The Carringtons are up to their usual tricks in “Wild Ghost Chase” as “Dynasty” treats us to a Halloween serving of scheming and sabotage.
Barred from seeing her fiancé at the moment, Fallon puts her focus this week on fulfilling her community service hours, which her family is bemused to learn she plans on completing herself versus paying her way out of it. While she’s initially put off that her task is less teaching inner-city kids tennis and more turning a lot littered with garbage into a garden, she dives in with amusing gusto (and to the equal amusement of her gruff supervisor). But when Fallon comes back the next day to finish the job, she finds the site has been trashed, which threatens her compliance with the court. She soon suspects Adam is the culprit and, at a Halloween shindig Sam is throwing at the mansion, she tackles him, first figuratively, and then literally into a cake (while, of course, costumed as Marie Antoinette).
Earlier in the episode, though, Fallon bumped into Evan Tate (Ken Kirby, “Good Trouble”), Trixie’s older brother. In that scene, he was way too quick and way too nice about accepting Fallon’s apologies about Trixie’s accident, so it’s not a huge surprise when she catches him at the scene of the crime and figures out that he’s the saboteur. Evan – not completely unwarrantedly – thinks she got off way too easy for her role in his sister’s death and the destruction of his family that followed. But all it takes is one genuine show of remorse for him to flip his opinion of Fallon so much that he goes in for a kiss. She demurs, citing Liam, and they agree to be friends...which I’m pretty sure is what Fallon and Liam agreed to be when she was engaged to Culhane, so yeah, probable love triangle ahoy (and if so, Kirby’s gonna have to step it up, because I thought he was kind of a flatline in this first outing).
Elsewhere, Sam’s snoozy hotel storyline gets a boost of bitchiness from Kelly Rutherford. Her recurring character Mrs. Daniels turns out to be the president of the Atlanta Historical Alliance that Sam needs to charm. And given their history – recall that, the last time we saw her, Mrs. Daniels was casually admitting that her baby wasn’t Steven’s (hey, remember him!) once she found out he wasn’t a blood Carrington – the barbs start flying immediately. As they rank on each other, they argue their sides of the issue – Sam doesn’t want his hotel to commemorate a homophobe while Mrs. Daniels doesn’t want to give up such a historic find when she’s up for reelection. Sam briefly considers washing his hands of the hotel, but in the end, he decides to stick with it and make a sacrifice, agreeing to stand down in exchange for a prestigious recommendation. Kind of a weird coda, but it’s still the most fun a Sam subplot has been in forever, and I want Rutherford back ASAP. Also, it was very nice to hear that Steven is still a person who existed/continues to exist in this universe (hey, maybe someone should call that Parisian mental hospital and check on him?!?!). Also also, Anders went to the Halloween party dressed as Captain Kirk and it was perfect.
Also perfect? Dominique, who is really giving me life with her soapy scheming. This week, Dom’s enlisted a shady lady lawyer to sneakily secure power of attorney over Jeff’s assets, but she gets tripped up when it turns out Jeff moved everything into a trust. Also, Monica is sniffing around as to why the cops haven’t arrested Adam for Jeff’s “murder” yet, which threatens to expose Dominique’s double cross. So Dom does what any mother would – she freaking drugs her own daughter to get her out of the way! It’s a gangster move, I gasped.
Unfortunately for Dominique, her ass gets caught snooping around the Atlantix offices by Culhane (who, thanks to Fallon, is now the majority shareholder). Culhane tips off Monica (and sidebar – I kinda thought I saw a spark between these two this week. And between Culhane and Dominique, to be honest. A mother-daughter love triangle would be super soapy. And it would free us from the boring Culhane/Kirby pairing. And then maybe they could try Kirby with Adam, which I’ve always thought could be interesting. Anyway...) and Monica pretty quickly puts it together, dragging Dominique to the Carringtons’ costume party as a distraction long enough for Jeff to sneak back into town. Dom’s attempts at spin flop and she’s banished by her kids, though she promises not to give up on them...which I assume means she’s not gonna give up on stealing all their money.
Finally, still in the slammer, Blake worries that he’s wearing out his welcome with the other inmates. Cristal – still jockeying for position in the Carrington power structure with Adam – is the one who comes up with a successful plan that gets Blake put on mansion arrest. She also takes advantage of Adam’s fight with Fallon at the Halloween party to usurp him as CEO of the family winery. I must say, I’m really digging this rivalry between Cristal and Adam.
So that’s “Wild Ghost Chase.” Spirit yourself over to the comments section and share your take on this week’s “Dynasty.”
