Every Tuesday we will jump on board. Cheers!
Redartz: Sorry to interrupt this regularly scheduled "Follow the Leader", but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up: The CW is offering "Crisis on Earth-X" this week. A mammoth crossover with Supergirl, Flash, Arrow and Legends. First two hours were last night, climactic two hours tonight. More heroes and villains than you can shake a remote at! Great fun; a word to the wise. And now, back to your topic...
21 comments:
Discuss those two soap-opera juggernauts, Dallas and Dynasty (and their spin-offs, Knots Landing and The Colbys). Did you care who shot JR ? Were you in awe of Joan Collins' shoulderpads ?
I had zero interest in Dallas till the summer of 1980 when the BBC re-ran the first two seasons on a daily schedule ending with the shooting of JR - it was the first time I'd watched Dallas and I got completely hooked! But I gave up on the series after they brought back Bobby Ewing from the dead in the most infamous shower scene since Psycho - I felt it was an insult to my intelligence so I stopped watching.
I watched Dynasty too even though it was consistently awful - Joan Collins' wooden acting was perfect for the show (they'd wanted Sophia Loren but she said no). The only thing I can recall about the Dynasty spin-off, The Colbys, is the final episode which ended with Fallon Colby encountering a UFO exactly like the one in Close Encouters Of The Third Kind!
Just two thoughts about Dallas:
1) Why did they all live together in the same house ? Why didn't JR and Bobby have their own houses ? It seems pointless being mega-rich if you still have to live with your mother!
2) There's a scene from Dallas where Lucy Ewing (played by Charlene Tilton who was called "The Poison Dwarf" by the British tabloid press) is taken down to the Gulf of Mexico and she runs along the shore in great excitement because she's never seen the sea before....hold on a minute - she's never seen the sea ???? Texas is the same size as France and I'm sure most French people have seen the sea. It seemed a bit odd.
Greetings, I have confirmed with my French wife that both Dallas and dynasty were wildly popular in France. However like in the United States, "everyone "agreed that the shows were not well acted , Nor were the plots very deep, which explained the wild popularity.
My parents watched Dallas (and later Knots Landing), but I never really got into either show ... although I always thought Donna Mills was the sexiest woman on TV.
I did watch Dynasty for a few years, but after a while it got too repetitive and I gave up on it.
@Colin: That does seem weird, especially since Texas is on the gulf Coast and some places (Brownsville, Corpus Christi) are pretty well-known for their beaches. You'd thin Lucy would've made it down there at least once.
The first two parts of the CW crossover were great; I hope they pull off the ending.
Colin J- afraid I never watched either show, not even once. No nighttime soaps, except the wonderful satirical sitcom "Soap". Only daytime soap I ever watched was "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman". Note that both those shows accented the humor...
Everyone around here watched Dallas and Dynasty around here. I had a roommate who watched both of them faithfully. They were all the rage here. I didn't actually watch them that much. Dallas aired on Fridays, which was not a big TV watching night for me at that age. Dynasty didn't really fire me up that much.
My older brother watched Dallas for a time, and while I was initially indifferent, that whole 'who shot JR?' thing got me intrigued and then I watched it for about 2 seasons after that. Then I got really hooked on another night-time soap, Falcon Crest (starring the first Mrs. Reagan!) and watched that for about 3 or so seasons. Apparently watching night-time soaps was some kind of preteen/early teen phase, because by about the end of my sophomore year of high school I'd stopped watching them - and I've never had any interest and revisiting them. And I *never* watched a single minute of Dynasty, even though it was pretty popular among a lot of the kids in my HS.
Since Redartz brought it up, I loved Soap - most of which I watched in syndication.
My mother got hooked on soaps by her grandmother and I got it from her, so we watched Dallas pretty regularly until after we found out who shot J.R. which we thought was kind of a let down. Oddly, my girlfriend is from Romania and she watched Dallas with her grandmother there during the '80s before the fall of communism because Ceaucescu thought it properly displayed the darkness of capitalism. Cliff Barnes (or "Criff" as her grandmother used to pronounce his name) became a popular byword for fecklessness at that time there, I'm told.
As Dallas waned, some cousins of mine hipped us to Dynasty which took the place of Southfork as a soap staple for some time. We both still love a good night-time soap and so "Empire" is a DVR staple currently.
Regardless of France loving D & D (and Jerry Lewis, lol) I never watched either, nor any soaps. But, I had some fraternity brothers who dialed in every Friday night. And, my senior year in college, we put a TV in our room and it was a daily ritual for co-eds to come by at 14:00 local time and watch General Hospital. I found the plots to be rather plodding... like 3 steps fwd and 1 back. But as a reader of Golden Age comics, I'm not in a position to complain about plot depth, lol.
Red - you are really raking my memory with the Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. OMG.. if I had a nickel for each time I heard someone say that, lol!
From Terry in Virginia:
I found those nighttime soap shows pretty air-headed. On the other hand, I loved Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. That was a very off-the-wall Norman Lear production that aired 4 nights a week at 11:00 p.m. on the West Coast. It was a comedy with no laugh track and very experimental in its own way. Worth checking out if you can find it anywhere.
For prime time during the same era, Hill Street Blues was (and remains) one of the best dramas ever to air on network television. I remember being disappointed when Dallas won a "Best Drama" Emmy over Hill Street. Sigh...
I watched both Dallas and Dynasty and particularly the latter back in the 80s and I know the basic characters, but for the life of me I cannot remember a single real plot point other than the “who shot J.R.” thing. Nothing sticks.
Now ask me some minutia about Peter Parker and Deb Whitman’s relationship in comics and I’d probably have at least a rough idea.
Thanks for the comments.
By the way, over here we pronounce Dynasty as Dinasty, not Die-nasty :)
And we also had SOAP but I only saw a few episodes.
Just a correction to Terry's comment about Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: on the west coast it aired at 11:30 p.m., right after the 11:00 nightly news.
I have to say, Martinex, I can relate to your point about not remembering much of those shows. Like I said, I watched Dallas pretty regularly for a while, and also Falcon Crest, and while I can recall the names of most of the main characters and the general setting (Dallas was centered around a family of filthy rich oil barons, Falcon Crest around a family of wealthy vineyard owners north of San Francisco, and one character owned a newspaper in SF), I couldn't recount a single actual story-line from either, except, of course, I know who shot JR. Most of what I remember is just some individual scenes or bits of dialogue.
On the other hand, again like Martinex, I can often recall quite a few details about stories, plots, characters, dialogue, etc. from comics I haven't read for decades. So I think those night-time, and probably day-time, soaps are the real disposable entertainment, rather than the stuff like comics and cartoons, for example, that usually got labeled as such.
Who did shoot JR? Man, was that question asked a billion times or what? Given I never watched Dallas I'm not surprised I don't know but given a consensus that no one really remembers much of Dallas, do any of you recall? ( No fair googling lol!)
Charlie, the character who shot JR was played by Mary Crosby, daughter of Bing - that much I genuinely remembered but I admit I had to google Mary Crosby to recall who she actually played in Dallas...it was Kristin (sister of JR's wife, Sue-Ellen). But I can't remember why she shot JR.
I never got interested in either show, but I watched a few of the "who shot JR" era episodes, quit when the "big reveal" was disappointing.
@Colin Jones:The "Poison Dwarf" story made me laugh, thanks for that!
I was a regular watcher of Dallas when it first came on. Can't recall when I stopped watching. Before the "Who Shot JR" stuff. Dynasty has been rebooted and is currently showing on the CW network here in America. On that subject I will quote one of my favorite Proverbs:
"As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly."
About the 4 part crossover:
I have become a fan of the CW super hero shows. I'm about a season to a season and a half behind on most of the shows except Arrow. I'm current on that one but missed the first three seasons.
Flash review: It's the Classic Star Trek episode where there's evil doppelgangers for all the good guys!!! I love it!!!
Spoiler Alert: Kara 'floats' in her sleep. "The nice lady sleeps above her covers. FOUR FEET above her covers!!!"
Spoiler Alert Dos: Two words "Greased Lightning" in January!!! Correction: "Black Lightning" in January...
(We were little boys, we were little girls
It's nine o'clock, don't try to turn it off
Cowered in a hole, ope your mouth
Did we miss anything, did we miss anything
Did we miss anything, did we miss anything
Catapult (catapult), catapult
Catapult (catapult), catapult
We were little boys, we were little girls
It's nine o'clock, don't try to turn it off
Cowered in a hole, ope your mouth
We in step, in hand, your mother remembers this
Hear the howl of the rope, a question
Did we miss anything, did we miss anything
Did we miss anything, did we miss anything
Catapult (catapult), catapult
Catapult (catapult), catapult
March could be darker, March could be darker
Catapult (catapult), catapult
Catapult (catapult), catapult
We were little boys, we were little girls
It's nine o'clock, don't try to turn it off
Cowered in a hole, open your mouth
We in step, in hand, your mother remembers this
Hear the howl of the rope, a question
Did we miss anything, did we miss anything
Did we miss anything, did we miss anything
Catapult (catapult), catapult
Catapult (catapult), catapult).
PS: Caught the ending. Best CW four part crossover EVER...
Prowl- I couldn't agree more. "Crisis on Earth X" set a new standard for televised comic crossovers. A very high standard. This graying geek is still stoked about it...
I'm late to the party here in no small part because i've been off watching Crisis On Earth-X aka the other Justice League movie. I do love how they treated is as a single cohesive movie, down to replacing the usual series titles with the event title.
But, turns out it doesn't matter that i'm late. I never watched any of the Dallas/Dynasty shows. I've been sitting here trying to remember what aired opposite them to get a clue what we were watching instead, but without success. Probably a lot of short lived shows that died in the opposing time slots.
Charlie, on the question of who shot JR: to the best of my memory (no googling!), his sister-in-law, Kristin (played by Mary Crosby - which I wouldn't have remembered, thanks, Colin!), shot him in the aftermath of an affair that ended badly. She felt jilted or something like that. A plot point that emerged in the show later, in the next season, after that actress was no longer a cast-member, was that she had been pregnant and in fact gave birth to their child, who was tracked down by JR's younger brother, the Man from Atlantis, and somehow he ended up adopting him. I'm not entirely sure why he did that - maybe because he and his wife (the stunning Victoria Principal) couldn't have a kid of their own?
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