How David Jacobs Would Have Saved Dynasty

[Monzo]

In a February 1985 TV Guide article, David Jacobs and Esther Shapiro were asked what they would do differently with each other's shows.



While Esther Shapiro primarily advocated giving the women on Dallas much more power, David Jacobs saw weaknesses in Dynasty—weaknesses that would indeed later cause ratings problems. "They are adding too many people", Jacobs complained regarding Dynasty. "What has to happen to Dynasty at some point is that it has to focus on the story... Dallas is about money, while Dynasty is about things money can buy." Jacobs argued that the Dynasty characters were too wealthy for the audience to care about them.

Should Esther Shapiro have taken David Jacobs' comments to heart, or was it good that she stayed true to her vision?

 

[Werewillie Oleson]

Dallas is about money, while Dynasty is about things money can buy."

It can be specified as both soaps being about prestige, with the difference that the prestige in Dynasty was already achieved (the Rockefellers of Colorado) while Dallas was prestige in the making.
Whereas JR would really want to have Lankershim-Blaisdel, in the case of Blake Carrington it was more about control and loyalty. The nerve that anyone would defy the mighty Carrington tycoon!
It gives the Dallas business soap more longevity because they only had to come up with new "projects". Dynasty could not repeat that one storyline over and over again.

I guess a lot of Dynasty's status fetishism disappeared when they started to focus on the mansion, basically erasing the sounding board of real-life Denver.
So while Dynasty increased the opulence in terms of objects it became a less prestigious drama. Dallas continued its craving for more, financially but also psychologically since JR had the prestigious image of his father to live up to. And it was never going to be enough.
Dynasty had the pilosophy of the "million dollar spit in the ocean" and there was the arranged marriage to save Denver-Carrington. It does indeed feel very aristocratic and it's not the same as actually mortgaging Southfork.
But Dynasty didn't need to be faithful to the premise of Dallas. It was good when it was convincingly bitchy.

(but then the episode also spends a lot of time on characters talking about Amanda's happiness/unhappiness and it's SO boring).

 

[Rove]

In part I agree with Esther how the women on Dallas were written sometimes however when I compare the female characters on both shows I'd argue the ladies on Dallas were written with depth and offered material that viewers could relate to. The female characters on Dynasty were one dimensional and only intended to wear furs, jewels and throw shade at each other...which becomes repetitive.

The very character which put Dynasty on the world map was Alexis and her introduction was a masterstroke but instead of delving deeper into her background and her hatred of Blake the writers quickly married her off to Cecil so she could be on a level playing field with Blake...and afford those furs, jewels and trade barbs with Krystle.

David Jacobs is correct when he refers to Dynasty as having too much clutter however I'd argue where Dynasty lost me was the recast of the Carrington children...horrible.

 

[Daniel Avery]

It's been argued in other places that Dallas could be male-focused because Knots Landing was female-focused.

As Dynasty was typically more invested in style over substance, perhaps The Colbys could have attempted to be more substantial to differentiate itself.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

DYNASTY tried to get Paulsen for Season 6, but wouldn't give him final say in the plotting (i.e., the Pollocks wouldn't die and no one would kill them). It wasn't for another three years that they'd cede to Paulsen's demands once the audience was already gone.

Jacobs said in '85 that DYNASTY needed to focus more on "story" or it was going to be in trouble soon. The execs always seemed immune from criticism, but years later Doug Cramer admitted that (at around the time of the above-posted article) the producers were interested in enhancing the storylines --- perhaps they were listening to this article (???). But DYNASTY just got worse anyway within a few months, doing exactly what Jacobs said they'd do.

Esther says she'd make Miss Ellie a much stronger character if she was running DALLAS. And I agreed (I read the article when TV Guide published it). But I also knew their way of making Miss Ellie "stronger" was to have her get raped and have affairs, maybe having a pool fight with Rebecca over Digger.

Of course Jacobs could have fixed DYNASTY; Esther would have ruined DALLAS (especially if she allowed the Pollocks to run it). Robert McCullough could have run DYNASTY well (but probably would have gotten fired for pulling the same on-set stunts that Eileen Pollock pulled -- even though he'd still manage to do the show itself better).

Both DYNASTY and KNOTS were female-dominated. Yet KNOTS was never "A Woman's Show" in the vile, idiotic way DYNASTY soon became.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

P.S.: Is that Esther in black talking to Krystle at the beginning of the Black & White Ball scene posted above? It's definitely Esther in black talking to Caress in the Masquerade Ball scene months earlier.

 

[Ked]

Esther says she'd make Miss Ellie a much stronger character if she was running DALLAS. And I agreed (I read the article when TV Guide published it). But I also knew their way of making Miss Ellie "stronger" was to have her get raped and have affairs, maybe having a pool fight with Rebecca over Digger.

This reminds me of something I read where Esther said that she was "protective" of the character Kirby... who would be stalked, raped, impregnated against her will, lose her father to suicide, be slut-shamed, victim-blamed and cheated on by her husband, stalked more by her rapist, divorced and humiliated, suffer an extremely painful miscarriage, get engaged to her rapist, be told her mother is alive only to find out that her mother ALSO committed suicide, and then be blackmailed into leaving by her rapist's mother.

Yeah. "Protective."

 

[Ked]

P.S.: Is that Esther in black talking to Krystle at the beginning of the Black & White Ball scene posted above? It's definitely Esther in black talking to Caress in the Masquerade Ball scene months earlier.

Come to think of it, I have no idea what Esther looked like back in those days. I just remember clips of her in later interviews where she looked plumper... and there was that one remark that Joan made regarding an argument she and Esther had, where Esther told her, "You're not Alexis Colby, *I* am!" to which Joan retorted, "If she wanted to be Alexis, she was going to have lose a few pounds!"

 

[Spooky Owl!]

Come to think of it, I have no idea what Esther looked like back in those days. I just remember clips of her in later interviews where she looked plumper... and there was that one remark that Joan made regarding an argument she and Esther had, where Esther told her, "You're not Alexis Colby, *I* am!" to which Joan retorted, "If she wanted to be Alexis, she was going to have lose a few pounds!"

There was a period where Esther trimmed down a little. Didn't last. She'll be 100 in about 18 months, so it worked for her.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

This reminds me of something I read where Esther said that she was "protective" of the character Kirby... who would be stalked, raped, impregnated against her will, lose her father to suicide, be slut-shamed, victim-blamed and cheated on by her husband, stalked more by her rapist, divorced and humiliated, suffer an extremely painful miscarriage, get engaged to her rapist, be told her mother is alive only to find out that her mother ALSO committed suicide, and then be blackmailed into leaving by her rapist's mother.

Yeah. "Protective."

Yes, there's a difference between a character being victimized and simply being A Victim. Obviously, the same thing happened with Krystle.

But Esther had the knack of saying the right things, the things necessary to fix the show, yet nothing was ever done because Eileen Pollock ran it.

 

[lbf522]

I don't think they could have done better on each other's shows. Dallas was written better. Even Some of the actors felt that way. The Ewings and the Carringtons were different in how they were written.

Making Alexis a mogul over night was a turn off for me much like making Cliff coming into the boardroom of Wentworth and acting like he was schooling the board of directors who had been in the company for decades.

Ewing Oil and Denver-Carrington were treated differently. We had storylines regarding Ewing Oil unlike with Denver-Carrington. Southfork being mortgage and Ellie wanting to give Garrison Southfork were great stories. We did not get the same with Denver-Carrington and there were possibilities.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

I don't think they could have done better on each other's shows.

Jacobs was more talented, though, more objective, than Eileen Pollock. Or Aaron Spelling.

Esther was smart and instinctive, and the excellent DYNASTY pilot and earliest incarnation of the series reflected her sensibilities. So if she brought that sensibility to DALLAS on her own, it could have worked. But the people Esther turned DYNASTY over to (the Pollocks, et al) also reflects her weaknesses. Yes, she had the good judgment to go after Paulsen in 1985 and, successfully, in 1988 (when it was too late). But the pandering crap she allowed her various proteges to turn DYNASTY into for years is, ultimately, on Esther -- if not Esther alone.

When Jacobs was running KNOTS, when there was a problem with his writers, he fixed it. And, had Jacobs actually run DALLAS, you would have never seen Donna Reed, dream explanations to wipe out a year of mediocre plotting, or the silly tripe DALLAS got into in its closing years after Paulsen was gone.

And a lesbian mafia got rid of Ed Ledding, a good line producer, at the end of Season 2. And that changed DYNASTY's karma forever.

^^
Almost slender.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

And I tend to assume Esther has a Scorpio Rising. As this photo provides evidence: there is a scorpion, which has risen to the top of her head. No wonder she gets along so well with Paulsen

 

[Ked]

And a lesbian mafia got rid of Ed Ledding, a good line producer, at the end of Season 2. And that changed DYNASTY's karma forever.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

Oh, yeah... Esther, "Mike", Elaine Rich.

Destructive lesbian mafias are infamous in the workplace. But nobody openly talks about it.