Should Rita have been more evil?

[Werewillie Oleson]

What did you like about season 6?

 

[Alexis]

There is a lot I like about season 6, even love about season 6. I love Caress and Ben. I love Alexis and Ben's lies and plotting to destroy Blake. Ben's greed and his devilishness. I love how season 6 looks. I love especially how Alexis looks in the second half of the season. I love that she finally reaches her goal, however briefly, of taking the mansion. I love the Cobys and Zack Powers showing up.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

What did you like about season 6?

I think people sense that Season 6 could and should have been the series' natural peak somehow. I wanted more Colbys in the earlier part of the season, with Krystle in the attic concurrent to the three or four episodes mid-year that Alexis was on the Moldavian throne before a reverse-reverse coup sent everybody back to Denver, tails between legs, re-converging in their usual positions. Caress appears.

Of course, this mostly didn't happen. But it should've.

Anyway, if you did the too-soapy Rita story at all, it needed to be four weeks instead of 11 (except for a few scenes where you see Rita, Sammy Jo, and that seedy director plotting the thing out).

 

[Alexis]

I am just wondering now. Did they grey Christopher Casenove's hair at the sides to age him like they did with Stephanie Beacham?

 

[GillesDenver]

Yes, I believe so. His character was also much older than he was (50 rather than 40).

 

[Werewillie Oleson]

I love Alexis and Ben's lies and plotting to destroy Blake

But it looked kinda cheesy, didn't it?

 

[Alexis]

But it looked kinda cheesy, didn't it?

I'd just witnessed a royal wedding massacre in a fictional kingdom where a massacre didn't really happen. As well as Alexis' murder trial where she has ludicrous outbursts in court that would not stand in any court. As well as a reveal that Alexis wasn't a killer that it was Neil McVain in drag. So, well, no... Not that cheesy. It was big bold campy soap opera. That's what Dynasty was serving me at that time. And I did love it.

 

[Werewillie Oleson]

Wild accusations and false testimonies in court regarding some out of the blue tragedy from the past...it should have looked like something big but somehow it didn't.
But then again, the only time the Tom Carrington character worked for me was in the nazi treasure storyline.

 

[Alexis]

Wild accusations and false testimonies in court regarding some out of the blue tragedy from the past...it should have looked like something big but somehow it didn't.
But then again, the only time the Tom Carrington character worked for me was in the nazi treasure storyline.

In the scheme of things on DYNASTY it wasn't that cheesy. That's all I am saying. Think about what had gone before.

 

[Michael Torrance]

In the scheme of things on DYNASTY it wasn't that cheesy. That's all I am saying. Think about what had gone before.

It was about whether Blake lied to his father to influence him against Ben. It was a civil suit, not a criminal one, and what transpired (testimonies from people at the field, for instance) did not seem cheesy to me. It was NOT just Ben and Alexis with the story. There was more meat to their lie.

 

[Werewillie Oleson]

I don't dislike those plotlines, but I don't find it more interesting than Sammy Jo's scheme.
Sammy Jo is more fun to watch than the campy, moustache-twirling* Ben Carrington.

*ironically, an image that was mocked by the one and only Lady Ashley in the previous season.

 

[Alexis]

I don't dislike those plotlines, but I don't find it more interesting than Sammy Jo's scheme.
Sammy Jo is more fun to watch than the campy, moustache-twirling* Ben Carrington.

*ironically, an image that was mocked by the one and only Lady Ashley in the previous season.

Well maybe, but Linda Evans being exasperated in an attic for 11 episodes is certainly less fun that both of those things. I don't hate the very idea of the Rita plot, it's just not very cleverly done and it needed to be at least half the length it was.

 

[tommie]

Well maybe, but Linda Evans being exasperated in an attic for 11 episodes is certainly less fun that both of those things. I don't hate the very idea of the Rita plot, it's just not very cleverly done and it needed to be at least half the length it was.

Like @GillesDenver pointed out, but the biggest issue with the Rita plot was that it became too repetitive quickly - there's only so many ways you can show the same thing over and over again (Rita trying to fool the Carringtons / Krystle trying to escape but being stopped by something). I remember when I watched the Karen gets kidnapped plot on Knots Landing and even though that one lasted five episodes, they still could've cut out maybe two episodes from that plot! If you're going to have a character held captive for a longer period of time you might as well leave them off screen because there's really not any story to tell about it besides the fact that they're captured and can't escape.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

Or maybe they could just bring in Joanna Cassidy to play both Rita at the mansion and Krystle in the attic, switching off filming duties with Linda Evans every-other-scene, to create an air of constant disorientation for the audience.

And once Krystle is freed and Rita drives over the cliff up on Scorpio Curve, we're never entirely sure who is who -- especially once Krystle is back in the mansion, safe and sound, Cassiday continues to appear here-and-there as Krystle every few scenes, without explanation, eventually fading away as Linda gradually re-takes the role full time.

And Pam nods off a thousand miles away in Texas.

 

[Ked]

The other night at work, I suddenly imagined a remake of the scene where Alexis playfully confronts "Krystle" at a boutique about running into her last night with "your handsome doctor."

Rita has no idea what Alexis is talking about and casually dismisses her as a "crazy"... until Alexis starts describing what the "doctor" looked like, and suddenly Rita realizes what's going on.

Rita: (slipping into her Southern accent) "You're lying! You're lying! Joel wouldn't cheat on me! He wouldn't!"

Alexis: "...Wh... what are you-? Hah! Don't try to confuse me to cover up your sordid little affair, Krystle! I saw the whole thing. You and that doctor - if he even is one - were dancing the night away, you couldn't keep your adulterous hands off each other!"

Rita: (aggressively steps forward) "He had his hands all over her?! What do you mean by that?! You say they were dancin'?! Were they holdin' hands?! Kissin'?! Tell me everything, damn it! TELL ME!"

Alexis: (backing away, flabbergasted) "Wh... why, Krystle, I... you..."

Rita: (grabs Alexis and starts shaking her) "Tell me everything you saw, you bitch! Tell me everything! TELL ME!"

Alexis: (alarmed and genuinely frightened) "LET GO OF ME!" (breaks free and runs for the door) "You're crazy! You're absolutely crazy! Out of your mind!" (exits)

Rita: (stands shaking and heaving enraged breaths, ignoring the shocked salespeople standing around, while the background music swells dramatically)

 

[Piggyrella Sanderson]

I think that Rita should have sounded and acted like Faye Dunaway (upon Crawford´s wicked spell) : someone aloof who thinks is above everybody and is the greatest star of all. Only that this version would have axed the Abrigore guy and torment little Kweethtina to death...

"My name is Rita and I love Margaritas..."​

 

[Spooky Owl!]

I was never on board with the Rita story (one of the EMPIRE producers later said, "once you go for the evil twin, you've lost your way" -- little did she know that their evil twin would turn out to be Triple Gemini, the twins, Juicy Smollay) and Krystle's incarceration should never have happened for 11 episodes.

And I've complained for 40 years that one of the problems of the plotline is that Linda Evans supposedly delivers her lines as Rita the very same way she did as Krystle.

But, in retrospect, that simply isn't true... And one of the reasons I believed it was true was that we had been dubbing episodes of DYNASTY with fake, satirical dialogue where the characters were all coprophagic, incestuous perverts and exaggerated versions of their actual selves. And in so doing, we dubbed Krystle with a moany, boorish, childish, spoiled voice which, as it turned out, prognosticated Rita almost exactly. (Much as I anticipated the major plot points from Season 9 two years in advance, only @Willie Oleson doesn't believe me).

Today, I'm forced to concede that Linda's delivery as Rita is in fact quite different from Krystle. She gets to be funny and neurotic as Rita in a way Krystle had only unintentionally become by this point in the series -- and that's the problem: Krystle had long-become so vapid and flimsy, either in the writing for her, or Linda's disheartened performance ("stultified," as Gordon Thomson described her feeling on the show as DYNASTY proceeded), that Linda is, in a way, more present, more in-her-body, as she plays Rita than Linda had been as Krystle for years.

Obviously, that should never have happened. And the fact that the Rita story was so stupid didn't help. But better to see Rita faking it at the mansion (I still think they should have given her a fluffy, pixy wig) than to suffer through Krystle's endless, whiney scenes at Delta Rho, getting into a bathtub and pleading with Georga Hamilton, her ineffectual attempts to escape that attic.

That said, if somebody had simply asked Linda to lower the pitch of her voice, as she did in the first couple of seasons, as Krystle, the character might have been sustained and even developed a little better than she did. But no one on the set seemed to be concerned with any of that, Eileen Pollock probably preferred Krystle wimpy, and Linda Evans was apparently too exhausted with the deleterious spiral of Krystle and the program surrounding her, to be jarred out of her by-now automated, almost clinically-depressed, performance.

 

[Daniel Avery]

There are very few instances I can recall where the invention of a dual role for an actor came organically from the established plot--it was almost always a "stunt". In daytime soaps there was usually an agreement of sorts between actor and producer to create the "dual role" to please a bored actor who wants to branch out, to do more than they already do (and sometimes just to get an Emmy). The daytime actor who campaigns to have a dual role will feel obligated to take advantage of the opportunity by crafting the character and making more of it than might be on the page, but if an actor is just handed this material and told Make the best of it, they likely won't be as dedicated to the situation. There are examples where actors hated playing that dual role and subtly sabotaged the plot by not giving their all to the challenge.

In daytime, though, they have the luxury of time---as much as five hours per week to write/play all the various differences between the two roles. Dynasty had no such time available. I agree they didn't do enough to differentiate Rita from Krystle, but the plot was already long enough without spending time forcing us to get to know Rita as a person rather than a tool in a plotline.