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Dynasty returns after an extended hiatus and gives us one of the more ridiculous storylines of the series thus far … and it seems to indicate the writers have no idea what to do with the character of Dominique Deveraux. I know everyone involved with this version of Dynasty is trying to ‘shake things up’ so they aren’t just repeating the original but at the same time they’ve completely watered down most of the main characters and almost turned it into ‘The Fallon Show’ (and bless Elizabeth Gillies for being able to carry this weight on her shoulders).
From the beginning they started tinkering with the characters by making Blake a mob boss, or something like it. Blake is supposed to be the flawed hero but not so morally bankrupt as this iteration of him is. Then it got worse by pitting Blake and Cristal against each other. This is supposed to be heart and soul of the show, and it took them three seasons to finally get the couple on the same page … but this Cristal is as bad as Blake. In the last couple of episodes, she’s put a hit out on Alexis and almost got her brother killed. The original Krystle was devoted to her husband but was strong enough to stand up to Alexis face-to-face. I may be wrong but I don’t remember her ever hiring someone to do her dirty work for her. If Krystle had a beef with Alexis, she took care of it herself (and at least the current version of the show recreated the famous lily pond fight between the two nemeses … that’s how Krystle handled her affairs).
Alexis has also been mishandled because she’s supposed to be Blake’s ex-wife and business rival. Not a homeless, penniless woman who depends on him to survive. And now she’s in a marriage of convenience with Jeff Colby to screw Blake out of his business. Alexis Carrington Colby does not need men to prop her up. And now Dominique is a mess of a character as well. In the original, she was found to be Blake’s half-sister and a successful singer so they’ve got that part right (well, at least the half-sister part). But once Blake accepted that, he gave her 40% of his company and the pair were business partners. But because Blake has no company to share, they’ve made the two butt heads and now sent Dominique on some ridiculous quest to be a reality TV star.
No one is going to watch ‘House of Deveraux’. No one. Even taking a note from the Kardashians and making her ‘insta-famous’ by posting it online … who would care about this woman no one knows? Or her daughter, who no one knows. This whole reality show thing is just dumb.
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And can we please stop putting obstacles between Fallon and Liam? Can’t we have just one stable, loving couple on the show since Blake and Cristal are far from stable (but at least they don’t despise each other as they did in the Cristal 1.0 season … and Cristal 3.0 may actually make it to another season). The whole thing with Liam’s son went absolutely nowhere. The kid was abandoned by his mother in the last episode, Fallon showed caring for children was not her forté (at least blabbing to the kid about his mother when she wasn’t supposed to didn’t drive another wedge into her relationship), then Fallon shows she can deal with a kid when she’s the one who is finally honest with him and talks him down from the tree he’s parked himself in (and of course fell out of and nearly joined the other bodies in the pond), but in the end all was well and Fallon did discover her mothering instinct … even though she had a terrible role model.
So now what? Now that mom is back from taking a little breather from her own kid, Fallon wants to fight to keep the kid even though Liam said he was not ready to be a father. But Liam seems pleased by this newfound attitude. But it seems the writers have forgotten just a few episodes back that Liam and Fallon nearly split again when she was determined to have a home and family and he absolutely did not want children. Now he’s ready to fight for the son he barely knows?
I don’t know what happened to this season of the show. The first half of the season was so tight and focused and it seemed like they really had a plan mapped out. Now we’re back to just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. The original Dynasty was a straight drama that, through a modern lens, is pretty campy by today’s standards. The new Dynasty tried to play it straight the first season, then went completely loopy in Season 2, and became a mixed bag in Season 3 but the biggest problem they seem to have now is that they are intentionally going for the camp factor and it’s not working. You can’t create camp; that’s something people see after the fact. At this point, they should just make the show a parody of the original and hire writers who can write funny while also playing it straight, which makes it all the more funny to the audience. Elizabeth Gillies knows how to do this to perfection and she seems to be the only actor the writers know how to write for. The show is frustratingly uneven but I will keep watching for Gillies and hope that someday the writer can maybe look at the original to see how the relationships worked and apply that here.
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