff is final you're gonna marry me!" he informs Kirby.
And so to the wedding itself. There's a harpist. There are flowers. Lots of flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. (Couldn't they have halved the flower budget and splashed out on a few exterior scenes?) As the bride descends the long staircase, Blake and all of his nearest and dearest that are currently in the opening credits look up, adoring yet rigid. At this moment, Krystle's never looked more like a fembot. With the swelling music and the endless dewy eyed reaction shots, I get the distinct sense that I'm meant to be feeling something, but I don't. Over at Colby Co, Dex has returned from Rambo Land and suddenly Alexis is eating out of his hand. "You are important, darling, very important to me," she tells him. "Alexis, you're going to give me a swelled head," he replies. Is that a double entendre? While Blake and Krystle exchange vows, Alexis and Dex shag on her office couch. It might have been nice to cut back and forth between the ceremony and the shagging in that same way that the original wedding was juxtaposed with Matthew Blaisdel looking sad on a hill. As it is, the ceremony makes for dull viewing. After all, it's nothing we haven't seen before. After Dex has given her a good seeing to, Alexis's mullet--or an unpleasantly frizzy version thereof--suddenly returns. She contrives a reason for them to go to Rio--she wants to drill for Pina Coladas or something. "I heard Blake Carrington's going to Rio on his honeymoon ..." replies Dex and pretty soon they are having their first row. It's the same one they'll be having in almost every episode for next four years. "I think you still have a thing for Blake Carrington!" Dex bellows. "I'm not sharing you with anyone!" "Blake Carrington, I loathe him!" Alexith protesteth. "Those are words from the bottom of my soul. I despise that man etc. etc."
One of the most embarrassing moments in all of DYNASTY takes place during the wedding reception as Blake serenades the brim of Krystle's hat with a half sung, half spoken rendition of "Embraceable You". Poor John Forsythe. Peter Someone, the same Peter Someone whom Jeanette spoke of earlier, is seen tinkling the ivories. He then exchanges a few awkward words with the newlyweds. Judging by the aura of stiltedness that is so Carousel Ball, I'm guessing Peter Someone is A Real Life Person. "The last time I saw you was at Fallon's coming out party. That was also quite a party," he tells Blake clunkily. Jeanette and Mrs Gunnerson are among the guests--what fortunate serfs they are to be sure. Pee Wee cruises Clowdia's ass some more, Kirby bends double in pain some more and Fallon catches the bouquet again.
At least the final scene looks quite promising. "Get your passport and pack your things, we've got a plane to catch," Alexis orders. "Bull!" Mark replies. "Mark, how delightfully erudite you always are. One way or another you're gonna pack your bags so you decide whether it's one suitcase or everything you own." "OK, where are we going?" "... Rio de Janeiro and I'll be staying at the Barry Manilow Hotel!" Blake's ex-wife and Krystle's ex-husband gate crashing their their honeymoon? Cool, I'd certainly tune in for that. (Or at least I would if I could ever manage to eject the disc containing the next episode from my computer. It's stuck!)
***************
"The Ring."
OK, so this is the episode where Alexis and Mark show up at the Barry Manilow Hotel to wreck Blake and Krystle's honeymoon by any means necessary--leading a conga line through the hotel corridor, peeing the private pool, putting donkey sperm in Krystle's sun block, getting rotten drunk on Sangria and staying up till 4-am singing "Agadoo" at the tops of their voices--whatever it takes. Except they don't. Mark is on his way to the airport when Dex arrives at the apartment and tells him that there's been a change of plan. "Look pal, I work for Mrs Colby," Mark replies. "Nobody else tells me what to do." Dex reaches for one of Alexis's bags and Mark takes a swing at him. They start fighting and it's really funny. Just as it's getting good, Alexis emerges from the elevator, and she and Dex have a strangely disjointed conversation. "Blake Carrington was a fool for ever letting you go, but he did! That's his mistake, and I am here right now for you!" shouts Dex. "That sounds like an invitation," Alexis replies. It does? "Yes!" Dex confirms loudly. "To let the past die and look hard at your future instead!" What I love most about this exchange is Mark standing in the middle of the room the whole time. "The future could be interesting," muses Alexis. "Why don't you call the airline and cancel my reservation?" So Dex calls and surprise, surprise--there is no reservation, Alexis having already had second thoughts about conga lines, donkey sperm and all the rest of it. "Blake Carrington is still a part of my life," she proclaims to Dex, "and when I destroy him, it's not going to be in his hotel room, it's going to be in his boardroom. Your lesson for today: I run my own life." And our lesson for today: Not all episodes of DYNASTY deliver what was promised during the previous instalment's cliff hanger. Still, as anti-climaxes go, this ain't exactly Moldavia, and once one gets past the slight disappointment, this is an enjoyably loony episode.
While the newlyweds are away on their boringly idyllic and "Agadoo"-free honeymoon, the underlings take over the asylum with Andrew Laird, Moneypenny Marcia, the magnificent Mrs Gordon and and tooled up Tony getting a crack at the action like never before.
Tracy goes on a megalomaniacal rampage through Denver Carrington. First Andrew catches her going through the confidential files (Blake is remarkably unconcerned when this is later reported to him), then she gets sassy with Marcia (as opposed to Marsha, which is more Knots Landing Motors). "Mrs Carrington's office? No one told me you'd be using Mrs Carrington's office," queries Marcia in surprise. "Well I'm telling you now, Marcia," snaps Tracy in perky bitch mode. "I am speaking for the company in her absence, and I will do it in the proper office behind the proper desk." This nearly gives poor Marcia a stroke, but at least she gets a close up out of it--and what a handsome woman she is! Some intensive googling reveals that it was she who yanked out Donna Mills' kidney during Season 4 of KNOTS LANDING and, even more thrillingly, that she played Girl with Cow in CARRY ON CAMPING, aka The Film That Invented Sex. I think Marcia might be my new favourite character.
Two weeks later, sorry--TWO WEEKS LATER!!!, Mrs Gordon and Danny are approached by a friendly paedo in the park. "I'm keeping my eye on that one," vows Mrs Gordon ominously from beneath her Bat cape. Later she calls Claudia at La Mirage to tell her the paedo man has followed them home and is watching Danny from across the street. Poignantly, Mrs G never seems to think it might her the nice pervert is interested in, and that she could be the one he wants to keep chained up in his cellar. Shame. If GERALDO ever does a show about Nannies With Low Self Esteem, I hope Mrs Gordon will be watching. Claudia races back to the apartment. "Don't panic!" she panics, before moving the family en masse into the Carrington mansion. As plot devices to get everyone living under the same roof go, this is in slightly poor taste, but still isn't quite as inane as Donna and Ray's water pipe bursting during the DALLAS dream. We also get the added bonus of Alexis and Claudia's first shouting match. "I did not move Danny in with Blake and Krystle as an attack on you!" insists Claudia. "That place is a prison!" yells Alexis. "It's got guards, it's got fences, it's got visiting hours ... What am I supposed to do, send Danny a postcard?" "... I don't need anyone's permission to act where my son's safety is concerned," Claudia replies. "Safety? With Blake Carrington? That man destroys, Claudia! He destroys from within!" By now, Claudia is clearly thinking, "Jesus, I've been sectioned twice and I was never as crazy as this bitch."
Kirby is suddenly interesting again. I think it's because she isn't taking any crap. With Blake and Krystle gone, she and Jeff are free to proceed with their divorce, but it isn't happening fast enough for her liking. "Kirby, we're not eloping," huffs Jeff. "It takes a little longer for a divorce." Then Adam, after lurking behind walls in his most Machiavellian cardigan, bursts into her bedroom proclaiming, "Adam Carrington loves you as he's never loved anyone in his life before!" Instead of doing her usual thing of yelping like a passive aggressive puppy that's been stung by a bee, Kirby stands her ground: "Your brand of love belongs in an alley, Adam ... Keep your love. The baby and I will be just fine." "You're looking at a man who was deprived of his birthright," he continues. "Is that what you want for your child? He'll grow up hating you because you stole what was rightfully his." "Which would you prefer--him hating me, or growing up a Carrington and hating you?" she snaps back rather smartly.
It appears Dex took that little tiff with Alexis about the airline reservation to heart because he went all the way to Australia for a good sulk. Now he's back. His emotional baggage, sadly, did not get mislaid en route. "I needed that two weeks to think about my life," he tells Alexis, "where it's been, where it's going and with whom. It always came down to one woman. You." "Sorry, you're dealing with a disinterested party," she sniffs. "At first that's what I thought, but you've tried to shut me out too many times, Alexis, to be disinterested." (Isn't that the logic of a rapist?) "You're afraid of me," he tells her. "Nothing frightens me, Dex. If you knew me better you'd know that." "Save it. You're frightened because you want me as much as I want you ... I spent most of my time searching for the one thing on this earth that comes closest to matching you. This." He gives her a spangly necklace. "Oh my God, it's breathtaking!" orgasms Joanie. "The setting was designed by me, each stone was handpicked by me," he tells her modestly, "and each facet was cut to reflect your beauty. You are afraid. Don't be. It's not a collar, Alexis. It's a tribute." "I can't!" she protests insanely. "Yes, you can!" She puts the tacky thing on and her first instinct is to gaze at her own reflection. Dex strikes a pose behind her and looks into the mirror admiringly. "Magnificent," he declares. Alexis is so turned on by her own image that she allows him to get her boobies out. Narcissism and materialism--the key ingredients of Alexis and Dex's "passion".
Ernesto Pinero, a slimy piece of Eurotrash in a cravat and the new architect for La Mirage, knocks on Pee Wee's hotel room door expecting to find Helmut Berger, but has settle for Jon Cypher aka Jeff Munson aka Dirk Maurier aka Pee Wee's attorney instead. "I borrowed $2,000,000 to finish that damn hotel of Pee Wee's," Ernesto rants. "From the money he is squandering on his habit lately, what guarantees do I have about getting that money? ... I received a call from the bank. They know I am leaving for Rio tonight and they expect a payment from me on arrival." "So?" replies Cypher nonchalantly. "Take a later flight." That's such a Pee Wee line that I wonder if Helmut Berger wasn't originally meant to do this scene and it had to be rewritten when he just couldn't drag himself out of Jack Nicholson's jacuzzi.
With Blake in Rio, (the city, not the dog) Andrew appears to have appointed himself surrogate Carrington patriarch, dispensing fatherly advice to Kirby and Jeff as if his life depended on it. Outside of a homosexually-themed court trial, this is the most verbose we've ever seen him. "I was at the airport when your father flew to Korea and I was there when they flew his body back," he tells Jeff. (Strictly speaking of course, Jeff's father's body wasn't flown back as there was no body found; heck, he wasn't even Jeff's real father.) "At the risk of overstepping my bounds," burbles Andrew, "let me ask you something. I'm a trained observer and I wonder, I just wonder if your split with Kirby doesn't have something to do with Fallon, something you still feel for her that you can't quite overcome ... Everything seems to be happening so quickly. You and Kirby, this divorce, Fallon and Pee Wee de Vilbis ... If they get married, he becomes your son's stepfather." It's hard to understand what Andrew's motivation for saying all of this is--unless it's simply for the pleasure of freaking Jeff out, which is reason enough in my book.
There's even more underling action at the end of the episode when a frantic Jeanette rushes up to Krystle's bedroom: "It's Kirby, Mrs Carrington. I'm terribly worried about her ... It's her ring finger. It's terribly swollen. It's as though her wedding band is cutting off the circulation!" And the heavy handed symbolism probably isn't doing her much good either. "We've tried everything," Jeanette continues, "soap, oil ... " (Hey, great idea for a TV show!) "... she's in a great deal of pain and I don't know what to do." Krystle, always good in a swollen finger crisis, (she understands people, you see) doesn't miss a beat: "Call Tony at the stable. Have him bring a tool that can cut through gold!" Downstairs, Kirby is seated at the kitchen table while the entire staff hover around her, (including Mrs Gunnerson; well, sometimes there are more important things in life than Swedish meatballs) all staring anxiously at a close up of a hand and some pliers. We cut back and forth between this shot and one of Krystle and Kirby taken from another angle where they appear to be about four feet away from the table; this has the effect of making it seem as though Kirby has enormously stretchy arms. Tony's tool penetrates the ring (uh huh) and everybody gasps happily like he just delivered a baby. But before Mrs Gunnerson can turn her attentions back to her divine pink grapefruit sherbet, Kirby cries out, "Look at my hands!" and we see a close up of a pair of perfectly normal looking hands--well, normal if you're a 45 year old man. "Oh my God! Call Dr Winfield," shouts Krystle. "Kirby's changing sex!" Well, that's one way to get out of having Adam's baby
***************
"Lancelot."
Dr Winfield regretfully informs Kirby that she is not turning into a man. Rather, she has "mild preoclampsia and an electrolyte imbalance in your bloodstream". He orders her to eat some fairy lights and stay in bed. Rebelling against the idea of enforced bed rest, Kirby tells Krystle that she's still allowed to indulge in a little light hang gliding. Back at the mansion, she collapses after trying to play the piano with her nose and is confined to her room. As Adam is ogling Little Blake and Danny in the solarium, Jeanette suddenly appears on his shoulder like Jiminy Cricket in a frilly apron. "Those two little boys. Aren't they beautiful?" she coos. "The Carrington heirs. How your father loves them. He'd give their parents the world for what they've given him." "Yes, the world," murmurs Adam. He then steals into Kirby's room and for a second you think he's going to perform a home made caesarian on her. Kirby's past caring anyway: "Ever since that night when we were together and this baby was conceived, it wasn't meant to be and whatever happens now we deserve," she tells him. "I don't care about my life." Yes, I can see how they're attempting to make Kirby into a doomed Hardy-esque heroine, but it doesn't quite work. There's no real atmosphere, it isn't feverish enough, everything's too brightly lit. Adam proposes to her for the 37th time: "Our baby is going to be a Carrington ... I have enough strength for both of us ... Marry me, Kirby. It'll guarantee the future for all three of us."
Blake can't understand why Jeff and Kirby are divorcing: "You know, I've loved both those kids as if they were my own," he says to Krystle, taking time out from his busy schedule to fret about "two kids" he isn't even related to because, hey, that's just the kind of billionaire international corporation head he is.
Pee Wee and Fallon are enjoying a post coital moment at La Mirage. "Water thinking about? Something complimantry ah hope?" Pee Wee asks. "You brought excitement back into my life," Fallon replies tonelessly. "Ah think we should have a real potty," Pee Wee decides and starts chopping out lines of talcum powder. "Ah fine it ver stimoolating," he adds by way of explanation. Fallon chooses not to partake of the Naughty Salt and saunters through the hotel lobby to fetch herself another bottle of champagne instead. Good idea. After she's drunk its contents, she can hit herself over the head with it repeatedly to distract herself from the sight of a coked up Helmut grinding his teeth into a fine dust for hours on end while re-enacting his finest moments from SALON KITTY.
Blake grows suspicious of Pee Wee after examining his architect's plans for La Mirage and arranges a meeting with him, but Pee Wee is nowhere to be found. "I don't mean to be rude, Mr Maurier," Blake tells the character played by Jon Cypher (who last week was called Everett; now he's Maurier, but a different Maurier to the one he appears as in Season 7), "but when I phoned Pee Wee I expected to meet with him, not his lawyer." "I am sorry," Maurier replies, "but Pee Wee is having trouble memorising his lines. He does extend his apologies, Mr Carrington, or at least he would if he could remember them, and has asked me to fill in for him." "That's fine," replies Blake warmly. "Just between us, I couldn't understand what the f**k he was saying anyway."
Alexis appears only briefly in this episode, once to remind the Stevenbot how mental his wife is, and once for a tediously pompous love scene with Dex, in which he manages to fawn all over her while simultaneously inflating his own ego: "I consider myself someone very special as far as you're concerned. The fact that I gave you that necklace you're wearing and the fact that you accepted it should prove that .... Alexis, what would you say if I said I was falling in love with you? I mean, really falling in love with you?"
With Krystle discussing her uterine problem with Dr Winfield and scenes of her, Blake, Fallon and Pee Wee cheering at some stock footage of a horse race, the episode is danger of flat lining. You know you're in trouble when you're looking to Tracy to liven things up.
When Kirby tells Jeff she's accepted Adam's proposal, the instalment suddenly springs to life. "What? Are you crazy?" asks Jeff incredulously. "Are you out of your mind? After what he did to you?" Then abruptly we cut to a close up of Blake: "You raped that girl?" "Kirby and I were two very lonely people," Adam tells him. "We had some champagne. We had too much champagne ..." "Rape has nothing to do with that," replies Blake, speaking from experience. "It's an act of violence. It's an act of abuse and violence. In another time, they'd have dragged you out to the centre of the square and horse whipped you, branded you an animal. My God ... that child is yours, isn't it?" This scene, which takes place in the library, is really quite good. "I know how you must feel right now," says Adam, "living in this house with all these lies. Betrayed by your family, by the people you love ... The blame is mine, only mine. I'll go ... Move back to Billings ... I can make a life there with Kirby and the baby." "You're my son and dammit, you're gonna stay right here in this house and you're gonna learn what it is to behave like a man, like a Carrington! I insist that you stay." "Father," he replies. "I love you very much and I will change. Please believe me." How dramatic and swirly!
Now, if this were any other drama series, (except FALCON CREST maybe) we might expect to see Blake confront Krystle over the fact that she has kept the knowledge of Adam's rape and impregnation of Kirby a secret from him--y'know, actually explore the conflicts that exist between the main characters--but instead the drama come from an external source: an anonymous voice on the phone who tells Blake that Allegree has been kidnapped! "A woz disapee?" asks Pee Wee down at the stable. "What da hell is going on hee?" And we're flat lining again.
The episode ends with more anonymity, in the shape of a package for Claudia--it contains a bleeding beef heart and a note signed "My Love Always"--whoops, sorry, wrong show. It contains violets and a note from someone called Lancelot. Who is Lancelot? The friendly paedo from last week's episode? Or the horse napper? Or one of Nick Toscanni's distant relatives? Before I could find out, this episode, which has been suffering from post traumatic stress after being trapped inside my computer for a week, broke down so I missed the final seconds, but I'm sure they were indescribably brilliant and transcended everything we understand drama to be capable of.
***************
"Seizure."
Horse-nappers, mysterious packages, dodgy Europeans, weird illnesses--all plot devices being inflicted upon the Carringtons. There is precious little conflict between them anymore. As a result, there's no core to the drama, just an emptiness at the centre of each episode.
Over at Carrington Farms, a suspicious cop is cross examining Tony the Handyman as to his whereabouts at the time of Allegree's disappearance. Tony, on the verge of hunky tears as usual, insists he was snuggled up with Dandy Dandridge for the night and heard nothing. Then there's a long scene between the cop, Blake and a mostly mute Pee Wee, during which the cop theorises as to the horse-napper's possible motivation: "You don't get to the top, Mr Carrington, without a lot of others sinking to the bottom. You're both wealthy and powerful men. I'm sure you'll find someone out there who'd love to get revenge by stealing one of your most valuable possessions and destroying it." Blake's having none of it: "Why do you think those thieves over in Ireland stole the Agar Khan's horse? For money! ... Stop searching for enemies and start searching for that horse!" It's during this scene that it gradually dawns on me that we're actually meant to care that the horse has been stolen. As difficult as it might be for us to identify with Blake and Krystle's current crisis, (I'm guessing that few audience members have had a prize thoroughbred filched from their back yard), we're supposed to be so in love with the Carringtons by now that any loss they suffer automatically becomes our loss. (Oh, and a nice touch to have Blake compared with the Agar Khan, who in his native Pakistan has a status akin to the Messiah.)
I must confess it's been a while since I've seen Season 4 and I can't quite recall how this story-line resolves itself. Does it end with Allegree turning up in LA suffering from amnesia and talking in an English accent, or does he get just replaced by a doppleganger who resorts to feigning illness to avoid intercourse with Blake?
Pee Wee takes advantage of the media interest in Allegree's disappearance to announce his engagement to Fallon before sticking his tongue down her throat on live TV. The news comes as a shock to the family (including Fallon herself). "He's got all the subtlety of a ring master," huffs Jeff. "I'll tell you what I'm getting," snaps Fallon in reply, "a man who has worked hard for everything he's got. Didn't have a rich uncle to give everything to him on a silver platter. You tell me who's the better man." This is the sole instance of inter-family conflict in the episode, and even then she apologises before it can get really interesting.
Blake is also unhappy about Fallon's engagement, admitting to Krystle that there's something suspicious about his son-in-law-to-be: "I just can't put my finger on it," he frets. Can't you, Blake? Then you must have suppressed the memory of last week's scene with Mr Maurier during which you accused Pee Wee's architect of inflating the costs for the new wing of La Mirage to include "tens of thousands of dollars being wasted on frivolities."
In due course, Blake receives a ransom demand for his missing horsey. "$2,000,000 in diamonds or Allegree's glue. No cops." Krystle, Pee Wee and Maurier convene in his office. "Ah juz tok to Zurich," says Pee Wee. "Mah meen dollaz is lined up. Ah fly to Loz Angeleez to buy dah diamonz." "I don't like this," protests Blake. "I don't like it one damn bit!" But despite his reluctance to succumb to extortion, his just-can't-put-my-finger-on-it suspicions about Pee Wee and the evidence he had last week that all but proved Pee Wee's pal was out to defraud Fallon, Blake hands over a million dollars to Pee Wee as his share of the ransom, without even taking any legal advice. Where the diddly is Andrew Laird, or any of the rest of Blake's battalion of lawyers, at a time like this??
Adam, meanwhile, keeps a vigil at Kirby's bedside. "You look tired," she says, which is the practically the nicest thing she's ever said to him. "Why should I marry you?" she asks simply. "Because I'm the only one you have left," he replies and suddenly it all seems quite sad. "Tell me I'm wrong," he continues. "Say it. Say 'Adam, you're wrong.'" Isn't that such a DYNASTY line? Nearly all the characters make a habit of asking someone to repeat a specific phrase that includes their own name. I believe it starts with Claudia in Season 1. "Why don't you tell me to leave?" she says to Steven just before they sleep together for the first time. "Why don't you say to me, 'Claudia, leave'? Steven, say it." For a writer to have all his characters speak in the same voice and with the same rhythm is terribly lazy; it's just bad writing, plain and simple.
That said, there's a surprisingly effective scene where Adam attempts to build bridges with Jeff. "I want you to accept my apology," he tells him. "I didn't break up your marriage ... You never loved Kirby. You married her on the rebound because it always was and it always will be Fallon." For once, Jeff doesn't get on his high horse (probably because it's been horse-napped) and instead shakes Adam's hand, thereby acknowledging the truth of his words. There's the potential here for a delicate piece of human drama with Adam, Kirby and Jeff all attempting to build on the fragile truce that now exists between them. But instead the script requires Kirby to all of a sudden go all wobbly, whereupon she is hospitalised for more turgid medical melodrama. "When I was a boy," Adam tells Blake in the hospital waiting room, "all I had to love was this ugly little mongrel dog. I used to pick him up and love him so much I'd nearly squeeze him to death, but I frightened him and he ran away." Forget "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"; Adam's now become Lenny in "Of Mice and Men."
Alexis is once again excluded from any of the major story-lines. Given that she is DYNASTY's principle antagonist, this only adds to the episode's sense of emptiness. We see her dressed for a ballet opening in a horrible pink blancmange of a frock, her hair pulled back to emphasise her profile--never Joanie's best feature. Dex arrives at her apartment clad in soiled jeans and leather jacket, fresh from wildcatting in the Powder Valley (which sounds like a town in a John Waters' movie). I'm not sure, but I think we're supposed to find the contrast between high society Alexis and dirty, virile Dex kinda sexy. While her back is momentarily turned, he hastily sheds his clothes to reveal ... hairy shoulder blades. Eww! Alexis dumps the ballet and heads for the Powder Valley saloon with Dex to sweet talk country bumpkin Oscar Stone ("What a handsome name and so suitable for such a very, very attractive man") into selling them his land. When she sneers at the local yokels for serving her a martini "on the rocks", we're meant to join in. She and Oscar then hit the dance floor where she manages to bust a few hayseed moves while keeping her nose firmly in the air. If you've ever wondered what Margaret Thatcher would look like poured into Olivia Newton John's leather trousers from GREASE, this is the scene for you.
Watching this sequence, I was reminded of a scene from early Season 10 of DALLAS in which a down-on-his-luck JR has his secretary Sly, clad in a skimpy blouse and mini skirt, bat her eyes at a inbred looking farmer in order to lure his field away from him, and wondered why I find that scene amusing and enjoyable while this one just feels smug and patronising. I think it's the absence of a self congratulatory aura that makes the DALLAS scene work for me. JR exploits the farmer and Sly, but there's no subtext asking us to admire him for slummin' it with the poor folks or to applaud Larry Hagman for being such a swell sport. (Plus the actor playing weird farmer is genuinely funny.) As Alexis dances, Dex and the yokels watch her admiringly, and again we are expected to share in their adoration. "It's definitely a deal," Oscar tells Alexis on the dance-floor, "but on one condition ... you talk so pretty, I just wanna hear you sing." There follows a carefully arranged set piece designed to demonstrate what a great sense of humour Joanie has. Alexis lip-synchs to a half sung, half spoken version of "See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have." It's prudently choreographed and quite tame--neither especially impressive nor particularly embarrassing (as opposed to Blake's toe curling rendition of "Embraceable You" a few episodes earlier). There's more hairy shoulder blade action during a gratuitous shower scene between Alexis and Dex. On my print of this episode, their flesh has a slightly greyish pallor, reminiscent of the large headed aliens that appeared on THE X-FILES.
Tony's right (that's Tony the forum member, not Tony the weepy handyman)--Pamela Bellwood is quite poignant in the scenes relating to Claudia and the violets. The sight of his wife acting well obviously makes the Stevenbot uncomfortable. "You're a Carrington now," he reminds her. He doesn't want her thinking back to how great the show used to be when she got to work with Bo Hopkins and Al Corley, and asks her to give him the flowers and the note from Lancelot. "They don't seem to want to let go of me," she tells him. "They exist ... Someone sent them to me." Reluctantly, she hands them over and he burns them. During a later scene in the library with Blake, (while Claudia and Krystle are upstairs, talking "about turning the adjacent room into a walk in closet"--insert your own repressed homosexual gag here) the Stevenbot formally renounces the Al Corley incarnation of his character. "I used to spend hours alone in this room reading," he tells his father, "but never really being here. This room is you, Dad. Everywhere you look in this room there's a richness, a comfort. A comfort that I never took time to notice before. Should have spent less time reading and more time looking." Yeah screw Emily Dickinson and that homo poetry crap, just surrender to the opulence. Don't question or debate, just luxuriate. Anti-intellectualism, thy name is Carrington.
At La Mirage, Claudia exhibits some right wing tendencies of her own (and not for the first time; remember her "You painted a picture of Steven as not a man" remark to Sammy Jo earlier in the season?). "Clowdia, no congradoolations?" Pee Wee de Vilbis asks her, referring to his and Fallon's engagement. "Fallon is very important to me," she claims (in the same unearned way that Blake insists Kirby is "just like a daughter" to him). "She's very special to me and, although some people wouldn't think so, she hurts easily." Especially if you pretend to throw her baby off a building. "Maybe where you come from, Pee Wee," she continues, "making passes at any woman that's passing is funny." Gee Claudia, xenophobic much? When Pee Wee tries to touch her, she slaps him. He's lucky she didn't put a sheet over her head and hang him from a tree.
Even though I've seen Season 4 before (more than once), I still find myself falling into the trap of waiting for Tracy to do something brilliantly devious that will justify her inclusion in the opening credits. But of course she never will. Halfway through the season, the writers seem to have figured that out as well and have decided to turn her from a stop-at-nothing corporate go getter into just another gold digging ****. "I'm heading to the top at Denver Carrington," she tells Bill Rockwell, the ex-head of PR at Denver Carrington. He isn't convinced. "I know you," he replies. "Maybe it's not the job you want. Maybe it's the boss. That is how you got your job with me. So, on to bigger and better mattresses." She should have slept with Adam when she had the chance, but I guess she didn't realise she was a tramp then.
There's another glimmer of poignancy when Kirby wakes up in the hospital. "I want this baby too now, more than anything," she tells Krystle. "I've spent enough of my life living in a fantasy world. It's about time I grew up." But then it's time for more medical madness. "Oh Krystle, my head!" she suddenly yells. "It feels like it's bursting! I can't stand it, I can't stand it, oh!" "Someone fetch a doctor," shouts Krystle. "Kirby's spontaneously combusting!" "I can't stand it, I can't stand it!" Kirby continues--or maybe it's just an unscripted outcry by Kathleen Beller.
***************
"A Little Girl."
Adam spends the episode pacing the hospital floor while Kirby undergoes-- well, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what Kirby undergoes. There's much talk of "visual disturbances" and "severe headaches" and "lives hanging in the balance" and at the end of the episode her baby is delivered unsuccessfully by Caesarian, but at the risk of being insensitive, this must rank as one of the most tedious miscarriages in all of soapdom. (Krystle lost her baby in half the time and far more movingly.) Despite Adam being overcome with remorse for every bad thing he's ever done and Gordon Thompson acting his heart out and the relentlessly overblown score continually telling us what An Enormous Tragedy this situation is, it's all quite uninvolving. (Perhaps the problem is the nature of Kirby's illness; if this story-line were set in the 19th century and she'd caught some sort of plague particular to major domo's daughters, it might have had more resonance, but to inflict her with some random ailment on top of everything else she's been through feels like cheating.)
Alexis remains strangely sealed off from this story-line. Does she even know that Adam's the father? She's nonetheless back on form in this episode, doing the thing she does best--nibbling on inappropriate delicacies while someone is trying to have a serious conversation with her. "Try one of these canapés," she encourages Fallon, who is busy being indignant about her bad mouthing Pee Wee to Blake. "They're delicious. They've got little nuts and alfalfa sprouts and all sorts of things." Fallon is angry and wants an explanation. What follows is DYNASTY's first attempt at creating fictional royalty. "I was in Majorca when I saw it happen," says Alexis, spiking her own grapefruit juice with vodka. "Your Pee Wee dumped Princess Anda." (Isn't that Luke Skywalker's mom?) "She was an extremely beautiful and very rich young woman, about your age, with whom he was supposedly madly in love and planning to marry. He dumped her and ran off to Monte Carlo with some obscure little French actress with no talent, at least not for acting. The princess was so upset that she attempted suicide. It was all extremely tawdry." Fallon accuses Alexis of jealousy. "Oh Fallon, how could I be jealous of you?" "You can't stand to see me happy with any man because you've never achieved that yourself, ever since Blake threw you out of his house and out of all our lives ... Keep out of my life!"
There's a couple of scenes of Alexis being enjoyably horrible for no particular reason (other than to provide her victims with a motive to team up against her). While Dex is off in Utah, from where he will doubtless return brandishing the gift of a priceless necklace he has had fashioned out of Mormons, Alexis appoints Mark her handbag holder for a night at the opera. "If that fat lady's one of the world's great sopranos, then I'm Michael Jackson!" he opines on their return to the penthouse. Alexis is amused. "I find you rather agreeable tonight," she tells him. Conversation then turns to their affair of Season 3. "Do you miss those nights, Mark?" she purrs. "Do I miss them?" he replies. "How do you think I feel lying down there every night, knowing how close you are?" "Take off my necklace," she tells him. "Now." He does so, before moving in for a kiss. She suddenly breaks away. "Now take that necklace to your room and tomorrow you can take it to Jensen's and have the clasp fixed. It's been bothering me all night. Sweet dreams, Mark."
Next, it's the turn of Congressman McVane. She summons him to her office: "Come in. Well, come all the way in, Neil," she says as he hovers nervously by the door, "unless you've got a nostalgia for one that particular spot. That's where you tried to strangle me one memorable night." She then dangles a job offer in front of his nose, ("I'm looking for a consultant in Washington when that Canadian Tar Sands deal comes through") only to snatch it away. "Get out of my sight, you miserable has been ... Please escort Mr McVane out of my office and out of my building," she tells Mark.
Over a drink in a sleazy club boasting dancing girls and real looking customers (a much more DALLAS than DYNASTY setting), McVane suggests to Mark than they join forces: "Killing is too good for Alexis. The real answer is blackmail. Hit her where she lives, in her chequebook. I would love to bring her to her knees and leave her to suffer the way she left me ... There must be lots of dirt where that one comes from, and who better to find about it than the man who's with her most of the time? ... Together we'll bury her." Mark says no before he says yes: "Forget it, McVane. My fingernails are clean. I'd like to keep them that way." Neil replies with the most delightfully ludicrous line of the episode: "Think about it, Jennings, and don't worry about your nails. I know the best manicurist in town!"
The return of Allegree takes place off screen while Blake is in Washington at a "closed-door emergency session", whatever one of those is (I'm guessing it involves strippers and bongs). Neither Blake nor the suspicious cop are happy with Pee Wee's handling of the ransom situation. "Whazza maddah? Don'choo bleeve me?" "Well, in this country," says the cop, clearly a graduate of the Claudia Carrington School of International Diplomacy, "it's customary to inform the police when a crime has been committed. Maybe they don't play it that way where you're from." "Maybe you donno whoo you're talkin' to. Ah'm Pee Wee de Vilbis. Ah'm not one of dah trash you usually deal vith!" Pee Wee flounces off in the direction of Jack Nicholson's jacuzzi. "Maybe there's more to Pee Wee de Vilbis than any of us knows--so far!" muses Blake. Could this penny be taking any longer to drop? Pee Wee couldn't be more obviously sinister if he was striding through in Denver with a cape and fangs.
Later, Jeff bumps into Pee Wee at La Mirage and makes a request: "Stop teaching Fallon how to fly." "She's determined to learn," he replies. "Ah'm her instructor, a ver good instructor--in dah air and in bed. Whazza madda--she never told you about dat?" Jeff hits him.
Tracy runs tittle-tattling to Blake when she hears about Dex's latest deal with Alexis. "I feel about your company as if it were my own home," she tells him, nuzzling furiously between his buttocks, "and I want to make sure my welcome here stays as warm as you're making me feel right now ... a lovely warmth." If her head was any further up his arse, it'd be coming out of his mouth.
Blake and Dex do some more boring shouting, ("I can damn well kick you off my board!" "I don't take orders from you, Blake. You want me off the board, kick!") then Dex and Tracy attempt to out-smug each other: "Dex, this sudden fascination you have with who I am or what I might be craving, does it have anything to do with the fact that I am on top of my job and because of it, you find yourself swimming in some very hot water?" This leads to some painfully convoluted double talk about hot water and scorch marks which results in her massaging his fingers.
Krystle is at La Mirage when Claudia receives another white box containing the same flowers and message as last time. "What's the matter, Claudia? You look like you've seen a ghost." How insensitive; I thought Krystle was supposed to understand people intuitively? I've never liked the violets-in-a-box plot because I could never get past the fact that Claudia so never called Matthew Lancelot and he so never sent her violets during their marriage. Putting that to one side, however, it's kind of interesting to watch Pamela Bellwood do her thing, and the Blaisdel history remains impressively intact, in this episode at least. "I never saw Matthew after I was forced to testify at Blake's trial," Claudia remembers. "Then I had that accident with Lindsay and I wound up in the hospital. Then Matthew took our daughter and they were both gone. Did you see him, Krystle?" (This question resonates with the desperately poignant moment in Season 2 where Claudia, post-overdose, says to Krystle, "You've heard from him, haven't you?") "I know that you both meant something to each other once," she continues. "Did he tell you how much he hated me for being with Steven? Do you think this is his revenge? ... What is happening? Is he back? Is he trying to punish me?" Krystle's brilliant advice? "You have to push this out of your mind." Yeah, Claudia, repress those feelings! "I tried," she replies, "but it stays, just like the thought that my little Lindsay may not be dead."
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, everyone's being nice to Adam. Even people who have never been nice to Adam are being nice to him, which is kinda weird. "Adam, Kirby is going to come through this all right," whirrs the Stevenbot. "I've known her a lot longer than you have and I love her a lot too." Sure he does. In fact, Kirby and the Stevenbot share a bond so strong it transcends the need for them to interact in any way whatsoever. With the kind of originality we have come to adore him for, Steven #2 describes Kirby as "a fighter", then embarks on a heart-curdling tale of the WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY adventures they enjoyed as children: "We all went on a camping trip once. Kirby couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old and she decided she was going to ride a canoe down the rapids alone. Well, she did and hours later we had just about given up hope of ever finding her, but we heard a little voice"--and here, God help us, Jack Coleman actually does an impression of Kirby's "little voice"--"'Hey guys, over here!' and we saw her clinging to a rock smiling through her shivering. She said, 'Don't look so scared, I'm not! Just come and get me fast!" Can't you just picture Kirby as a little kid: those same big eyes, that same stupid hair, only with cutesy wutesy freckles and buck teeth. God, I suddenly hate her all over again. "Thanks, Steven," murmurs Adam, now sweating heavily from the saccharine overload. "It's good to have a brother."
If this wasn't enough, Jeff comes to Adam asking for forgiveness: "You once accused me of never recognising you as an equal. But not now ... I always blamed you for ruining my life with that poisoning, but it wasn't you, it was Alexis. I was wrong and I'm sorry for all of this". Back at the house, Jeff's act of contrition continues. "I had no right to marry Kirby," he tells Krystle, who sympathises breathily. "I dragged Kirby off to Reno as a way of getting Fallon out of my system. I lied to Kirby that night and I've continued to lie to her just I've lied to myself that my love for Fallon was over, but it's not. Gold help me, it's not and it's never going to be." This speech might have been more impactful had John James not rattled it off like he was ordering Chinese food over the phone. "De Vilbis is going to hurt her, I know it," he continues, "and you know what's so ironic? There isn't anything I can do about it, not a damn thing." No Jeff, that isn't ironic. Irony is not the same thing as frustration. Otherwise I would find your Alanis Morrisette-esque misunderstanding of the concept of irony extremely ironic (which in itself is kind of ironic ... I think).
That Adam is in the hospital chapel when he tells Blake the truth about Jeff's poisoning is surely no coincidence. In this scene, Blake is patriarchal father, Father Confessor and God the Father rolled into one. "Father ... I lied," Adam tells him. "It was my idea. Not mother's. She knew nothing about it until the night Jeff collapsed ... I did it, Father ... I only pray that it's not too late to be forgiven, that Kirby will be spared, and my child." But not even absolution from Blake the Almighty is enough to save a child conceived in rape. "It was a little girl," the doctor tells Adam. Boo hoo. End credits
***************
"The Accident."
"It's been agony," says Blake, reflecting on the standard of recent story-lines. "First Kirby's sickness, then losing her child and the kidnapping of the horse and now finally this terrible thing about Adam ..." "I love you, darling," Krystle replies helpfully.
Kirby awakens from a dream in which her baby is alive to find Adam at her bedside. "They tried so hard," he tells her. "All the doctors tried, but see, she was so small, so weak. They couldn't save her." Kirby whimpers. It's sad, yet boring.
We get our first peek inside Tracy's apartment where she has a wall full of newspaper clippings about the Carringtons (including, rather sweetly, one about the psychic from Season 3) and wanders around naked eating grapes with "the ageing but still attractive boy reporter Jeremy Thatcher" from New York. She has a story for him, but he questions her motives. "What's my angle?" she says teasingly. "What's Tracy Kendall up to this time? ... I was done out of the top PR job at Denver Carrington and the only way I'm gonna get it is if I drag the lady down." (Tracy loses serious points in this scene, for referring to herself in the third person and for her gratuitous use of the word "lady".) Krystle and Allegree end up on the cover of The Whisper under the headline "ARE THE RICH ABOVE THE LAW?" and for a second you think it's some juicy exposé about bestiality at the Carrington mansion, but it's just some boring stuff about nepotism ("She's really only the spoiled wife of a tycoon playing at being career lady") and the horse-napping.
Claudia is touching as she describes "seeing" Lindsay again since receiving the violets. The Stevenbot's advice ("Can't you just forget about it?") is as sensitive and helpful as Krystle's was last week ("You have to push this out of your mind"). Ironically, Alexis is the first person to make a constructive suggestion to Claudia, that she take the evidence to the police. Claudia replays her by adopting an hilariously English accent in their scene together.
Blake and Dex have another of their macho arguments. They're almost as tired of talking about Dex's seat on the Denver Carrington board as we are of hearing about it, but helpfully, an off screen and ailing Sam Dexter has suggested a different topic. He wants Blake to tell Dex the truth about Alexis. Blake's warning starts out well but ends rather insipidly: "She's a shark. She'll use you for as long as you satisfy her in business and/or in the bedroom, and then she'll go for blood. She'll try to destroy you. Then she'll get rid of you with no time for any questions." Far more interesting is Dex's response: "My father is a useless, spineless man who would be nowhere if it weren't for his father, and for me." As far as I recall, this is the only time that Dex describes his father in these terms. Certainly by Season 7, everything is fuzzy and wuzzy between them. Had Dex's daddy issues been developed, they might have placed his rampant narcissism in some sort of context (although perhaps the 1980s is context enough). Dex's next revelation is even juicer: "You may not know this about Sam Dexter, your good friend," he tells Blake, "but once, after a drink too many, he told me that he'd had a thing with Alexis when you were still married to her." "Really?" replies Blake wryly. "First the father, then the son. I gotta hand it to her. She's a real humdinger!" ("Real humdinger"? Is that Bing Crosby for "perverted ****"?) This is another tit bit that never gets repeated, not even when history repeats itself (sort of) by Dex sleeping with Amanda. Just think--if the cycle were to continue, Catherine Oxenberg would then have to hook up with Sable and Dex's offspring, who should be ripe for the plucking just about ... now.
After confessing to poisoning Jeff, Adam throws himself on Blake's mercy: "I'll face whatever decision you've made about my final punishment." Blake doesn't know how to handle the situation, and the writers neatly turn this dilemma into the focus of the story-line. There's a moment where he turns his back on Adam in his office where it all feels kind of epic and important. He goes to Alexis for advice. "I've come here today to apologise for ever doubting your love for children," he tells her. "I know now that you must love Adam a great deal ... You could have exposed him and saved yourself and you didn't ... I want you to help me understand how he could have done what he did." "The Almighty Giant asking me for help?" asks Alexis warily. "Why? Does the unforgiving Blake Carrington really give a damn?" This is good, meaty stuff ... until we get to Adam's teenage druggy breakdown, the all purpose explanation which effectively serves as his (and the writers') Get Out of Jail Free card. "What he needs is more love," concludes Blake. "I ask for your forgiveness again, Alexis, and I thank you." Alexis is moved. It's always slightly disappointing to see her succumb so easily to Blake whenever he shows her some tenderness, but at the same time, it's the one thing that humanises her character and breaks the endless Alexis/Blake "I'm going to destroy you!" "I won't let you!" deadlock. She returns home from their meeting to find Dex waiting for her. There could be no worse, or more interesting, time for him to propose marriage. When he does so, she insists that they are fine as they are. Dex gets all shouty, blaming Alexis's reluctance on her "ex-husband, whom you can't seem to get out of your head or your life or your heart!" "You know I hate Blake," she protests. "Hate and love can be very close!" he tells her.
Fallon and Claudia look lovely. "I just don't understand why it all has to be so madcap," says Claudia in reference to Fallon's upcoming wedding to Pee Wee. "That's my middle name, isn't it?" replies Fallon, which brings back terrible "madcap" memories of her and Mark doing the Charleston at the La Mirage opening. "Fallon, I love you, you know that," Claudia tells her, (who knew arranging a few banquets together could generate such intense feelings?) "but I do have some reservations about Mr de Vilbis ... He made a pass at me, here in your office." "... I've seen Pee Wee around other women. It's just his way of complimenting them," Fallon explains depressingly, before dismissing Claudia with, "You've had your say along with everyone else."
On his way to the office, Jeff gets a flat. Along comes Tony, shirt undone, tool box in hand, to jack up his ... tyre. He makes some vague, off hand remark about how much wine he drank the night Allegree was kidnapped, which has Jeff suddenly putting two and two together. Cut to Jeff telling Blake Tony was drugged. This is all very similar to the scenes near the end of Season 2 where Krystle, also prompted by a chance remark of Tony's, suddenly realises that Alexis was responsible for her miscarriage. Blake and Jeff talk to Dandy Dandridge. Or rather, Blake talks; Jeff just sits there. There's a very amusing close up of John James, his eyes completely glazed over, that makes you realise Stephanie Beacham wasn't kidding when she said of him, "mentally, he's out fishing". Dandy's clearly got "accomplice" written all over him. Suddenly, this plot is moving suspiciously quickly. You get the sense that they're writing like crazy to get Helmut Berger off the show asap.
To that end, Jeff appears to spend the next two days driving around, speaking to someone on his car phone. "The person that stole Allegree was his half owner," he finally concludes. "There was no one, including Pee Wee, who bought $2,000,000 worth of diamonds in LA on the day that he said that he flew there ... He took Blake's $1,000,000 and probably cabled it out of the country to Rio or Zurich." Fallon accuses Jeff of "inventing garbage" (isn't that the writers' job?) and goes in search of Pee Wee, who has spent the whole episode hiding in a cupboard because he hasn't learned his lines. Maurier covers for him. "Pee Wee? I'm afraid he's gone," he tells her. "He's left the hotel and the city ... He doesn't want to see you again. Pee Wee found you beautiful and amusing ... and now he's had to leave." Fallon runs out of the hotel, the voices of Blake, Alexis, Jeff and Claudia shouting inside her head. That can't be healthy. Could this be the moment that triggers Fallon's mysterious headaches, disappearance, head transplant, amnesia and alien abduction? A drunk driver, who could be a physical manifestation of Fallon's repressed incest rape fantasies, appears out of nowhere, gets into his car and tries to drive away (to escape from Fallon's subconscious, perhaps?). Viewed from a psychological stand point, signs saying NO EXIT and LA MIRAGE take on a new significance. Blake, surely the original object of any madcap incest fantasy going on here, pulls up in his big car. Jeff and Fallon are arguing in the parking lot. The drunk driver's car careens towards them, appearing to tap one of them on the knee. "My God!" exclaims Blake. Yes, it's still agony.
***************
"The Vigil." Oh God, not another one. Between you and me, after Kirby's spontaneously combusting sex change or whatever it was, I'm a bit vigiled out. Fallon's vigil isn't quite so dreary, however. Instead of copious weeping and icky childhood memories, we get a bedside montage of Jeff and Fallon in happier times (and better seasons), and Alexis calling Krystle "an ex-stenographer", which is always fun.
There's the obligatory scene of Blake losing his patience with one of the doctors, ("Dammit, I wanna know what's wrong!") but it's only because He Cares So Darn Much, and he is immediately chastened by the tough love he receives in response ("You hired me, Mr Carrington, because I'm one of the best neurologists money can buy, not because I baby-sit anxious parents!"). Eventually the word comes through that Fallon is in a coma, following her prolonged exposure to Pee Wee's mangled syntax.
Pee Wee, meanwhile, is trying desperately to get out of Denver without having to learn any extra dialogue. "He's catching the next flight to New York [and onto] Morocco," Maurier tells Blake. "Once he gets to Morocco, Carrington, neither you nor Aaron Spelling can lay a hand on him. There's no extradition treaty with the US!" "No matter where he goes, I'll find him," vows Blake, sounding a bit like Daniel Day Lewis in LAST OF THE MOHICANS. "I'll track him down if it takes the rest of my life!" He grabs a phone and dials some numbers at random. "Airport security, this is Blake Carrington ... I want you to hold all the planes to New York. I don't care what it takes. Do it!"
All Pee Wee has to do now is get through customs and he's home free, but x-rays reveal the dumb ass is carrying a syringe, a stash of naughty salt and a girlie mag in his attaché case. In his attaché case. I ask you. He could have at least made the effort to shove them up the De Vilbis bottom. (Well, maybe not the girlie magazine; one doesn't want to risk internal paper cuts.) Suddenly, Blake appears from nowhere, rushing through the customs barrier and lunging at Pee Wee. Everyone stands around watching. A burly security guard eventually tries to intervene, but Blake sends him flying with nothing but his own moral strength. "Blek, lat me explen!" bleats Pee Wee. "This is your lucky day, de Vilbis," snarls Blake as Pee Wee is led away. "I would have killed you!" It's our lucky day too, as this is the last we ever see of the cadaverous loony (THE GODFATHER, PART III notwithstanding).
Alexis is initially unaware of Fallon's accident, as she and Dex are too busy christening her new sunken bath set to pick up the phone. After turning Dex Japanese, they dress in matching kimonos and drink saki. "You know, it's a very strange thing," she muses. "The more I say no to you, the more interested in you I become." "... I'm the only one who won't take your 'No' for an answer," he replies, before returning to his favourite subject. "Blake Carrington--where does he fit in? You claim it's over, but you spend a helluva lot of time, energy and passion on that man." "Passion? Have some sushi," deflects Alexis, before finally picking up the phone. "Fallon? Oh my God! What happened?!"
As one ex-Mrs Jeff Colby is admitted to the hospital, another is released, and a delightfully negative Kirby returns to the mansion. "I don't wanna be waited on, I don't wanna be smiled at. I don't wanna be told what a beautiful day it is. OK?" "I lost a baby too," replies Krystle, oozing empathy and white light from every orifice. "You have to open up to others." "Well, that's fine for you. You have someone to reach out to, you have a husband who loves you, and of course you have all of this. I'm a downstairs girl. We're expected to keep our feelings to ourselves."
Kirby's even colder to Adam. "You still wanna marry me even though you know I don't love you?" Weirdly, this makes him smile. "You will," he replies. "I promise. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, you're gonna love me as much as I love you." "I hope you have enough love for both of us because I've decided to accept your proposal," she replies. (I thought she already had accepted his proposal, right before she went all wibbly wobbly?) "Now we'll have everything we ever wanted," she continues flatly. "You'll be in your father's favour once again ... I'll be a Carrington ... What more could I possibly want?" "... Kirby, that doesn't sound like you. You're a loving, sensitive girl, you're not--" "Hard and calculating? Watch me. I learn fast," she says, then promptly sticks her tongue in his mouth. "I've learned something these past few weeks," she later tells Jeff. "We all get what we deserve, really deserve, in this life. And I can live with that." I'm not exactly sure what she's talking about, but it sounds bitter and jaundiced so I like it.
Adam issues his 374th apology of the season, this time to Jeff. "Blame it on Alexis, destroy my marriage, and you're asking me to forgive you?" replies Jeff incredulously. "What are you, out of your mind?? ... Forgive you? I could kill you!" After grovelling some more, Adam, rather refreshingly, then adopts a different tack. "I came to you for forgiveness and you say vengeance is yours," he says. "Well, we'll see. Press charges and we'll both see them thrown out of court." "You confessed to Blake yourself," Jeff reminds him. "You just confessed to me." "With no witnesses," he replies. Next morning, the Stevenbot also gets his robotic knickers in a self righteous twist: "What about Mother?" he whirrs at Adam. "You tried to frame her for Jeff's poisoning. How could you do that?" "Someday, Stevenbot," replies Adam, "you're going to have to look at Alexis as an adult would, not as her baby boy." This kind of foreshadows the dilemma the Stevenbot finds himself in after witnessing Mark's death, but it's hard to imagine that the writers are thinking that far ahead.
Not only does Adam get his bite back, but Alexis is funny again. There's an enjoyable penthouse scene in which she rants about Fallon's condition to Krystle over the phone ("Now this could never have happened if Blake had only listened to me for once about that Pee wee de Vilbis ...") only for Krystle hang up on her, watches in silent disgust as Mark makes himself a fish egg sandwich, ("That's caviar, Mark, not peanut butter") and then admonishes Adam over his engagement to Kirby ("For God's sake, you're not in the backwoods of Montana now. You've got a brain, use it! ... I didn't spend over twenty years crying over you, dreaming about you, just to have you throw it all away!") before placing a call to Morgan Hess: "I still think you're slime, but since I know you'll do anything for money ... I want you to go to the Denver Chronicle and get me every story about a crime that was committed twenty-three years ago. The subject's name, Alicia A(y)nders"--and isn't Marky's DYNASTIER explanation for the sometimes missing 'y' inspired?--"She had a husband called Joseph and a daughter called Kirby, plus a son I'll be marrying later in the series and another daughter who'll appear briefly for exposition purposes, but those two haven't invented yet so don't worry about them. The crime was murder."
Some guy called Eric Grayson invites Blake to become State Chairman of "The Party". (Party, what party? Communist? Boston Tea? That sixties movie with Peter Sellers? No one's saying.) "It's gonna take a man with power, influence and respect throughout the state," Eric tells him. (As well as a conviction for manslaughter and a reputation for beating up Eurotrash in airports, presumably.) Dex, who became a Colorado citizen three years ago and therefore has "a vested interest in this state and this country", doesn't approve of Blake as the committee's choice. Nevertheless, Blake tells Eric that "If they want Blake Carrington, they've got him." (Third person alert! Third person alert!)
Turns out this is all part of trampy Tracy's master-plan to get more than two scenes' worth of screen time per episode. "When Blake Carrington becomes Leader of the Party, I wanna be in charge of the PR," she tells Eric in bed. "You owe me and besides, both of us know how upset your wife would be if she saw you right now." Eric manipulates Blake as easily as if he were a small child into thinking Tracy is his own choice for the job. "Mr Carrington, I could never say no to you," simpers Tracy. She and Eric feign ignorance of each other in front of Blake; this minor deception will later prove her downfall.
Claudia visits Matthew's mother, played by Diana Douglas, (mother of Gordon Gekko; ex-wife of Spartacus--"I'm Mother Blaisdel!" "No, I'm Mother Blaisdel!") who bakes Claudia molasses cookies and then glares at her with thin-lipped hatred whenever she isn't looking.
While vigilising at the hospital, Jeff says sorry to Alexis for falsely accusing of her trying to kill him --can we please call a moratorium on people apologising to each other over the poisoned paint story-line? Eventually, Fallon comes out of her coma and immediately sends Alexis away, ("Mother, get out of here!") just as she did after waking up in hospital after her last major car accident back in Season 2. Dr Williams then performs the traditional procedure of of testing for reflexes. First, he bludgeons Fallon's feet with a sledgehammer. "Can you feel that?" he asks. "No," she replies. Then he pulls out each of her toenails in turn with a pair of pliers. "Can you feel that?" "No! Oh my God Jeff, I can't move my legs! I need to get off this mother-loving show, but I can't move my legs!"
**************
"Steps."
"I've been like this for a week now," says Fallon, helpfully letting us know how much time has elapsed on screen since the end of the last episode, "and we've had one expert after another poke and prod, and not one of them can tell me why I can't move my legs!" As part of her treatment for paralysis, Fallon has been dressed in a jogging suit, which seems a bit like putting someone suffering from impotence into a pair of crotchless panties. "The way you look in that outfit, you'll be running the course in no time!" a nurse tells her with typical DYNASTY logic.
Following Adam's confession, Blake has become strangely amiable towards Alexis, regarding her intention to destroy Adam and Kirby's relationship ("You may think the butler's daughter is good enough for our son, but I certainly don't") with a sort of benign amusement, and even inviting her to the house for Fallon's homecoming. "No," she declines. "The last time I saw Fallon at the hospital, she made it clear that she didn't want to see me."
Fallon's return to the house is treated as a big deal (even though, as far as the audience is concerned, she's been in the hospital for less than half an episode). As Jeff carries from her car, Krystle and Gerard look on, dabbing their eyes with lace hankies. Later on, while Fallon sits by her bedroom fireside petting a fluffy white cat of the sinisterly Blofeld variety, Jeff adopts Kirby's deeply grating Season 3 habit of relaying an "amusing" conversation he has supposedly just had with Little Blake. "I went to the nursery for a 'Hi, Dad' and he said to me, 'You know, Dad, Mom's really looking terrific! ... A real trouper, huh?'" Much funnier, if unintentionally so, is the line Jeff delivers to Blake upon leaving Fallon's bedroom: "I don't think it would take much to tip her over right now." Yeah, a quick shove should do it.
"This electric bike will take me from here to California!" Fallon tells Krystle in the exercise room, eerily prophesising the Dark Days of Emma Samms to come. Jeff woos Fallon during a picnic by the lily-pond. "When you're ready to love again, you will," he tells her. "When you're ready to walk again, you'll walk." Yes, after behaving like a prize **** all year, he is suddenly transformed into Mr Understanding. In protest at this unlikely character change, Little Blake attempts to hurl himself into swimming pool. Big faker that she is, Fallon suddenly springs to her feet and grabs him.
Adam delivers a speech in Kirby's bedroom which sounds remarkably like everything he'll ever say to Claudia during Seasons 5 and 6. "Together we can have everything we ever wanted," he murmurs. "All the dreams become real. Power and wealth, the Carrington name. I want it all!" He is interrupted when Alexis calls Kirby summoning her to lunch. Does this mean Kirby has a private telephone line in her bedroom? Or is there an Ernestine-like switchboard operator located in the bowels of the mansion?
The scene between Kirby and Alexis is unusually well written (for this point in the series anyway). It begins with Kirby (who, for reasons best known to Nolan Miller, is dressed as though she's about to ride side saddle in 1932) arriving at the penthouse and meeting Mark for the first time. They shake hands, but before they can compare notes on what it's like to be rubbish in Season 3 before unexpectedly growing into one of the most interesting characters on the show, they are interrupted by Alexis. After dispensing with Mark ("Don't you have an appointment at the Muscle Factory or somewhere equally intellectual?") and then casting a critical eye over the catering, ("George, these are Cornish game hen, I ordered quail") she turns her attention to Kirby. "Do you know that I happen to have a great deal of respect for you?" she asks. "No, that hasn't crossed my mind recently, Alexis," Kirby replies mockingly. "A position has just become available in Paris for which I think you are eminently suitable," Alexis continues. "With that position goes the use of my apartment on the Avenue Foch, a car and a chauffeur, and a very substantial salary and, just think, most importantly you'll be in Paris where you want to be." Oh yes, all those lovely cakes! Do it, Kirby--say oui! However, Kirby's isn't the flaky pastry she once was. "I'd be where you want me to be," she replies. "Kirby, I'm offering you--" "A bribe. 'Stay away from my son, Kirby, and I'll make it worth your while.' ... No sale, Alexis. I was raped right here in this room by your son, did you know that? And now you're trying to do the same thing. I have news for you, lady, I may have lost a child, a Carrington baby, [even Kirby is careful not to refer to it as Alexis's grandchild] but I promise you, my next one will also be a Carrington." "We're out of your reach, Kirby. You don't belong." "I've made up my mind to belong wherever I say I belong."
This last statement is arguably Kirby's high point of the series--after trying so desperately to conform, to be accepted into "the upstairs world", (however vaguely that world may have been defined) she now claims the right to simply reinvent herself. ("I am whatever I say I am," as Eminem didn't quite put it.) Her victory is short lived, as Alexis swiftly disabuses her of the notion that she can outrun her past: "Check your own bloodline, Kirby, because if I were you, with your background, I'd adopt a child ... I'm talking about your mother." "My mother died when I was a baby!" "You may wish that she had, but I can assure you that she is alive, she is very much alive ... She ran away, Kirby, when you were two years old. She ran off with her lover and when he didn't satisfy her anymore, she killed him ... Your father should have had the courage to tell you instead of blaming me with that letter from the grave. Your mother's in prison - a prison for the criminally insane!"
Of course, this would all carry more weight if we knew something--anything--more about Alicia's story. (It's fair to assume it involves Zach Powers and a yacht; these things usually do.) "All I know is what your father told me a couple of years ago when you came back from Paris," Blake tells Kirby. "He said that your mother was still institutionalised." As no such conversation took place on screen, it does seem a bit of a cheat to suddenly invent it retrospectively.
At Denver Carrington, Tracy dangles her cleavage in Blake's face ("You are the most photogenic chairman the party has ever had!") only to be interrupted by Dex, arriving at the office for his weekly shouting match with Blake. This time he's all huffy because Denver Carrington is refusing to refine the oil that he and Alexis bought from Oscar Stone. "You're still playing games with your ex-wife. I thought you were a businessman!" he yells. "You are no longer a schoolboy," Blake replies. When you make a move, you better be willing to take the consequences ... When you came onboard with your father's proxy, I asked one thing of you--loyalty--and you made deals with the competition ... You chose your partner, Dexter. Now, you and your partner, get somebody else to refine your oil!" God, I actually find myself siding with Blake here. How very disturbing.
China Sea oil lease alert! This topic hasn't cropped up since early in the season, when Adam tricked Alexis into putting her name to the mercuric oxide purchase papers by telling her she was signing a statement of interest in the leases. Now, the Stevenbot accuses Adam of stealing his China Seas evaluation report (you remember, the file he decorated with shiny sequins and bits of glitter back at the end of Season 3). "Let me tell you something, Stevenbot," barks Adam, "you wouldn't be handling the research if I hadn't started the project, if I hadn't talked to those people in Colorado Springs and gotten then interested in the possibilities of that project in the first place [the same night he lured Kirby to that motel room] ... Now why don't you toot on back to Colby Co and see if you can find where you put that file?" Of course, Adam has stolen the report, and he now hands it over to Blake, sequins and all. "That's a combination of research done by the Stevenbot and me," he admits, "but what's important, Father, is that I initiated this entire project ... Hong Kong's buzzing with activity, Father. If Denver Carrington moves fast, if we're the first company to make a solid bid on those oil leases, the competition will never know what hit them."
Meanwhile, back at the house: More attention is devoted to the menu for Fallon's celebration dinner--crown roast pork (rare), asparagus with hollandaise sauce, new potatoes with caviar and sour cream, chocolate mousse--than to what caused her paralysis in the first place. ("I happen to think it's psychosomatic," Dr Williams says vaguely at one point.) "It must be perfect," trills Krystle. "Tonight is the celebration of a miracle!" "Don't worry, Mrs Carrington," replies Mrs Gunnerson. "Tonight, the kitchen will perform its own miracle!" Each puts an arm around the other's waist, and it all feels vaguely obscene. The dinner itself is a bore. The family assembles, each smiling the same generic smile, all ad-libbing the words "beautiful!" and "wonderful!" at each other as if on a loop. (It's strange--put a bunch of Ewings in the same room and sparks fly; gather four or more Carringtons together and the drama flat-lines.) It's fitting that in a scene entirely bereft of individuality, Blake should pay tribute to his daughter's uniqueness with a bunch of attributes applicable to most members of the human race: "She's contradictory in temperament, defiant and determined. Tough enough to stand on her own two feet yet sensitive enough to feel deeply some of life's pain ... I salute you, Fallon, and I'm proud to love you." "Yeah, whatever," thinks Pamela Sue Martin. "Eight more weeks of this crap and I'm outta here."
More interesting is seeing Alexis slumped on her couch, having had "a lot too much" to drink. "I want to indulge in self pity and 'poor little me'," she tells Dex, before admitting the cause of her unhappiness. "It's her, it's Fallon ... We've never been really close. Maybe it's because we're alike in so many ways. We've tried. She's tried and so have I, but it's never lasted." Dex urges her to call her daughter and make amends. She picks up the phone, then chickens out. "I can't, I can't!" she cries. The scene provides a nice change of pace for Alexis and Joanie (and even for Dex), at least until it devolves into another Lex/Dex snogfest.
Claudia sees a white box on the breakfast table and panics, until Krystle assures her that it contains napkin rings rather than violets. (What Krystle doesn't tell Claudia is that "Napkin Ring" was her pet name for Matthew.) The episode ends with Claudia receiving a photograph of herself in an envelope. Alas, it's not the one of her in the African village where she's got her knockers out, but a pretty snap that Matthew took "on our first anniversary". She decides to travel in Peru in order to find out once and for all if Napkin Ring is still alive.
***************
"The Voice, Part I." Part I of three, no less: the only three-parter in prime time soap history. So is "The Voice" an epic trilogy of LORD OF THE (NAPKIN) RINGS proportions, or simply a failure of imagination on the part of whomever it is that thinks up the episode titles?
The opening scene features some gratuitously hard core happiness round the Carrington breakfast table. Krystle and Blake are being all teasy weasy with each other by the buffet. "How would you like one of these corn fritters smack in the face, Mr Carrington?" "I would much prefer a good morning kiss, Mrs Carrington!" Fallon has a horrible line to Blake: "When I was a little girl, you use to say 'Every morning is a new time of hope and every business day can produce the deal of the century'" which Pamela Sue Martin at least has the decency to rattle off as quickly as possible. "I haven't seen you in days," Blake tells his daughter. Well, the last time we saw Blake and Fallon together they were knee deep in hollandaise sauce and chocolate mousse at the end of last week's episode, which means that a significant, but unspecified, amount of time has passed in between.
Suddenly, Blake is all about Hong Kong. And you haven't lived until you've seen Krystle trying to explain the political situation to her assistant: "This deal is a tricky situation, Tracy," she says gravely. "There are conflicting territorial claims in the China Sea area. The press may try to make a political issue out of it." It's the longest line Krystle's had all season and you can tell she was sweating it. So much so that it brings on a dizzy spell. Is she [a] pregnant, [b] suffering from an undiagnosed brain disease, or [c] both of the above? Tracy accidentally-on-purpose lets the cat out of the bag about Krystle's bun in the oven in front of Blake. Krystle explains away her years as the empty armed Madonna with a quick "He said that if I were careful and didn't do things to excess that I had a chance." The pregnancy confirmed, Blake showers her with gifts--a fur, a Rolls Royce and chauffeur, a necklace. Krystle does her customary demurring before accepting them all. Unable to travel to Hong Kong with Blake, she sends Tracy in her place.
The Stevenbot awakes in an empty bed to find "Steven darling, I've gone to Peru" crocheted onto Claudia's pillow. With Blake in Hong Kong and Jeff and Fallon off skiing, there's an awful lot of yellow lettering in this episode. In PERU THE FOLLOWING DAY!, Claudia meets Pat, a Colorado School of Mines contemporary of her beloved Napkin Ring. Later in PERU!, Pat pulls a Pee Wee on her by trying to stick his tongue down her throat. The Stevenbot arrives from nowhere and frowns him into submission.
Meanwhile, in ASPEN COLORADO!, Jeff and Fallon have sex and marvel at the way each other's characters have been totally rewritten. "You used to be the epitome of a three piece suit kind of guy," remembers Fallon. "Compulsive worker, kind of a stiff actually. Now you wanna ditch everything and fly off like some kind of playboy!" "I thought you were fascinating but shallow," Jeff replies. Now she's just shallow.
Over in HONG KONG! Rashid Ahmed makes a most welcome return, accompanied by a Middle Eastern flourish on the soundtrack and some gloriously nonsensical dialogue. "It has been said that the greatest cuisines of the civilised world are Chinese and Italian," he tells Blake. "So it is appropriate that we two gourmets, gourmets in power that is, met first in Rome and now in Hong Kong." Blake is distinctly unimpressed: "From what I understand, you were exiled from your country after you pocketed the money you got from my company." "I am representing that government," insists Rashid. "Blame it on my innate brilliance, blame it on my expertise in the field of oil, blame it on what what you will, but these people needed someone very special to protect their interests and I am that man." "I will never deal with anyone named Ahmed!" "Carrington, you will deal with Ahmed or you won't deal at all. Period!"
Back in DENVER!--whoops, sorry--Denver, Kirby is stuck with her mad mother story-line, but no further back story is forthcoming. And it's not just the writers exhibiting a lack of interest: "I'm beginning to think you have something in common with Alexis," she snaps at Adam. "Neither of you give a damn about me finding my mother because of what she did."
While Adam is at Colby Co shouting at his mother, ("I am going to marry Kirby and if you do anything else to hurt her, I promise you you'll regret it!") he receives an overseas call from his father ordering him to look into Rashid's claim that "he's the representative of the government of these China Sea leases." (Just as the writers must studiously avoid any reference to Alexis as a grand-mother and steer clear of identifying what "party" Blake is now chairman of, they must also skirt round exactly which government Rashid is supposedly representing.) Adam makes a note of Blake's instructions on Alexis's phone pad, helpfully carving the words "RASHID AHMED LEASES" so deeply that a blind man with no hands would be able to decipher the indentation on the page underneath. Alexis waits until she is back at her apartment before calling somebody or other to investigate the connection between Blake and Rashid--all the better for a boozy Mark to spy on her. What fun!
Fallon returns from ASPEN! for a surprisingly sweet reconciliation scene with Alexis, who gets quite emotional. "Come and sit down and have some of these strawberries," she sniffs. "They're out of season, but they were freshly flown in from Patagonia. Wherever that is." They laugh. This is one of the few scenes in the episode during which Fallon doesn't suddenly grimace and start rubbing her temples. Are these mysterious headaches the result of: [a] a fractured skull, [b] a repressed incest rape fantasy, [c] an alien transmission, or [d] possibly all of the above but we'll never really know for sure?
Back in THE JUNGLES OF PERU! Claudia and the Stevenbot are taken on a guided tour of a generic forest, (Claudia compensating for the uninspired location with a humidity-inspired frizzy perm) and shown the remains of Matthew and Lindsay's jeep. "The jungle has a way of claiming everything," they are told. "The jungle is filled with animals and the bodies, they were undoubtedly dragged away from this spot by those animals during the night." There is some helpful growling on the soundtrack at this point, as if the jungle itself were telling Claudia: "Yessss, Katy Kurtzzzzzman, she tassssted goooood." Poor little Lindsay: sobbing her way through the trials of Season 1 only to meet the worst of all possible fates--being eaten alive off screen. Claudia weeps into the Stevenbot's chest, rusting his circuits with her tears.
HONG KONG! Having had Rashid's credentials confirmed by Adam, Blake deigns to do business with him. They meet in Blake's hotel room with Tracy acting as witness. "I am raising the $100,000,000 for the oil leases," says Blake, "but I have to go back to Denver to handle the thing properly by myself." He then hands Rashid a cashier's cheque for $5,000,000, "for which I want a sixty day option to deliver the remainder of the money." Rashid haggles him down to thirty days and then leaves the room. After quietly scheming and manipulating for the best part of a year for an opportunity such as this, Tracy suddenly starts pounding on the self destruct button. "Mr Carrington," she simpers, "does this evening really have to end?" Blake looks at her in alarm. "I mean, there's still a few details I'd like to discuss with you," she adds hastily. She then leaves to fetch some papers from her room, before returning with ... a negligee. In a box. She holds it against herself and asks Blake if he thinks Krystle would like one similar. It's such a weirdly inappropriate thing to do. John Forsythe gives very good embarrassed and you find your toes curling on Tracy's behalf.
Claudia and the rusty bisexual return home to Denver. No sooner are the words "It's a relief to know it's all behind me" out of Claudia's mouth than she receives a phone call. Someone has gotten hold of the Season 1 DVD and is playing Bo Hopkins' dialogue from the Matthew and Claudia diner scene down the line: "We need you, Lindsay and I. We're a family." Claudia collapses to floor. Is she [a] jet-lagged, [b] embarrassed, or [c] bored?
****************
"The Voice Part II" aka "Fired."
The episode opens with Rashid Ahmed spurting verbal diarrhoea all over Blake's Hong Kong hotel suite as if it were green ectoplasm and he was a thirteen year old girl possessed by Satan: "Good afternoon, Carrington, and an important afternoon for us both though I would hardly know from the frown on your face. Smile, my friend, smile! At least for the television cameras. That shouldn't be difficult, I shouldn't think, with a woman as beautiful as Miss Kendall at your side. The subject of beauty is not exactly an anathema to you. The last time we made a deal you had the ravishing Alexis at your side in Italy, remember? And recently I saw a photo of your most recent wedding. Fabulous looking blonde! You have exceedingly good taste in wives, Carrington!" Tracy interrupts this tirade with the memorable line, "Gentlemen, this is Mr Chew."
Back in Denver, Krystle has hit new levels of delirious serenity. "The baby and I slept beautifully!" she trills over the phone when Blake calls to tell her that "the Deal of Century" is "all set, all signed." Tracy's downfall is heavily sign-posted when Krystle says, "It was a great idea to introduce her to Eric Grayson." No sooner has Blake hung up the phone than he is opening Tracy's flight bag by mistake (their luggage having been conveniently delayed until this moment) to find a framed photo of her and a man Blake helpfully identifies for the casual viewer as "Eric Grayson." This picture begs so many questions. Why on earth would Tracy carry with her on a business trip an incriminating photograph, much less a framed incriminating photograph, of a man she f***ed once or twice solely with the intention of blackmailing him? She might just as well have packed a T-shirt with "I'M A SLUTTY OPPORTUNIST! SACK ME NOW!' written across it for Blake to find.
Over dinner with Blake, Tracy once again denies any prior knowledge of Grayson ("I hardly know the man") before segueing into some obsequious flirting as excruciating as it is clunky: "When we get back home, the man I'm looking forward to working closely with is not Eric Grayson, it's someone that I find much more fascinating. I'm sitting with him right now on a very special night, ready for my next course of this incredible dinner!" In a pathetically transparent attempt at seduction, she pretends to have lost an earring and asks if she can return to in Blake's room to look for it. He plays along politely, but it's clear that he regards her with utter contempt. "You were wearing both your earrings in the restaurant," he finally tells her. "You see, I'm very aware of women's earrings." We wait for some qualification of that last statement but none is forthcoming. "I'm also aware of women's games," he continues before addressing what he calls "the Eric Grayson charade." Cornered, Tracy changes tack. "I knew Eric Grayson and, on occasion, intimately," she confesses. "I'm a woman and he's an attractive man." (He's a what now?) "I happen to believe in going after what I find attractive and I think you're very attractive," she tells Blake. "Don't you feel the same way about me? Otherwise why would you bring me all the way to Hong Kong?" The hole she has been digging for herself is now so deep she's practically halfway back to Denver. Is this really the razor sharp public relations whizz we were introduced to at the beginning of the season? Could she be more suddenly inept? "I'm going back to Denver tomorrow morning alone," Blake tells her. "I don't care what flight you're on, what plane or where you're going. I'm buying off your contract now, paid in full." He then presents her with an already written cheque from his inside pocket which he has presumably been carrying around in preparation for just an such earring-based fiasco as this. "If that amount is not enough, you can contact my business affairs people," he adds. "You're fired, Miss Kendall. Good-bye!" "You can't!" shrieks Tracy. "I'm very good at what I do!" "I'm sure you are," he replies coldly.
Alexis is nursing a champagne and brandy hangover when she sees Blake on the TV news announcing "the Deal of the Century ... I am very pleased to announce Denver Carrington has secured vast oil leases in a very prominent area of the world, the South China Sea ... It is in no sense a political deal." After swiping Alexis's breakfast rashers, Mark listens in on her business call. She overhears him overhearing her and demands an explanation. "I can't be a bodyguard the rest of my life and I want to improve my future, learn from an expert, one of the smartest people I know--you." Apparently satisfied with this story, she tells him they're off to Hong Kong on business: "This deal is going to involve a staggering amount of cash. I'm going to need protection."
When Dex arrives at her office bearing gifts in a white box, (Oooh, napkin rings?! Nah, it's just boring old violets) Alexis keeps mum about her impending trip. He wants her to accompany him to LA instead. "You really wouldn't want me in Hollywood with all those pretty bikinied morsels dying to seduce you," she tells him. "Alexis, I stopped sleeping around with morsels, bikinied or otherwise, the day I fell in love with you," Dex insists before launching into a gratuitous speech about the virtues of fidelity: "You might not believe it, but I am very old fashioned that way ... A man and a woman belonging only to each other." Gosh, it's almost as if he's read the script ahead of time and knows what Alexis is planning.
As soon as Blake's plane lands back in Denver he is surrounded by an adoring press, (although I fail to see what's so amazing about his achievement--all he's done so far is shake hands with Rashid, write him a cheque for $5,000,000 and then hold a press conference; isn't that what billionaire businessmen are supposed to do?) but he only has eyes for Krystle. "[The doctor] said I was thriving. His word and a lovely word!"" she beams, her maternal glow now borderline radioactive. Blake summons Eric Grayson to his office where Marcia is looking ravishing in red. (I doubt Blake could say no if she took off one of her earrings.) "I don't do business with liars!" he snarls self righteously at Eric. This from the man who just signed a contract with Rashid Ahmed. "I want nothing to do with a political party that puts up with the likes of you ... I'm resigning as party chairman as we speak!" As Blake continues to crow about his deal and how he's now halfway to raising the $100,000,000 he needs, good old Andrew Laird, in his penultimate episode, cautions him against getting carried away by his success: "You're riding high now ..." Blake replies with yet more heavy-handed foreshadowing: "This deal is a once in a lifetime thing and nothing and no one is going to screw it up for me."
While Adam is high on his father's coup, Kirby is equally excited to hear about an institute in Bismark for the criminally insane where her psycho mother has been kept in a straitjacket for the past twenty years. "Kirby, why don't you leave it alone? It is in the past," sighs Adam, conveniently forgetting how interested he was in tracking down his own presumed dead parents less than two years earlier. After Kirby throws one of her tantrums, Adam gives in and meekly follows her to BISMARK, NO. DAKOTA! where she discovers that her mother has already been was released from the institute (hooray!) but is now dead (boo!). The scene in which Kirby visits Alicia's grave makes the framed-photo-of-Eric-Grayson-in-the-suitcase incident look like a triumph of narrative logic. On her way to her mother's headstone, she passes an old woman dressed in a mackintosh and beret as if she were a member of the French Resistance, kneeling in front of another grave. "Why did she have to do it? Why did she have to leave me?" asks Kirby aloud. "When they released her from that place, your mother came to live here," replies the resistance woman. "Here" as in the graveyard? Kirby doesn't ask, nor does she question why a woman tending another grave should suddenly start talking knowledgeably about Alicia. "We became friends," Resistance Woman tells Kirby. "She'd made a lovely rag doll. She called it Kirby, I remember she used to sit for hours with it cradled in her arms. Oh she loved you so much and she wanted to go back and find you and your father and ask him to forgive her. So finally one night she said yes, she'd go to Denver, but she never did. I guess she didn't have the courage. When your life has been ruined, destroyed--" Rather rudely, Kirby does not wait for Resistance Woman to complete her sentence before flashing back to Alexis. Kirby then repeats "When your life has been ruined, destroyed." Adam, who has been hiding in the car throughout this scene, suggests they return home. "Home, yes," replies Kirby robotically. "I know what I have to do there."
So who is Resistance Woman? Just a well meaning friend who been camping out at the graveyard since Alicia's funeral in the hopes that Kirby might one day happen by and she can deliver this speech to her? Or is there a deeper meaning? Could she be Alicia's ghost? Or the ghost of Joseph in drag? Or the ghost of narrative logic in a white wig? Or the Shapiros' equivalent of Hamlet's gravedigger? A glance at the actress (Natalie Core)'s imdb page reveals that she returns for a couple of episodes in Season 5 calling herself Dina Hartley before climaxing with her triumphant role as Woman at Auction in DYNASTY: THE REUNION where it is she who reveals how Dex met his untimely end. Combined with her graveyard speech, does this perhaps qualify her as the Grim Reaper of DYNASTY?
Dex returns to Alexis's office to find that she's buzzed off to Hong Kong and the Stevenbot is minding the store in her absence. The sight of the violets Dex left for his mother have gotten the 'bot all suspicious (because of course if Dex was trying to torment Claudia, he'd be sure to tip his hand by sending the exact same flowers to the victim's mother-in-law). Steven asks if Dex knew Matthew Blaisdel. "I met him several times." Of course he did. Dex met everyone several times: Rock Hudson, Clay Fallmont, Cousin Ginger, Lady Ashley ... in fact, it seems like all Dex did before turning up in DYNASTY was hang out with people who would also later turn up in DYNASTY. There's some weird stuff where Steven accuses him of having a "similar voice, similar accent" to Matthew. Dex mumbles something about them both coming from Wyoming, when surely a more appropriate response would be, "Are you deaf as well as repressed, you uptight android?? Matthew and I sound nothing like each other; he had a laid back Southern drawl while I bark all my dialogue in as loud a voice as possible!!" Dex and Steven then get all pouty with each other: "From the very beginning, I haven't exactly been on your list of favourite people!" "I don't waste my time on liking people who don't like me!" "I resent you even beginning to suspect me in this lousy business that's going on against your wife!" "I don't give a damn ..." "I warn you ..." "Is that a threat ...?" And on and on and on.
At La Mirage, Claudia sees a girl whom she thinks is Lindsay, but on closer inspection realises it can't because she isn't sobbing uncontrollably (and she looks more like Tatum O'Neal anyway). Later, Claudia receives another phone call from the Season 1 DVD, but manages not to fall over this time. Rather excitingly, the scene then cuts to Dex hanging up a phone before dialling another number to ask, "When is the next flight to Hong Kong?"
Speaking of HONG KONG!, Alexis arrives at her hotel suite, complaining of jet lag. Joanie's ability to make a line about "that dreadful overnight delay in Honolulu" laugh out funny is her true gift as an actress. The lovely Rashid is waiting for her with a characteristically restrained welcome: "My remarkable Alexis Colby! Look at you! Look at you, obviously fatigued from a delayed and unholy flight, yet more beautiful than ever! ... A toast to the most provocative and fascinating woman in the world and the most cryptic!" She wearily declines his offer to make mad, passionate Middle Eastern love right there and then "but you can sit a corner and watch me sleep if you like. Later we'll talk about ... you and me and Blake Carrington and $5,000,000." Then they kiss. What fun.
***************
"The Voice Part III" aka "The Tape." (Guess they just couldn't choose between two such evocative titles.)
Hard as it is to believe, Blake and Krystle manage to scale new heights of self satisfied smugness at the beginning of this episode. "While you sit here peacefully in your office," mock-scolds Krystle, "the phones are ringing off their hooks in the rest of the building ... Seems that everybody wants to interview Blake Carrington--Forbes Magazine, Fortune, World Finance, Time." "Is Newsweek ignoring me?" mock-pouts Blake. "Apparently, they've only called twice today!" replies Krystle mock-seriously, adding that "World Finance want a cover story." "A cover? On me?" asks Blake mock-modestly. "Only if they show me with a beautiful public relations lady I know who happens to be carrying my baby ..." and on and on the preciousness continues. "This is wonderful and awful," opines Marcia out in reception, but she's only half-right.
The reference to World Finance Magazine heralds the first appearance of "top reporter" Gordon Wales ("which rhymes, as they say, with tough as nails." Stop it, Krystle, you're killing me). He is probably my favourite of DYNASTY's recurring characters. As the only non-psychopath in Denver to worship at neither the Carrington nor Colby altars, he remains a cynical thorn in the sides of both Blake and Alexis right up until Season 8, when he finally succumbs to Krystle's radioactive goodness. It's typical of DYNASTY that while fictional World Finance Magazine should be mentioned in the same breath as such prestigious titles as Forbes, Fortune and Time, Wales's interview technique, much like that of his Pulitzer Prize winning predecessor Clare Maynard, is strictly tabloid: "Tracy Kendall," he says to Blake. "She went with you to Hong Kong, but she didn't come back with you. What happened? Was she worried about the political consequences of this deal so you just, what, got rid of her?" "This interview is over!" barks Blake.
Having followed Alexis to Hong Kong, Dex bribes his way into her suite where he finds Rashid in a towel and her in her nightie. "Oh God," Alexis groans with the kind of resignation that suggests being caught in flagrante delicto is not an entirely novel experience for her. "Get dressed," Dex barks at Rashid. "Alexis, with your permission I should like to deal with this whining dog," responds Rashid rather marvellously. Alas, Alexis sends him away before he can snap Dex in two, or at least fart on his head. This does, however, leave Dex free to deliver one of the most memorable lines of the entire series when he calls Alexis "a ****, a **** with the morals of a dog in perpetual heat!" She slaps him, he slaps her. They struggle with one another, she scratches his face, then throws plates at him. He throws her down on the sofa, they struggle some more, she throws some more stuff. "Nice to see the real you, Alexis!" he spits. She pushes him over, they roll around on the floor, he pulls her to feet and kisses her. Embracing, they end up back on the floor, then he extricates himself, stands over her and announces, "We're through, Alexis!" "You overrated cowboy!" she shouts from the floor as he makes his exit. "You thought you owned me? Well nobody owns Alexis!" She hurls a champagne bottle in his direction as he leaves. Back in 1984, this man/woman cat-fight was decidedly outrageous, and it makes for an enjoyable, if completely daft, variation on the annual Alexis/Krystle punch up.
Kirby visits a pre-Zorelli police department and gains access to her father's suicide note by claiming that she is plagued by nightmares that he has been murdered. "I tried to stop that evil woman," she reads. "I pray my death will satisfy her need for vengeance." Her cynical scheme to become Mrs Adam Carrington appears to have been superseded by a more harebrained one to avenge her parents' deaths. (Did Alicia commit suicide as well as Joseph? Or did she just die of being a bit mad? So many questions ...) To that end, she stops by a gun store to purchase a pistol from DALLAS's Wild Bill Orloff, now a kindly, short-sighted firearms seller. "Let me tell you somethin', young lady. Guns can be very dangerous, deadly in fact. Now is there some particular reason you want one? ... You know I can see through that smile of yours that you're scared beneath. You're frightened of something." How reassuring it is to know that the sellers of guns take such a benevolent, grandfatherly interest in their customers. Once again, Kirby lies her head off; this time claiming to be a single woman plagued by burglars. "Sounds to me like you don't intend to miss the target at all," observes Wild Bill. Kirby's situation now resembles that of Claudia near the end of Season 2 when, having decided to kill Cecil Colby, she spends the next couple of episodes walking around aimlessly with a gun in her handbag.
Having accepted Jeff's proposal, Fallon enters her "Mysterious Wedding Headaches" period. I really like the merry-go-round scene where everything suddenly goes slow motion and wonky, and the painted horses become all sinister and nightmarish. Even the music's quite effective. If only it had anything to do with anything.
Matthew calls again. This time Krystle speaks to him, but it's still the same dialogue from the diner scene: "We need you, Claudia ..." (What a pity they didn't play his "You got hold of somethin' good, Krystle" speech instead; I love that scene.) "That's exactly what he said both times before!" gasps Claudia. "It's almost as if it were a recording!" gasps Krystle. "When I was in the sanatarium and Matthew was in the Middle East, he sent me a tape recorded letter, only I never received it," recalls Claudia, "and then she told Matthew when he got back that it never arrived." "Who's she?" "His mother!"
Claudia and Krystle glide to Mother Blaisdel's house (which looks confusingly similar to the original Blaisdel house in Season 1) like a floaty version of Cagney and Lacey. "Nice to see you again, Claudia dear," lies Mother Bee. "Mrs Blaisdel, we're here to ask you about the tape," says Krystle Cagney. "If you know anything about this, it might be better if you tell us about it now rather than the police." Claudia remains silent throughout most of this scene. During her reaction shots, she looks completely stoned, but I suspect this is Pamela Bellwood employing an acting technique so subtle as to be undetectable to the human eye. Mother Bee, caving in under pressure from Krystle Cagney's intensive blondness, tells all: "This man came by to see me. He asked for my co-operation. He said he'd pay me $500 if I'd give him the tape ... He said something about using it to upset Mrs Stevenbot Carrington, and because I felt then as I do now, that you've no right to happiness in your new marriage after what you did to my son, my Matthew, I gave him the tape I'd kept." Claudia suddenly regains consciousness: "Who's been doing this to me? Who, dammit? Who?" The scene fades to black, then there's a teasing cut to Blake and Krystle talking back at the house. "In the car she kept asking why would a man she'd never met torture her like this," says Krystle. So does that mean it's Dex? "I have my doubts that the man wanted to do it," replies Blake. "I can make a pretty good case for the woman who might want Claudia out of her son's life." So does that mean it's Dex and Alexis? "Darling, you've handled this very well," Blake tells Krystle, "but I think it's my turn to handle it now. After all, who's first in the opening credits? Not you, my sweet, and certainly not Mopey Bellwood. It's only right that I waltz in and take over this story-line just as it's reaching its climax."
Accordingly, Blake is driven to Desolation Row where one Morgan Hess has his office. "I just found out you're back doing some of your shady work for my ex-wife," Blake snarls, grabbing Hess by the collar. "Those anonymous packages, those taped phone calls, I wanna know about them!" A reel to reel tape recorder, which could not be more conspicuous if there was an animated arrow marked "INCRIMINATING" hovering above it, is on the desk. Blake presses play and, sure enough, out comes Matthew's voice. (Poor Bo Hopkins--one can only hope he was handsomely reimbursed for this undignified use of his fine performance.) Hess claims that he was using the recording to frame Alexis. "Look, the woman did me dirt ... I'll plant the tape in her office and then tip off the cops. When her son finds out, he's gonna hate her for what he thinks that she did to his wife. That'll destroy Alexis Colby!" Hess says all this with a big smile on his face like he thinks Blake's gonna be really impressed and give him the thumbs up to continue with his plan. Does he perhaps not realise that Blake and Steven are related? "You scum!" shouts Blake, which is the cue for the police to burst in and arrest Morgan. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this story. On one hand, it's a piece of crap; on the other, the whodunit aspect is enjoyably twisty-turny--and it's not over yet.
Claudia decides not to press charges against Mrs Spartacus. ("She lost her son and her granddaughter. I can't add to her suffering.") After tossing the photograph of herself she received from "Matthew" onto the fire, (which, considering how she dies, is kinda portentous) she turns her attentions to the Stevenbot. "Now all that's on my mind is the future with you and Danny," she tells him in an enthusiastic monotone, and they have some silky sex.
Back in Hong Kong, Dex bumps into Tracy in a bar and they begin flirting nonsensically. "Sex. I like the way you say the word," she tells him. "Two strangers in a strange place. What else is there to talk about?" he replies. The drivel continues post-coitally. "Two strangers of yore have become extremely compatible," Tracy purrs. "You are a complete man." "The most complete," Dex confirms. He wants her to take a job with Alexis. "To know her is to distrust her ... You can earn yourself two salaries for the job, one from Mrs Colby and one from me." While Tracy and Dex aren't in the same league as DALLAS's Kristin Shepard and Alan Beam, there's still something intriguing about seeing two "lower level" soap characters team up against a more powerful enemy. See also: Mark Jennings and Neil McVane. (What doesn't work so well is finding out two random characters have been working together all along, e.g. Roger Grimes' father and Nick Toscanni; Morgan Hess and Sammy Jo.)
The last scene is really good. Rashid comes to Alexis's suite bearing a gift "from an outrageously expensive antique shop." "How outrageously sweet of you, Rashid," she smiles. "Legend has it that it belonged to the Empress of Tibet," he tells her, "reputedly the most beautiful woman in all of Asia. Her people gave it to her when her troops won a victory over the Mongols so that she might witness her beautiful smile as Empress and Conqueror". It's a hand mirror with a pretty handle. "I'll treasure it forever," she coos. After ending up in a pink heap following her earlier squabble with Dex, Alexis cuts a much more dignified figure in this scene. She is dressed in darker colours with nary a shoulder-pad in sight and looks vaguely Egyptian; more Cleopatra than Empress of Tibet, but it's all foreign innit? She enquires when "the deal" will be completed, the details of which we have yet to be let in on. "I play it carefully but I play it well," Rashid replies enigmatically. "But when?" she asks. "For $5,000,000, I think at least I deserve a timetable." "Alexis, when it happens you will not miss it because the explosion will be heard all over the financial world and Blake Carrington will be dead financially." "Blake's funeral. Finally," she murmurs with relish and then looks at her reflection in the Empress of Tibet's mirror, or rather she looks at us looking at her reflection. It's a very effective moment.
**************
"2nd Birthday."
The decorations are in place for Little Blake's birthday party. "Magical," coos Krystle as if she has never seen a balloon before, while Blake talks excitedly of "my chance to ride on a choo choo train." Fallon, thankfully, is preoccupied with more Mysterious Wedding Headaches. She tells her doctor about the groovy scene on the carousel in last week's episode: "The music turned into noise, this unbearable noise, and it was as though it were coming from deep inside my head." "Headaches are all part of the healing process," insists the doc, but it sounds to me like there's a dumpy little English woman incubating inside Fallon's skull who is planning to burst out of her head as she walks down the aisle, like a cross between that scene from ALIEN and something out of SCANNERS. Fallon undergoes a brain scan to be sure.
Blake is off to the South Coast where Denver Carrington's "deep survey ship has been outfitted with some new solar equipment I want to take a look at." This has nothing to do with anything, but does allow he and Alexis, returning from Hong Kong, to have one of their airport runway run ins. Alexis comments on his TV appearance with Rashid Ahmed. "You make such a cute couple. Ever thought of taking your act on the road? ... I really do wish you well in this venture," she adds. "The day that we start pumping what I'm sure will be millions of barrels of oil is the day that your company does an about face," Blake gloats. "Denver Carrington moves into the lead. We're going to be Number 1." "That's the day when they'll give away fur coats in Hell," she replies. "Cute, real cute," comments Mark in the background.
Alexis makes for Colby Co where she continues to run her interchangeable male secretary gag ("Lloyd." "it's Douglas, ma'am.") into the ground. The Stevenbot greets her with flowers. "I adore silver sterling roses!" she exclaims. "They're so beautiful." "They were till you walked in and eclipsed them," he drools. Oh just put the poor robot out of his misery and bend him over the ivory tusk desk, woman--that's all he wants. Alexis feigns disappointment at her lack of success in Hong Kong and the Stevenbot goes into a huff. "In business, you have to take your losses gracefully," she tells him. "I'm doing it for you. There'll always be another deal, but there won't always be a chance for you to reconcile with your father ... I wouldn't want to be a part of anything that would destroy that relationship." For some unknown reason, the Stevenbot buys this explanation even though it flies in the face of everything he knows about his mother.
Instead, he takes his hissy fit out on his brother: "You know you might be dressed like a gentleman of the manor, but you're nothing more than a thief, a common thief, Adam!" "I'm getting a little bored," Adam sighs. Me too. How many more scenes of Steven whining about Adam stealing his precious file do we have to sit through before one of them finally hits the other? Adam puts a pithier spin on the situation when he explains it to Jeff: "Steven can't seem to let go of this wild fantasy. In it, you see, I'm the pirate who makes off with his evaluation report and then claims it as my own, thus stealing from the rich to give to the rich."
Dex and Tracy also return from Hong Kong. Krystle happens upon the latter clearing out her desk. "You got what you deserved if not what you were after--my husband!" Krystle tells her. "I don't have to take this," Tracy shoots back, "especially from someone who started out exactly where I am ... Don't you recognise yourself? I'm just following in your footsteps ... The road you started on when you were just a secretary with an eye out for the boss and a better life. If that boss had been married, my guess is it wouldn't have stopped someone like you for a minute, maybe less." This is possibly Tracy's finest hour; Krystle may never have been a gold digging ****, but it's always enormously satisfying to hear her described as one. Krystle slaps Tracy. "Your little game's over, Tracy, and you've lost," she says. "The way I play, the game isn't over till the team walks off the field, so just between us, let's just consider this a time out," Tracy replies. Nice to see that her recent setbacks haven't diminished her ability to stretch a metaphor to the snapping point.
Dex suggests to Alexis that they continue their business relationship even though their oohing and aahing one is over. He then drops her penthouse keys into a conveniently placed vat of hummus. (Does anyone really need keys to get into that place?) "Grand gesture of a petulant schoolboy," observes Alexis while doing some broccoli acting.
After hearing that she took a sneaky peak at Joseph's suicide note, Blake lunches with Kirby in his office and counsels her "to forgive Alexis ... for the sake of your marriage." "I will find a way to handle this situation," she replies, in that I'm-not-gonna-lie-but-I'm-not-gonna-tell-you-the-truth-either way of hers that manages to be cryptic and blatant at the same time. She then avails herself of a Denver Carrington pay phone to book an appointment at the local firing range. She concludes the call with another meaningfully meaningless line: "In a situation like this, any time is the right time!"
Little Blake's second birthday arrives. Jeff dresses up as a clown. The party is a pastel mish-mash of jugglers, balloon shapers, trapeze artists, real horses, pretend horses, merry-go-rounds, toy trains, one extra randomly dressed as a mermaid, another as Guinevere (evoking memories of Season 8's Ye Olde English Fayre--shudder), whimsical music and giant toy soldiers. "Oh Blake, isn't it magical?" coos Krystle. Again. Kill me now. Did I mention Jeff is dressed as a clown? Relief arrives with Alexis's first appearance at the Carrington mansion since she was banished by Blake after the last time Kirby tried to kill her. She makes an oh so humble request that Blake consider her bid when it comes time to sell off some of his China Sea leases. He agrees. She then launches into one of her "We'll always be connected through our children" speeches and he backs away nervously.
Blake tells Krystle he's going to name his new survey ship after her and her waters all but break with emotion. Adam, meanwhile, is enthralled with all the jugglers and trapeze artists. "This is what a child of ours would inherit," he tells Kirby. She, however, is more interested in shooting her future mother-in-law in cold blood. "Does that job offer in Paris you made me still hold?" she asks Alexis before rushing off to the shooting range to practice firing at Joanie-shaped holograms. ("Hey, that's great! Right through the heart!" slavers her instructor.) While sacrilegiously wearing one of Al Corley's old sweaters, the Stevenbot apologises to his mother: "I feel ashamed that I ever suspected you of being involved in that awful plot against Claudia." Yes, it was an awful plot wasn't it? "It's hardly the first time I've been set up," Alexis replies generously--and it won't be the last either; only a few more episodes to go until Steven's suspecting her of being involved in another awful plot.
While speculating about Alexis's new-found humility, Krystle breaks one of the unspoken rules of DYNASTY by using the "g" word in reference to her nemesis: "It's her grandson's birthday. Maybe she declared general amnesty for the day." Surprisingly, the Mouth of Hell does not immediately open up to devour Linda Evans whole. Instead, Joanie bides her time--waiting 23 years to get revenge by accusing Evans of beating her up on stage.
Alexis wanders into the kitchen where she berates Jeanette over the selection of party hors d'oeuvres. "Watercress is for giraffes," she announces (curiously spoiling the line by pronouncing "giraffes" with the short American a as opposed to the posh English ah). "You know, caviar would be much more suitable for such an occasion. I adore caviar." As Gerard hovers ineffectually, looking as though he might wet the floor with terror, I find myself almost missing Joseph and his oddly delivered put downs. Krystle materialises and leads Alexis out of the kitchen and into one of the fancier rooms, just as she did during their first meeting in Season 2. "Alexis, no one gives orders to my staff but me," she tells her. "Krystle, all I asked for was a morsel of food," Alexis protests. Krystle declining a flute of champagne from one of her mute servants is enough for Alexis to conclude that she's pregnant. "Not that it's all that special. I mean, even worms can procreate," she says hastily, echoing Fallon's similar line about childbearing from Season 2: "What miracle? Any cat can do it with less fuss." "But they don't all survive," counters Krystle. "You know for a simple soul, you can be very cryptic sometimes," Alexis observes. "You made sure I lost my first baby, Alexis, but you're not gonna get anywhere near my child this time." "Stop playing Mother Earth, Krystle. When you've given birth to four, then you can crow." Here, the series is following the pattern laid down two years earlier of planting the idea of a long lost Carrington child just before the end of one season, before kicking off the next with a full explanation and arrival. "Four? What are you talking about?" asks Krystle. "Did I say four?" replies Alexis innocently. "Must be the champagne. It's not meant to be gulped down. Of course I meant three. You can't count the miscarriage I had after Steven." "You lost a baby?" "Don't be so naive, darling. It happens all the time. You know, you really amaze me, Krystle. You act like you're the only woman in the world ever to get pregnant and the only one ever to have lost a child." It's a nice deflection by Alexis (i.e. the writers and Joanie) to turn the situation around and make it appear that Krystle is the one out of step.
During the party, Fallon receives a call informing her that the brain scan has revealed no evidence of Emma Samms hiding inside her head, as a result of which she lightens up considerably. "Sometimes I can't get over how beautiful he is," she gasps with regard to her son. Maybe that's because she hardly ever looks at him. Jeff, still dressed as a clown, presents her with a jack-in-a-box containing an engagement ring. "It was Grandma Colby's," he explains. "My Uncle Cecil left it to me." Bet Sable was thrilled about that.
Alexis receives a phone call from Morgan Hess. "I've already taken care of everything," she tells him cryptically. Does that mean she did send Claudia the violets? All is explained back at the penthouse. "You call me from headquarters and threaten to talk to the press about our past connection so I put up your bail, get you an expensive lawyer. Now what?" she asks Hess. He says that he wants her to use her influence to get the charges dropped. "If I spend three months in the slammer, I'm out of business!" "Slammer. What a quaint word," she replies. "If there was any true justice in the world, Mr Hess, it should be your tailor who should be sent to the slammer for those hideous jackets he supplies you with. Now please go." "One day, lady, somebody's gonna get you and good!"
That evening, Fallon and Jeff assemble the family for another boring Carrington gathering full of teeth and kisses and sparkly dresses and "how prettys" and "you look beautifuls" to announce their wedding plans. Mercifully, they are interrupted by a message from Andrew Laird instructing them to turn on the TV news: "Blake Carrington has gotten himself involved in an international incident," says the announcer. "Ahmed claims that Denver Carrington's $100,000,000 advance to secure the leases was going to buy arms to fight the other government claiming that area of the China Sea. This provoked an immediate counter reaction. Naval forces have now moved into the China Sea and are patrolling the area. So there will be no oil explanation or drilling there in the foreseeable future. What does this mean for Blake Carrington who, only a week ago was being touted as the American businessman who had just closed the deal of the century?" "I'm the scapegoat!" cries Blake. "I've been tricked! God, how could I have been so blind?" He, Krystle, Jeff (no longer dressed as a clown, sadly) and Adam head for the office. "I knew that the whole situation in the China Sea was unstable," Blake continues, "but to get a powder keg to explode, somebody's gotta light a fuse ... Ahmed got a fat commission from the deal. Why would he double cross me? ... The woman behind the man, the person behind this dirty business ... Alexis!"
"You were perfect, darling," purrs Alexis down the phone from her bubble bath. "It worked like a dream. You always were a perfect liar and a perfect lover, and now you know what your next move is so enjoy yourself, my darling. We deserve it."
***************
"The Check."
In preparation for this episode, it would seem that the DYNASTY writers have attended a Foreshadowing 101 seminar and decided that before Mark can be propelled off of Alexis's terrace, it must first be established that Alexis has a terrace. And so the episode begins with Mark in the penthouse carrying a drunk woman over his shoulder. "Mark, you invited me here to see the view from your terrace," she giggles. "So far, all I've seen is your bedroom!" Realising that Alexis is on her way up in the elevator, Mark hastily crams the giggling girl into the garbage chute and hides out on the terrace. From here, he eavesdrops on an argument between Alexis and Blake, during which Blake accuses her of colluding with Rashid Ahmed to destroy Denver Carrington. Alexis denies everything. "If that's what you're thinking, you're wrong, Blake, just like you were wrong when you accused me of poisoning Jeff ... Why don't you for once in your life believe me??" she wails before storming off to bed. The scene ends with a rather nice shot of Mark smiling knowingly as he sips champagne on the balcony, while Blake, unaware of his presence, looks worried in the background.
The foreshadowing doesn't end there, no siree. There is portentous dialogue alluding to Mark's fate scattered throughout the episode. Subtle as a sledgehammer it might be in retrospect, but I quite like it. "When I heard you tell Carrington that you had never laid eyes on Rashid Ahmed in Hong Kong, I damn near fell off the terrace in laughter," he tells Alexis. "Too bad you didn't," she replies. "All right, Mark, just exactly how much is this going to cost me?" $100,000, to be precise.
Mark celebrates his windfall by helping himself to the contents of Alexis's bar. Neil McVane suddenly materialises from behind a wall, having presumably smelt the ink on Alexis's cheque. "We had an agreement," he reminds Mark (and us). "Blackmail Alexis, sharing the profits. I've been waiting to hear from you ... Please don't let me down." He later appears in the bank, cunningly disguised as a pamphlet, where he observes Mark conspicuously depositing his cheque.
Mark then pays a farewell visit to Krystle, whom he hasn't harassed since trying to rape her seventeen episodes ago. "I'm on top of the world, kid," he tells her, aspiring to James Cagney but landing closer to Karen Carpenter. "I do know somebody who'd like to push me off, but don't worry, I don't push so easily." Even though it's a bit rubbish, I quite like this scene. It's got an nice end-of-the-road vibe to it. ("Finished. Game, set and match," Mark tells Krystle. "I wanted to say good-bye to the one lady I've always loved and always will ... You're worth two of Blake Carrington, twenty of me, and where Alexis Colby's concerned, a world of her.")
"Where will you go?" Krystle asks at the end of their scene. "I've always liked New York," he replies. New York? Hey, that's where Sammy Jo is! And she's back in the opening credits too! There's something so pleasantly sordid about Sammy Jo's New York adventures. On DALLAS, the gold-diggin' gals rarely have to sleep with anyone uglier than Larry Hagman, but on SJNY, La Locklear is obliged to shack up with the slimiest of specimens. Ed, her latest overweight sugar daddy, has promised her "my own exclusive contract with a cosmetics company." There's only one small problem: "They are cancelling the whole campaign," he tells her. "Oh babe, with your body and that skin, it's only a matter of time." "You used me!" she yells. "I was here at your beck and call, I couldn't see any other men, it was always what you and your sleazy body wanted! Well let's see what that precious wife of yours is gonna do when I tell her about us!" Ed punches her in the puss, which is enough to send her flying over an easy chair. "You little whore, you're out of your league!" he shouts before waddling off, leaving her to cry some angry New York tears.
Meanwhile back in Denver, Claudia and the Stevenbot are trying to liven up their silky, soft focus marriage by re-enacting one of Rock Hudson and Doris Day's scenes from THE PJYAMA GAME, in which she wears the top half of a pair of PJs and he the bottoms. Before either has the chance to lapse into a coma of excitement, the Stevenbot receives a call from Sammy Jo, now swigging beer, sporting a sexy black eye and asking about Danny. "I'm just about to sign a fabulous modelling contract," she lies. "I'll be in touch." The Stevenbot and Claudia look at each other nervously.
Kirby, sad about Fallon and Jeff's engagement, is fondling her gun during an atmospherically lit bedroom scene, full of dark shadows and gothic nightdresses. The mood is ruined by Adam, turning on the lights to tell her he's off to Far East with Blake, but that he'll soon be back to make plans for a quiet wedding. "Time, time to do what I have to do," murmurs Kirby insanely. She then goes from being the maddest person in the room to the sanest, as she and Claudia have their first and only conversation of the series (aside from those horribly ad-libbed "You look beautiful!" "So you do!" "Ha ha ha!" exchanges that take place during occasional family gatherings in the library).
"I'm really glad I caught you alone, Kirby," says Claudia. Ooh, sounds interesting: as two bereaved, victimish, occasionally gun-toting outsiders living under the same roof, one might expect a degree of empathy and insight between these two characters. Then again, maybe not. "It's about Fallon," Claudia continues. "I thought it would be terrific idea if the two of us gave her a surprise wedding shower." "That's your terrific idea?" Kirby asks, looking at Claudia like the twice-committed, doll-abducting, homosexual-marrying, borderline xenophobic banquet arranger that she is. "What could we possibly give her? She already has everything." "How about love?" Claudia suggests, her 't' sounds getting terribly precise. "Even a Carrington needs that. Look Kirby, I know that it hasn't been easy for you, but I just thought me rubbing your nose in the fact that the one man you've loved all your life is about to wed his ex-wife under your nose, thereby spelling it out to the world that he only married you on the rebound in the first place, might help." It's like Dominique coming up to Claudia a year later and suggesting they throw a roller-disco for Luke to celebrate his and Steven's first bear hug. "I'm not a Carrington yet. I may never be," replies Kirby, somehow resisting the urge to pelt Claudia with napkin rings.
Kirby then makes a totally rubbish attempt to murder her potential mother-in-law, (but actual future sister-in-law), Alexis. Instead of bumping her off in a dark alley or even her own office, Kirby decides to kill Alexis in the A(y)nders' family home in broad daylight. "I was born here," she begins, apparently intent on boring Alexis to death. "My father killed himself here. Feels so empty doesn't it? It felt like this ever since my mother died and my father went to live in the mansion with you and Blake. I wonder if he took that emptiness with him ... You were there. Did he spend his nights alone in his room? ... Were his days empty? Did you notice? Did you care?" "... I have no interest in discussing your dead father," replies Alexis, her eyes glazing over. "When did he die?" Kirby drones on. "Was it here, or was it years ago, bowing and scraping to you?" "I don't have to answer to you ..." "Then who do you have to answer to? There must be someone somewhere to whom you're accountable." This should be a good scene, but the plotting is so half-baked it's hard to care. "I'm leaving," Alexis announces. While Kirby fumbles pathetically for her gun, an Ed Asner look-alike who runs the local Neighbourhood Watch arrives to escort Joanie out of the scene.
Alexis returns to Colby Co for another hilarious exchange with one of her male secretaries, ("What is it, Mohammed?" "Actually, it's Barry, Mrs Colby!" Cue canned laughter) and her first scene with Tracy. "I admire your business sense, your position in the community. I can't think of anybody that I'd rather work for," simpers Tracy. Alexis regards Tracy, as she will Leslie Carrington later in the series, with a specific kind of bitchery--a kind of silent, mocking amusement that she reserves for women in the workplace, i.e. pretenders to her throne. It's not dissimilar to the brand of horribleness Joanie herself often exhibits on talk shows and the like. "I have access to Denver Carrington's confidential files," Tracy continues. "I know things that others, including you, do not. Now should you hire me, my loyalty would obviously go to Colby Co." If Tracy is so quick to sell out Denver Carrington, Alexis asks, what would prevent her from eventually doing the same to Colby Co? Tracy's reply is a classic. "I read where you said, 'Life holds no guarantees'," she tells Alexis solemnly. Gee, it was Alexis who said that? I always thought it was Diana Ross.
Blake and Adam fly to Hong Kong where they learn that Rashid Ahmed has vanished into thin air. Instead, they meet with Mr Lin, trade representative to his country's government (the country that dare not speak its name). "I believe the last time we spoke was in Colorado Springs," Mr Lin tells Adam in perfect English--so why did Adam need Kirby as a translator in Colorado Springs? Yes! I've finally caught you out on that one, Richard Shapiro, and it's only taken me twenty-five years! A ha ha! "There were no arms purchases," Mr Lin assures Blake. "We have no desire to initiate hostile action against our neighbours." "... I need your government to refute Mr Ahmed's allegation," Blake replies. "Silence, sir, often proves to be a most effective weapon," counters Mr Lin getting all Confucius on Blake's ass. "If we say anything, my government feels that it would only serve to inflame an already dangerous situation." Ha! Blake asks for his money back. "Mr Carrington, your $100,000,000 is now our $100,000,000 and already committed to projects in our country. We simply sold you the leases. We did not guarantee their protection," replies Mr Lin. Ha ha! You gotta love them whacky Asian types!
With Denver Carrington in deep doo-doo, Fallon wonders whether and Jeff should postpone their nuptials: "I just don't know if it would be right to go through with a big wedding with everything the way it is." Hey, Pamela Sue, whatever happened to "Million Dollar Spit in the Ocean", the game you lectured Krystle about in Season 1? "The poor cut back in hard times. The rich know that's the time to spend."
Back in Denver, Blake tries to put on a brave face, but Krystle won't stand for it. Seriously--it's like she's suddenly emerged from a year long trance. "Stop treating me like a toy wife," she snaps. "I am big and strong enough"--I think Joanie could testify to that--"to share the bad news as well as the good." Blake takes a deep breath. "Every dollar of that hundred million that I raised had a condition attached, a time limit on the exploration," he explains. "If I can't start the search for that oil before the time limit, the creditors can call in for their money." "Which means you have to find $100,000,000 or lose Denver Carrington," clarifies Krystle. "And time is running out," he replies. Gosh, it's actually quite exciting!
****************
"The Engagement."
Krystle, pungently clad in leotard and tights, hands Blake a copy of World Finance Magazine (the cover of which someone in Aaron Spelling's art department must have spent all of five minutes mocking up, by gluing a picture of John Forsythe to some cardboard) with the verdict: "The man on the cover is handsome, but it's an ugly article inside."
Blake worries that the article-***-hatchet job, written by good old Gordon Wales (which, lest we forget, rhymes with "tough as nails"), could prejudice the banks' decision regarding his loan extension. It all comes down to one man: Avril Dawson (who has recently served on DALLAS's Texas Energy Commission and later becomes a studio executive on THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW). "If he extends my loan," Blake explains to Krystle, "so will the others." "And if they don't extend?" she asks. "Then Denver Carrington belongs to the banks," he replies.
The episode then jumps forward a week and Krystle finds Blake, still waiting to hear of Dawson's decision, sitting by the fireside enduring a dark night of the soul. Scratch away at Blake's capitalist veneer and we find ... more capitalism. "In the past," he begins, "whenever I failed, I could always turn things around. Failure just meant one thing to me. Fight harder, be tougher. Make sure every lesson was learned. If nothing else, I knew I could fight back and win ... I have a feeling they've turned me down ... I've lost everything." "Everything?" challenges Krystle. "When you first proposed to me, Blake, I remember you saying that if I were uncomfortable about being married to a man with a great deal of money, you'd give it all away." (She appears to have confused Blake's proposal with his attempt to woo her back at the end of DYNASTY's first episode.) "Do you remember what else you said?" she continues. "Mm hm." he replies, "That even if I did give it all away, I would find some way to make it all back. Whether it was the next year or the year after, you could be sure I would make it all back." "Because that's the kind of man you are," she adds. Yes, that's the kind of man Blake is--a fine upstanding money making machine. "You're a winner and everybody loves a winner, especially me," she adds nauseatingly. Because for Krystle, and for DYNASTY, winning equals money equals goodness.
Sammy Jo shows up at the mansion uninvited, wielding a stuffed crocodile. Gerard whimpers in terror. Heading for the nursery, she finds Mrs Gordon, aka the prototype Mrs Doubtfire, skipping around the nursery singing "la la la" for Danny's edification. Clearly, she is still traumatised following the friendly paedo story-line. Perhaps understandably, Sammy Jo elects to book into La Mirage for the duration of her stay.
Towards the end of the episode, Sammy Jo complains to Fallon about the hotel. "On the surface, La Mirage seems so you: beautiful, but the inside is a major disappointment," she begins, and one thinks, oh this sounds like the start of an interesting metaphorical comparison. "Not enough towels and dust everywhere," she concludes. Then again, maybe not. "If you don't like the accommodation, get the hell out," suggests Fallon. "Send a magnum of your best champagne to my room," Sammy Jo instructs the desk clerk. "And a grilled ham and cheese," she adds as an afterthought. The desk clerk looks at her like she's just requested a stash of kiddie porn. Because for the desk clerk, and for DYNASTY, a grilled ham and cheese equals low class equals no money equals moral weakness.
Remember the good old days when Mark Jennings used to get his weekly rejection fix by making an unwelcome pass at one or other of the Carrington and/or Colby women? As if sensing he is not long for this soap opera, he decides to visit the empty well twice more in this episode. First, he breaks off a riveting anecdote about Ilie Nastase to congratulate Fallon on her upcoming nuptials. "There was a time I thought we were destined to be together," he tells her, "that time we spent in Haiti ... but Alexis didn't give us a chance, did she?" "Mark, Alexis put an end to something that was probably hopeless to begin with," Fallon replies, "We should thank her for saving us from ourselves." And away Pamela Sue Martin skips to cross off the episodes on her DYNASTY calendar until she can leave Hollywood to grow alfalfa and stage community productions of "The Vagina Monologues." Just two more to go!
Alexis has assigned the Stevenbot her half of Lex/Dex to manage, which leads to a surprisingly satisfying confrontation scene between he and Dex. Both characters are pretty obnoxious and it's refreshing to see someone stand up to them, even if it's only each other. "Nobody tells me how to conduct my business, least of all Mama's boy!" barks Dex, exhibiting some enjoyable low-level homophobia. "You'll deal with me or you'll deal with nobody because we both know you've been dumped!" retorts the Stevenbot. Ha ha! Dex is riled. "Nobody dumps me and nothing's over until I say it's over!" he snarls, grabbing Mama's robot by the lapels. "Easy, cowboy!" whirrs Steven. "If you need to prove your masculinity do it on somebody else's time!"
So Dex decides to do some masculinity-proving on Alexis's time. It's the same old pattern between these two: He barges uninvited into her space (in this case, the penthouse) and makes a passionate declaration towards her ("You're the most exciting woman I've ever known ...") which quickly turns into a passionate declaration towards him ("... and whether you know it or not, I'm the best man you ever had!"), then he grabs and kisses her; she resists then responds, and then collects herself to delivers a dry one liner ("You do have a way with lips") before sending him away with a flea in his ear ("In Hong Kong you called me a ****. How dare you assume you can seal my life with a kiss? Well nobody owns me, Dex! ... If you want ownership, why don't you go and buy it on the street where you belong?!").
There's another interesting office scene between Alexis and Tracy. Alexis's total lack of female solidarity with Tracy feels very credible (and very Joan Collins). If anything, she is more contemptuous of Tracy because she is a woman. When she instructs Tracy to sit down opposite her, for instance, Tracy is obliged to drag a chair over to the desk. "I did a little checking on you before I hired you, Tracy," she tells her. "That doesn't surprise me," Tracy replies. "I doubt whether a woman like you is surprised by much of anything anymore," Alexis says archly. A woman like you--Alexis's hypocrisy here is impressive, and it's a hypocrisy that DYNASTY subliminally endorses. "You have certain, how shall I say, connections?" she continues, before providing us with a retrospective of Tracy's one-scene flings: "A power broker by the name of Eric Grayson; Jeremy Thatcher, a writer of dubious talent known for his character assassinations; and an advertising executive from New York ... Men, influential men. Now I'm not criticising you, Tracy. Men have used women for centuries, so why shouldn't it be our turn now?" And here the hypocrisy deepens--Alexis is attempting to put a feminist slant on Tracy's whoring (Tracy's whoring, mind; not her own, which she doesn't even acknowledge) in order to justify pimping her out for her own ends: "I want you to use your 'charms' on an important man, a banker named Avril Dawson ... Is that clear?" "Very clear," Tracy assures her. "I'll get on it first thing tomorrow morning." "No, you'll get on it tonight. Consider it overtime."
Later, we see Tracy in bed with Dex. "Congratulations, Tracy. You chose the best," he tells her, referring to his own cocksmanship. "I don't wanna work for Alexis anymore," she says. "I wanna be with you ... Why are you obsessed with that woman, Dex?" He instructs her to obey Alexis's orders. Tracy's situation here has a lot of dramatic potential. It's similar to the one Julie Grey and Kristin find themselves in in DALLAS when JR instructs them to go to bed with other men, only worse because Tracy is caught between a couple, both of whom want her to prostitute herself for their own ends. Maybe it could have been more interesting if Tracy were the one to fall off the roof at the end of this episode--a not so innocent victim of Alexis and Dex's feud.
Blake and Krystle are dressing for Fallon and Jeff's La Mirage engagement party when Avril Dawson finally calls about the loan extension. "There's nothing more I can do about it, Blake," he says. "That's it." So, in effect, Blake has lost Denver Carrington--only it's handled in such an understated, almost matter of fact way that one can't be sure. It's an unusually effective, sombre moment. Blake insists that the family not be told until after the party. Downstairs in the library, Pamelas Sue Martin and Bellwood have their final "You look so beautiful!" "That necklace is so pretty!" "It's something from Mr Wonderful here!" "Ha ha! Ha!" exchange of the series.
Mark gets his second rejection fix of the episode when he drunkenly announces to Alexis that he's changed his mind about leaving Denver: "You may not need a bodyguard but you need a man ... You need me." "You must be suffering from delusions of adequacy," she replies. "You're going to pay for my silence, Alexis, and a lot more than money! From now on, we share everything including your bedroom." He kisses her and she pushes him away. "I paid you a hundred thousand dollars to keep your mouth shut," she reminds him. "For a tennis bum that'll buy an awful lot of balls and believe me you're going to need them!" What an outrageous line this was back in 1983, a full ten years before the ground-breaking, crotch-grabbing start of NYPD BLUE ("Ipsa this, you pissy little bitch!"). "Now I want you to pack your bags and get out of here," Alexis continues, "and get out of Denver, before I get back tonight. Otherwise I'll have you carried out." "Ha ha! Kicking, screaming, feet first? You can't get rid of me, Alexis!" Mark staggers out on to the terrace where he looks over the balcony and Geoffrey Scott sees his entire career flash in front of his eyes. Fade to black.
After the first couple of years of an 80s soap, it becomes increasingly rare for exterior scenes to be shot at night, and so their occasional presence provides a subconscious frisson that Something Significant is Occurring. So it is when we see Alexis leave her apartment building and board her limousine on her way to Fallon and Jeff's party. She is informed by her driver of "some kind of accident round the corner, looks serious." Then Neil McVane appears at her window: "I wanna talk to you about money!" She could care less and tells him to scram. And let's not forget about the off screen witnesses hovering around the building that night--the Recurring Death Lady watching from her adjacent balcony, and the Stevenbot who, when seen later at the party at La Mirage, gives no indication of having apparently witnessed his mother commit murder.
"This is a beautiful party," coos Krystle at La Mirage. (Clearly, she has a penchant for elevator muzak arrangements of Cole Porter songs.) Just as at the Carousel Ball, she and Alexis run into one another in the powder room. "Blake was more than a little surprised when I told him you claimed to have had four children," she says. The repeated reference to Alexis's supposed miscarriage as a fourth child does rather make it sound as if she keeps Amanda pickled in a jar. "Blake remembers nothing unless it has a dollar sign in front of it," Alexis retorts, repeating her "Carousel" trick of punctuating her dialogue with a spray from her perfume bottle.
Alexis and Blake then steal away from the celebrations for one of their customary confrontations in Fallon's office. She offers him a six month loan of $100,000,000. "If at the end of that time you can't pay it back, Denver Carrington becomes mine. No merger, just mine, Blake." "I'll see you in Hell before I let you get your hands on Denver Carrington." "You're down, Blake. You're going to have to sell off everything. Everything! You'll be lucky to get a penny on the dollar!"
Enter Sergeant Cooper aka Jeff Faraday's drug dealer aka Sue Ellen's movie producer aka Gary Ewing's doomed foreman at Empire Valley, with some grave news for Alexis: "Your bodyguard Mark Jennings? He's dead ... He fell from the balcony of your penthouse, Mrs Colby. Too soon to tell if he jumped or if he was pushed." Aw. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I'm gonna miss the moustachioed old masochist.
***************
"New Lady in Town."
So Samuel Mark Jennings (or Mark Howard Jennings, depending on what season you're watching) becomes DYNASTY's third (after Ted Dinard and Cecil Colby) bona fide dead person--a surprisingly low death toll when compared with the other prime time soaps. By the same point in its run, DALLAS had racked up nine corpses, while FALCON CREST had bumped off an impressive fourteen characters (possibly even more; that's just from memory). The general assumption seems to be that Mark committed suicide. Blake provides him with a rather snide epitaph: "He drank a little too much, didn't he, and he could never hold down a job, and he went from woman to woman." "He's dead, Blake!" remonstrates Krystle, clawing back a few of the humanity points she lost during her hideous "everybody loves a winner, especially me" scene in last week's episode. "For godsake, you're making it sound like his life was meaningless, like it was a total failure!"
Refreshingly, Krsytle isn't the only one of Blake's acolytes to tear a strip off him in this episode. Jeff also gives him a taste of his own self-righteous medicine when he suggests they keep the truth about the family's precarious financial position ("They're gonna foreclose on Denver Carrington unless I can raise the money in some other way") from Fallon. "What you're asking me to do is lie!" Jeff argues. "Blake, when are you gonna realise that Fallon isn't a little girl anymore?" (In the event, PSM could care less. "My father will come through. He always does," she murmurs as she unbuttons John James's shirt one last time.)
Andrew Laird (in one of his final appearances) also gives Blake a hard time as he urges him to sell off prime assets in order to keep himself afloat:"You are not in any position to choose!" The holdings Andrew suggests have each played a key role in previous story-lines: As well as the mansion which he advises mortgaging, there is Blake's football team (didn't he already sell this to Logan Rhinewood back in Season 2?), the shale oil extraction process (nearly obtained by Claudia for Cecil by sleeping with Jeff, also in Season 2), the Carrington Plaza (scene of the rooftop Jeff/Adam testicle yanking earlier this season), and Allegree (the beeyoodybubble oz, half of which Blake presented Krystle with as a wedding gift). In the event, Allegree is the only asset Andrew is able to shift. "I got a million and a half for him from a syndicate in Louisville," he reports. "I asked 5,000,000 for that horse, but word is out, Blake. Everybody was trying for a bargain." No mention is made of the fact that that the back end of the horse still belongs to Pee We de Vilbis (or his creditors). Nevertheless, there is something terribly satisfying about seeing Blake pushed into a corner.
Even better is the scene in which Tracy finally stands up to Alexis, after she once again attempts to bully her into shagging Avril Dawson. "Look, I didn't sign on to this ship of vipers to become the company whore ... If you want something from him, why don't you sleep with him? I hear that's one of your specialities." In a ridiculously florid manner that makes Kirby sound like she's in a Pinter play, Tracy goes on to explain how her affair with Dex began: "In bed, a magnificent bed in Hong Kong on which we made love, and where we made a plan involving him and me and you. Sort of a plan-a-trois, you might say ... He still has a thing for you ... I pity him ... Miss Kendall just quit!" I think this is Tracy's final scene--after this, she just disappears. It's a nicely bitter note for her to end on. If only she'd been given an actual story-line during her stay, it might even have been worthwhile.
We are asked to believe that the only potential buyer in all of Christendom for Blake's oil shale thingy is Alexis. Accordingly, he goes to her office to find her sitting at her desk with a small racoon on her head. The whole scenario is an excuse for her to launch into another of her enjoyably insane tirades: "Gone are the days when you were king of my fate, when you exiled me from my children and threw me out of Denver ... You're at somebody else's mercy now. You're finally getting a taste of your own medicine and when it becomes too bitter for you, when you start to cough and choke on it, then you'll be back to accept the only offer that I'm ever going to make!" And out of her office she sweeps.
She returns home to finds Sergeant Cooper in her apartment, wondering why she failed to mention her affair with Mark when previously questioned by police. "It was personal and short-lived," she explains. "Like your friend Jennings," he replies.
Throughout the episode, suspicions surrounding Mark's death slowly begin to build. "Last time I saw him," Krystle remembers, "he said he was sitting on top of the world, and then he said that he knew someone who'd like to push him off that world. Is it possible that he didn't commit suicide?"
Dex wonders something similar when he stops by the penthouse to offer Alexis his support, and finds her pondering The Terrace of Doom: "I saw Mark Jennings when I was in Hong Kong and he seemed very happy with himself ... What went on here in Denver when he got back?" "Your imagination is running away with you," she tells him coldly before sending him away ... and then suddenly she's back to where she was at the beginning of the season, alone and paranoid in her huge apartment.
We're treated to two grand entrances in this episode. The first belongs to Sammy Jo. Clad all in red and flanked by mute luggage laden servants, she grooves down the Carrington hallway to the ticky-tacky sound of "Thriller (The Elevator Mix)" playing on her ghetto blaster. (As feeble-sounding as the music in this scene is, at least it's instrumental. In a later Sammy Jo scene, there is a beyond pathetic rendition of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", apparently sung by Jeanette while cleaning out the Carrington toilets. It's small details like these, and the crappily mocked up cover of World Finance Magazine that reappears in this episode, that help render DYNASTY, for all its real diamonds and fancy floral arrangements, such a cheap and tacky-seeming show.)
Under orders from Krystle to "stay sweet ... for as long as you're here", Sammy Jo embarks on her biannual slide down the Carrington bannister, at the end of which she is contractually obliged to collide-cute with someone. In Season 2, it was future mother-in-law Alexis, in Season 6 it'll be future husband Clay Fallmont, but this time it's potential partner-in-crime Adam, who immediately finds favour by referring to her as "Samantha".
Later, while happily tormenting Tony in the Carrington stables, Sammy Jo overhears Adam asking Kirby to accompany him on a business trip to Vegas (where he hopes to unload the Carrington Plaza) so they can be married. "I've been through one Nevada quickie and that was enough," Kirby snaps. "Why is it every time I make plans for our future, you pull away from me as if the idea were repulsive to you?" he asks, "I'm wondering if this marriage is ever gonna take place." "That's exactly what I was wondering," she replies. The synchronicity between the writers losing interest in the Adam/Kirby story-line and the characters losing interest in each other is kinda poignant. Peaking out from behind the stable door, we see Sammy Jo's brain ticking away beneath her Farrah-style hairdo. Sammy Jo and Adam: what a good idea!
Meanwhile, the Stevenbot is in New York (as signified by stock footage of the Statue of Liberty and a traffic jam) on Alexis's behalf. He is approached in a restaurant by a guy named Owen Bancroft. "We were at Princeton at the same time," Owen tells him. "Maybe we can get together for dinner some time. I'm in the phone book." From his Dinard/Deegan-esque blazer and sweater ensemble and general aura of polite neediness, I think we all know what that means. Our suspicions are confirmed when he offers his sympathies regarding Ted Dinard: "I always liked him." The Stevenbot looks nauseous. (I'm not sure how this guy would have known Ted Dinard, as the impression given in Season 1 was that Steven and Ted met after Steven had left Princeton. Perhaps Owen and Ted bought their blazers and sweaters from the same Boutique of Loneliness. However, given that Owen has no problem recognising Steven in spite of his head transplant and that Steven himself still displays no sign of recently witnessing his "mother" commiting murder, Ted Dinard is the least of this scene's continuity problems.) Before one can ponder the narrative significance of this meeting, (paving the way for Luke Fuller perhaps?) along comes sleazy Ed, Sammy Jo's fat ex, with some bad news for the Stevenbot: "She didn't tell you? ... The campaign was scratched, terminated, cancelled, executed at dawn. She's had it with New York. She's never coming back."
Back at the mansion, Sammy Jo is telling Krystle that she's planning to stick around for longer than originally planned: "If I'm not welcome here ... I can always pack up my son and move back to La Mirage with him." She then turns on Claudia, ("You're fake, an impostor") and refers to Mrs Gordon as Danny's "nervous Nelly of a nanny." When the Stevenbot returns, she whips off her towel (Sammy Jo that is, not Mrs Gordon) to announce that she wants Danny back. Like Krystle and Claudia before him, the Stevenbot looks terrified of her. But why? They are rich and powerful (and therefore beautiful and good) Carringtons; she's burger-eating trash. If this were DALLAS, JR would simply threaten to send some good ol' boys round to Sammy Jo's motel room and she'd be on the first bus outta town.
The second grand entrance of the episode--the grandest since Alexis's arrival at the end of Season 1--takes place at La Mirage, and consists of five bellboys, two large trunks and one black woman in a white trouser suit. "Welcome to La Mirage, Miss--" "Devereaux." "... We have a beautiful junior suite ready for you on the second floor." "Junior suite?" snaps Dominique, as if it had just been suggested she snuggle up in an alley dumpster. "I specifically asked for a two bedroom suite. I don't sleep in my clothes nor do I sleep with them. I require one bedroom for my wardrobe and one for myself. If you don't have a two bedroom available, please call another hotel in the area that can accommodate me." Nothing is too good for Dominique, as she will continually remind us. She even upgrades Fallon's generic greeting of "Have a pleasant stay" to "I intend to have a memorable stay."
While it goes without saying that her colour isn't referred to, this scene is all about race. After all, would any of this behaviour be half as interesting, or impressive, if Dominique was just a rich anonymous white bitch we'd never seen before? The subtext of the scene--in fact, of all her scenes in this episode--seems to be, "I might be black, but don't assume for a minute that I'm the hired help. Nor that am I your equal. I'm your superior." So the question is: Is Dominique's refusal to be fobbed off with "a beautiful junior suite" the synthetic but logical DYNASTY extension of Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus, or is her behaviour (bearing in mind that in three years her colour is never once verbally acknowledged) really saying, "I may look black, but don't worry, I'm actually the whitest person on this show"?
When the word "groundbreaking" is used in reference to Dominique, I often get the same queasy feeling I did during Halle Berry's Oscar acceptance speech, when she thanked God and her lawyer in the same sentence and somehow fused the Civil Rights movement, the fundamental dishonesty of Hollywood and her own innate narcissism into one amorphous blob. On the other hand, I'm also reminded of the brilliantly observed scene in THE SOPRANOS in which Aida Turturro's character Janice bitterly sounds off about how she participated in the civil rights movement, only to be rewarded for her noble activism by the sight of black folks riding around in SUVs and blasting rap music. In other words, doesn't true equality mean that a black DYNASTY character should have the same opportunity to be as superficial and bereft of humanity as her white counterparts?
Dominique's behaviour is unusual in other ways. She continually reels off factoids about the Carringtons in the kind of inappropriate manner I would have liked Rita to have done after infiltrating the mansion in Season 6 ("Hello Amanda, my youngest, artistically inclined step-child whom I have only known for a year and yet like immensely, how are you today?"). "Your mother is the single richest woman in all of Denver and possibly the entire country," Dominique informs Fallon over breakfast. "She was born in London. She went to school in Switzerland, Gstaad and Geneva I believe. She married Blake Carrington when she was seventeen. She bore him three handsome, beautiful children, Adam and then you and then Steven ..." "Who are you, Miss Devereaux?" asks Fallon in wonder. "Are you a society columnist from New York or Los Angeles? Is that why your face is so familiar to me?" This question is a weak attempt to resolve a blatant contradiction about the level of Dominique's fame: She is an international superstar ... whom no one in Denver has ever heard of. Fallon might as well be asking, "Who are you, Miss Streisand? Are you are roving reporter on ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT? Is that why your nose is so familiar to me?" Dominique seizes on the question as yet another opportunity to assert her own superiority: "A society columnist? That is very amusing. No, my dear, I am not a society columnist, but if indeed our paths ever did cross, it's up to you to remember me, not the other way round." Oh get over yourself, you daft mare.
I always thought it was the actress giving a humourless, pompous performance, but I've finally grasped (and it's only taken me twenty-something years to do so) that Dominique's imperiousness is a character choice by Diahann Carroll. The trouble is, trying to project nuance of character in a dramatic vacuum where everyone is either Totally Evil or Blankly Good doesn't quite work--just ask Pamela Bellwood, whose attempts to convey subtlety just come across as if she's been hit on the head with a brick. Nonetheless, adding a mysterious black stranger to the mix at such a late stage of the season, when the central characters are already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and murder charges and wacky headaches, feels like a bold and intriguing move.
Dominique reappears in the final scene of the episode, doing a sort of regal waddle into Alexis's penthouse. Now it is Alexis's turn to assert her authority: "You weren't invited. I sent for you." (As one might send for a servant; specifically, a black servant.) "And this isn't a social drink," she continues, "[it's] a chance for me to find out why, since I've never met you, I don't like you." "... Exactly what is it about me you don't like, Mrs Colby?" asks Dominique. Hmm, good question. On what basis is she pre-judging Dominique? All we/she knows about her so far is that she's black and rich. Is that what Alexis doesn't like? Or is it that Dominique is suddenly breathing down her neck in the opening credits?
Like Fallon, Alexis mistakenly concludes that Dominique is a member of the Fourth Estate. "Would you say these clothes and jewels are those of your everyday journalist?" Dominique retorts, referring to what would be described as her bling. (OK, if it's possible to draw a line connecting Dominique to Rosa Parks, then linking her to Missy Elliot is a no-brainer). "Well, anything can be rented these days," Alexis chuckles. "Except intelligence. And I'm a very intelligent woman, Mrs Colby," Dominique brags, apropos of nothing at all. "What do you want, Mrs Devereaux?" Alexis asks. "Merely to check out in the flesh what I've heard so much about," she replies, before once again going into factoid mode. "You adore the South of France even though you are prone to seasickness on yachts," she tells Alexis. "You were actually expelled from a boarding school in Gstaad and you worked for several months as an artist's model in Hamburg of all places." "Wrong, it was Brussels of all places," interrupts Alexis. (So Alexis worked as an artist's model in Brussels, spent a year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, had an affair with King Galen of Moldavia, dated Cecil Colby in Denver and flirted with both Carrington brothers in Colorado Springs, all before marrying Blake at the age of seventeen. Sounds like her adolescence was almost as eventful as Rebecca Wentworth's.)
"On a deeper level, you are deeply vulnerable when it comes to your children and totally ruthless when it comes to your bla bla bla," Dominique continues before turning her attention to the champagne ("burned ... obviously frozen in the bottle at some point") and caviar ("I prefer Petrosian Beluga"). The spectacle of a black woman out-Alexising Alexis is an undeniable pop culture thrill, and probably Dominique's best moment on the show. However, in her attempt to prove that she's the richest, glitziest, bitchiest, whitest and/or blingiest diva on the block, Dominique ends up on such a high pedestal that she remains stuck there for the next three years.
"Look, Miss Devereaux," Alexis is telling her, "whatever it is that you're doing in Denver, [and in the opening credits] I suggest you tread very carefully with me ... Who the hell are you anyway?" "Who am I? You'll find out very soon, very soon ... I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Thank you, Mrs Colby. Ciao--for now." Off Dominique trots. Deprived of the last word, Joanie does her best to look arch.
***************
"The Nightmare." Season finale.
We open to the sight of Dominique Deveraux riding shotgun on the La Mirage piano-stool, lip-synching her heart out for the edification of a bunch of white folks. "Good-byyye to spriiiing and all it meant to meeeeee ... For I must have yoooouuuu or no one, And so I'm throooough with looooove." It's quite a shift to see such a determinedly aloof and cryptic character suddenly emoting like there's no tomorrow, eyes closed in a pained expression as she attempts to wring every last drop of pathos from each vowel. Fact is, whenever she sings on DYNASTY and THE COLBYS, Dominique stops being Dominique and becomes Diahann Carroll.
Conversely, it's hearing her sing that makes Alexis, who arrives at the bar in time to catch the end of her number, finally twig as to Dominique's identity. "Of course. It's Dominique Dever-rer," she says, as if losing interest in the name before she's even finished saying it. Thus begins Alexis's occasional, cheap-but-effective habit of deliberately mispronouncing her rivals' names (Cassie, Sybil). But if she didn't know Dominique's name prior to this scene, it begs the question of how she was able to summon her to the penthouse in last week's episode? Did she simply call up the La Mirage front desk and say, "This is Alexis Colby, send me the black woman"? "You had a somewhat chic little place of your own in Monte Carlo," she tells Dominique in this scene, "or was it Marbella?" "Could have been Rome. I've had very chic little places in all three," replies Dominique, continuing her habit of super-sizing whatever comment is made to her. So we now know that Dominique is a night club owner and something of a chanteuse, but as yet there is no mention of her international recording career or her COLBY-sized record label. Following this brief exchange, Alexis asks the bartender how long Dominique has booked into the hotel for and because bartenders carry such knowledge in their heads, he is able to tell her that she is booked for "an indefinite stay."
After a dull library exchange between the Stevenbot and Blake regarding Sammy Jo, ("I can't hand my son over to a woman like that: a liar, a cheat, a tramp; God help me, I can't!") we cut to an unexpected scene of the kind that season finales are sometimes made. An establishing shot of the apartment building inhabited by Claudia in Season 2 is followed by the sight of Sammy Jo in bed with a pizza and ... a posy of violets! Yep, just when one has forgotten all about that slightly rubbish story-line, along comes one final twist that makes it more interesting than it ever was before. Morgan Hess enters the scene and it becomes clear that this is his appropriately seedy apartment. "Violets. They nearly did the trick on her, didn't they?" sighs Sammy Jo. She and Hess then proceed to explain the plot to each other like no one in real life ever does, but as it's all for our benefit it would be churlish to complain. "Like I told you when you came to see me that night before you left for New York," he reminds her laboriously, "there are no guarantees ... You came to me and slept with me and, while you were at it, asked me to find a way to send Claudia Carrington back to the sanatarium." "And away from my kid and my terrific ex-husband," she continues. "I'm not the stupid tart they like to think I am. I have a brain and feelings, and I don't like the way they humiliated me in that courtroom." Only now does it become clear that the crazy violet story-line has spanned almost the entire year, from Danny's custody battle to this, the season finale. "You know, I still dream about you," slavers Morgan, opening Sammy Jo's top and ogling her off-screen breasts. That's what I love about Sammy Jo, she'll do it with anybody. However, the revelation that she was behind the scheme to drive Claudia insane shifts her character from "gold-digging tramp" into "borderline evil" territory. I'm not sure how convincing a transformation this is, but it's fun so it doesn't really matter.
Another scene that's been brewing all season--ever since the events of the last season finale, in fact--is Kirby and Alexis's final showdown, which takes place in the latter's penthouse. "You have robbed me of the most important person in my life, Joseph A(y)nders," drones Kirby as Alexis struggles to stay awake. "You drove him to his death and then tried to atone for it the only way you know how: money. But that is not the way that you settle such an unforgivable debt. A life for a life, Alexis. Even if it is an ugly life for such a beautiful one!" She then pulls out the pistol she's been lugging around in her handbag for the past six episodes. "Oh God!" Alexis exclaims in alarm. And who can blame her? Less than twenty-four hours after being accused by a black woman of serving burnt champagne, she's held at gunpoint by a major dodo's daughter. Will these breaches of etiquette never end?!
"Oh yes, pray to him," Kirby rants. "Pray hard and quickly!" (Hmm, that's got me thinking--if Kirby had returned from Paris a novice nun, i.e. had the Shapiros ripped off THE SOUND OF MUSIC rather than SABRINA, would her character arc would have been more satisfying? Of course, this would have entailed Denver being overrun by Nazis, but that could have worked. Moldavian Nazis, maybe?) "Kirby, your mother! Your mother committed a crime and was sent to a mental institution ... You want the same thing to happen to you?" Evidently not, as Kirby begins to tremble violently, as if she were a washing machine on final spin. "Do it now, Kirby ... Go ahead. Pull the trigger ... and watch me die. That's what you want, isn't it?" Shivering like a traumatised calf, Kirby lowers the gun, the way we always knew she would.
Bloodstains on the upholstery safely diverted, Alexis adopts a harsher tone. "I won't press charges," she tells Kirby, "if you refuse to marry Adam and go back to Paris ... Otherwise you'll go to jail, and I will cut Adam off and he'll lose everything." "What do I care about Adam?" asks Kirby. "Oh you care," Alexis replies confidently. "You care because you love him." From Kirby's reaction, we see that she does love Adam. Quite how Alexis would know this, having barely ever discussed her son with Kirby, is beyond me. But then, how Alexis knows about half the things she does--such as the arrival of a mysterious black woman at La Mirage--is a mystery. I'm not sure whether or not Kirby's love for Adam is meant to come as a revelation to us at this point, but it feels like it should. Truth to tell, between the swollen fingers and meeting the Grim Reaper at her mother's graveside and buying the gun from the kindly man who used to be in DALLAS, I've kind of lost track of Kirby's inner life. Either way, her reaction to this fait accompli is great. She looks at Alexis, pauses, and then says quietly, in a flat, expressionless voice, "You bitch." It;s as though both character and actress are completely wiped out, drained from two years of trying to imbue these ridiculous scenes with some sort of believability.
This leads to Kirby's last ever scene, at least until that wacky reunion, in which Adam (wearing a pair of dangerously short shorts) enters her room to find her packing her bags. "I'm leaving," she tells him. "I'm going back to Paris." "For how long?" "A year, ten years, I don't know," she replies. "I'm not going to marry you ..." "Did my mother have anything to do with this?" "No! For god-sakes, can't you see? I don't love you ... I never did." Here, Kirby sacrifices herself for Adam just as Alexis did at the Denver Carrington board meeting earlier in the season. "I don't believe that. I won't," he snarls, grabbing her. "Stop it," she protests. "What are you trying to do, rape me again? Is that all you want from me?" "You know, I tried to be decent with you and I guess I should have realised that any sense of decency would have been wasted. Of course you're going back to Paris, to that Frenchman who kicked you around and treated you like dirt, because that's what you've been from the day I met you, Kirby, is trash." As if this were not humiliation enough, we see a smirking Sammy Jo eavesdropping in the hallway. Adam storms off, leaving Kirby to burst into tears while holding a bowler hat. And that's her lot. Bye-bye, Kathleen Beller. Kirby entered the show a optimistic, bright young thing, but two years under the same roof as the Carringtons and Colbys have reduced her to a heartbroken, grief-stricken mess, used, abused and quickly forgotten. In some ways, I really like the callousness with which the show treats her departure--there's no sugar-coated vestibule farewell like the one Claudia received on her way to the funny farm in Season 3; in fact, Adam doesn't even wait till she's out of the house before he starts bumping and grinding with Sammy Jo in the exercise room. Because it's DYNASTY, however, one is never quite sure if the unceremonious nature of Kirby's final scene, and the fact that no one seems to notice she's gone, is intentional or just incompetence. Indeed, the departures of each of Adam's women--Kirby, Claudia, Dana--all seem to kind of get lost in the between-season shuffle.
The funniest exchange of the finale comes after Sammy Jo offhandedly informs her aunt of her intention to raise Danny herself. "You can't be serious!" exclaims Krystle. "I heard that line the other day on TV, an old movie," Sammy Jo replies casually. "'You can't be serious!'"
Pamela Sue Martin keeps a low profile in her final ever episode, spending most of her time by the fireside in Fallon's bedroom. Jeff drops by and they debate the collective noun for giraffes for a while. "How about a neck of them?" he suggests. Later, she reminisces with the Stevenbot about their childhood beanbags, and it's all too precious for words. She mutters something about "my head ... ever since the accident, I get these really bad headaches sometimes," but it's just all so vague.
After angrily rejecting an offer of $10,000,000 for his football team from Dex, ("That team's worth $50,000,000 at least and you know it!") Blake is forced to admit defeat. "The banks, they've foreclosed," he tells Krystle. "I've lost the company." This is a prime time soap first. Losing "the company" is the very worst thing that could happen to the Ewings, the Carringtons or the Channings; it's the very definition of being "destroyed". DYNASTY without Denver Carrington is like NYPD BLUE losing its police station or Rachel from FRIENDS minus her hair products--can the series even exist without it? Fortunately, Krystle the human fortune cookie is on hand to provide some perspective: "Blake, banks can foreclose on a company, but they can't on a man."
Krystle goes to pack up her paper clips, leaving Blake to survey his office one last time. I'm gonna miss the original Denver Carrington decor--all the rounded doorways and silver paint gave the show a kind of a STAR TREK vibe. This solemn occasion is interrupted by the arrival of Dominique, clad from turban to toe in white. She appears without an appointment for another of those delightfully enigmatic (i.e. meaningless) visits. "The Villa Marini. Does that hold any special memories for you?" she asks. "Yes," Blake replies. "I was there on a business trip ..." "You met there once with Rashid Ahmed. Rashid was a steady customer at my night-club in Rome. Why am I here? To satisfy my curiosity, I suppose. How could a man as tough and as brilliant as you're supposed to be be taken in by Rashid in Hong Kong?" How indeed? Because the writers have decreed it so. "I hate to deprive you of what you're obviously here for: a story." says Blake, "but I've had a very long day and my daughter is getting married tomorrow, so if you don't mind, I don't intend to stay here and fence with a stranger." "C'est tres droll! I mean it is to laugh - everyone in Denver mistaking me for a reporter ... Once your daughter is married, you just may want to look me up and continue this conversation ... We are two people who should know one another, Blake." "Miss Devereaux," sighs John Forsythe, giving good weary, "I still don't know who you are or what you want and I don't really care." He leaves, assigning Marcia the task of throwing Dominique out on her ass as he goes. In the absence of anyone else to deliver her final line of the season to, Dominique addresses a framed, not terribly flattering, photograph of Krystle: "Won't it knock their socks off when they find out I'm a Carrington?" Gasp! Well yes, their socks will be knocked off, but only briefly. Then they'll pull them back on again and carry on as if nothing has happened.
Dex comes back from one of those long trips he goes on periodically, where he seems to spend all his time rehearsing the passionate speech he's going to deliver to Alexis upon his return: "I took off for Wyoming. I was angry, damned angry. I just wanted to go home to what I knew and loved as a kid ... basics: fresh clean air, hard riding, all the things that are supposed to clear a mind, but it didn't work for me. When I got back here, Tracy Kendall told me that you knew all about our affair and it hit me suddenly. I set up a double standard, Alexis. We both had our affairs and I had no right to expect you to act any differently than I did." "Well, that's extremely modern of you," she replies. Of course, this is all a complete rationalisation on Dex's part to keep himself on the show--he didn't have his affair until after he and Alexis had broken up over her affair with Rashid. "You're a lot of woman, Alexis," he continues, "and you're what I want, so I'll have you on your terms ... I need you so very much." They kiss, and thunder rumbles in the distance.
Because of the incredible miracle currently gestating in Krystle's womb, there has been no cat-fight between her and Alexis this season. Instead, we must make do with the beauty parlour scene in this episode in which she overhears Alexis in the next cubicle discussing said miracle: "You give a man of a certain age the news that he's going to become a father, and he asks no questions about how or by whom." Krystle sneaks up on her nemesis with a bowl of indeterminate sludge. "So you like to sling mud do you, Alexis?" she asks, before depositing it on her face. Hardy har har.
The night of the wedding arrives. (Who throws a wedding at night? Brides wishing to flee the scene in a dramatic stylee, that's who.) While Gerard and Krystle coo over the cake, Fallon has a freak out in her wedding dress, banishing her ladies-in-waiting from her room so she can go nuts in private. Some PSYCHO style violins start to shriek, Fallon flashes back to the scary green horse on the carousel, and then everything--the flowers, fireplace, her own reflection--goes all wibbly wonky. It's kinda groovy in a style-triumphing-over-substance sort of way, although that would imply that the sequence contains some substance to triumphed over.
Meanwhile, the guests are mingling downstairs. Adam can clearly be seen amongst them, which gives the lie to Emma Samms' later recollection that he came to her room just before the wedding in order not to rape her. Or something like that. "Here Comes The Bride" starts to play and everyone looks up, expecting to see Fallon descend the staircase. Everyone. Was no minion despatched to tell her the wedding was about to begin? Has she no bridesmaids, no flower girls, no matron of honour with whom to make her entrance? For if there were such a person, they would have already found her discarded wedding dress and realised she'd shimmied down a drain pipe and legged it. Jeff and Blake go upstairs to investigate, just in time to hear the sound of a car engine starting down below.
Meanwhile, Sgt Cooper arrives at the mansion to arrest Alexis: "Mrs Carrington, we have learned that just before Mr Jennings died, he opened a bank account and deposited a cheque for $100,000 ... signed by you. The department has a theory--that no man takes his life with that kind of money in the bank." Try telling that to Kurt Cobain. "Mrs Colby, I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Mark Howard Jennings ... Cuff the lady!" Alexis is hauled off to the cells where she enters a world of fat-bottomed warders and cackling hookers laughing at her in her candy wrapper dress. It would take DALLAS another two years to subject Sue Ellen to the same humiliation. "Let me out of here!" both women cry.
Fallon, clad in the raincoat of the deranged and the desperate, drives through the night in search of Advil, hotly pursued by Jeff. There's lots of fake looking rain, then a sudden flash of lights, a scream, an echo and black screen. It's all quite nice to look at, but of course it makes no sense. Unless it's an alien abduction; that would explain everything.
James' interpretations of the Dynasty episodes are so great to read he is very clever and witty with them. Great to have them all together like this.
Ahhh Kenneth judging by your pic of Peta Toppano you are a fellow fan of "Return To Eden" like me hee hee. It was the Australian 1980s version of Dynasty!! Wasn't Peta a great television bitch?? One of the best I would say. She had fun with her role and really hammed it up. I love that show. I have the 1984 three part mini-series and also the 22 episode 1986 spin off tele series. It is a shame it didn't have more seasons as it was just getting intresting. I loved it when it aired in the 198os at the time. It had some wonderful campy dramatic lines of dialogue in Soap. I have probably said this before but I think if any of you Dynasty fans who are hungry for a similiar flavour and feel to Dynasty then buy this short Australian tele soap....it is romantic, campy, corny, dramatic and the 1980s fashions are great to see again. I also loved the main theme music....beautiful. Here is the link if you want to check it out........
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Stage/4791/
Last edited by denver darling; 10-12-2007 at 11:24 PM.
Really, these should be the site's official Episode Re-caps.
But un-edited.
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