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Should Rita have been more evil?
- Thread starter Spooky Owl!
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- 6
It seems obvious in hindsight that Rita was out of her depth when it came to being a doppelganger. They could fix her nose and bleach her hair, but without Joel in the same house to pull the strings, she couldn't out-evil anybody. She was no Sable, trying to gaslight Barbara Stanwyck
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I like the idea that we don't see or even know about Rita until Krystle and Daniel run into her in NYC at Sammy Jo's apartment. I want that to be her first appearance, unexplained until early in Season 6.
Was this an actual scene on Dynasty or was it cut? I don't remember it.
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Yes, late Season 5. I always forget about it, too, but I think I'd like it as the first time we see Rita, with no explanation for weeks.
Linda Evans hated that storyline which I can understand. I know doppleganger storylines are a part of soaps and dramas but for me, I have never cared for them. We are to believe that some person can be made to look like you and impersonate you and your loved ones, friends, etc will not know anything is strange? That this goes on for weeks.
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The problem with Rita is that, once she is in the mansion, the only thing she did was trying to avoid Blake's "passion". It went on and on from several episodes. It's not until she tried to kill blake that the story changed (and worked).
Instead of doing all that scenes that made Rita a fool and Blake a sex addict (strangely in season 5, during the Dankel Reece's storyline, he did not have sex with Krystle for weeks and that did not seem to matter to him...), there should have been more variety in the nature of the scenes. Also, Blake should have gradually realized that something was strange with Rita (and not because she did not want to sleep with him!!) before she tried to kill him.
Instead of doing all that scenes that made Rita a fool and Blake a sex addict (strangely in season 5, during the Dankel Reece's storyline, he did not have sex with Krystle for weeks and that did not seem to matter to him...), there should have been more variety in the nature of the scenes. Also, Blake should have gradually realized that something was strange with Rita (and not because she did not want to sleep with him!!) before she tried to kill him.
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I think that's one of the main issues with the storyline - there was little to no variation to the scenes, you had Blake at the mansion lustin' for lovin' and Joel just being creepy towards Krystle for weeks. It was ultimately written too daytime soap-ish where they often have to stall some storylines since they have to produce five episodes a week, but on the other hand they usually have such large casts with multiple storylines usually moving the pace along nicely when they have to put the pause button on one storyline. I feel lucky that I watched it in daily reruns so it never bothered me that much, but I can imagine those who watched it weekly in the original runs must've been throwing stuff at the television after a few weeks (or turning off the television set as we saw going by the ratings).
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God knows.
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I have never cared for them either. IF they had to do a storyline where Evans plays someone else, it would have been better if she has some mini-stroke while back home to look for mementos of her sister Iris and forgets who she is. She could have hitched a ride with another woman and do a Thelma and Louise kind of thing. She could be a con-woman pretending to be a psychic in some desert town. She could be running a brothel after she realizes she has enough expensive jewelry on her to finance the takeover. Then someone like Joel could have seen her and realized who she is and tried to take advantage of it. And the whole thing should still have taken half the episodes.
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They say when you go for the evil twin your show has lost its way.
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A twin would have been somewhat believable. Not a f*cking stranger off the street.
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Krystle and Rita had different taste in men. I know that. 
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Krystle and Rita had different taste in men. I know that.
Yes, as Krystle liked a controlling man who thought his way was better and Rita liked a controlling man who thought his way was better. Ah, wait...
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She called LB a little creep.
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She called LB a little creep.
She had her moments, I guess.
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I don't know which writer came up with it. It wasn't the best idea but it could have worked if cleverly done. However what they did was just insultingly stupid and lazy. People often say that the Pollocks took their ideas from Daytime and made them bigger and better. Well I don't know. On Daytime you can do something like an evil twin plot because you have weeks to set up a plot, get the viewer on your side and then really launch into it. Seeing a new episode every day, you can move slowly, other plots bubbling all at the same time. In Primetime you do not have that luxury so not everything that is a good idea in Daytime soaps works for primetime.
Saying that if they were going to do a Krystle swop they would have needed to make it a much shorter plot with a basis of it actually achieving something. The plot has to ultimately accomplish something. Not just be a Krystle swop for that reason. What they should have done was have Blake drugged a little prior to the switch. Then he would be more susceptible to it and it would be easier to believe that he thought Rita was his wife. If Blake is somehow incapacitated, and not at work for a while it would have been more believable. Then Rita would assume Krystle's place and she would look after Blake at home with the help of Dr Abrigore. Limiting guests to the house to see him. Blake would mostly just be sedated, Rita wouldn't even sleep in the same bed as him. They could have had Rita and Joel swindle small amounts of cash out of Blake and make off with it as well as paintings and Jewellery from the mansion. Have Blake sign cheques etc. Have them get away with a fair amount of money but still keep it small time. Krystle still locked at Delta Roe and Sammy Jo being an accomplice. Maybe one who doesn't even get found out, after she puts a stop to the mad plan when she fears that Rita and Joel are going too far and that either Blake or Krystle or even Krystina were in real danger.
Saying that if they were going to do a Krystle swop they would have needed to make it a much shorter plot with a basis of it actually achieving something. The plot has to ultimately accomplish something. Not just be a Krystle swop for that reason. What they should have done was have Blake drugged a little prior to the switch. Then he would be more susceptible to it and it would be easier to believe that he thought Rita was his wife. If Blake is somehow incapacitated, and not at work for a while it would have been more believable. Then Rita would assume Krystle's place and she would look after Blake at home with the help of Dr Abrigore. Limiting guests to the house to see him. Blake would mostly just be sedated, Rita wouldn't even sleep in the same bed as him. They could have had Rita and Joel swindle small amounts of cash out of Blake and make off with it as well as paintings and Jewellery from the mansion. Have Blake sign cheques etc. Have them get away with a fair amount of money but still keep it small time. Krystle still locked at Delta Roe and Sammy Jo being an accomplice. Maybe one who doesn't even get found out, after she puts a stop to the mad plan when she fears that Rita and Joel are going too far and that either Blake or Krystle or even Krystina were in real danger.
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I don't know if that is true. By their own interviews, the Pollocks eventually went against everything they had done on daytime (tightly interwoven arcs of many stories) and even what they were hired to do--and did-- for DYNASTY in season 2. Sometime in season 4, they really thought the surprise plotting was their own rediscovery of the plot wheel, and they run with it...nowhere fast.
And that is where it falls flat from the get-go. On The Bold and the Beautiful, Scott Clifton as Liam developed amnesia and became a different man who fell in love with his nemesis Quinn. Through the trite soap trope, Quinn finally saw what women had seen in Liam, and Liam saw a side of Quinnn nobody else, her son included, had. Scott Clifton recently cited it as his favorite storyline on the show, and in fact many fans of the show became fans of the unlikely couple (Youtube has tons of videos) whereas before they were always enemies.
Krystle's character had stopped developing for years. The diagnosis, that something had to change, was correct. But the solution was snake oil rather than real medicine.
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Yes that would have been more interesting than the full stop we got.
And then it could have lingered because someone is going to piece the evidence together, little by little.
But that would happen after Rita and Joel were gone.
But in a season where nothing seems particularly brilliant I honestly don't see why this is such an awful storyline.
Like I said before I've always watched it as a lot of trouble caused by Sammy Jo. I really like the roadhouse scene with Krystle, Joel, Dex and Alexis.
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Because this IS the whole season 6A. That and King Galen.
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Well a lot of the plots are just crappy daytime attempts done poorly in primetime. The two Krystle's is an example of that. Poison paint seems very early '80s daytime soap. I also felt like the fascination with incest and the times they flirted with that came from daytime. However, just like an evil twin plot such plots need to play out slowly, and both characters have to be unaware at all of any relation when whatever flirting occurs. Dynast's efforts at this always felt a bit sick, cheap and really forced. Both Adam and Fallon and later the even worse Leslie and Clay. A lot of the stilted dialogue reminds me of when a daytime soap is winding down one big story and setting up a whole other new one and for a period you will get two actors walking in on each other and repeating the same crap that they have already said to each other 100 times already. It's like stalling for time until the next plot happens.