KNOTS LANDING

[YRBB]

Thanks, Carl! I wanted to mention that Gary/Olivia scene but forgot. Once again, she reminded me a lot of her mother.

 

 

[YRBB]

EPISODE 16: OUT OF CONTROL

 

When the episodes begins – chaos! It’s all so shocking; hard to believe Mary-Frances is dead. I could rage about the Lechowicks wasting Mary-Frances within an episode of her return, but it’s all so surprising and captivating. Most of the episode, of course, deals with this unexpected event. Brilliantly, Jane Sumner also returns to the show (this time, played by the same actress) and, despite her relatively brief previous stay, her scenes with Greg bubble with the weight of the past. The scene in which Greg calls Jane but can’t say the words is particularly touching – some of Devane's best work.

 

And, then, another twist: Mary-Frances was operating under an assumed name. Initially, I thought this death was connected to Oakman and that mess, but what if the writers are developing a separate mystery? Or maybe they’re making us think it’s a separate thing!

 

Tom learns that Greg and Paige were an item. It’s perhaps a little unconvincing that he either hadn’t heard that or found out earlier, but it’s funny he becomes a little jealous and territorial.

 

Meanwhile, unconnected to absolutely everything, Val and Danny continue their seemingly unstoppable gallop towards marriage. You’d think at some point Val would have something to say about Greg or Mary-Frances’ murder, but she’s not only a blind caricature, but a self-involved one too by now. I never thought I’d be annoyed by Val. Thankfully, Gary won’t give up and there is one amusing scene where both Val and Gary visit Pat and Frank regarding Danny (finally, the Williamses involved in something) but by the time Val and Danny are unexpectedly getting married, a sense of cold and dread is taking over me. I’m beginning to really resent this storyline. They’ve got to fix this.

 

And, while they’re at it, I do wish they’d settle on how they want to spell Mary-Frances. They’ve had three different versions so far!  

[YRBB]

EPISODE 17: MY BULLET

 

Val makes her one appearance to tell Karen that she and Danny eloped. The look on Lee’s face is great but then the writers turn our stomachs with the sight of Val and Danny in bed about to make love. What did we ever do to deserve this? Poor Val, indeed!

 

Michael wants his money back from Harold for blah blah blah. Ugh, it all pretty much develops exactly like you’d think: Harold is paid a threatening visit, he’s desperate to get the money. He ends up asking Mack to loan him $13,000. Both Mack and Karen (who are dealing with goldfish drama) are stunned at this… and then proceed to lose about 60 IQ points each. I mean… neither one, not the wise busybody, not the former investigator, suspect something serious is going on if Harold is asking for that much money? It doesn’t even occur to them. A little coldly, they say no without even summoning him to ask more questions. It’s all because the writers need to get Harold blackmailing Tom with the secret of him being a dirty cop, of course, but I still didn’t expect them to give the MacKenzies the shaft for once!

 

The opening scene is hilarious: Greg, back to his old self, has had enough of security meetings and bodyguards. He calls his security team 'police academy rejects' and Tom and Ricardo are 'clowns trying to do comedy'. (Well, in all fairness, Ricardo's jokes were wildly inappropriate for the situation and setting). It all goes downhill from there. Carlos calls Paige to ask her to visit Greg. She lies to Tom about where she’s going but he finds out when Carlos calls back to ask Paige not to come following Paula's unexpected arrival. Well, she’s his girlfriend, so…. The ensuing Paula/Greg/Paige/Tom interactions from this little misunderstanding are a lot of lighthearted fun, leading to Tom's confession that he’s in love with Paige. Her reaction – instantly melting and deciding they need to get condoms – shows it actually does mean something to her despite all her bravado.

 

Things don’t end so nicely for Greg. He receives a visit from the shady Robert, who oh-so-subtly tries to take Mary-Frances’ notebook. Surprise: They end up hating each other. It is in this fun scene that the problem with having a talent like Devane on your show reveals itself: A lot of actors, especially the younger ones, can’t stand up to him, so to speak. Even if they have the talent, they lack the gravitas. But we’ll take the talented actor anyway.

 

Things then really take a turn when Greg, drinking heavily, sees a vision of Mary-Frances (yay, more Stacy Galina!). How very Six Feet Under of him. But the true shocker comes when Paul Galveston shows up as well! Wow, I surely never thought we’d see him again. He does seem to be written entirely too overtly, speaking in a way I don’t quite remember him ever doing, but he’s dead, so whatever. These visits, of course, lead to the obvious question: Why isn’t Laura there? They may or may not have asked McCashin to return but, to their credit, they address her absence by having Greg say she wouldn’t fit in with them because she actually loved him. Well, OK, that kinda works. Greg indulges in his self-pity and literally tries to outrun his ghosts by leaving the ranch and paying the MacKenzies a late-night visit, but they kick him out. Greg returns home, where he ends things with Paula and continues to be tormented by the ghosts of his dead relatives (now that they make a point of it, wow. He really does have 3 major relatives of his dead). All in all, this is a little too on-the-nose for Knots Landing but seeing the actors and Devane's work help sell it.

 

Strangely poignant is the Meg story: One of Greg's daughters is dead, the other one is about to learn about death when the goldfish she suckered Mack into getting her passes away. "The fish is dead," Mack deadpans to Karen in perhaps one of Dobson’s finest comedic moments. Touchingly, neither one can bring themselves to tell Meg the truth and they pretend the ‘fish doctor’ saved the goldfish. Meg believes them. "Thank God for the fish doctor," they proclaim, which would have made an excellent title for this episode. "There’s been too much death," Karen further explains to Mack in one of those moments where the audience’s thoughts perfectly meld with the characters’.

 

After a night of heavy drinking, Greg realizes that Mary-Frances’ notebook is gone. As he stares at Mary-Frances once more, he asks what was going on with her, and she disappears, leaving him and us to wonder. This could be really good!

[Soaplovers]

Reading your re-watch of season 11... this season really shows the contempt the show--runners had for Val.  You'd think after the whole Jill episode, she would want to enjoy being single and have fun with friends and casual dating for awhile before getting sucked back into a relationship.  Also, having Val isolated from the other characters in season 11 is sad... but at the same time, how could Val be included in a realistic way with the other characters especially outside of the cul de sac grouping?  She wasn't involved with Lotus Point nor with Sumner Group.. and most of the new characters coming in weren't moving into the cul de sac (other then the Williams clan).

 

I think by the 10th and 11th season.. it was like two different shows (the Sumner Group and cul de sac crowd).. and with Abby/Laura gone.. you lost two key bridges that could have tied the shows together.. since Paige really didn't have a lot of interaction with the rest of the cul de sac group despite living there for a couple of seasons.

 

 

[DRW50]

Reading these reminds me of how I disliked Meg living with Mack and Karen, being raised by them, a situation that should have been much better than it turned out to be. I think it's because rather than seeing them as loving parents and feeling the poignancy of the situation, I saw Mack by this time as a huge self-righteous pain in the ass and I never forgave him for what he did at Laura's funeral. I never stopped wanting Greg to take his child back.

[juppiter]

 

FTFY.

 

I really hate this season. Hot take: worse than season 13.

[DRW50]

 

DIRTY COP! DIRTY COP! DIRTY COP! He's a...DIRTY COP!

 

I spent most of that storyline wishing for a Tom and Mack murder/suicide.

[KMan101]

I remember kind of loathing so much of Season 11. Reading the great recaps by @YRBB brings it all back, lol

 

I'm with Carl on how I hated Meg living with Mack and Karen.

 

It was also sad how isolated Val was. I don't actually remember thinking that watching the season (which, it's been quite a while) but reading the recaps it's obvious how little she was used and how isolated she was. I mean, a character like Valene almost writes herself, how could no one not be interested in that?

 

I remember being disappointed in the Michael/Eric/Linda thing. I don't know I don't remember feeling like they truly did it justice. I also felt Harold and Olivia were mostly wasted, which was a shame. I was so bored of their money woes. Olivia definitely had shades of Abby and I wish they did more with her.

 

Betsy Palmer was always over the top and campy LOL. It worked, sort of, on Knots but it felt a bit out of place and I sort of resented how they could have Betsy Palmer come in but Lilimae was dumped. And I love whacky Betsy Palmer. But Aunt Ginny was odd.

 

I also don't remember caring much about Amanda and it just felt so dragged out and tedious. The initial rape and the next morning followup were good but I didn't care for the hallucination thing, it felt like they weren't taking it seriously but I could be remembering wrong.

 

I both liked and hated Tom. I loathed Mack most of the time. And I got kind of sick of Knots becoming The Greg and Paige Show, as much as I loved them, Nicolette Sheridan and William Devane. They definitely carried the show in it's later years though. But it was just ... a lot at times. Although I'd center a show around them too, they're both so damn good and interesting to watch. But Greg drained me at times lol. It was just ... a lot.

Edited March 4, 2018 by KMan101

[soapfan770]

Probably one of my favorite Season 11 moments is when Anne and Paula end up wearing the same hideous yellow dress. 

 

I too was disappointed by the Michael/Linda/Eric triangle and I felt it lacked some energy. I know the actor who played Eric passed away in 1990 but I can't remember if we finally saw Michael and Eric make up after their huge fight before Eric left again. I really did like Lar Park Lincoln though it's too bad she didn't have much of a career after Knots.  

[juppiter]

 

Whether they intended it this way or not, it felt like Val was trying to convince herself (or maybe JVA added that in.)

 

i mean, if Valene said that to ME, I’d be like 

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[DRW50]

 

I always had a soft spot for Eric but I never thought Steve Shaw (RIP) was much of an actor. Pat Peterson got very hot by this point and was a decent enough actor, but I can see why the show decided to focus elsewhere, and especially why Linda was moved elsewhere. 

 

Sibling triangles are always more interesting on paper than in execution. 

 

That season had a lot of stories that likely seemed better on paper, especially Harold and Olivia (which mostly felt like they still had the actors under contract and needed to pad out episodes - for me Olivia lost all purpose as a character when they made her relationship with Abby so one-note in Abby's last seasons), and the trashy Danny saga. He was just grafted onto the canvas, and it showed.

 

I did think the season was watchable, which I can't say about seasons 13 and 14. 

Edited March 5, 2018 by DRW50

[YRBB]

EPISODE 18: THE RIPPLE EFFECT

 

An interesting episode that somehow feels similar in tone to the big, dramatic middle seasons of the show. The pace also picks up considerably. I wonder if it will last. We shockingly begin with Val going to Gary's ranch to tell him she married Danny (I still don’t get it). Amusingly, Gary questions why she felt the need to come tell him. Things get very bizarre after this (yes, even for the usual standard in this Gary/Val/Amanda/Danny story). Amanda runs into Danny while he’s picking up the twins and she’s picking up her last check, and she’s fascinatingly rude and dismissive. "Drop dead you slimy son of a bitch" is the nicest thing she says to him. Somewhere in there, Amanda kinda coughs/garbles, which must mean she’s crazy.

 

Later, in what has to be one of the most ridiculous scenes in Knots Landing history, Amanda shows Gary her brooch made with a condom (….) and that was her way of telling him she wants to have sex. OK. They have sex. Then Amanda decides she’s leaving town and she’s gone! OK? Surely, this can’t be the end but Gary really takes it calmly. Just bizarre stuff.

 

Thankfully, Karen actually does something productive for once and arranges a dinner party: Thanks to the fact that she invited Danny and Val and Pat and Frank, we get a three-part montage instead of the usual two. The dinner scenes are really good (and well lit, everyone looks fabulous). You gotta laugh at Danny turning on the bullshit charm to 200 and constantly making jokes everyone seems to hate but act like they don’t. It’s a scene that uses Behren’s lack of charisma to its benefit: Danny is putting on a huge performance that is hardly believable and everyone in the scene sees it (save for Val, dear God they’ve murdered her). The moment Karen makes her realization during coffee time after Danny slips with a comment about beating children is refreshingly melodramatic (the music made me jump) and it gave me goosebumps. I really liked her turning to Mack after everyone’s gone and telling him that Gary is right about Danny.

 

Mack also makes a realization: For no reason other than the plot dictates it, he makes a comment about phone calls between lovers and both he and Paige realize Tom never called Paige from the airport like he said. Paige breaks up with Tom again and Mack, Frank, and Peggy realize that he is a dirty cop. Dobson does great in the scene where he confronts Arnie Zimmer and the man admits it was Tom all along.

 

Meanwhile, Tom dodges Harold's blackmail effort with some blackmail of his own. I don’t buy at all that he found out about the Mexico stuff but the whole thing leads to a swift exit from Harold after he finds out about Olivia's money from stocks, steals it to pay off his debt, dumps Olivia, leaves town, and never pays Michael back. Wow. I guess that’s it? Funny how not one, but two characters in this episode quickly leave town.

 

Greg being sarcastic, rude, and mean to the police is really fun! The show puts Michael to good use here when Greg asks him to find out what Mary Frances went into his computer for. Contrasting his behavior towards everyone else, Greg stops Michael before he exits his office and thanks him. It’s a very nice little moment. Turns out, Mary Frances is part of a subversive group, Oakman is involved, and Greg can’t figure out exactly what it was she was tracking. As Greg and Paula exit a restaurant at the end of the episode, Greg is shot! It’s all getting slightly ridiculous, but OK.

[DRW50]

Is this Pat Peterson and Kim Lankford in the first ad? 

 

@vetsoapfan @SoapDope

 

 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Yes.

[DRW50]

 

Thanks. I thought so but I thought it might be too much of a coincidence. I wonder if a casting director saw the commercial.