Monday, March 2, 2009

Flash Back- 80's TV

[Dynasty, Twentieth Century Fox.
Originally aired Jan. 1981- May 1989]

You may have noticed that I rearranged my music clips again and have put the Dynasty TV show music at the top. It was the #1 rated TV show in the US in the 1984-1985 season.

Here are my memories of this show...

In the first few years of this series I am positive that I never missed an episode. My life was adjusted accordingly so as to be in front of the telly on those nights. I couldn't miss the wonderfully crazy story lines of the Carrington family. They lived in grandeur! All those fancy clothes and jewels and travel and hairstyles and shoulder pads!!!!! [trivia: The mansion in California used in the opening sequence of the show was also used in 1978 for the movie Heaven Can Wait].

Remember those shoulder pads on all those women? I think they got bigger and chunkier as the years progressed and the seasons went on and on!! These were the years I was in the height of my retail career days in clothing store management at the malls (when malls ruled!) . The clothing my stores sold were not exactly what Krystle and Alexis would have worn but they did not escape the influence of the giant shoulder pad fad!

Remember the hair, particularly Krystle's hair? I tried that hair. Yep! It didn't look like Krystle's though. My hair still wanted to do what it wanted to do and not what it was supposed to do. I had the same experience when trying to emulate Dorothy Hamill's famous wedge cut and Farrah Fawcett's curled/feathered down the side locks!! They were all a no-go for me. *sigh* [trivia: Did you know that Farrah made a guest appearance on the Partridge Family?]

Dynasty was my favorite, although I did watch some others too, like Knotts Landing and Falcon Crest, Miami Vice and Dallas. (Who shot JR? and Wendy's Where's the beef ? both became 80's catch phrases= or would that be catch questions??)

Like some shows do, Dynasty became less of an attraction to me as the seasons wained on. The stories were always somewhat over the top and far fetched but they became tired and outlandish when I began to lose interest. I began to find myself doing other things in my life with no pangs of guilt over not being in front of the TV for that show. Still, it holds many fond memories for me. It was fun to see how these people lived in a mansion with servants and never had to wash the dishes or do laundry or clean the toilets!...though I would not want the problems they had with other aspects of their lives (thus the string of years of script ideas)!! To hear that theme song music takes me back to an '80s era long ago, filled with unnatural shoulder lines and stiff sprayed hair, and a younger me!!

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