Dynasty Season One Review

Major Spoilers are included in this season review. Please read with caution.

I watched the entire first season last summer, and planned on waiting for season two to conclude, but I have recently discovered one of my favorite characters is no longer with us. So, I have made a change of plans and have no desire to watch the second season.

Dynasty is about Fallon Carrington (Elizabeth Gillies) being furious with her father about his engagement to Cristal, who also works at their company. This is a 2017 reboot of the original series with the same name. I was not really into this first season until they reached a Cristal-centric episode exploring her background and how it was connected to the initial mystery they set up with her.

There are other members of this family in this show too. Blake Carrington is Fallon’s father and the current CEO of the company. Steven, Fallon’s brother and Blake’s son, who is also gay, and gets into political scandals that directly hurt the Carrington reputation. That sounds about right for a soap opera type of show.

To be honest, what they do at the company is not really relevant to the plot, and it’s used more as a vehicle to larger family issues.

Michael Culhane is the limo driver, and Fallon’s lover. They have an on-off relationship throughout the first season, that gets left on a cliffhanger when Fallon is torn between him and another man. What a typical situation for our heroine to find herself in. She also hooks up with Jeff Colby, who has a mission of his own that tries to get involved with the main plot of the series. There’s drama upon drama.

The best story told in the first season was Cristal’s background, and how that tied in her struggles to move up in the Carrington company, and later expanded to how she survived escaping an abusive situation plus her hardships as a Latina woman. I was sobbing during her first background story, but shortly after being introduced, it was pushed to the side during the second half to make room for the other stories pushing toward the surface.

Her romance with Blake is tested in almost every episode, and her rivalry with Fallon is classic fun… honestly the dynamic between these two fierce women made the show binge-worthy to me.

Overall, the drama never stops coming, gets convoluted at times, but that’s to be expected (?), but the cliffhanger at the end was pretty insane. I remember screaming for everyone to get out of there. But, whatever. I will not be tuning in for a second season for quite some time.