“Dynasty” serves up drama along with dinner this week as the Carringtons celebrate Thanksgiving.
While the kitchen staff fret about the food and crack jokes about kook balloons Claudia shooting the bird last year (continuity alert #1!), Fallon is dealing with an extra helping of drama thanks to the two men in her life. On the Culhane side of things, in addition to their recent tension, she’s also dismayed to learn he hasn’t told his disapproving mother Luella about their engagement. As for Liam, when Fallon contrives a run-in with him at the former Carrington Atlantic offices, he lays it on the line – he wants to be with her, but he’s “done being [her] backup.” So he challenges her to go the whole weekend without thinking about him and their kiss, and if she can’t, to accompany him on an international getaway he’s about to set off on.
Trying to push Liam’s love ultimatum to the back of her mind, Fallon makes it her mission to win over Luella. She does so in typical Fallon fashion, by basically bribing the pastor at the church where the Culhanes normally volunteer on Thanksgiving (continuity alert #2!) with a new roof and inviting the congregation to the manor for dinner. But Luella isn’t willing to even try. Unfortunately for her, her first attempt at storming out is dashed by a literal storm – a tornado warning that forces everyone to stay put at Casa Carrington. Things only get worse – Luella overhears Alexis calling the parishioners “vagrants,” Fallon keeps popping pills to starve off her storm phobia, Culhane’s sister Evie cracks wise about the tense situation – and finally spills over into a fight between Fallon and Culhane. But they’ve only started digging in when the storm breaks a window, sending a cow-shaped creamer airborne, knocking Fallon in the head.
This sends Fallon into a “The Wizard of Oz”-inspired dream sequence. It’s kinda silly; this show’s budget must be shoestring because the whole thing takes place at the manor and the special effects are pretty goofy. But there are some cute touches – Alexis and Cristal, as witches, crossing wands. Fallon using champagne to get Culhane-as-Tin Man moving. Sam rocking out in his Cowardly Lion getup. The boys’ faces when the wizard turns out to be Fallon and she kisses herself. Anyway, the whole point of the dream is to make Fallon face up to the “hard choice” she needs to make between her men. Once she’s awake, and after some inadvertent advice from Alexis, she calls Liam and admits she did think about him…but that it’s still time to say good-bye, because what she has with Culhane is real. While this reads like the end of this love triangle, I can’t imagine it actually is, given we see Culhane overhearing the call, his face inscrutable. Plus, the Ada Stone secret still needs to go boom.
Meanwhile, with the annual football game (continuity alert #3!) a washout thanks to the storm and all the other changes the Carringtons have gone through in the last year, Blake is eager to do something different this Thanksgiving, namely the new Cristal. He insists, though, that he wants to get to know her better before they sleep together. But flitting around, interfering with their alone time, is Alexis. She’s bought into the psychic’s prediction from last week about Blake’s love and Blake’s life and – convinced Cristal is a threat on both counts – has started following him around like a “fairy godmother of death prevention.”
There appears to be more severe clouds on the horizon, though, when Cristal figures out – via a phone call with a former colleague about their severance packages and a slip by Anders – that Blake is the one who bought and closed her clinic in Arizona. But when she confronts him, he comes clean, and she’s much less mad about it than I thought she would be. She does insist that, if it’s going to work between them, he needs to “let [her] know [him] completely.” Blake counters that he doesn’t want to wait for what he wants…and then he freakin’ proposes to her! It could just be the show racing to get back to an outsider Cristal-as-Blake’s wife dynamic, but I can’t shake the feeling that this Cristal is up to something.
Elsewhere, Sam and Kirby are still making plans for “Sammy 2.Jo.” They’ve gotten Steven on board (and sidebar – I’m already sick of these “I talked to Steven!” updates from Sam. It’s so silly the character isn’t on-canvas), but Anders is understandably aghast when he catches them taking terms while playing around with a turkey baster. Sam himself starts to sour on the idea after talking it over with Fallon, and Kirby gets mad at Anders for interfering. In the end, while Sam does decide she’s not the “right candidate to help [him] start [his] family,” he uses a little reverse psychology to smooth things over between Kirby and Anders, who extends an invite for her to live at the manor. I’m glad they pulled the plug on this Sam/Kirby baby thing before it really even got started because it’s not what I want to see either of them doing. For example, now that she’s back under the Carrington roof, can Kirby and Fallon start clashing again?
But maybe a baby is still in Sam and Steven’s future. Fed up with Hank’s dimwittedness (and sidebar – I haven’t really mentioned this, but the running gag of Hank’s ineptitude at scheming has been hilarious to me), Claudia instructs him to set up a meeting for her with Alexis, promising to “do more than shoot up the turkey this year” if she doesn’t get her payout. It seems Hank has done just that, but instead, he meets with Alexis on his own, accepting a check and parting with her on surprisingly amicable terms. But then, we see that he has left (super cute, btw) baby Matthew outside Alexis’ trailer, with a note asking that they protect him from crazy Claudia. Given an unsubtle cut between Sam and baby Matthew – as well as Steven and Claudia’s entanglements in the original series – I have to imagine this child is on his way to becoming an adopted Carrington.
Now that you’ve filled up on my thoughts on this week’s “Dynasty,” come to the comments section for seconds on “That Witch.”
