Knots Landing

[Soaplovers]

I think that the problem with Laura was that she had grown to love herself and saw her value in both herself, her career, and her marriage.  She had this inner strength and confidence that Lynn/Bernard didn't know how to harness/write for because they were more interested in generating conflict amongst emotionally immature people.

Karen/Mac and Gary/Val were all immature/stubborn to a fault even though they all had grown/evolved.  So the Latham's could key into their essence/history to generate the standard soap opera tropes and stories for them.

Even the season 8 conflict with Laura's pregnancy and Greg not being cool with it didn't diminish Laura's fire and strength.  You saw how she was able to move on and live her life as a single mother because she'd already done that after Richard took off.  

I saw her response to Greg's kissing Paige as 'that's my husband and I can't change him.. but once I find something better, I'll toss himself'.  She wasn't emotionally tied to him nor his money.. and I think that was partly why she was such a unique and interesting character in the nighttime soap world in the 80s.

[DRW50]

And her evolution was so subtly done. There was nothing like the depraved shows later on, like Game of Thrones, where they said a woman needed to be raped in order to find empowerment. The layers of Laura were what got me hooked on Knots, somewhere in the season 3 repeats. And I agree that her becoming a therapist would have made sense - look at how much her trauma over her mother drove her decisions early on.

[DemetriKane]

Laura was at such a cool place by season 7. There were many exciting avenues to take the character, I wish they had explored the different dynamics within the friendship circle. Watching Karen and Laura have more conflict, with Laura becoming the advice giver to Val is something I always wanted.  And why wait until she dead until you bring on her mom?

Yep. Yup. I didn't care for it.

Edited 4 hours ago by DemetriKane

[kalbir]

Did anyone like Greg/Paige as a couple? There was an age gap (in 1988 William Devane was 49 and Nicollette Sheridan was 25) but the ick factor to me was Paige being the daughter of Greg's frenemy Mack and at one point it was thought Greg was Paige's father.

Also I didn't feel that Greg/Paige were a genuine love, it seemed more like mid-life crisis/rebound. Of all of Greg's main pairings (Abby, Laura, Paige), to me the only genuine love was Laura.

[Khan]

I was fine with Greg and Paige as a couple (ick factors and all, lol).  What I didn't like was how juvenile their push-and-pull was, with Greg alienating her repeatedly and arbitrarily, and Paige leaving him and/or The Sumner Group in a huff, only to come back together, like, thirty minutes later, lol.

I get that Greg was not someone who enjoyed sharing his feelings with others, but c'mon.  He was a little too old for all that on-again/off-again [!@#$%^&*]; and so was Paige, and so were we.

Mary Robeson wasn't her aunt, though.  Thanks to WBTV's Primetime Soaps app, I was able to rewatch all of S14, and I learned, in fact, Mary was her aunt - which I guess made Joe her uncle?

Truly, I thank the streaming gods for being able to rewatch the final season, because, for the past 30+ years, I never was able to understand how Mary and Joe, Nick and Vanessa, Val's disappearance and Treadwell (and Abby) all fit together; and even now, it still seems a trifle sketchy to me.  (The shortened season and reduced budget wreaked some havoc on the storytelling, did it not, lol?)  But I do appreciate the attempt, because it's probably the first time since Val's pregnancy that the show even attempted to tie the cast together under the same story umbrella.

And even if she was trepidatious (sp?) about raising Meg alone, she wasn't the type to express those feelings outwardly.  Laura wasn't going to fidget and cry like Val, or shout wild-eyedly at others like Karen.

Edited 1 hour ago by Khan

[kalbir]

In the interview posted on knotslanding.net, William Devane described the Greg/Paige storyline as "juvenile". 

From that interview I also got the impression that William Devane was on his way out near the end so he wouldn't have returned if there was a season 15.

[Soaplovers]

Greg and Paige were an interesting choice for a couple.  I do think the lack of focusing on the generational differences hindered their long term potential.

I think Laura had learned to keep her feelings close to her vest, especially after the hell she went through in her early years on the show.  The last scene of her trying to keep her tears inside as she drove away was the first time we had seen Laura really express what she was feeling after two or three seasons of her keeping her true self hidden from everyone.. even Greg.