A look back at the 1st season of 'Dynasty'

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http://www.slate.com/id/2293600/

By Alex Mar
Posted Wednesday, May 25, 2011, at 2:28 PM ET

1981 gave America its first female Supreme Court justice, its first test-tube baby, a resolution to the Iran hostage crisis, and, most important of all, Dynasty. At first only modestly popular, the series eventually became the top-rated show on television, and its excesses became synonymous with those of the decade. It endured for nine seasons—220 episodes rife with catfights, amnesia, look-alikes, and even a wedding disrupted by terrorists from a country called Moldavia.

Thirty years after the series premiere, it's possible to look back and see the unrealized promise of its less-than-blockbuster first season—the Dynasty that could have been, before ratings pressures and the introduction of diva Joan Collins put an end to challenging story lines. As improbable as it sounds, the series' first 13 episodes represent what might be called Dynasty's "arthouse" era, a brief period before its characters were flattened into the caricatures that came to define the prime-time soap genre.

Dynasty debuted in the shadow of CBS's Dallas—also about an oil baron and his family, but, you know, in another state. At least during its debut season, however, the series was more than just a cheap imitation of a rival's success. The pilot alone managed to touch on class tensions, gender inequality, the impact of Middle East instability on American oil prices, and even homosexuality—all while showcasing Linda Evans' impeccably blow-dried hair. Though always unabashedly a soap at heart, Dynasty, in its first season, established a number of compelling narratives that broke free of genre convention.

Initially, the series followed two families from different socioeconomic strata: that of oil baron Blake Carrington and that of middle-class striver Matthew Blaisdel. Through Blaisdel and his wildcatting partner we learn about the scrappier side of the oil business, and with surprisingly gritty realism. (The Blaisdel plots tended to unfold at glamour-free locations, from the rig to the crew's dive bar to the boxing gym.) The Blaisdels' story line was meant to give the series the epic scope and struggle of Giant, but primetime viewers didn't respond. "The audience told us almost immediately: All they wanted to do was be in the mansion," Esther Shapiro explains on the DVD of the first season. "[They] couldn't care less about the oil fields. They didn't want to see grubby rooms." By Season 2, a caricature of upstairs-downstairs life complete with butler and housemaids (but absent any real class resentment) replaced the middle-class world of the Blaisdels.

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Depending on whom you ask, Dynasty in its first season was a show about class structure (the oil rich, the middle class, the servant class) and about outsiders in conflict with those privileged few. In effect, the core theme from that first season was of absolute power and how it corrupts absolutely.

Dynasty when it first started in 1981, was likely a product of TV writing that was still situated somewhat in '70s storytelling, where social issues were at the forefront. But by the second season, Dynasty for better or worse, became decidedly more soapy to attract a bigger audience. In return, it found a niche in the more popular mainstream.

But with the more campy direction that they chose, we along the way, got one-note black/white characterization, and superficial soapy plots, where the rich was heroic and the beautiful was the norm. In a sense, the very cruel reality which was a consistent dark undercurrent of the more cerebral first season was disregarded completely for fantasy and illusion. It basically at the end of the day, sacrificed story and substance for style and sensationalism.

To give better you an idea regarding the change in characterizations post-Season 1, the earthy and ephemeral outsider that was Krystle in the first season became the cardboard cut-out blonde sky goddess of the rest of the series; the frightening and very complex villain that Blake was in the first season became the heroic and principled knight in shining armor that was an extension of TV's classic Bachelor Father; Fallon was watered down to give room for a more sensational villainous to grow (her more soapy mother Alexis).

In a nutshell, any outsider that represented what was real in the TV audience was written out and only the neurotic was kept (a perfect example of this is Claudia, who unrealistically became a permanent house-guest and later a Carrington herself). The outside world was kept from view from the TV viewer as the show became more and more claustrophobic, reduced to the privileged class's opulent fantasy domain.