Reception
The series attempted to ride the wave of popular night-time soaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, when Paper Dolls premiered in September 1984, the first episode achieved an 18.4 rating. It featured the requisite stock pleasures such as big business, glamour, intrigue, catfights and verbal spats (particularly between Racine and most of the other characters). In one scene, Mark entered Racine's office while she was getting a massage. He asked, "Do you want me to wait outside until you're decent?" Racine responded, "How much time do you have?" In another scene, an irate Julia, brandishing a Barbie-style fashion doll of her daughter, stormed into Racine's office. "This will not be the new Taryn Blake doll!" she barked. "The eyes are brown!" Coolly, Racine quipped, "I guess they couldn't quite match that bloodshot tone."
However, even with a series of rave reviews in People magazine urging viewers to give the show a chance, ratings were low and the series was not able to find an audience. The final episode of the series found David on the verge of failure after an influential fashion critic was blackmailed by Wesley and Racine to pan his new sportswear collection; Grant's wife Marjorie (Nancy Olson) was feared dead in a plane crash; and Racine received a call from Mark intimating that his digging into her secretive past had uncovered something very interesting. The cliffhangers were left unresolved.
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)