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KNOTS LANDING


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Sign me up for liking both eras, as well! The self-contained episodes (which, really, if you think about it, also had strong hints of serialized stories, arcs and character development), could stand on their own but also perfectly supplemented the more soapy/continuous parts of the show. In a way, they provided all the building blocks that made the show so strong afterwards.

Currently going through Season 5 for the first time, and I am in awe of how well plotted, written and executed it is. I really do appreciate the complexity. Chris, you are so right.... it's a business story, well thought out and intricate, but the main focus is the characters and what they do to each other. That way, it doesn't become too technical, but it's also far from generic.

It's soapy bliss!

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What types of industries wouly you had Greg Sumner's business conglomerate, Sumner Group, be involved in?

What assets, businesses, and properties would you had the Sumner Group own and operate globally?

It was never clear what exactly the Sumner group did.

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To me it never made a lot of sense after they were involved in worldwide spy schemes or whatever was going on when Gary blew that one place up.

I think Greg would probably invest mostly in big resorts with golf courses he'd spend most of his time on.

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The crazy spy story was when somebody got the bright idea to swap HWs for Dallas and Knots at the peak of each show. It didn't work for either show, but was worse for Knots because Peter Dunne never returned. I thought Paulsen did a decent job at Knots. At the very least it still felt like the same show, just with beefed up storylines for the men. Peter Dunne, as brilliant as he was at Knots was pretty bad on Dallas. He feminized the show far too much and didn't know how to write the male characters. I liked some of it and I did like Angelica Nero, but it didn't feel like Dallas. Felt more like Dynasty bizarrely enough.

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Yes the entire 7th season which is odd since it was such a critical season for Knots. The only time the show was #1 for the week was when Val was reunited with those babies, so it was risky to put that story in someone elses hands. I wonder what Dunne would've done with another season. He's another writer that needs to be interviewed.

My thoughts keep changing as I rewatch so there's no telling what I'll think, but the first few times I enjoyed the Jean Hackney story. I liked the actress who played her and how Ben became unraveled. I thought it was done in a way that didn't completely ruin Ben, who eventually had to be written off to pave way for Gary & Val's inevitable reunion. Maybe I would've held off more in light of how bad Val's stories got, but I didn't mind it too much.

As I'm watching the 5th season, I do enjoy it and find it powerful, but there is also a disconnected feeling. The Chip story went on for too long and seemed to dominate the canvas for a while. It had nice moments, but I don't like how Diana now seems thrown to the side. With a story like that I want to see a payoff and huge resolution to Diana and Karen's relationship. It was such a major relationship throughout the series and goes out with a whimper. Laura is also a character that seems to have changed so much. She has no love interest for most of the season nor a private life outside of being Abby's henchwoman. I wish they had gone in a more devious direction, especially after she locked horns with Sumner. The evolution of her relationship with Abby is more interesting than Karen/Abby.

Michele Lee has always been a unique actress which is clearly highlighted here. I didn't think anything could top the season 4 finale when she discovers Diana moved out, but her performances during her drug addiction put Faye Dunaway to shame. The facial expressions and body language is so over the top lol. I just *love* Michele Lee. She is fabulous.

Greg Sumner was always a favorite of mine and I'm grateful he came as such a perfect time. It's hard to imagine Knots Landing without him once he arrives. I'm also wondering how I missed how deep his relationship with Abby was in the beginning. I didn't realize she and Gary had such a loose marriage.

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Karen's pill addiction story was so well-paced.

I wouldn't have minded seeing Laura with a darker side but I mostly loved seeing her fight to build her life - on her own terms - and also forging a strong friendship with Gary (which was later ignored) and the complex relationship with Abby. I loved that she refused to listen to Karen's attacks against her for taking money from a bad person like Abby. Laura was a little too "real" for an increasingly one-dimensional set of characters.

The woman who played Jean didn't work for me. Maybe she was better on Paper Dolls.

There was something about the seventh season which just seemed off to me. I guess it was the changing of the guard. Paige didn't work for me at that time, it wasn't written to Nicolette's range.

For me Olivia's drug addiction carried that season.

Edited by CarlD2
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Honestly...? I think KNOTS wrote out Laura, not because they were overbudget (I mean, they probably were overbudget, but it wasn't as if she was the only one who could've been cut loose), but because the Lechowicks could not write for Constance McCashin the way they could for others. Like you said, Laura was definitely more complex than Karen, Val, even Abby. She was neither a total bitch, like Abby, nor a total heroine, like Karen and "poor Val"; and the Lechowicks, as writers and producers, were simply too incapable to know how to handle that.

I've always said that as influential as KNOTS was on me as a writer, the show really lost something when they let go of McCashin and Julie Harris (Lilimae). Up to that point, they were often the go-to examples of how KNOTS' cast was a proverbial cut above the other primetime soaps.

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If it had been up to me, I would have written out Michael (who, although he grew up to be handsome and not a bad actor, had little to do other than be cuckolded by Linda, who still would have worked fine without Michael in her early stint as Eric's wife), Olivia (I know the show had plans to make her a mini-Abby if Tonya Crowe hadn't left but I thought her last few years on the show were sanctimonious, self-righteous, and memorable only because her husband had a fantastic chest), Lillimae (I think she'd just run her course), and Val (ditto). I also would have been very tempted to write Mack out, mostly because, IMO, he was ruined when he was so nasty at Laura's funeral and when he became such an obsessive father to Paige, and also because it would have left the show with less room to stand on with Karen/Mack raising Meg, a story idea I wasn't overly fond of, as it took away a ton of potential drama with Greg trying to deal with a child who reminded him of a woman who loved him yet also deeply hurt him - they might as well have just had Meg go live with Richard, for all the story potential wasted :(

I can't think of one strong female character the Lechowicks really wrote for. They did an OK job with Karen - she was two-dimensional, at best, but I think they "got" Karen, and knew what Michelle Lee's range was. They didn't know how to write Abby (meddling mother, that mess with Michael York, the Yurikami or whatever stuff), they hated Val. I think they did know how to write for Paige. I'm surprised Nicolette and the Lechowicks have never teamed up again, because I think that was a perfect mating of actress and writer/producer. Nothing Nicolette has done since has been the same, including her endless degradation on Desperate Housewives.

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Carl! No way should they have written off Val or Lilimae! I think losing Lilimae was a harder blow than Laura. Julie Harris elevated the cast and had such flawless chemistry with Ted and Joan. I hate that they didn't just reduce her episode order or bring her back at some point. Aunt Ginny was a terrible replacement. Even had she stayed, like Laura, you have to wonder what the Lechowick's would've done with her. Probably endless one dimensional comedy scenes.

Karen suffered from Michele Lee's control of the character which unfortunately meshed perfectly with the Lechowick's uber politically correct attitude. Mack was introduced as a womanizer so why is it so hard for Michele Lee to accept that he might have an affair on Karen? The original triangle with Anne was flawlessly written and could've given them years of story had she not vetoed it. It was mature and gave her a great new rival. Instead you have the perfect couple fighting over things we could've give a damn about. And I don't think Anne recovered until the final season. I didn't like the silly comedy character she turned into. Especially the homeless plot. By that point the character lost all her appeal for me.

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To me Lillimae was just a weak character and the only reason she worked was Julie Harris and the initial concept of the character. I would have liked her more if she were a grifter who brought out mixed emotions in everyone and played on those emotions. That's basically what she was in her first appearance. When she came back and they tried to make her more sympathetic and treated her as a mother to Val, I had little patience for her. She was never a mother to Valene for most of Valene's life, and I think it should have stayed that way. All the clucking and the "cute" advice was badly fitted with her self-righteous tirades and judgmental attitude. During times like the reaction to Gary cheating with Abby I wondered if she really thought she was helping Val at all.

Lillimae seemed to work best when she had stories about men who seem nice, take advantage of her, and go insane. That worked well with Chip and especially with Joshua. But you can't do that again and again.

I would have kept her on recurring, not written her out entirely, but honestly, I understood why they got rid of her. And I think, ideally, it should have been a moment of catharsis for Valene. Saying goodbye to this fantasy she had tried to cling to, as she clung to the fantasy of her dream man Gary. Instead, Valene became a huge victim, and incredibly pathetic, not to mention irrelevant.

I never knew she vetoed that.

I actually do think that Mack wouldn't have cheated on Karen, but there are other stories which could have been told. I just don't think they knew how to write for Mack. The story with his adopting Jason was a nice story that came after 3 years of DIRTY COP!! and childish behavior and meddling and obsessiveness and so on, with little of the humor and the quiet moments that I had loved in Mack's early years.

The homeless plot was pure hell, especially her annoying sidekick. The only good scene was the one where she had a department store put makeup on her.

Other than that I didn't think her stories were too bad, just because I think the slinkiness and immaturity were a good contrast to Paige.

What were Anne's last stories? I barely paid attention to anything with Anne, Claudia, that boring as hell slab of beef from Italy, and the boring British woman, Vanessa? I had a tough time watching anything with Claudia after how they destroyed her in late season 12/early season 13.

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Oh I loved that sexy slab of italian beef, Nick. In the final season Anne was married to Greg and thought she was pregnant, only to find out it was menapause. I thought it was a nice story and she was taken more seriously that season. The final season was fairly good, I just wish they had used Diana more, particularly in the Vanessa role instead of that dreadful British actress they cast. It would've been a throw back to the shows roots having Diana return and fall into her same old habits with the wrong men. Would've been something interesting for Mack and Karen as well. I know they gave them Meg to keep them young, but please. There was no story with them having Meg. Even if Laura was around it wouldn't have created story for her.

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I always thought they gave them Meg as a reason to not tie Greg down with a child. I wish they hadn't done that - Meg still could have spent a lot of time being raised by nannies, and her presence would have given Greg story and added to his stories. Does Paige want to be a mother this early on? Will Claudia see Meg as a threat to her empire? Will Greg use Meg to replace Mary Catherine? And so on.

I forgot that Greg/Anne were still married then. Some of that was good but it saddened me that he had so little respect for her - but then, no one did.

Looking back, I can see that the show did try to give Greg and Paige other love interests even though they were supposedly fated to be together, but it seemed like they gave up on this after a while, especially with Paige. I would have rather seen the show end with Greg/Abby and with Paige deciding to be on her own.

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I'm with you on Michael and maybe Mack. But Olivia? Lilimae? Val?

Here's what I would have done:

1) Keep Laura, Lilimae and Val, but let go of Anne, Ben, Cathy, Jill, Paige and other supporting characters. (Especially with Abby and Olivia still around, Anne and Paige are redundant.)

2) Reunite Gary and Val, while simultaneously splitting up Karen and Mack. (Michele Lee was right: KNOTS needed at least one stable married couple on the front burner. And Gary and Val, IMO, had come to a place where reconciliation seemed like the best option, not continued (and forced) separation thanks to psychos like Danny and Jill.) Give the two some time to be support for other characters, and let them (and their fans) enjoy some marital bliss before plunging them again into drama.

3) Have Laura divorce Greg, as well, leading to an acrimonious custody fight for Meg. Mack agrees to represent Laura, thus setting the stage for a possible Mack/Laura relationship, which seriously tests her friendship with Karen and places Val and Gary in the middle. (At the same time, Abby seizes an opportunity to hook up with Greg, which will impact her and Olivia's relationship as well.) If Kevin Dobson and Constance McCashin exude genuine chemistry together, pursue the relationship all the way to marriage. If not, then write out Mack at the appropriate moment.

4) Karen cannot take the pressure of her pending divorce and Mack and Laura's affair and ends up becoming dependent on prescription drugs again. Eventually, Eric, now working at Lotus Point, agrees with Abby that she needs to step away from the business, sending Karen even further on a downward spiral. By this point, either Mack/Laura are working out or not. Either way, Karen's relapse provides a catalyst for her, Mack and Laura to resolve their differences (with Mack leaving town soon thereafter, depending on the success of his and Laura's affair).

5) By the following season, Karen is back on the road to recovery: she's out of rehab and even back in school, pursuing a college degree. (There's also a potential, and potentially messy, new relationship on the horizon with her professor.) And though she's no longer working at Lotus Point, Eric is there to represent her interests; and thanks to Abby's systematically forcing her own nephew out, she and Karen are guaranteed to keep locking horns for some time to come.

Edited by Khan
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