"Dynasty" was a really good bad show for a while.
Hey, I can remember getting together with a bunch of my college friends — male and female — to watch the show back in the early '80s. We'd laugh, we'd yell at the TV, we'd cheer for Krystle, we'd hiss at Alexis.
It was the ultimate guilty pleasure. "Dynasty" was full of corporate battles and murders and kidnappings and adultery and evil twins and aliens. It was addictive while going way over the top at being campy, ridiculous, fluffy entertainment that wallowed in excess. How could you not love it when Krystle and Alexis would go at it in one of those fabulous catfights?
CBS (having apparently run out of reunions for its own shows) brings together much of the primary cast of the 1981-89 ABC hit tonight for the hourlong "Dynasty Reunion: Catfights & Caviar" (9 p.m., Ch. 2).
Not that the series either started or ended well. When "Dynasty" premiered in January 1981, it was a total ripoff of CBS's "Dallas." Its original title was "Oil" and Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) was meant to be a J.R. Ewing clone — an oilman who would do whatever he had to do to win at business.
And in his personal life as well. He was engaged to his former secretary, the sweet Krystle (Linda Evans), and he was the bad guy to good guy Matthew Blaisdel (Bo Hopkins ) — Krystle's ex-beau.
Eventually, Blake became both hero and good guy, leaving viewers who caught those first 15 episodes to forget that he once raped Krystle.
The show didn't really catch fire and catch on until the second season, when Joan Collins joined the cast as Blake's evil ex-wife, Alexis. For the next four seasons, "Dynasty" was a dizzying carousel of improbable soap twists, fights, love, wealth, power and fashion. It was the excessive Reagan '80s, and nothing on TV wallowed in excess more than "Dynasty."
"Dynasty" became so much a part of the pop culture that a 1983 episode featured cameo appearances by former President and Mrs. Ford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (playing themselves, of course).
Everything was great (dumb but great) pretty much right up until the infamous Moldavian Massacre — the May 1985 season finale in which most of the cast was gunned down by terrorists at the royal wedding of Blake and Alexis' daughter, Amanda (Catherine Oxenberg) to Prince Michael (Michael Praed).
Come that fall, everybody but a couple of peripheral characters survived, and the sheer enormity of the stupidity marked the beginning of the end. Compounded by a horrible, dragged out Season 6 plotline in which Krystle was replaced by a look-alike (also played by Evans) and a big slowdown in the plotlines as ABC used "Dynasty" to launch a spinoff ("The Colbys"), the show never recovered. It lasted four more seasons — by which point most of the original cast had decamped — but it was never the same.
It didn't exactly go into orbit, but it came close. In the 1987 series finale of "Dynasty" spinoff "The Colbys," a big ol' spaceship appeared, and Fallon (at that point played by Emma Samms) was abducted by aliens.
It's wasn't a dream or hallucination. In the "Dynasty" reality it was real, and it played a part in the, ahem, mothership's continuing storylines when Fallon and Jeff (John James) returned to "Dynasty" the following season.
Really.
Oh, but when "Dynasty" was fun it was great fun!
"DYNASTY" DEBUTED on Jan. 12, 1981 and aired its 220th and final episode on May 10, 1989.
The two-part, four-hour miniseries "Dynasty: The Reunion" aired on October 20 and 22, 1991, reuniting much of the original cast and tying up most of the loose ends left when the series went off the air without a "final' episode.
The spinoff series "The Colbys" (originally titled "Dynasty II: The Colbys") debuted on Nov. 20, 1985, and aired its 49th and final episode on March 26, 1987. (That fall, several characters from "The Colbys" migrated to "Dynasty" — including some who had migrated from "Dynasty" to "The Colbys" in the first place.)
On Jan. 2, 2005, ABC aired the made-for-TV movie "Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure" — a two-hour retelling of the behind-the-scenes machinations that went on at ABC and on the set of the prime-time soap.
BEFORE IT ENDED, all four of Blake and Alexis' adult children were played by two different actors.
Pamela Sue Martin was Fallon from 1981-84; Emma Samms from 1985-89.
Catherine Oxenberg was Amanda from 1984-86; Karen Cellini from 1986-87.
Gordon Thomson was Adam from 1982-89; Robin Sachs assumed the role for the 1991 reunion movie.
Al Corley was Steven from 1981-82; Jack Coleman from 1982-88 — and then Corley resumed the role in that 1991 reunion.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com