Knots Landing

[Chris 2]

David Jacobs hiring his ex-wife’s husband reminds me of Jack Webb, who hired his ex-wife (Julie London) and her husband (Bobby Troup) to star on “Emergency”. Very civilized!

David Jacobs gave us two great - and very different - TV shows. What a legacy!

[kalbir]

Dallas the family/business conflict-based show with the heart and roots of a western. Knots Landing the community-based show that set itself apart with high emotional stakes character driven storytelling.

RIP David Jacobs and thank you for your contributions to primetime television.

[DemetriKane]

Rest in peace, King David. I have tremendous respect for him, I had hoped to be his mentee one day.  And he truly came off like a good guy.  He will forever be missed.

!!!!

[Soaplovers]

I also partial to his 3rd series he helped create in the late 80s called Paradise/guns of Paradise.  It lasted 2 full seasons and partial 3rd season.

It was a hybrid of self contained and hybrid stories that took place in California in the late 19th century about orphan kids coming to live with their single uncle..who had a love/hate relationship with the town banker (they became a couple later).

He had great ideas and sadly he wasn't always listened to.

[te.]

Fun thing about Paradise - they had a young actor auditioning for the third season; they felt he was talented - too talented for a series that was probably getting cancelled, so they adviced him to take the other job he had lined up. The actor? Luke Perry. The show? Beverly Hills 90210.

 

Maybe David Jacobs had nothing to do with that audition, but from now on, I will imagine he had a part in creating the defining prime time soaps of the 90s.

[SFK]

Has the original Knots bible/treatment ever been made publicly available and posted online? I don't know if David Jacobs ever went into detail in any of his interviews, but I'm curious about the couple that became Gary and Val and what if anything of their initial concept got carried over into the Seaview Circle Ewings' storyline. 

[Vee]

After a lot of delay and a lot of IRL priorities, I've wrapped KL Season 6. I have stuff to say about it for those who care, but my commentary on the show will be considerably spaced out and in more generalized blocks from now on. I also am wrapping the end of Dallas Season 8 shortly, because I'm hoping to try watching Dallas' famous 'dream season' and KL Season 7 together in sync due to their unique Lorimar creative showrunner swap to compare and contrast. I'm back in my Lorimar era!

I am sure people are tired of my critically hammering Dallas in multiple threads, and I do think it has its merits especially earlier on. I enjoy watching portions of it for what it is even in its later years, but it's a very different beast to me. What I will say though is it's consistently strange how connected I can be to even tiny character moments in Knots - Ben playing post-coital bagpipes for Val in the season finale before the big news comes down while Val giggles and says 'this is getting weird' - which never seem to happen on the mothership show, and how you feel the character history weight and stakes for every person involved. There's such care taken too with the cutting and production value, like the cross-cutting in the opening, ricocheting back and forth between a shellshocked Karen struggling to talk to the police after Ackerman's blown his brains out, to Mack finally fully committing himself to his wife's faith in her beliefs as he illegally ransacks Ackerman's house for his files. And the big, famous tableaus like the end sequence at the Fishers has all the characters arrayed across the screen and location shoot like they're in a Western, just splayed across a suburban street. I just never see stuff like this on Dallas much, character-wise or style-wise. It's not a wonder to me that KL ran fourteen years at this point; the wonder is how it seemingly (by comparison to Dallas at least which was understandably larger than life and tapped into the zeitgeist) flew relatively under the cultural radar at the same time.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Vee

[kalbir]

@Vee Looking forward to your thoughts on the final 10 episodes of season 6. Those episodes to me were the peak of Knots Landing: Ava Gardner arc, the start of Empire Valley, Val's babies.

Edited September 7, 2023 by kalbir

[Vee]

I was somewhere in those 10 eps when I left off - I'll have to check my notes. I will say I was surprised they simply concluded the Ruth arc off-camera. In between the penultimate episode and the finale Greg finds out what Ruth did with Abby to con Laura into thinking Abby and Greg had slept together again (a Melrose Place-esque or late Dallas-level scheme that seems beneath KL tbh) and sends Ruth packing without a final scene, all offscreen. Presumably because Ava Gardner's contracted run was up and maybe she was too run ragged by the network TV filming pace to even be bothered with more. There's also no Joshua or Cathy in "The Long and Winding Road" which feels appropriate, if a bit surprising given that story ticking up and up.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Vee

[j swift]

Please register in order to view this content

Gary Ewing could get it.  Not that bright, prone to addiction, and not always loyal.  But, boy oh boy could he wear a pair of boxers!

[Soapsuds]

Gary was a hot stud. There's an episode where he is wearing gray warm up pants and you can see junior. TS/Gary is hung.

[SFK]

I was telling Adam this picture is straight outta Tennessee Williams, Streetcar meets Cat.

[j swift]

Please let Adam know that I am a huge fan of his account.  His pop culture curation is second to none.

[SFK]

I sure will, he's great! He and I were having a conversation about KL's infamous sandcastle opening (he hates it, I love it as a fun experiment a long-running show like Knots is fortunate enough to try). I found myself on the beach at Magens Bay last week and I wrote out the KL logo for him in the sand, he posted it in his stories.

[kalbir]

@j swift @Soapsuds I can't believe you're so thirsty for Gary.

The Gary/Val/Abby triangle was pivotal in ushering in Knots Landing's peak era and drove storylines for years. I never thought Gary was a prize though. When the triangle was beginning I was like "why are these grown women fighting over this weak mama's boy?". The triangle worked not because of the triangle itself, but for the character arcs: Gary manned up, Val moved on with her life after losing her first love, and Abby got the come up that she was all about.