Dynasty Episode 7 Review: Taste of Your Own Medicine

This Dynasty review contains spoilers.

Dynasty Episode 7

For their belated Thanksgiving episode, Dynasty delivered the show that we all really want: escalating antics and the Anders and Sammy hour. When the snark is good, it’s very very good, like Fallon casually calling Cristal “participation trophy wife” while verbally sparring with Claudia, who was pointing a loaded gun at her at the time.

Because this is a soap, Claudia is actually evil, rather than a good person the Carringtons screwed over. Purely good characters never last long on soaps, but making Claudia the killer absolves the Carringtons of everything and sends Claudia packing – at least for a little while. This feels like the cleanest way to wrap up Matthew’s murder, but also like a bit of a misuse of someone who could have caused more thorny problems for the Carringtons. Still, it brings us to the kind of fever pitch that a show like this requires, and that is a very good thing. Dynasty is best when it’s running headlong into ridiculousness, and in that way this episode works quite well.

Michael Colhane gets a backstory

Because they are WASPy and wealthy, the Carrington family takes their Thanksgiving way too seriously. There’s a small marching band, cheerleaders, and Blake even has a playbook – not that it helps. Michael Colhane and the rest of the staff team always win. Blake also kicks out his star player Fallon after she makes one too many sex tape jokes after her begrudging apology. I enjoyed that Cristal wanted Fallon to stay – she’s not really Fallon’s enemy unless she’s made to be. It’s also getting harder to believe she would ever be with someone like Blake, but I’m hoping her secret identity from the arepa lady will hold some motivation.

Back to Michael, who is probably one of the only good people in this show, but apparently he does have a flaw: wanting to please his parents. Lying about your job to make your mom and dad proud is the perfect kind of misstep for someone like Michael. It gives us an opportunity to learn more about him and Fallon an opportunity to prove she’s a better person than we thought, all without ever really changing our view of Michael.

I enjoyed seeing Fallon show some redeeming qualities once again, and I’d love to see Michael given the chance to go after his career dreams, whatever they may be these days.

Jeff Colby has something to hide and Blake isn’t hiding anything very well

It’s pretty gross that Blake makes the staff come in on a holiday to entertain him, and keeps a few of them around even after claiming they could take the rest of the day off, but that tracks with everything else we know about him. And if we weren’t sure, he makes a big speech to Stephen about how the special people have different rules, like being able to pay off cops.

Stephen isn’t buying into it, though. The most surprising thing about Blake’s corruption is that he so readily admitted it to his son. He must really be confident in his way of viewing the world, or in Stephen’s love for him. As Stephen said, Blake is choosing to force him between his father and doing the right thing, and that’s about to get ugly. But if Stephen goes after Stansfield, how long until the corrupt cop tells everyone about how he killed Willy for Stephen?

Jeff Colby is keeping a different secret, and doing a better job of it than Blake. His father Cecil is in prison and he goes to visit him while his sister goes to the Bahama’s, like he told Fallon he was going to do. Up until now Jeff’s main qualities have been “ridiculously smart” and “ridiculously into Fallon,” so he must really be invested in keeping his father’s prison sentence a secret to turn down Fallon when she calls. I’m hoping that Cecil’s crime has something to do with Blake Carrington.

Capable Fallon is back

Fallon is so ballsy in this episode. She figures out the whole crime with a loaded gun pointed at her, all the while talking shit to the murderer. Fallon, who was once working toward becoming an engineer, realized that the truck that lead to Matthew’s death was rigger by an engineer. It never even occurs to dumbass Blake, who’s so sexist that he almost got shot when he insisted on sitting at the head of the table, that “girls can be engineers too, dad!” Unfortunately, Dynasty has spent so little time on this supposedly central mystery that wrapping it up doesn’t feel like a satisfying reveal.

The more unexpected turn is that Fallon repeatedly makes the choices that a nice person would make. In addition to not ratting Michael out to his parents, backing off on his relationship, and making up with Cristal at the end, she unselfishly tells Steven to stay at Thanksgiving and get along with blake after she gets tossed. She knows their relationship is in a good place and how much that means to her brother, and that means more to her than not being alone or getting back at her father for kicking her out (again). She even jumps to try to take a bullet for her father. Fallon is for sure petty, but she only pretends to be cold.

She’s still Fallon, though, so after putting her foot in her mouth as usual, she pays what she call a “rich bitch tax,” which I so desperately wish was a real thing. And apparently Fallon’s mother gave her a gun for her 16th birthday. Who is this woman? We need to meet her immediately. Fallon is the most fun to hatewatch when we can root for her while hating her. For a few episodes there she was so useless and whiny that she wasn’t any fun.

I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of Claudia – a sanitarium feels like the perfect place to store a character until a season finale – but for now the murder of Matthew is settled. On to Blake’s corruption, Cristal’s past, and Jeff’s father.