Dynasty - Season 3, Episode 11

"You know, Kirby...non-consensual sex between two attractive people can be incredibly hot."

"The Search"
Original airdate: 12/15/1982

Episode summary: Blake refuses to accept the possibility that Steven died during the oil rig explosion and enlists the aid of a famous psychic to help locate him. Adam lures Kirby to his penthouse and rapes her. Jeff grows increasingly ill from the toxic paint on his office walls and starts hallucinating.

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Recap: Blake is in his Bali hotel, poring over the same map he was poring over during the previous episode. Alexis pops by wearing a fantastic safari outfit and insists on flying with him and Cassidy to South Borneo. Blake's like, "Hell no", so she reminds him that she's Steven's mother and an independently rich woman who no longer has to take orders from him or anyone. She says she will not allow anyone to prevent her from finding out what happened to her son, then threatens to charter or buy (!) her own plane to get her to South Borneo. A few seconds later, Cassidy arrives to collect Blake, looks at Alexis in puzzlement and asks if she's coming...and all three stare uncomfortably at each other until Blake lets out a deep sigh and reluctantly gives Alexis the green light.

Kirby finds Fallon in the nursery, glumly staring out the window. She tells Fallon that Blake is very confident that Steven is still alive, but Fallon says she doesn't share his optimism and wails, "Oh! Why did Steven have to die?!" Kirby tells her to just remember him when he was alive, and reminisces about how the three of them used to play together when they were children. Kirby suggests that maybe this tragedy will bring her and Jeff closer together - but Fallon insists that their entire relationship was a mistake of gargantuan proportion that never should have happened. Well, d'yuh. Anyone could have seen that train wreck of a marriage coming a mile away. She tells Kirby she wants to spend the day with her son and gives her the day off from nannying. 

Kirby heads straight over to ColbyCo to visit Jeff. She invites him to go to a movie with her, but Jeff declines and says he has too much work to do. He warns her that it's going to be dark soon, so she should get herself home (which was a little weird) and a disappointed looking Kirby heads off to the movies alone.

Joseph delivers a letter to Krystle from her deadbeat brother-in-law, Frank Dean...and in the next scene, she's at the La Mirage, reading it out loud to Mark. Frank wrote in the letter that he got help from Mark, so she asks him what sort of help he provided...and Mark just shrugs and says he gave him a few bucks - and by a few bucks he means $1000 - then sent the loser on his way. Krystle says she's happy Frank is gone, but unhappy that he (Mark) was the one who paid him off. She insists that Frank is her problem, so Mark reminds her that he owed her a bunch of money from when he cleaned out their bank accounts and absconded to Mexico during the n-stage of their marriage. Krystle still insists on repaying him, so she pulls out her checkbook and writes him a check for $1000. As she's doing that, Mark notices that she's wearing her locket...and correctly assumes that she replaced his photo with one of goat daddy.

Blake, Alexis, and Cassidy arrive in South Borneo to talk to the injured foreman. The doctor warns Blake that the foreman is in excruciating pain on account of nearly being burned to a crisp, and therefore can't be questioned for too long...and Blake and Alexis agree and put on sterile gowns. They enter the foreman's hospital room and find him laying on a bed surrounded by mosquito netting, and introduce themselves as Steven's parents and ask him what he can tell them about the explosion. The foreman scrunches his face in pain and recalls that there was a sudden explosion, after which he heard men shouting and screaming...and he blacked out and somehow ended up in this hospital. Alexis asks him if he knows what happened to Steven, so he tells her that Steven was among a group of men coming on for a new shift. He then needlessly adds that Steven was a loner, had only one friend on the rig (Ben), and seemed to be running away from something in his life...and the last tidbit prompts Alexis to turn toward Blake and glare daggers at him. Blake and Alexis politely thank the foreman for his time and exit the room. Cassidy informs them that three bodies were just recovered near the site of the explosion...but Steven's wasn't among them. He goes on to say that Steven was most likely blown off the rig and then drowned, but Blake barks, "That's just speculation!" He says that Steven is a strong enough swimmer to have made it to a nearby island, and when Cassidy points out that his search team covered all the nearby islands, Blake growls, as if he has any authority whatsoever in Bali, "Cover them again! And after that, cover them again!" OMFG. He offers to cover the cost of the search and rescue effort until Steven's body finally washes ashore someplace - but Cassidy just stares back at him in dumbfounded befuddlement, somehow resists the urge to tell him to go pee up a rope, and quietly ambles off. As Blake glares angrily into space, Alexis sidles up to him and poutishly rests her head on his shoulder, and it was weird that he didn't pull away from the quasi-cuddle.

"You get your ass back out there and search for Steven on every island in the Southern Hemisphere!"

"And when you're done that, search them again ten more times! And then ten more times!"

Jeff is in his office at ColbyCo, looking increasingly queasy and sweaty. He's staring at a photo of Fallon and mumbling, "Why, Fallon? Why has it been so long and rotten for us?" then puts it away when Kirby pops by for a follow-up visit. She tells him she went to a movie and would like a ride home - but Jeff suddenly enters a zombified state and mutely stares at her, then starts hallucinating that she's Fallon. He gets up and stumbles toward her, babbling about how much he wants her. A delighted Kirby replies, "I love you too!" and Jeff pulls her toward him and kisses her hard while moaning, "Fallon.." Kirby's all, "Wha-a?" and pulls away from him and runs out of the office in tears. When she gets off the elevator in the lobby, she runs right into Adam, who grabs her by the arm and orders her to tell him what happened. She tells him she always gets teary-eyed when she's famished, so he offers to take her to "a restaurant in the sky" and she's like, "Sure, OK" and follows him. Big mistake.

Back in Bali, Cassidy tells Blake and Alexis - who has changed into a lovely yellow summer dress - that his search team found something near the explosion site, and hands Blake a work jacket with Steven's name stitched onto it. Alexis shrieks in horror, but Blake refuses to believe that it means Steven is dead. He barks at Cassidy to continue the search - but Cassidy says he's done all he's going to, and his men have to get back to their regular jobs now. Blake sneeringly retorts, "Fine! I'll get better men to do it!" - LOL - and Cassidy warns him that a search effort is going to be difficult with a typhoon on its way. He then beats a hasty retreat, leaving Blake stewing, and a despondent Alexis clutching Steven's jacket and weeping. Blake orders her to stop crying, and once again insists that their son isn't dead - but Alexis begs him to share in her grief. Blake suddenly perks up and starts babbling nonsensically about a psychic named Dehner he once saw on TV who helped police find a missing child. The fuck?? He gushes, "The man's a miracle worker!" Alexis looks at him like he's crazy and wails, "Steven is dead, Blake!" then says if he won't cry with her, she'll cry alone with only Steven's jacket for company. LOL. After she sadly shuffles out of the room with the jacket, Blake contemplatively stares into space and murmurs, "Dehner.."

Over at Carrington manor, Jeff tells Krystle about Blake's harebrained scheme to enlist the aid of a psychic to locate Steven. Krystle notices Jeff's sweaty disheveledness and says she's calling a doctor, and as she heads over to the phone, Jeff passes out.

Adam's "restaurant in the sky" ends up being his/Alexis' penthouse. Shocker. Kirby's getting hammered on champagne, jokingly rails at Adam for deceiving her about taking her to an actual restaurant, then derisively adds, "Deception is always part of men's game plans." Adam asks her if Jeff deceived her tonight, and she breezily tries to pretend she doesn't know any Jeff, then goes, "Oh yeah...Fallon's spouse." She asks him to dance, so Adam turns on some music and waltzes around the living room with her for a few minutes. He then undoes her hair bun, stares at her with creepy intensity and asks, "Do you want me?" She goes, "Want as in 'desire'? No" and makes it clear that all she desires right now is to dance. He reminds her that he once told her she was going to want him, but she says she doesn't remember that - and suddenly there's duhn duhn duhn sound effects over the dance music, and Adam leans in and forcibly kisses her. When Kirby tries to pull away, he grabs her with both hands, kisses her hard, and rips off the top of her dress. As she screams in protest, he pushes her down to the floor and mounts her, and she punches at him and cries, "No! Please!" Eventually she gives up the struggle and lays on the floor like a corpse while he kisses her, but there's no mistaking that she's not at all into being assaulted.

"So...wanna have sex with me right now?"

"Definitely not."

"Mmm..? I'll take that as an emphatic yes."

Not long after the attack, Kirby enters the living room, the sleeves of her dress all ripped up. She tells Adam, who's standing in the living room with his hair all disheveled, that she wants to call for a taxi. He offers to drive her home, then says, "Sorry that it all happened...that I lost control." To Kirby's (and my) utter incredulity, he adds, "If you're concerned for my respect for you, it hasn't suffered at all" and Kirby glares at him and snaps, "It means less than nothing." She says her respect for herself has suffered, and when he apologizes again, she barks, "Save it!" and for some reason doesn't address the fact that he violently forced himself on her while she was kicking, screaming, punching at him, and crying, "No! Please!" - and also doesn't come to the undeniable conclusion that he just committed a felony and probably deserves to be locked up.

"I need to call a taxi and flee."

"Don't worry - despite my violent attack on you, my respect for your honor hasn't waned."

"Come again?"

Jeff's laying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling when Fallon enters the room. She informs him that the doctor said he'll be fine, then scrunches her face with concern and asks him if she can get him anything. He snarkishly insists he's fine.
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Kirby returns to the mansion in tears...and as she heads up the grand staircase, Joseph suddenly appears and asks her where she's been all night, and she just says, "Out" and hurries upstairs. She runs into Fallon and mumbles incoherently about how she went to a long movie that turned out to be a comedy of errors, just like life.

The following morning, Krystle heads off to Los Angeles to meet up with Blake and Dehner the Psychic.

Jeff drops by the nursery, where Kirby is tending to Baby Blake. He gives his son a cuddle and acknowledges to Kirby that he was really messed up last night. He explains that he was dead tired - and that his nerves were playing tricks on him, making him think he was looking at/kissing Fallon instead of her. Kirby pretends as though his obvious preference for Fallon didn't upset her to the point of unwittingly driving her into the arms of a deranged rapist. 

Blake and Alexis are en route to the United States...and Blake is deplaning in Los Angeles, while Alexis is flying on to Denver. She tearfully tells Blake she wants to have a memorial service for Steven, but he forbids it and says memorial services are for the dead - not the soon-to-be recast. Alexis tells him he's lost his damn mind and insists that Steven is dead, then suddenly gets all riled up and wails, "When you sent him away, you killed him!!"

Blake and Krystle are consulting with Dehner in his swanky Malibu home. Dehner asks Blake if he has anything of Steven's he could use to get a reading, so Blake hands him the letter that Steven wrote to Fallon during the La Mirage episode. Dehner touches it and squeezes his eyes shut to make it look like he's thinking very hard, but then murmurs, "Very faint contact." He then declares it's not enough, so Blake asks him if he'd have better luck with more of Steven's possessions. Dehner vaguely says, "Maybe, maybe not." Blake chooses to focus on the maybe part of that response and invites him to travel to Denver with him and Krystle, and he agrees.

"For the low low price of one million dollars, I'm pretty sure I could make contact with Steven...or his ghost."

"Sold!"

The next day, Dehner boards the Carrington jet with Blake and Krystle. He's clutching Steven's letter and pretending to think hard again, then asks if he can be alone to concentrate on its cosmic energy...and the flight attendant/pilot/whoever shows him to the private bedroom. Blake tells Krystle he's pleased that she made the trip to Los Angeles with him, and she carefully says she thinks Dehner is an honest man and everything, but worries that his powers might not work in every situation. Blake gruffly insists they will and will tolerate no doubt of the man's powers...then immediately apologizes for being such a snappish jerkwad. He then notices that Krystle is wearing a locket, and instead of just saying it belonged to her grandmother and leaving it at that, she tells him the sad tale about how Mark pawned it while they were married, but then bought it back, kept it all these years, and presented it to her during the previous episode. Blake looks unmistakably pissed off, and when Krystle insists that Mark was merely trying to make amends for pawning her treasured heirloom, he snaps, like the big baby he is, "It doesn't matter. I have more important things to worry about." LOL. 

When the trio arrive in Denver, Blake shows Dehner to Steven's room so he can try another reading. A tearful Fallon greets Blake, and he informs her that he's convinced Steven is still alive, waiting to be found...and to that end, he's enlisted the aid of a famous psychic. Joseph, meanwhile, informs Krystle that Jeff has been acting really strangely lately, and Krystle nods and mulls that over as she stares contemplatively into space.

Over at ColbyCo, Jeff is looking sweaty and queasy again. Adam strolls in and chides him about his messy office, and Jeff grumbles about how depressing the blue walls are. Adam's like, "Blame me. I chose it." [Uh, I think he was blaming you.] Adam offers to have the office repainted - no doubt to something even more toxic. After Adam struts out of the room, Jeff rubs his temples again and looks like he's about to fall over.

Blake is about to enter Steven's room when Krystle suddenly enters the hall and stops him. He notices the locket around her neck and gives it an angry squint-eye...but puts a pin in that for now and tells her he wants to give Steven's wristwatch to Dehner to see if that will help him contact Steven (or, at the very least, his ghost). Krystle refrains from rolling her eyes and urges him to get some rest, and he bitchily accuses her of not believing in the psychic's efforts to find Steven. He then shoves her away from the door and growls, "I don't want your negativity anywhere near this room - or Dehner!" - LOL - and Krystle wanders off, looking pensive and upset. When Blake enters Steven's room, Dehner tells him that if Steven is alive, he'll "come" to him here, and Blake nods approvingly and says, "He will. I know it."

Adam is at the Toxic Paint Store, buying paint of a different color for Jeff's office. The salesclerk reminds him that the fumes from this brand of paint are extremely poisonous, so Adam fibs and says he's painting the hull of his boat and that he's A-OK with the fumes' deadly toxicity. He gleefully says, "They can really mess up your mind after awhile. And if you breathe them long enough, they can kill you." The salesclerk just shrugs indifferently and is like, "Whatever, psychopath."

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