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Thanks mainly to a strong performance from overseas markets, Dynasty is back on The CW for a second season. To be fair, the show did maintain and even see a slight rise in its so-so ratings after moving to Friday midway through season 1, so that was also encouraging enough for the network to bring it back. How it fares this season is anyone’s guess now that Fox is also programming Fridays with new scripted series that have gotten a head start in the ratings.
I have to be honest, while I watched Dynasty every week during the first season, it got to be quite a slog to sit through towards the end. The injection of Nicolette Sheridan certainly helped a bit, but there was one major issue that the production team just screwed up terribly from the beginning and that was the relationship between Blake and Cristal. On the original series, Krystle was the moral center of the Carrington clan. On the new series, she was just as devious and underhanded as the rest of them. There was no one to root for, no light in the middle of the turmoil of this family. The relationship between Blake and Cristal got so bad that it seemed a divorce was in the works.
And then came the finale that found Cristal shot in the stomach and trapped in a fire. Along with Culhane, Alexis and Steven. And then the surprise announcement from Nathalie Kelly that she was not returning to the series … an announcement made without the permission or knowledge of the producers. It makes one wonder if the on-screen tension between the characters was real, because as a viewer it felt like Kelly was really, really unhappy to be there. And now the producers say this plan to kill off Cristal came about midway through the season. Maybe they told her and that just set things in motion for the rest of the season to be just an unpleasant, contractual obligation for her and it showed on screen. But she’s gone, Cristal is dead, so now what?
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The second season premiere picked up weeks after the fire with Alexis milking her stay at the hospital from smoke inhalation for all it was worth — or at least for all the Carrington’s insurance was worth. But the building that burned was her property, her home, she has nowhere to go … except back to the manor, and her hilarious entrance is a motorized wheelchair was everything. Kicking off the new season with a lot of levity courtesy of Alexis is a step in the right direction. But there are some other dangling plotlines from season one that need to be addressed.
It seems they’re going to ignore just how Alexis, Culhane and Steven escaped the inferno. There was absolutely no mention of that. Nor any mention of Claudia, who actually shot Cristal and ran off with the Adam impersonator. Will we ever know if Matthew did actually fake his death, or if the whole thing was in Claudia’s head? Instead Culhane is now shacked up with Fallon even though she still has to pretend she’s married to Liam, whose uncle is very interested in buying Carrington Atlantic (which is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary). Uncle Max (guest C. Thomas Howell) believes Liam and Fallon are husband and wife, so he needs to juggle him and Culhane at least until the ink is dry on the contract. But Uncle Max tosses a wrench into the works, insisting that Fallon stay with the company for at least six months during the transition. While she’s in love with Culhane, she obviously still has feelings for Liam so she does the one thing she does not want to do at this point … ask Jeff Colby for help.
Jeff has a Russian oligarch on the line to buy the company but at a lower value than what Max is offering. But she wants to just cut ties with Liam and focus on Culhane and she’s willing to accept that offer. But it comes with a caveat as well: the buyer, Nikolai Dimitrov wants Blake to remain with the company for at least a year. Fallon’s okay with that mainly because she resent him running off for the last month, leaving her to deal with the fallout of the fire and the sale of the company (to be fair, she did basically take his voting rights away). Perhaps she sees this as a win-win for her — she’s rid of Liam and Blake gets payback for leaving her to handle everything. Let’s just say Blake is none-too-pleased to be her pawn in this game.
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Steven is still dealing with the gut punch he got right before his wedding to Sam that Melissa Daniels is pregnant, with his child. He still hasn’t revealed this news to Sam, and she seems adamant that he knows, but she’s coming off as a bit fishy. Is she hoping to break up Steven and Sam? Steven only slept with her to get Sam’s immigration papers taken care of by her judge husband. Now she’s facing a divorce and really putting the screws to Steven, even apparently inviting herself to the CA anniversary party and talking to Sam but, as she told Steven after Sam moved on, being force to lie to Sam about the baby’s father … this time. Blake had already given Steven the number of a lawyer to help set up a trust for the baby, and he also advised Steven to tell Sam before he did anything else. But with Sam still in mourning over the death of his aunt, he didn’t feel it was the right time to burden him with more bad news.
The one positive thing that came out of Cristal’s death was the bonding between Sam and Blake. First a woman claiming to be the ‘real’ Cristal Flores showed up, saying her identity was stolen by Cecila Machado and Blake just told Anders to write her a check to make her go away. Anders, Alexis, Steven and Fallon was afraid it would set a precedent, and it did with more people claiming to be Flores family members seeing a handout for ‘their troubles’. Blake again told Anders to throw money at them. But there was also the press to deal with, harassing Sam for being just as much of a fraud as his aunt. Blake tried to keep Sam from doing something stupid on camera, but one guy was really pushing their buttons and crossed a line, forcing Blake to punch the creep in the face. The whole incident brought Sam and Blake even closer.
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But things came to a head at the anniversary party. Unhappy that Fallon is using him to seal a not-so-great deal, and that Steven hasn’t had the balls to tell Sam about the baby, an inebriated Blake took center stage and blew it all up. He let loose on Fallon for using him in the deal and made comments that would make it even harder for her to wiggle out from under her sham marriage to Liam, basically forcing her to take Uncle Max’s deal (Blake had apparently done business with the Russian in the past and wanted no part of him). Then he let loose on Steven and revealed the news of the baby to all the assembled guests. It was a spectacular flameout. After he literally dropped the mic, he found Alexis in Cristal’s bedroom attempting to open the safe. She desperately needs a million dollars to pay off the guy who was posing as Adam before he reveals to the world that the two of them were working together, and that she told him to kill Cristal (which is not what she said, but he took ‘keep an eye on her’ to mean burn that mother down). An angry Blake opened the safe and started throwing money at Alexis but … the two of them ended up in a passionate embrace which lead to more than just a heavy makeout session.
In the aftermath, Sam was surprisingly calm about the baby news. He even surprised Steven by telling him he was okay with it, perhaps it was something he needed to help bring him out of the darkness he’s put himself in since Cristal’s death. He’d be more than happy to be one of the baby’s two fathers, but one has to wonder how Melissa will react to this turn of events she had not predicted. Alexis, however, did make a great point: how did a pre-menopausal woman who slept with a gay man one time end up pregnant? Is she faking the pregnancy, complete with sonogram photos? And Fallon now finds herself on a private jet with Liam headed to New York to meet the rest of his family. But before that happened, Culhane proposed to her and she accepted. This is going to get real messy.
And there is also the reveal of Kirby, Anders’ long lost daughter who has returned to Atlanta to stir up trouble. Her timing couldn’t be worse since she was apparently sent to Australia after setting fire to Fallon’s bedroom, an act she vehemently denies, claiming Fallon set her up. With another fire to deal with, Anders is suspicious of his daughter’s arrival but she says he’s the only person who doesn’t believe her innocence. After being kicked out of hotel after hotel for loud partying, Anders decides she should go back to Australia to live with her mother but … she ends up shacking up at Jeff Colby’s place until she can get settled.
The episode ended in Sedona, Arizona at a health and wellness facility where a woman is watching a replay of Blake punching that reporter in the face on the website Celebrity Tantrum. Her co-worker teases her about her obsession with that video and Blake Carrington, suggesting that maybe one day she could meet him and fall in love and be the new Mrs. Carrington. After all, she already has the first name. The woman leaves the office, revealing her name tag: Cristal Jennings.
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Hoo-boy! Any long-time Dynasty fan knows that Jennings was the last name of Krystle on the original series. So it now makes sense when they revealed the news that the ‘real’ Cristal would be coming to the show this season. How she gets from Sedona to Atlanta and into the Carrington family remains a mystery, but it’s safe to say that when she does she’s going to cause a lot of drama. But please Dynasty writers and producers, DON’T make her a gold-digging bitch. If you’re going to go so far as to give her that name, she needs to be a nice person who can go up against Alexis and Fallon, but she had to be totally committed to Blake and her family. Don’t screw it up again!
What did you think of the season premiere? Tell us in the comments section below!
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