KNOTS LANDING

[yrfan1983]

I went down a random Love Boat rabbit hole and skimmed through the ’78 2-part Season 2 premiere, guest-starring our beloved Donna Mills!

https://youtu.be/c8nIPQ1WxgY

https://youtu.be/jdtbu3DFRuM

 

Donna has described how she spent the entirety of the 70s stuck in “damsel-in-distress” role and this is a perfect example. I won’t spoil the plot except to say that she falls in love with a handsome stranger, played by David Birney (eeek, this is the actor later revealed to be abusing his wife Meredith Baxter Birney). Donna's character and story is very serious and woe-is-me.

The whole time I’m watching this, I’m seeing her intelligence and talent shining through, and I’m thinking, she deserves much better than this.

I can only imagine how landing the role of Abby must have been salvation for Donna!
 

[Vee]

And now, the conclusion:

• Episode 8 of Season 6, "Tomorrow Never Knows" is famous for reasons I don't think I need to elaborate on for most people here. I knew vaguely of some of the events coming but not the hows, whys or specifics, which made it all very compelling for me. This ep is also the first fateful mention of the mysterious Paul Galveston, where we get a warning about him very early on: "No one works with him, you only work for him." Like Wolfbridge in S5, the writers very slowly start to weave first offhand references to Galveston and his empire into the show. First, like Wolfbridge, there's connections without a name attached then more direct references; Laura looking for water sources for Lotus Point and getting wind of a bigger power player in the region. Once again the show draws disparate and seemingly unconnected threads together slowly, and of course we're about to discover just how deep Galveston's involvement in the core of the show really goes - all I knew was he was a major business player who made trouble for several characters and is apparently Sumner's father or something, but I did not expect him to be tied into Val's babies. I do suspect the deeply strange "Who Killed Loder?"/Tidal Basin subplot with Mack and his ex-con right hand Tom Jezik (amazingly still on the show and a regular recurring player, which I did not expect a year ago), all about a dirty cop and some dead women, is also connected to Galveston but I have no idea at present. That whole weird story is fascinating so far though in that it seems so random.
• Ep 8 also gives us Cathy singing "Time After Time"! It's no Cyndi but Lisa Hartman does a great job and then moves directly into an old Ciji track. They've transformed the character a lot very quickly, but I'm not too fussed about it. I can buy her trying to move on from the kind of person she was with Ray and Gary real quick.
• Alas, Mack is finally moving out of Ben's. Their comic and occasionally homoerotic relationship will hopefully live on.
• That's the end of the funny little loose ends for this episode as it's time for the main event: The creepy lullaby music as Val goes into labor is terrifying, and it's so unsettling as she tries to call around the neighborhood with no one home and phones ringing in empty houses - except for the Fairgate boys, who are partying with sub-Friday the 13th Part III disco music while Eric is happily fed pizza by a young lady while also wearing a rather well-fitting red striped top. The boys rush Val to the hospital and are clearly very worried for her, which is touching to watch. The birth sequence is incredibly disturbing in spite of dated camera effects - the close-ups on Val's face and Ackerman in almost direct close-ups to the camera, howling away in either direction, the mix of triumphal orchestral music with the creepy discordant synths. Anyway, Ackerman gives Val the bad news as the biggest story in Knots history begins, and all Val can say is "but I saw them. I heard them cry." And so did the audience! This must have been the most insane mindfuck of a twist for a live viewing public without spoilers or streaming BITD. And it's very hard to watch JVA like this as she takes the news, having radiated joy about these new children after the struggles of her desperate youth for well, a few too many months for a TV pregnancy, but never mind that. There's also an intriguing cut during these events directly to Abby soothing a crying Olivia following another of her (prophetic?) nightmares just before or after Val gives birth - an almost mystical, supernatural element is almost intuited with this connection between the two, not unlike the townsfolk of Twin Peaks reacting psychically to evil acts in the night on that show a few short years later.
• Gary has a great, cryptic line to Abby as he goes to Val upon hearing she's gone into labor: "You have nothing to worry about. You never have." When you look at that statement through the lens of how the Ewings came back together against impossible odds at the end of last season and the start of this one, and how Gary ran headlong after Abby when he saw her taken hostage while leaving Val behind, it has a new and unique impact. That doesn't mean I don't think Gary loves Val, or that she's not in his blood, because she is, the same as Abby. But it's different, and I think Gary knows at least part of that. That's why he tells Abby she has nothing to worry about - because he believes it. At this juncture in their lives anyway, when push comes to shove I suspect he'd always be the man chasing after her because of how she excites and inspires him.
• Abby seems genuinely sad for Val when Gary breaks the news about the twins, and it's well played by Donna Mills. It’s not camp or bitchery, and the slightly guilty sigh of relief she lets out after hanging up their call is real and conflicted too. then comes the final call in the dark from a brusque mystery man in the dark asking for "the father’s blood type," which is creepy as fùck. Abby's mounting dread as she begins to put the pieces together about what the man calls "the children in question" must have mirrored the audience's. This was the absolute right way to do this story vs. what they'd originally planned for Abby, but I'll get to that more in a bit.
• Julie Harris' performance as Lilimae reacts to the news about the twins in Ep 9 is possibly harder to watch than JVA's. It feels like the weight of all her own sins coming down on her, like something she feels punished for far more than Joshua.
• There's a lot more film noir lighting in Abby's drawing room, and Ben's office, in the hospital corridors with the camera prowling down through the shadows as Gary and Ben discuss events, then as Gary comes home to Abby, who listens in horror as Gary muses that Val thinks she saw the twins.
• Off-kilter camerawork persists in the fallout from the 'miscarriage' even in the sunlit cul-de-sac. Everyone's staggered reactions are played out carefully, including Karen and Mack returning from their seaside trip happy in love and getting the bad news from the boys - there's a great moment where Karen wordlessly bolts into the house. They also do a beautiful job with a key scene with Lilimae sadly dismantling the nursery with the help of Gary, of all people. When he quietly confessed he wanted the twins to be his, they gave Lilimae the admittedly portentous but graceful line "in a way they were." "You are the continuous thread that runs through her life," she acknowledges. "And you," Gary counters. They hold hands as he helps her take the cribs apart, and finally seem to have found some degree of common ground after years. Shackelford and Harris don't vie for power, they're just very giving to each other onscreen. We all know it's not always that way on other soaps in either daytime or primetime.
• The gaslighting aspect of Val's story, and the veil falling behind her eyes as she tries to put on a genial face, hits very different in today's world. Other reactions also get space to play out: Karen wanting to cancel Thanksgiving dinner (Val says no), and an equally naive and damaged Joshua earnestly asking his new favorite TV preacher if Val's miscarriage is retribution for her sins. He's still shot through with dogmatic puritanism and dysfunction despite his earnest and unworldly innocence, and that's what makes him potentially dangerous. So of course, the pastor suggests Joshua try writing a sermon of his own. I'm pretty sure I know where this is going and it's quite topical for the time.
• The atmospheric direction from the early sequences post-tragedy kicks into high gear at the close of Ep 9 as a dazed Val wanders through her now-empty nursery, with the roving camera from above following her as she shrinks into herself in a light-shafted corner of the blank space. They have Gary go fetch her, where Val confesses, "we should never have gotten married again." (She might be right, despite how killer they've been together since early Season 5.) But as Gary says, "I've never regretted it." Both statements of note.
• Mack’s Thanksgiving speech for the ensemble at the MacKenzie house is very classy stuff, owning his mistakes and being humble and thankful for having his new family back. Abby being back in the cul-de-sac for a community event for the first time in several years is something I made note of about this ep a couple pages ago, and it's trippy to see her there; you can tell she's uncomfortable, having previously tried to beg off IIRC, but it's fitting that she is there and we get to see her and the others having to adjust to who she is now vs. the rest of them. Even Tom Jezik is there! The dinner is pretty wholesome and comforting in the face of a monstrous tragedy; everyone in turn gets to give thanks and give their own perspective on the various storylines of the moment, and that feels very of a piece with something daytime would do at its best. Of course there's a twist in the tail at the end, when Gary and Val return and Val cheerily chirps, "Gary and I were late again as usual." Just ambiguous enough to be unsettling for the freeze frame.
• A brief interlude: Greg Sumner spends his Turkey Day alone in his suite, with even more atmospheric lighting, lonely angles and shadows on him and his perfectly plated hotel food. There's very little said between him and the help. A little artistry on this show says more than most dialogue.
• By Ep 10 ("Message in a Bottle") Val is flying a kite in her hallucinatory erotic dreams of her, Gary and a cheerful Abby on the beach. A lot to unpack there, and obviously Val is not well. This is another very well-shot episode from newcomer(?) Nick Havinga who also did Ep 8. "I had no business raising an Ewing, let alone being one," Val calmly tells Ben, while also seeming to quietly blame J.R. for what happened to the twins. I was wondering if they'd hit that beat, and I'm glad they did. It makes sense her mind would go there.
• All the stuff with Abby from this point on is straight out of '70s conspiracy thrillers, all Alan J. Pakula or Sidney Lumet's greatest hits, stuff like Klute or The Parallax View - creepy phone calls, tinkling music, disappeared people. Abby races out to the Galveston Industries plane on its airstrip accompanied by amazing Harry Manfredini-esque strings, only to find no Scott Easton waiting for her - just a strange Easton doppelgänger. Abby rapidly turns into an '80s TV version of a Hitchcock Blonde with all the fashion, trappings and music to match as she scrambles to hunt down Easton, play phone tag and unravel the scheme that is turning her world upside down. This is compounded further after (in another smart plotting move) Olivia goes to see Val, who lets Olivia in on the secret of her very much alive babies; Olivia tells Abby, who acts on her own concern by going straight to Val's doctor: Ackerman. She knows something is up, and she tells him she knows he knows - on another show a character like Abby wouldn't necessarily do that, trying to undo a horrible crime against someone she's supposed to hate and fear. Instead of Abby as the direct conspirator as was originally planned (and vetoed by Donna Mills), her role is repositioned so that her culpability is mitigated. Instead the story becomes a conspiracy thriller starring Donna Mills, where we know she has done mischief in the past and gotten in over her head, but here she becomes almost the audience identification figure in the storyline - the only person who knows something is up, trying to learn the truth about something she never intended to happen but feels guilt for. They go so far with this as to have Abby storm Galveston Industries, security be damned, with the viewer cheering her on; here, she find Easton's weird doppelgänger who essentially says Easton is dead and watch your step. Her growing paranoia and fear is so well played, so carefully built up, and by the end of the ep Abby is literally rocking in her chair out of sheer nerves. She's tried to do her due diligence, which is a smart move by the writers by way of Mills. She becomes the protagonist, or at least the antiheroine. It's brilliantly nuanced character and plot work and you'd never know they didn't originally plan it this way as opposed to something that Mills is right about - the original idea would've left Abby irredeemable.
• Paul Galveston finally appears in the flesh in Ep 10, where he and Gary bond over horses and ranches. The surrogate father/son angle here, with Galveston appearing to be a superficially kinder sketch of Jock Ewing to Gary, is not lost on me and is a fascinating idea if they lean into it. Which is notable given I know whose father he apparently really is.
• The whole weird Loder/Tidal Basin storyline continues in this ep with a focus on Jezik, still the most unlikely surprise recurring player. There's a super-cinematic suspense sequence of Jezik meeting a contact at a foggy abandoned warehouse with a drip-drip-dripping water faucet, followed by silhouetted men grabbing him and working him over for snooping in the wrong places. It's very well done, but this whole side story is still baffling yet spellbinding to me because unlike Wolfbridge it feels beamed in from another show, with most of the events (murders) and key players (a dead cop named Loder) taking place offscreen. I assume it must go back to Galveston too - this team loves giant umbrellas on this show - but the jury is out for me on how well it will play in the final analysis.
• There's a nice sequence in this ep too as Karen listens to Val tell her origin story about falling for Gary, calling him 'this blond god' who helped her in the diner back in Texas. But most of Ep 10's stuff with Val is given over to her collapsing psyche, with a terrifying, brilliantly shot sequence with Joshua walking in on Val talking to herself in the dark about the babies, and then a campier but equally spooky dream sequence of her in a blazing white hospital room with creepy Ackerman, her family and her men all looking on in scrubs, chiding her, gaslighting her. Val's rightful paranoia gives way to paranoid delusions against her loved ones, and that leads to her finally making her getaway. JVA is genuinely frightening in this stuff so far, and with the first third of an already epic season down (maybe my favorite for now, and not just for the baby story but for the evolutions in Abby, Gary and Sumner so far) I'm very excited to finally continue on with the show.

Edited October 21, 2022 by Vee

[Spin865]

Eric and Michael have real  "Wonder Fairgate brothers powers activate!" vibes in episode 9. On the subject of the preacher, I'm confused with what I think is supposed to be a cable news station having a religious show on it (even if the preacher seems more of a middle of the road type than a Pat Robertson type). Howard Duff who played Paul Galveston played a similar character on Dallas a few years later.   

[Vee]

I assume it's just a local cable affiliate with a lot of different programming. They had more of those back then, IIRC. (RIP to Los Angeles' beloved film-loving Z Channel)

 

[yrfan1983]

Did the show ever say why Val's first novel was titled "Capricorn Crude"? Or anyone have a guess? I know crude is probably a reference to oil, but I have no idea where Capricorn fits in.

Side-note: A KL writer was asked in SOD what storyline he felt wasn't written well, and he said "Val's writing career". It was just one of those 20-word blurb Q&As, so he didn't elaborate, and I really want to know more on why he said that.

[Vee]

I could've sworn it was retitled by the publisher. I don't know the whys of 'Capricorn.'

[Franko]

It was. Val's original title was "A Family in Texas." "Capricorn" doesn't directly translate to "Ewing," but it was close enough for the writers, I guess. (Ewes being female sheep and sheep being members of the caprini species.)

[Vee]

Right - I 'd forgotten the original title. I didn't know that about Capricorn! The publisher's is a much better title tbh.

[Joseph]

i felt something familiar when i watched her on murder mystery called "A Star Is Dead" pretty lame, but Donna In her rather Small Role made it worthwhile, the bonus was a glimpse at the Beautiful Carla Borelli, who appeared on a little scene. But as you said Donna was in yet another damsel in distress role, one that dies

[Franko]

I'm pretty fond of Donna's work in "A Star is Dead." She's playing a takeoff on Marilyn Monroe, with Peter Palmer of Lil' Abner as the Joe DiMaggio

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analogue, June Lockhart as her callous mother, Robert Foxworth as the JFK type and best of all, William Daniels as the politically conservative publisher of a sleazy tabloid. William laying into Donna with that voice is just something else.

 

 

[Broderick]

The book was also (supposedly) a "hatchet job" on the greedy Ewings.  

In literature, much has been written about the separation of the "sheep" (the good) from the "goats" (the bad).  

In astrology, the Capricorn symbol is the Goat.

By changing the name of Ewing Oil to Capricorn Crude, the company was effectively changed from something "good" (a sheep, a ewe) to something "bad" (a goat, a Capricorn).  

[Franko]

I wonder if that wordplay came from Peter Dunne, who apparently was responsible to Ciji's successor being "C.G." Thanks for the extra info, @Broderick

[Soapsuds]

Watching season 5 

Did they call Gary's family to tell him that he wasn't dead?

Didn't Mark St. Claire notice none of his family was there?

Who was the gunman? Was it Ray attempting to shoot Gary or was it Wolfbridge group?

I don't recall.

[Joseph]

Hope Y'all Like It

[yrfan1983]

I was not expecting the end…amazing!

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