Reviving a 'Dynasty'

"Dynasty" was a really good bad show for a while.

Hey, I can remember getting together with a bunch of my college friends — male and female — to watch the show back in the early '80s. We'd laugh, we'd yell at the TV, we'd cheer for Krystle, we'd hiss at Alexis.

It was the ultimate guilty pleasure. "Dynasty" was full of corporate battles and murders and kidnappings and adultery and evil twins and aliens. It was addictive while going way over the top at being campy, ridiculous, fluffy entertainment that wallowed in excess. How could you not love it when Krystle and Alexis would go at it in one of those fabulous catfights?

CBS (having apparently run out of reunions for its own shows) brings together much of the primary cast of the 1981-89 ABC hit tonight for the hourlong "Dynasty Reunion: Catfights & Caviar" (9 p.m., Ch. 2).

Not that the series either started or ended well. When "Dynasty" premiered in January 1981, it was a total ripoff of CBS's "Dallas." Its original title was "Oil" and Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) was meant to be a J.R. Ewing clone — an oilman who would do whatever he had to do to win at business.

And in his personal life as well. He was engaged to his former secretary, the sweet Krystle (Linda Evans), and he was the bad guy to good guy Matthew Blaisdel (Bo Hopkins ) — Krystle's ex-beau.

Eventually, Blake became both hero and good guy, leaving viewers who caught those first 15 episodes to forget that he once raped Krystle.

The show didn't really catch fire and catch on until the second season, when Joan Collins joined the cast as Blake's evil ex-wife, Alexis. For the next four seasons, "Dynasty" was a dizzying carousel of improbable soap twists, fights, love, wealth, power and fashion. It was the excessive Reagan '80s, and nothing on TV wallowed in excess more than "Dynasty."

"Dynasty" became so much a part of the pop culture that a 1983 episode featured cameo appearances by former President and Mrs. Ford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (playing themselves, of course).

Everything was great (dumb but great) pretty much right up until the infamous Moldavian Massacre — the May 1985 season finale in which most of the cast was gunned down by terrorists at the royal wedding of Blake and Alexis' daughter, Amanda (Catherine Oxenberg) to Prince Michael (Michael Praed).