"The Most Powerful Woman in the Western United States"

[Snarky Oracle!]

They said this about Alexis once or twice.

Now, if Alexis was so majestically fabulous -- and we assume she was, in an '80s kind of hyperbolic fashion -- why would they phrase it that way? (Which seems to underscore the show's writers' lack of a sense of context: they don't even know how to exaggerate properly).

Who else in the western hemisphere would have been more "powerful" than Alexis?? What woman east of the Mississippi River, or Colorado for that matter, would qualify? Nancy Reagan -- did the writers (or Joan) want to avoid offending her?

Maybe there's some heiress living on a mountain top somewhere in Brazil?

I assume The Queen of England and some Rothschild baroness, and Alexis never quite making it to the Moldavian throne, rules out anything east of the Atlantic.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

I don’t recall that being said about her.
Put Alexis up against season 1 Blake Carrington
Or Cecil Colby, she wouldn’t have stood a chance
Alexis and Joan basically had the same education which ended at 17, listen to Joan talk especially now, not that bright a bulb.
Season 1 Fallon was waaaayyy smarter than her mother and much more interesting bitch character.
It was a shame they got rid of Fallon’s business ambition and stuck her in a hotel when they finally decided to give her a “career” she knew how to handle her father and Cecil.
Cecil knew what she was capable of.
As great season 2 was, all that vanished as she chased after a weirdo
Alexis became untouchable and Blake dumbed down until season 9 but it was way too late
Alexis always needed a man to pull of her schemes which always ended badly anyway

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Even season 1 CW Alexis would have blown the OG away, she was actually one scary bitch
I don’t think even Joan’s Alexis could have used her dead baby as a weapon

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I don’t recall that being said about her.
Put Alexis up against season 1 Blake Carrington
Or Cecil Colby, she wouldn’t have stood a chance
Alexis and Joan basically had the same education which ended at 17, listen to Joan talk especially now, not that bright a bulb.
Season 1 Fallon was waaaayyy smarter than her mother and much more interesting bitch character.
It was a shame they got rid of Fallon’s business ambition and stuck her in a hotel when they finally decided to give her a “career” she knew how to handle her father and Cecil.
Cecil knew what she was capable of.
As great season 2 was, all that vanished as she chased after a weirdo
Alexis became untouchable and Blake dumbed down until season 9 but it was way too late
Alexis always needed a man to pull of her schemes which always ended badly anyway

Caress said it her book.

Joan's intelligence is more intuitive than anything else but comes off as laughably pretentious whenever she tries to sound sophisticated and knowledgeable; we just have to assume Alexis learned things after she took over ColbyCo.

They stuck Fallon behind a counter at tacky La Mirage because they wanted to spin her off to her own show as a hotelier. PSM had no interest in it, which ticked-off Esther Shapiro royally. So Spelling then stole the Shapiros' idea and created HOTEL in 1983, licensing Arthur Hailey's book "so Aaron wouldn't have to pay us" (said Esther & Richard). And that set off a slew of acrimonious lawsuits between Aaron and Esther which went on for years.

Lovely people, n'est-ce pas?


"I am undisputed queen of the Milky Way!"

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

As much as I loved Pamela Sue I can’t imagine a hotel spin off being successful
Fallon and Jeff with a revolving weekly door of guest stars? Fallon belonged on Dynasty and maybe that was the reason why they diluted and
sidetracked the original stories for her character and made her weak in season 3 to get back at the actress, that ended well, you hurt your own series and a great character.
I also couldn’t see real Fallon on the Colby’s as some hausfrau, did fake Fallon even have a job on the Colby’s or did she stay home and cry every episode? I didn’t watch.
John James was the weakest OG link to the series and they gave him his own show
Rewatching after season 2 and Alexis comes off as a drag queen, her “costumes” and her dialogue are ridiculous
I’ll take Alexis in jeans in a small studio scheming any day over what they turned her into, she had real power then

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

As much as I loved Pamela Sue I can’t imagine a hotel spin off being successful
Fallon and Jeff with a revolving weekly door of guest stars? Fallon belonged on Dynasty and maybe that was the reason why they diluted and
sidetracked the original stories for her character and made her weak in season 3 to get back at the actress, that ended well, you hurt your own series and a great character.
I also couldn’t see real Fallon on the Colby’s as some hausfrau, did fake Fallon even have a job on the Colby’s or did she stay home and cry every episode? I didn’t watch.
John James was the weakest OG link to the series and they gave him his own show

PSM wanted to leave DYNASTY in 1982 after Season 2, just as Al Corley did, both seeing -- correctly -- where the writing was headed . So she certainly didn't want to do some dumb, shlocky spin-off.

If only La Mirage had had even a miniature version HOTEL's lobby -- it was a roadside fleabag versus a 5-star fabulosity.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Even La Mirage could have been interesting if we had Fallon screwing her father’s football team each week in a different room.
After that episode where Steven is “killed” her character changes.
Maybe that was when she said no to the Hotel spin off
At La Mirage you could play tennis in your shorts all year round.

 

[Laurie Marr]

Even though Dynasty famously had Washington alumni make cameo appearances on the show, it never evinced a sense that there was a local business community. Contrast this with the glory years of Dallas. When I visited some of the locations last autumn in downtown Dallas, it felt weirdly authentic as though I had walked on the set. The location shooting helped Dallas , of course, but Dynasty seemed to have a nebulous connection with any business community that was even slightly convincing. So: the clumsy tribute about Alexis being the most ‘powerful woman in Western America’ is strangely apt.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

The most powerful woman in the world. How…. How???
Puts out cigarette on the hospital room floor.
Freeze frame.
Hashtag Madame Tussaud’s

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I'd have them call her "The Most Powerful Woman in the Western Hemisphere." One needs to dispense one's braggadocio properly.

Besides, I'm assuming Jacqueline Perrault is The Most Powerful Woman in the Eastern Hemisphere, those Windsors notwithstanding.

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Angela Channing would have eaten her for breakfast. Even Lana Turner knew how to play powerful.
Donna Mills played it well too.
Joan was never a convincing businesswoman
The writing was also to blame. It has to happen organically, we need to see them evolve or have a reason to become one
Joan played a lazy psycho bitch really well though, too bad they got rid of that a couple of episodes into season 3
There was no motivation for Alexis to want to run an oil company or have any clue how to, and nobody showed her how. They just put a tusk desk in the old Cecil office set and put her in it and wrote that she screamed get out of my office.
In reality a woman like her would have let the men run the company while she enjoyed the cash coming in, the men at ColbyCo would not be kind if she overstepped her boundaries, a woman who married the owner while he was dying in a hospital.
If only they kept Lloyd another few months it could have worked, I really believe they only fired him to save money yet they kept pointless bad actor Michael Nader until the end
Even Leona Helmsley worked and knew the hotel business, she was a horrible bitch but actually knew her employees and was fair if you did your job, she had motivation to be in that power position
That Rita Blake scene on the stairs should have been Alexis and Cecil in the middle of season 3, she needed to stay horrible not some “respected member of society and business” you can’t run a board meeting convincingly after shooting at a pregnant women
It also ruined Blake, being outsmarted by his ex wife every season, it got really old.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Angela Channing would have eaten her for breakfast. Even Lana Turner knew how to play powerful.
Donna Mills played it well too.
Joan was never a convincing businesswoman
The writing was also to blame. It has to happen organically, we need to see them evolve or have a reason to become one
Joan played a lazy psycho bitch really well though, too bad they got rid of that a couple of episodes into season 3
There was no motivation for Alexis to want to run an oil company or have any clue how to, and nobody showed her how. They just put a tusk desk in the old Cecil office set and put her in it and wrote that she screamed get out of my office.
In reality a woman like her would have let the men run the company while she enjoyed the cash coming in, the men at ColbyCo would not be kind if she overstepped her boundaries, a woman who married the owner while he was dying in a hospital.
If only they kept Lloyd another few months it could have worked, I really believe they only fired him to save money yet they kept pointless bad actor Michael Nader until the end
Even Leona Helmsley worked and knew the hotel business, she was a horrible bitch but actually knew her employees and was fair if you did your job, she had motivation to be in that power position
That Rita Blake scene on the stairs should have been Alexis and Cecil in the middle of season 3, she needed to stay horrible not some “respected member of society and business” you can’t run a board meeting convincingly after shooting at a pregnant women
It also ruined Blake, being outsmarted by his ex wife every season, it got really old.

Yes, for 7 years we never really saw Alexis "doing business." She just lounged around enjoying the spoils of her non-labor and insulting people --- the show wanting to present her as "a powerful woman" without actually writing it. We basically never got to see her perform in a corporate capacity whatsoever (or even being trained to do so) and this was one of the major flaws of DYNASTY, especially since it became so Alexis-centric so rapidly.

Part of the problem was indeed the script. But a portion of the blame can be placed on the well-padded shoulders of Joan Collins who some have called "a lazy actress" -- oh, she can dish catty put-downs and sashay around in designer gowns effectively enough, but Collins has this tendency to begin dispensing invectives with a certain energy, but she seems to lose focus before completing that sentence... Which renders her a bit of a poseur and Alexis coming off as just "a brazen hussy" and nothing more.

Alexis needed to be a little more. That said, most multi-billionairesses usually inherit her money (many males, too) or get it through outrages divorce settlements (e.g., Jeff Bezos' and Bill Gates' ex-wives). And such was the case with Alexis -- but they tried to pretend otherwise, Alexis posturing that she'd "built" something that was handed to her by a man (a very female way of handling things).

Michael Nader admitted that the only reason he stayed on the show for the rest of its run (instead of being written out as were an endless slew of extraneous characters) was because Joan was "attracted to me in the role" and kept him on the show... Cecil died so quickly because the female producers wanted to see Alexis behind that well-tusked desk, living in her "great apartment" (how gauchely-bourgeois), as soon as possible. At least Alexis admits to herself after Cecil's will is read, that she knows nothing about his business -- but we never see her learning anything or her having learned anything after the fact.

She simply basks in her own stature for nearly a decade -- a female fantasy of unearned wealth and outrageous lifestyle upgrades we're just supposed to believe she's managing from behind the scenes (and behind the camera). And that's one of the things that turned DYNASTY into "A Woman's Show" (said derisively) yet never happened to KNOTS LANDING (a show with just as many prominent women, but was too legitimately character-based to ever be fairly dismissed as such).

Perhaps ironically, one fan observed that Alexis "manipulates like a man -- she just picks up the phone and calls the president" while Abby "manipulates like a woman" (i.e. more subtly and far more cleverly). Although one could argue that "female manipulation" is more interpersonal and less strategic on Wall Street.

Alexis vs. Abby is a metaphor for DYNASTY vs. KNOTS -- one is ridiculously flamboyant but the other actually delivers the goods.


"I'm going to eat all these hors d'oeuvres because I made them all myself -- yes, I did... yes, I did!!"

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

Alexis in season 3 really has nothing to do with ColbyCo.
She flits around most of the season while her newly found son poisons Jeff who’s running the company.
She has her one moment in the boardroom meeting but that’s really it.
Which makes it even more ridiculous that in season 4 she’s this powerhouse in the oil business
They should have at least given Lloyd Bochner some residule checks for having his portrait in the Colby office set until the end of the series. Or at least hire his son on the series or on TC
They got rid of that fake Fallon one quickly enough and I didn’t blame them one bit

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Yes, a huge painting of Cecil should have hung in Alexis' outer office (a portrait with a dark background and not the crap paintings DYNASTY usually gave us) which we saw every time anyone came through her double doors. As it were.



"It's a cook book!"

 

[Lankershim Blasdel 1]

The Colby board surely would have ousted their CEO if it was ever found how much cash in the quarterly business expenditures were spent on wigs.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

The Most Powerful Woman in the Western United States -- or even The Most Powerful Woman in the Western Hemisphere -- must have been quite a come-down after King Galen promised to make Alexis "The Most Powerful Woman in the World" when she was it his hospital bedside.

And they almost offered an explanation for it, involving international banking --- neutrality, like Switzerland used to have, presumably so their crooked customers could hide their criminal assets, and the Moldavian royals could skim their percentages off the top.

Of course, this was never followed through on, because once ABC demanded mid-Season 6 that the Moldavians and Krystle-in-the-attic plots be ceased immediately, the network dictated that DYNASTY never, ever mention Moldavia ever again. And they didn't.

Pity. But the first half of that year kept Krystle locked up for so long, ~10 episodes ("too much misery," said Esther) and Alexis' rescuing of (and scheming with) the King, and Michael's plans for recouping the throne out-whined by Amanda's predictable "why don't you share your thoughts with me??" endless speeches, so we can't really quite blame ABC for becoming so high-handed.

Oh, how great Season 6 could have been -- potentially the Mother of All Soap Seasons and DYNASTY's natural peak: the Colbys in Denver for weeks (instead of minutes) before spinning off, Krystle's kidnapping (if it happened at all) reduced to half-a-dozen episodes (at most) running roughly concurrently to Alexis on the throne (of Moldavia, not her gold-plated toilet in her Denver penthouse), the Colbys attending the masquerade ball (when Ben is unmasked) in possibly a two-episode situation where Stanwyck is run over by Sable (leading to Stanwyck's video will, where she calls Alexis, Sable and Caress "whores, whores, you filthy, filthy whores!!!" for reasons we'd find out later ... I want Sable's mother, Agatha, in a one-episode cameo, to hand her niece, Caress, a packet of stuff with instructions that "you'll know when to use it"), and Claudia accosting Alexis on the street corner (over something Claudia witnessed) leading to Alexis "accidentally" pushing Claudia into the intersection and hit by traffic -- which is why once she sets fire to La Mirage, she's unable to escape after her wheelchair overturns, caught on the carpet in her suite.

Other things, too.

In my head, the Collection from Season 9 is connected to, or threaded through, Moldavia.

But instead of all that, Alexis simply became The Most Flamboyantly Narcissistic Woman in the World... Dex once called her "the Grande Dame of Grande Dames" ... Really, Dex??

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

If Alexis was The Most Powerful Woman in the Western Hemisphere, was Jacqueline Perrault The Most Powerful Woman in The Eastern Hemisphere??

I tend to think Jacqueline would kick Alexis' arse, but that a matter of subjective opinion...


"Okay, Blake, I'll bury my third under the vineyards; Jock will bury his third under Section 40; and you bury yours under your estate so that downstairs daughter of His Majesty's milliner won't get her hands on it --- that cow will just give it to that sleazy C.I.A. artist she winds up sleeping with every time your fly out of Colorado...".

"Alexis, did Roger give that you in exchange for your dreadful nethers ... or can't you remember?"

 

[Laurie Marr]

The late great Quentin Crisp once bemoaned a typically English type of hauteur that bored him: ‘they think that disdain is chic.’ This, sadly, encapsulates Collins’s approach for most of the show.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

The late great Quentin Crisp once bemoaned a typically English type of hauteur that bored him: ‘they think that disdain is chic.’ This, sadly, encapsulates Collins’s approach for most of the show.

Alistair Cooke said something comparable -- although he said it with less purple eye-shadow (something Crisp had more in common with Collins).

Didn't Crisp make a dismissive jab about Princess Diana right after she expired?

Anyway, Joan's ticky-tacky, rinky-dink pretentions of class somehow fit Alexis: Alexis' mysterious, perhaps-shabby, background making the character more interesting than had her presentations of "sophistication" and "taste" been legitimate.

Dilettantes' stories are sometimes more interesting, because of what they're trying to hide.

 

[Laurie Marr]

Alistair Cooke said something comparable -- although he said it with less purple eye-shadow (something Crisp had more in common with Collins).

Didn't Crisp make a dismissive jab about Princess Diana right after she expired?

Anyway, Joan's ticky-tacky, rinky-dink pretentions of class somehow fit Alexis: Alexis' mysterious, perhaps-shabby, background making the character more interesting than had her presentations of "sophistication" and "taste" been legitimate.

Dilettantes' stories are sometimes more interesting, because of what they're trying to hide.

Here’s the old dear on Diana: ‘I always thought Diana was such trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana so she knew the racket. She knew that royal marriages have nothing to do with love. You marry a man and you stand beside him on public occasions and you wave and for that you never have a financial worry until the day you die.’