Throw off your cares and woes! Banish all thoughts of the forthcoming TrumpoBrexalypse and rejoice! The greatest prophylactic against despair you could ever hope for has emerged: the Carringtons and the Colbys are back in town. Yes! Let your hearts swell as majestically as the theme music did during its nine-season pomp – Dynasty is being rebooted.
Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are to executive produce it – as much, I hope, for Savage’s quintessentially 80s-style name as for their soapy bona fides as the creators of The OC – and it will be broadcast by the CW network. In view of how important this is to the gaiety of nations and the survival of our collective mental health, I offer a few tips on how not to ruin Dynasty.
Don’t overthink it
The Shapiros never did. Producer Aaron Spelling never did. That’s how you end up with something as brilliant as a character called Dex Dexter, whose sole defining feature was that he always delivered his lines standing at a 45-degree angle to his scene partner.
The original creators simply licked a metaphorical finger, found which way the wind was blowing, added some diamond necklaces, horses and oil and went with it. And if they needed to change direction, they pushed someone down the stairs, or into a pond or massacred everyone at a wedding. If you thought Game of Thrones was the first to that, you’re too young to be reading this.
Find your Joan Collins
Dynasty only took off after Collins arrived as Alexis (“Oh my God!” gasped Fallon, “That’s my mother!”), the world’s greatest – well, everything. Bitch, nemesis, businesswoman, style icon. Everything. (Apart from mother – sorry, Fallon.) Find someone who can do that. I’ll give you a hint – it’s Joan Collins. Get Joan Collins. She’s still working. She is still everything. Get Joan Collins.
Don’t mess with the iconography
Alexis’s makeup became Joan Collins’ makeup, which now has basically become Joan Collins. So, you really do need her. I really cannot stress this enough.
If not, you’ll just have to paint her on to Leighton Meester, add a big hat and hope for the best. Good luck. It won’t work.
Write straight and play camp
Or vice versa. But take it seriously.
And take it to excess
We’re not here for nuance. Take everything too far. Especially the plot. We want lots of it. More than you could believe possible. Rule of thumb – do not let 20 minutes pass without someone being thrown from a horse, developing amnesia, finding themselves in a burning cabin or unconscious atop a mountain, or revealing themselves to be Blake’s illegitimate half son by his step cousin who is currently sleeping with the chauffeur and setting fire to log cabins in his spare time.
But, remember: excess does not mean detail. Make sure all heart transplants, births or bullet-removal operations are conducted with slightly less attention to physical and medical accuracy than is observed in the gorilla-brain switching scene in Young Frankenstein.
Follow the Fallon Rule
Established when Pamela Sue Martin left at the end of season four, this rule states that if any actor wants to leave, let ’em. Apart from Joan Collins. Simply replace them with another actor without explanation. Martin came back as Emma Samms. Not one viewer cared.
Heather Locklear
Get her, too. Also, animatronic John Forsyth. Then you’re golden.
