Vee

He was definitely moving into a villain role throughout late Season 6, but he didn't get totally apeshit til this year.

OneDrive floating vaults should really be set up for the ABC soaps IMO.

I too always thought it was wild that every man in that clan wanted (and got!) Reva. The Jordan Clarke/Kim Zimmer stuff only got more interesting as they got older, even in the Wheeler years.

Yes, I forgot about that. I got through to Joshua's demise - about six more eps, before taking a break, so I am a third through S7. Fortunately I still have some access to the show when I want to dip back in, but hopefully FreeVee will put the cleaner non-bootleg versions they have on demand sooner than that or the livestream will roll back around. I can definitely see what people are critiquing re: this season now. There's still a lot to like and a lot of solid stuff, and the heavy synths and high stylization (a la Miami Vice) of some of the Joshua goes psycho material and the Empire Valley intrigue are very well put together and atmospheric, but both stories grew/are growing increasingly tedious and OTT, and I was a longtime defender of the Empire Valley saga til now. (Why is Abby shepherding satellite convoys?) I felt very little for Joshua's death other than relief the whole thing was over; I felt his sudden descent into total psychosis was very rushed. He's a character you could've let percolate til the end of the year at least scheming and consolidating more power, if done more carefully but we know Paulsen's team came in with a mandate to dump both this and EV. Twitter and its delightful new infatuation with Knots is right: Today Joshua would have a top podcast or YT channel and a TV deal on Fox News or Newsmax, grifting heavily. Which is why so much of his initial televangelist story last season was (like the earlier Empire Valley stuff) still so relevant and topical today. As Tommy Krasker's wonderful KL blog has said re: Season 7, it's clear they started a la Dallas' long-term seasonal plotting from the point of 'let's have Cathy and Ben have an affair' and worked backwards, because I was surprised how early they started setting up a strong bond between them this season. I'm not thrilled that is down the road. It's a shame Ben is apparently going to get wasted in future (and he's already getting a bit of a heavy edit, more on that another time) because he's been such a solid part of the show and his double act with Mack is pure magic. I wonder what would have happened there if the Dunne team had stuck around, as many writers from that era have claimed they never intended to reunite Gary and Val (I have my doubts) and wanted Ben to be her true love. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with perpetually teasing or eventually reuniting Gary and Val - Gary and Abby (still my favorite of their pairings so far as of S6) have had a long run though they could've had longer, the Gary/Val push-pull relationship is one of the hearts of the show and them finally having secret twins is gold for that - but there was more material left to do for Ben, with or even without Val. I'll talk more about other stuff in a day or two when I collect my thoughts. Then I'll move through Season 7 slowly, but I am hoping FreeVee lets the show off the livestream leash soon. I'd also hoped they would put the restored versions up when it went public - these are cleaner but not HD - and I'll be disappointed if I get deeper into the show without them. I really hope a HD restoration like Dallas is truly coming. The show deserves it.

Ironically, a role he allegedly only got because James DePaiva turned Paul Rauch down flat. I am kind of happy the MacKenzies stayed solid, at least at a present viewer. I really like Karen and Mack, even with their recurring bombast and sanctimony. Their interplay is still sexy and fun, especially in this tense space with Jill in the mix. I do think a real breakup for a little while (nowhere near as long as Gary and Val) and some serious rivals for both, might have had juice much further down the road. Wild for Joshua to see another young audience member being used and abused and ask her how she can let her boyfriend treat her like that, approaching a moment of self-reflection for himself only to seduce her.

This whole convo was great. Lilimae: Has Mack said [Jill's] pretty? Karen: No. Lilimae: Then he thinks she's pretty. Teri Austin is pretty impressive. I an see why they kept her and let it play out. I wonder when that idea entered the picture, as we know KL was notoriously more fluid on long-term plotting and open to new ideas or actors/characters who took off while Dallas was supposedly plotted out a year in advance. They obviously decided to bring her back after her brief appearance in S6, but who came up with it? Paulsen from Dallas (who allegedly was not a fan of the looser approach at Knots), David Jacobs or someone else?

Season 7, Episode 6 is written by Bernard Lechowick, who soon will take over wholesale with wife Lynn Marie Latham. I loved an overcompensating Karen showing up to the family dinner she invites Jill too in a Y&R-esque plunging evening gown. And Jill's reaction to Michael making Chinese with background cries of distress from the kitchen: "Smells different." Of course they end up ordering delivery. Again, all business most primetime soaps of the era just couldn't be bothered with. Abby is operating more like J.R. at this point, digging up convenient dirt on Elliott the geologist to advance the plot. It's a very Dallas move, but it does work for her character. Cavanaugh, the lawyer briefly shown last season as being involved with the Fishers' illegal adoption, is now the prime target left in this whole baby caper. I still don't understand how or why Galveston or his equally-dead flunky got involved in masterminding this thing on behalf of Abby or Gary in the first place, but maybe Cavanaugh will say something about it. I'm not holding my breath! But at this point it's not that serious. It could well be that Galveston's aide was just that keen to appease Abby/the Ewings because Galveston was already so fixated on Gary as the heir he never had.

I love that the neighborhood cul-de-sac stuff is still such a part of the show even while it's riding high in the corporate '80s - the backyard party, then Karen dropping in on Val and the twins with a piece of cookware from the day before and bantering with her (Val: "Tell Aunt Karen to have a cup of coffee and shut up!"). It all has the same character and tonal throughlines from the first three seasons. Same with the behind closed doors suburban drama of Val and Ben hearing a thump upstairs (Joshua beating Cathy in their own family home) and it reverberating outward into household gossip. It is interesting how the new Paulsen team at least initially is committing to the psychological depth of the show, which Dallas just never has had much of IMO - Gary's grief over Bobby manifesting by retreating back to the ranch and the horses on Westfork. The unique relationships between Olivia and Gary and Olivia and Val from the early years are still being utilized and serviced. Doesn't hit nearly the same with the irksome Charlie Wade or other children on Dallas, who are all largely props. It's nice that Abby gets to bring up losing a brother too. It's clear Jill was originally intended to be a temptation for Mack. I do wonder when and how they decided to pivot BTS. I know Michele Lee(?) vetoed infidelity for Mack and Karen at a later date (I think with Michelle Phillips' character) and IMO she was right that they needed to be the stable couple - I think Victoria Wyndham and Doug Watson eventually did the same for their couple on AW. Hunt Block has arrived! Man, he looks young (and hot). I wonder where Block is today. I liked a lot of his ATWT work even though it was a world away from the depths of Scott Bryce's Craig Montgomery, and his role on OLTL was too brief and largely a writers' strike invention, gunned down and disposed of a day or two after it ended; his character was not wholly a bad guy, and his very brief scenes with Susan Haskell had real tenderness. It's amusing to me how his very first scene is just a riff on Chip the con man from Season 4. I love Greg's reaction to Abby's amorous approval of the younger man: "We'll trash him over lunch."

I am going to be obsessed with the convention! I think it's going to be a joyous time and I expect Kamala will come out of it with a considerable new bump that may solidify what's already there. I don't think you should have fear of watching it. For me it's more about discerning what is signal and what is noise - the media can try to put a damper on the week, but I don't think they're going to be that successful when all is said and done.

I'm sure other far more knowledgeable people will give you advice about the early years and mine is just a neophyte's, but I do have a watch/skip list for the first 3 I made for @Darn when the time comes. (Spoilers: The biker hell episode in S1 is not on it.) Speaking of actual character evolution, unlike Dallas: It's still a crazy quantum shift to me as a viewer seeing Val with actual small children of her own. I know this is a central storyline of the show's history but her and Gary's entire run on Dallas and KL up til now was built so heavily on having their youth and their family denied them for decades, and how Val had never had children of her own to raise. And now she has a real family and children of her own, and it's just mindblowing in its own way. Absolutely. I do think that Sumner (and his family empire) was a story nexus unto himself unlike anyone else though, and thus far it's worked. Anyway, here I go! I'll be locked in for at least a few hours (and have fortunately secured the rest of S7 for when I inevitably have to take a break from FreeVee). Yes, the late great Dobson and Doug Sheehan, Ted Shackelford and Bill Devane are all very rugged and sexy. But I'd also truly like to thank the fates for getting the Fairgate boys into the pool in my very first episode on FreeVee. It's nice to finally see Eric's much-hyped Black girlfriend too. However it will go pear-shaped soon, the Empire Valley story is still so ahead of its time for our current surveillance state. Greg (re: Gary): We have his wife. Empire Valley Goon: His wife? Isn't that a little strange? Greg: This is the latter half of the twentieth century, Frank. It isn't strange at all.

Let's all be ready for the media to breathlessly hype up any and all protest coverage tomorrow. They badly need something to dent the Dem momentum and the protestors at the DNC are their best shot. I don't think we're going to see anything like '68 out there tbh, I'm not particularly concerned but I do know they will overhype small or Very Online stuff and act like it's huge when it most likely won't be to the general public. That includes listening to professional online dead-enders or contrarians who don't exactly have their fingers on the pulse.

It still stuns me how hard Y&R has been running from the reality of their audience base for close to 20 years. My ancient babysitter kept the TV tuned to CBS in the late '80s and early '90s and Nadia's Theme used to drive me nuts as a small child, lol. You'd wonder if The Gates will light a fire at all.

For me the essential thing about the show's nature is the evolution of the characters, which is why I always urge people to watch the first three seasons (or at least select episodes). When the show starts out at the end of the '70s just about every woman in the cul-de-sac is a California housewife devoted to her husband. By the fourth season they all have careers, drives and lives of their own, and that only continues to build. The men were, for a long stretch at least, strong but often secondary. (The same element is also why the families, and the children of the Fairgates or Abby's kids, were so important. Val sublimated her mostly-dissipated relationship with Lucy Ewing onto Olivia, and Val and Abby were both very close to Karen's kids particularly in the early seasons.) The less central focus on the males changed with the arrival of William Devane as Greg Sumner and will change more, I'm sure.

Oh, that's right. My mistake.

Michael, Eric and Olivia are pretty involved in the early years too. I would recommend watching from the beginning. The boys drift away for a time or are recurring players, then come back then drift away again I think. Olivia is also very important to both Abby and Val. I do think it's too bad about Steve Shaw (Eric) - he's very underrated IMO. And yes, I'm hooked. I look forward to your ongoing journey as you may notice I have been spamming this thread with my episodic insights from the beginning over the last several years! There's always room for more! I think S6 is the peak of the Gary/Abby relationship as far as I've seen. I am only up to ep 5 of Season 7 myself via other means, and will be resuming the watch tonight live on FreeVee. Season 7 is the fascinating year where Lorimar bizarrely swapped the creative teams of Dallas and KL - KL's apex creative team of Peter Dunne and co. from Seasons 4-6 moved to Dallas, and David Paulsen from Dallas came to Knots. The sensibility of the two shows and focus on men and plot (Dallas) vs. women and character (Knots) is very different, and so far I have only seen a few of the signs of it at Knots. I'm eager to dig into it. Paulsen was out at the end of S7 too. Peter Dunne's season of Dallas so far has had some interesting changes for me that I've found very worthwhile and fresh in a Knots fashion, but I know it supposedly tanks quickly - its flop (and Patrick Duffy's absence, as he'd been killed at the end of the previous year) is what led to it being erased from continuity as 'the dream season' when the OG Dallas showrunners return along with Bobby Ewing in the shower the following year. I thought Ben knew they were Gary's, but I could be wrong.

More:

Non-paywalled here. Hillary is speaking on Tuesday, I believe.

Karen's sons (we don't talk about her daughter) are deeply underrated to me, and do have character and stories of their own, particularly in the early seasons and I believe also further down the road. As a newbie I understand that they apparently never quite came into their own as major players despite considerable attempts to beef them up, which is too bad, but I still think they're great. The kids in the various families, with a few exceptions, are actually essential to the show and fleshing out the lead characters - Abby's daughter Olivia has unique and evolving relationships with her, Val and Gary that date back even to story together without her mother in Season 2 when she was very small - and I think that's so important for this kind of show. And yes, KL and Dallas are night and day to me, as evidenced by my many repetitive critiques of Dallas in this and its own thread since I began watching both.

CNN has another deep dive as well. Harris was smart to ignore this advice.

Yet another moment of clarity with the GOP's own Frank Luntz:

Heads up:

Exciting to see Knots trending on Twitter.