[1] As its name suggests, the storyline usually revolved around the political intrigues of people whose lives are intertwined in Washington, D.C.[2] Capitol revolves around the Denning, Clegg, and McCandless families, who live in the fictional Jeffersonia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. At the center of the drama are feuding matriarchs Clarissa Tyler McCandless (Constance Towers) and Myrna Clegg (Carolyn Jones; Marla Adams; Marj Dusay).

The longstanding feud between the women is inflamed when Clarissa's war-hero son Tyler McCandless (David Mason Daniels; Dane Witherspoon) falls in love with Myrna's daughter, Julie Clegg (Kimberly Beck; Catherine Hickland).

Besides Tyler and her father, Judson, Clarissa's family includes sons Wally (Bill Beyers), a young man with a gambling problem, Thomas (Brian Robert Taylor; Michael Catlin), a doctor, and Matt (Shea Farrell; Christopher Durham), a handsome athlete.

While the original focus was on the Romeo and Juliet style love story of Tyler and Julie, the bulk of the storyline quickly switched to Trey and Sloane whose 1984 wedding was filmed on location at the Jefferson Memorial.

Playboy Jordy had several serious romances, most notably with feisty Lizabeth Bachman (Tonja Walker) and sweet Leanne Foster (Christine Kellogg).

The older character's pasts were explored more deeply when the wheelchair-using Jared Morgan was revealed to be Clarissa's supposedly deceased husband, Baxter.

Primetime TV veteran Marj Dusay took over the role of Myrna in April 1983 when Carolyn Jones became too ill to continue and her temporary substitute, Marla Adams, joined The Young and the Restless.

The casting of Jess Walton as Kelly Harper was also critically praised as the extremely complex Sloane returned to her old scheming nature in order to keep her marriage to Trey on solid ground.

With Washington D.C. having a large black population, soap critics complained that Capitol writers were not taking advantage of this fact to tell important stories, and Falana lasted less than a year.

The re-casting of Julie Clegg McCandless with Catherine Hickland was a plus, especially when the mysterious Zed Diamond appeared on the scene, shocked by her resemblance to his late wife, Jenny.

At one point, Hickland, Towers and Dusay were dominating all of the ABC soaps as villainesses of very nefarious natures while Walton found great success on The Young and the Restless by taking over the role of Jill Foster.

As with other soap operas in the mid-1980s, Capitol tried its hand with adventure storylines, pairing Sloane with Prince Ali (Peter Lochran), the potential King of Baraq, a fictional Islamic nation undergoing political strife.

The last weeks of the show focused on Sloane's taking over as Queen of Baracq (Ali was presumed dead) and her efforts to hide from his enemies.

However, the addition of film and stage actress Janis Paige as Sam's long gone first wife Laureen was filled with potential that never got the chance to be explored.

Veteran producer Paul Rauch responded with an idea for a more satirical serial called Grosse Pointe about a wealthy and dysfunctional blue blood family from Grosse Pointe, while Ryan's Hope co-creator Claire Labine's proposed drama was titled Celebration that would revolve around a middle-class family in the suburbs of Cleveland that would be produced by Procter & Gamble.

[3] Premiering in its place would be Bill and Lee Phillip Bell's new production, a sister show to their popular The Young and the Restless called The Bold and the Beautiful.

During its run, Capitol featured several well-known veteran actors of the stage and screen in contract roles, including Richard Egan, Carolyn Jones, Rory Calhoun, Constance Towers and Julie Adams.

In the show's last month, Broadway and movie veteran Janis Paige played Sam's first wife, Laureen, who was Trey's mother.

On June 8, 1981, CBS moved Search for Tomorrow, daytime television's longest-tenured soap and a fixture for nearly 30 years at 12:30 PM/11:30 AM Central, to the 2:30/1:30 PM timeslot between As the World Turns and Guiding Light in order to accommodate the hit serial The Young and the Restless.

CBS replaced Search for Tomorrow with Capitol in its timeslot, scheduled against the last halves of NBC's Another World and ABC's One Life to Live, the latter of which dominated the ratings at the time.