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After taking a week off because of the Thanksgiving holiday, Dynasty gives us a belated Thanksgiving episode as the Carrington clan celebrates the holiday in their usual style — a football game between the family and the staff. A tradition, according to Michael Culhane, that none of the staff likes but they have to be there instead of with their families (at least Blake does let them all go home after the game).
This episode was really taken up by that football game, squeezing in cameos by real players Hines Ward and Jamal Anderson as ringers for the family (and a Culhane led team still beat them … again), and it allowed for some more tension between the banished Fallon and her father. Assuming that they can put their issues aside for a “family holiday,” Fallon returns to take her spot on the team but Blake won’t allow it until she can apologize to Cristal for everything she’s done. Cristal doesn’t really care about the apology and wants Fallon to stay, but Blake just can’t let any of it go and Fallon ends up leaving, hoping to catch up with Jeff Colby and his sister on their way to the Bahamas.
What Fallon doesn’t know is that Monica is on her way to the islands but Jeff has lied to her. He’s got another trip planned: a visit to prison to see his father Cecil Colby! For long-time Dynasty fans, that is an important name and it’s going to be interesting to see how they incorporate Cecil into the new show. In the classic series, Blake’s ex Alexis ended up marrying Cecil Colby and then he infamously died in her arms, suffering a heart attack during sex, causing Alexis to try to slap him back to life. Certainly one of the original show’s campier moments. And with the announcement of Nicolette Sheridan joining the cast as Alexis, we’ll be watching to see how this all plays out.
Back at the Carrington manor, everyone is gone except for Blake, Cristal, Steven, Sammy Joe, Anders, Claudia (yes, she’s still there), and a few staff members to help serve dinner. With the revelation that someone has been tampering with Claudia’s medication, Cristal was not about to let her go back into the care of the nurse she believes is responsible. But finally contacting said nurse, it turns out Claudia fired her a week earlier for allegedly stealing from her. Blake is incredulous because the Blaisdells had nothing to steal.
For some reason Claudia keeps creeping around the house attempting to get into the wine cellar, but Anders directed her elsewhere on the first try and Sam witnessed her go to the cellar on another attempt. He found her apparently confused and then noticed there was a gun room down there too, and one of the drawers was open. Before he could ask if she took a gun, Claudia bashes Sam in the head and knocks him out, locking him in the room. Back in the dining room, Claudia pretends to admire a crystal vase full of wine and then drops it, forcing Anders to get another bottle … and then she locks him in the wine cellar.
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As dinnertime approaches, Cristal enters the dining room in a hideous gold jumpsuit — it really looked like a pair of ill-fitting coveralls someone spray painted gold and wrapped a piece of chiffon around the waist for a belt — while Claudia looked stunning in a bright red gown and tried to talk to Claudia about the mix-up in her medication. But Claudia turns the tables and pulls out the gun, revealing to Cristal that she isn’t as crazy as everyone thinks she is. In fact, she’s only been taking the benzos to deal with being cooped up in the manor!
As Blake and Steven arrive and become aware of the situation, Anders and Sam are working together from different locked rooms to free themselves (and honestly, the banter between these two has become one of the highlights of the series). As Claudia is holding everyone hostage, Fallon decides it’s time to rejoin the family but isn’t quite prepared to come face-to-face with a crazy woman with a gun. But Fallon actually becomes the hero of the day thanks to an earlier visit to Michael’s church where he and his parents were helping serve Thanksgiving dinner to the less fortunate.
There she met a little girl who used straws to build a catapult and told Fallon she wanted to be an architect. Fallon explains that what the girl as done is actually engineering and that she wanted to be an engineer herself but her father told her that girls could not be engineers. She tells the little girl she can be whatever she wants. That little bit of information comes in handy when Fallon reveals that she knew Claudia was an engineer before the accident that left her with a brain injury. But when Claudia found out about Matthew’s affair with Cristal, she kept faking her injury even after she had fully recovered and then … Claudia was the one who sabotaged the equipment! She only meant to injure Matthew, she hadn’t counted on the explosion causing the turbine blade to dislodge and kill him.
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After Fallon talks Claudia down (and is willing to take a bullet for her father), Blake calls in some of his shady friends and has her committed to a mental health facility, but that still doesn’t answer the question of who killed her friend Willy. Steven confronts Blake and voices his suspicions that it was the crooked cop Stansfield, and he’s also going to put a halt to the funding of the boxing facility because he knows there is something else happing with all the money supposedly going to the facility. Blake isn’t too thrilled with this particular turn of events. And Sammy Joe and Anders finally manage to free themselves from the wine and gun cellar (and we learn that Anders’ middle name is … Winifred?).
As the episode comes to an end, we’re back at the food truck where Cristal had money sent to her sister. Some shady dude is there looking for Cecila Machado (Cristal) and the woman running the operation says she has no idea who he’s talking about, and then pulls out a gun to scare the guy away. He tells her to tell Cecelia that they’ll be waiting for her. The woman calls Cristal and tells her that her business is no longer welcome.
So with the Matthew Blaisdell death wrapped up, where does Dynasty go from here? We know Alexis is coming sometime in the second half of the season (Sheridan is currently filming the show so she won’t be a season finale reveal — our guess is February sweeps), so we assume Steven will begin digging into the Carrington charitable financials, we have the set-up for the Cristal story (how long will it take these people to figure out Cecelia is Cristal?) which will put her and Sammy Joe in danger, and Fallon seems to be back in her father’s good graces after saving them all from Claudia. Once mama gets to Atlanta, will the two team up at Morrell Corp to go up against Carrington Atlantic? Stay tuned!
This episode aired November 29, 2017.
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