Recovering from a bad cold and bored to tears by the fare on television, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu (it’s shocking how much schlock there is with so many choices), I broke open a big box set of Dynasty and started binge watching. It occurred to me that I had actually never seen the series, except for a few snippets here and there, and I was curious to see the reason why the show’s ratings started to plummet after the fifth season. Was it the hideousness of the clothes? Mine weren’t so bad, sometimes, but the skirts and trousers were so baggy and shapeless that, coupled with the enormous shoulder pads, they made all of us look about four foot ten. They also watered the storyline down by bringing in a plethora of characters portrayed by big names such as Charlton Heston, Barbara Stanwyck, Ali MacGraw, Rock Hudson and my pal George Hamilton so that it would have been difficult for some viewers to figure out who was who. I was confused even though Alexis was related to most of them. A massacre occurred in fabled Moldavia (a country that disappeared in 1859), at which several of the characters were assassinated and then, with horror, I saw myself as Alexis disguised as a nun trying to break the King of Moldavia out of prison. Now I know why it tanked.
In the aftermath of Oscar week most denizens of Tinseltown have gone to ground or taken off in their private jets. There were at least 20 parties inside of the ten-day window, which most of the nominees attended and were, by all accounts, quite uneventful. I went to several, culminating in what I think was the most entertaining — the Vanity Fair viewing party at the Annenberg Center. I sat next to the fabulously entertaining Tom Ford, while Percy’s dinner companion was the ever-popular Monica Lewinsky, whose life story will shortly be made into a TV movie.
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