Knots Landing

[Paul Raven]

Afton on Dallas got to chirp a couple of songs at one point,I recall.

 

[DRW50]

I didn't know until reading it in Infinity Magazine (I will try to scan the article sometime) that Audrey Landers had a popular singing career in Germany or other parts of Europe.

[Paul Raven]

Knots 1st season ratings.

Competition was 20/20 on ABC and Kate Loves a Mystery (reworked Mrs Columbo from the previous season) Rockford Files,and Skag (Karl Malden family drama) on NBC

Episodes

1. 20.1/34 23rd Gary and Val move in and meet the neighbors. 

2. 23.3/36 14th Gary fights JR over an environmental issue. (appearance by Larry Hagman as JR)

3. 20.0/34 36th Karen is tempted into an affair...

4. 19.3/31 30th Laura is raped and lies that it was stranger, not a guy she picked up. 

5. 23.7/40 14th Lilimae turns up attempting to reconcile with Val. aired Friday @10

6. 20.3/34 38th Lucy visits Knots Landing 

7. 22.4/37 21st Motorcylce thugs terrorize the cul de sac.

8. 11.0/21 45th Sid's ex wife visits.  Season low

9. 15.9/25 37th Ginger is harassed by  dead ex boyfriends mother.

10. 19.1/32 31st Karen has a miscarriage, Eric is interested in Ginger's teen sis and Ginger wants to start a family.

11. 17.5/28 41st Richard and Laura clash over her working as he faces money problems.

12. 19.1/33 29th Gary hits the bottle, Ginger worries that Kenny is having an affair,

13. 18.7/32 34th Gary hits rock bottom and goes to AA. Ginger throws Kenny out.

So the ratings were not great and didn't really build, but the show did win it's timeslot a number of times.

[Vee]

I'd forgotten that was Barry Jenner. I know him best as Admiral Ross, Avery Brooks' cohort in the final years of the Dominion War on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I am nowhere near Robin's run on the show yet but I look forward to it. I do wonder why/how Allan Miller's Scooter abruptly disappeared so soon after he and Laura started hooking up. There was zero mention of him or of Laura leaving his firm.

[Khan]

KL experienced very big growing pains in seasons two and three.  David Jacobs and his team recognized after season one that the original, "'Scenes from a Marriage' x4" concept wasn't going to be sustainable, but I don't think they were comfortable yet with ramping up the storytelling.  That turning point wouldn't actually arrive until halfway through season four, with Ciji's murder.  IMO, that's when the KL we all knew and loved was born.

[Soaplovers]

Season 2 tried the serial elements for the sake of the elements vs if it made sense for the story or characters.  Abby was just a bored maneater that hit on Kenny, slept with Richard (with Val sometimes seeing some of the signals and looking uncomfortable).  And you saw that Abby's main goal was Gary..so she set it up where Val saw Gary with Judy to the point where Judy correctly guessed Abby's intentions.

Season 3 managed a good blend of serial elements within the self contained episodes.  

And @KhanI agree that KL succeeded because the show was about characters in Knots landing that knew one another personally and professionally.  While FC, Dallas, and Dynasty were tied  to one family and industry.  With KL's concept, more avenues to explore (Melrose Place had the same type of set up and blew it in season 4 thus shortening its shelf life to 7 seasons).

[Khan]

John Pleshette once made a very good point: just because they're your neighbors, that doesn't mean you're intimately involved with them.  You might wave hi and bye to each other in passing, or share small talk across the hedge about the weather and so forth, but you don't ever really have much to do with your neighbors, and they hardly ever have much to do with you.  I think that, more than any other factor, is what makes season one so uneven in terms of quality. 

You can see almost immediately that David Jacobs and his staff are struggling with how to make the four couples interact in ways that make sense and carry some impact on the stories.  Having Gary work for Sid at Knots Landing Motors is a smart way to have the Ewings and Fairgates interact, but what about the Averys and Wards?  Richard's an attorney; Kenny's a record producer; Ginger and Laura are a kindergarten teacher and housewife, respectively.  How do you bring them into stuff that's going on with the other two couples or at KLM without making it seem like you're shoehorning them in?

You can also see right away that some couples are just easier or more interesting to write for than others.  Gary and Val are good for stories, because of their past history, as established on DALLAS (even if the episodes where J.R., Lucy and Kristin visit are among the show's very worst, lol).  Richard and Laura are also good for stories, because they are the quintessential middle-class couple that's disintegrating under the weight of the husband's ambitions.  They personify Jacobs' vision for a Bergman-esque marital drama better than anyone else on this show.  Karen and Sid are a bit harder to write for, because Karen is so loud and shrill compared to Sid, who often fades into the surroundings; but, as the older, anchor couple, they lend to KNOTS a gravitas and stability that Gary/Val and Richard/Laura can't.

The hardest couple to write for, therefore, are Kenny and Ginger.  Not only are Jim Houghton and Kim Lankford unevenly matched, IMO, but there's just nothing about the Wards that's interesting or sets them apart from the others on Seaview Circle.  I think this is because Gary and Val's presence in the cul-de-sac makes Kenny and Ginger redundant.  You can't tell any good "young couple" stories with Kenny and Ginger, because Gary and Val, as spinoff characters, have that covered.  And while you can tell stories about the lengths Kenny will go to to be a major player in the record industry, they're gonna feel awfully similar to stories about Richard doing whatever it takes - even pimping women! - to pull himself and his family out of middle-class mediocrity.  So, what is left for the Wards to do?  That's why, when they leave after season four, you don't miss them.  (In retrospect, I think making either Kenny or Ginger black, thereby allowing for opportunities to explore the issues that an interracial couple living in Southern California in the late '70's and early '80's would face, would have been a good way to avoid this problem, even if it would have been way ahead of its' time, lol.)

I look at season two (and, to a certain extent, season four) as what could happen when you let Aaron Spelling or his sensibility run a non-Spelling show.  Nothing that happens is properly motivated; characters are too venal, and emotions are too big.  (I still laugh whenever I think of drunk Gary pounding on the glass and yelling to Abby that they are "RUINING LIVES!!!!," lol.)

Again, Ciji's body washing up the shore is probably the moment when the "new" KL rises from the ashes of the "old."  It's hard to explain, but you just feel like that's the moment when the show has finally figured out what it wants to be and how it wants to get there.

Edited May 10, 2023 by Khan

[Khan]

What Lisa Hartman wants more than KL stardom is a hit song that isn't a duet with her husband.

Compare that to DALLAS, where the best that they could do was have Sue Ellen sell lingerie.

Edited May 10, 2023 by Khan

[Vee]

That's particularly weird as I don't exactly associate Sue Ellen with sexy undergarments, sorry Linda Gray. But Sue Ellen was a state beauty queen so I guess there is some background.

[Soaplovers]

Lucy should have been the one to buy the lingerie company.. since she had been a model and had been around the block.. so she would know what men would like and what women would want to buy to feel sexy, etc.

[j swift]

To be fair, she bought the company so that she could control Mandy and get revenge on JR; she wasn't really interested in whatever Victoria's Secret may have been

[DRW50]

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[Soapsuds]

I was about to remind everyone about this. I'll be able to see this live today.

[Soapsuds]

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[DRW50]

Constance's interview was riddled with horrible technical errors for the first 20 minutes but otherwise was worth watching, mostly just for her great vivacity. 

She didn't share that much about her time at Knots, beyond some of the obvious (she was shocked at being fired), but here are a few comments I remember:

- she didn't have to audition for Laura, as she had worked with David Jacobs beforehand

- the show was almost canceled in season 3...she was in the hospital post-delivery when David Jacobs called to tell her they'd been picked up again 

- she got a lot of inspiration for her performance in Laura's rape episode from a woman who worked in wardrobe and had been assaulted 

- Ava Gardner would call her up and looked out for her, and other people 

- she didn't ask for either of her pregnancies to be written in...she seemed to think Laura had Meg mostly just so viewers would be even more upset when Laura died 

-  the main person she knew pre-Knots was Claudia Lonow 

- she was close to Julie Harris, to the point of Julie letting her stay in her house for a while after she gave birth to her first child as Julie was going to be away doing something for PBS

- she recently had dinner with Bill Devane, John Pleshette, and their wives. 

- she also mentioned meeting up with Michele Lee recently (we saw that photo). She talked a little about the people she doesn't see anymore (like Lisa Hartman) but wishes she did. 

For the game show fans, she touched briefly on her appearances, telling a story about going to Spago one night and having some woman there pushing her chest out and reminding Constance that she had "paid for these" due to all the money she had won for her on a game show.

For her talk about her personal life, when asked about grandchildren, she mentioned that her son (the one who played Jason) learned in recent years that he had had a daughter while in college. A reminder that those long lost kid stories do happen in real life, I suppose...

Edited May 12, 2023 by DRW50