Monday, October 16, 2017

Knots Landing season 6

Knots Landing Season 6 asks: can you build a successful primetime-soap season atop just one great storyline? -- and surprisingly, the answer is "yes."

Season 6 is the one where Val's newborn twins are stolen, an event that impacts most of the core characters, but none, heaven knows, more than Valene Clements Ewing herself. And although there's a lot more than just "Val's babies" to the season -- it juggles at least as many characters and plotlines as Season 5, and probably a few more -- nothing else really and truly pays off. Some of the story-lines, in fact, go off the rails so badly, they're jettisoned early in Season 7.

But through it all, there's Joan Van Ark, in an acting showcase unmatched in the series' fourteen seasons. Oh, other actors have seasons that play to their strengths, as well as to their characters' (Michele Lee and Ted Shackelford in Season 3, Kevin Dobson and Donna Mills in Season 5, Teri Austin in Season 10, Kathleen Noone in Season 14), but there's nothing quite like the tour-de-force that Van Ark offers up in Season 6, as Valene -- struggling to accept an explanation she knows in her heart is false -- develops a dissociative disorder, becomes convinced that she's Verna Ellers (the lead character in her latest novel) and takes off for Tennessee.

She turns into a "fictional character" that she herself created? If you described that plot to anyone who hadn't actually seen it unfold as it did in 1984 (particularly someone familiar with the tropes of soap opera), they'd presume it was played as camp, or at least with a wink to the audience. Typically on soaps, if a character develops a split personality, or discovers they have a twin, it's designed to let the actor spread their wings: to gift them a character somehow wilder and weirder than the one they're already playing. (Standard '80s soap examples: Jeanne Cooper on The Young and the Restless, Morgan Fairchild on Falcon Crest. Or, of course, a few years later on Knots, Van Ark's own maniacal turn as the victim of a "brain virus.") But on Knots Landing, once Valene slips into Verna's shoes, she's not amplified; she's simplified. Gone are the neuroses and fears brought on by two decades of battling the Ewings, the disillusion of being abandoned by her own mother, the fury at her husband's betrayal. The years stripped away, Valene emerges calmer, happier, seemingly younger. She calls herself Verna, but you sense you're being given a glimpse into the past, when Valene herself was still full of hope and promise. It's exhilarating, and it's heartbreaking -- and it's the furthest thing from camp. What gives the middle block of Season 6 such complexity is that Verna Ellers is more content than any version of Valene we've seen in six seasons -- yet she needs to come home, doesn't she? She needs to be "cured."

Doesn't she?

Season 5 had been one of those miraculous seasons where pretty much everything went right. Amusingly, when I reached out to headwriter Richard Gollance to speak with him about Season 6, his first words to me were "Why aren't you writing up Season 5?" (I explained that I was, in fact, writing up all the Knots seasons, and saving the best -- Season 5 -- for last.) He knew that Season 5 was a triumph, and that Season 6 didn't measure up. But if it doesn't measure up, it still benefits from all the groundwork laid a year earlier. Season 5 begins with two couples with enormous chemistry and story potential -- Gary Ewing and Abby Cunningham, and Mack and Karen MacKenzie -- and through the course of the season, adds two more: Greg Sumner and Laura Avery, and Valene Ewing and Ben Gibson. Going into Season 6, you've got these eight people perfectly positioned, and you want to keep them in place for at least one more year. So where do you mine the drama? The story-lines that worked in Season 5 can't be easily duplicated. So the writers settle on one great idea and run with it: what if Abby steals Val's babies?

It's almost pointless to discuss the other Season 6 story-lines, because everything is positioned around the saga of Valene's twins. In fact, some of the oddities and inadequacies of the season occur because everything is timed around their delivery, and there's an awful lot of apparatus that needs to be put in place before they arrive. Abby, who'd been kidnapped at the end of Season 5, has to be rescued and reunited with her husband Gary. (He'd thrown her off his ranch the previous season, and threatened divorce.) Once they're reconciled, he has to hand her control of Ben Gibson's cable station so that she can, in time, read his private correspondence, discover that Gary is the father of Val's twins, and then see to it (deliberately, as originally planned, or unwittingly, as ultimately filmed) that those babies never come home to Seaview Circle. (And what's more, Abby's D.C. lobbyist -- who's taking care of all the details -- has to arrange for his doctor colleague to sub for Valene's obstetrician, then get involved in something so nefarious that it costs him his life, so that he's not around to shield Abby once everything goes down.)

And that's going to take a while. Eight episodes, to be precise. And while there are some key events that need to happen during those weeks (Sumner's election to the U.S. Senate, Lotus Point's grand opening), that's still a lot of time to kill, and several characters are going to have to tread water until Val goes into labor. The Season 5 cliffhanger, as Gollance notes, "had torn apart the world that we had created" -- and that included three of the four couples. And although the writers had every intention of reuniting them, one of the ways they stretch the early portion of Season 6 is by keeping them apart as long as possible. Not Gary and Abby, because their reconciliation is required to further Val's story-line. But Mack and Karen, and Val and Ben -- they can wait a little longer. So the writers stall a bit. They give Ben a fellow newshound, P.K. Kelly, whose sole assignment seems to be to get Ben into bed. (She's so relentless in her pursuit of him, you can't tell if she's trying to seduce him or just wear him down.) And they pair Mack with Sumner's estranged wife Jane. The scenes between Ben and P.K. are filler; the ones between Mack and Jane are more than that -- they're awful. Millie Perkins was ideally cast in Season 5; she was the woman fighting for Greg that you didn't root for. The writers were forging a romance between Greg and Laura, so they needed someone who paled next to Constance McCashin, and mousy Millie Perkins fit the bill. She was a character we were primed to dislike, so pairing Perkins with Kevin Dobson, however briefly, feels misjudged. There's no chemistry between them, and the writers undo one of the most appealing aspects of Mack's backstory: that Karen was the first woman he truly loved -- because now we're told that Mack was once secretly in love with Jane (back when she was dating Greg). Their scenes together are awkward and uncomfortable, as Jane giggles that, after all these years, "we find ourselves acting like lovers," and admits that, when they're on the phone together, she's as jittery as a schoolgirl with a crush -- and all this from a character who was designed to be disposable.

That's not to say there are no good scenes early on. In the first episode, Karen awakens in the hospital after surgery (she was shot in the Season 5 cliffhanger), and although it's the sort of situation you've seen a thousand times before, Lee's acting choices are so sharp and specific -- as she navigates Karen's confusion, pain and terror -- that it feels fresh. And there's a great exchange when Sumner comes to visit her, knowing how much he's to blame for what's happened, but adopting, as always, the platitudes of a politician; he explains his presence, "I don't want to see anyone else get hurt," and Karen, who's dying and has no more patience for bullshit, answers, "Is there anyone left?" (For once, Greg can't seem to keep the politician's mask in place.) The introduction of Alec Baldwin -- as Lilimae's never-before-mentioned son Joshua -- is handled well, and aside from the scenes between him and Julie Harris (flawless), there's good chemistry between him and Lisa Hartman, with whom it's clear he's being paired. The reunion of Gary and Abby -- and the script's justification for him giving their marriage another chance, after he'd been so hellbent on ending it a few months earlier -- is dealt with effectively, laying their relationship bare in a few sentences. (Gary: "I love you. I don't trust you." Abby: "What a love affair. But I do love you." Gary: "God help me.") And there's a funny moment when Joshua meets Abby at the Lotus Point opening, and Abby -- always on her best behavior around a good-looking man -- plays the gracious host, and as she walks away, Joshua murmurs approvingly to Cathy, "She seems nice" -- and Hartman deadpans disbelief to the imaginary studio audience.

But still, the first five episodes feel scrappier than just about anything in the previous season. They're written by free-lancers, and they feel like episodes written by free-lancers. The next four, the remainder of the first block, are written in turn by story editor Joyce Keener, producer Peter Dunne, executive story editor Joel Feigenbaum and headwriter Gollance -- and they're splendid. In part, it's because they contain all the meaty material. It's at the end of episode 5 that Abby stumbles upon Ben's letter and realizes Gary is the father of Val's twins. And then the season truly gets underway: everything up to that point has been preamble. From there it's one great scene after another: Joshua serving as the catalyst for reuniting Val and Ben; Abby (of all people) serving as the catalyst for reuniting Karen and Mack. Valene, her labor induced early, heading to the delivery room and, soon after hearing her newborns cry, being told that they were stillborn. And Abby's mysterious phone call about "the babies in question." Soon it's Thanksgiving, and Valene, home from the hospital, is reluctant to join everyone at the MacKenzies. Gary goes to fetch her, and when they make their entrance, she clings to Gary's arm as if they're still a couple, and apologizes: "I'm sorry, Gary and I are a little late again, as usual." And the camera jumps from one reaction shot to the next, as each character wonders, "Has she lost her mind?"

The next episode, the start of the second block, begins on a sandy dune, and in runs Valene, in a white top, empire-waist orange skirt and matching suspenders. She's flying a blue kite, and seems as blissful as she did that day five years earlier when she first waded into the Pacific Ocean. We hear Gary's voice: "Let it go." She drops the kite, and he appears, his pastel polo shirt matching her skirt; they converse in shorthand, a couple in perfect tandem. "What?" "Let it go." "Why?" "I want to kiss you." She melts into his arms, and they drop to a blanket on the sand, kissing -- until a familiar voice calls out: "Val! Hi!" Abby appears, a mirror image of Val (minus the suspenders -- of course). "I think you've got something that's mine." Abby's unusually pleasant, but isn't Abby always at her most pleasant when she's getting what she wants? Gary asks her, "Is it time?" And Abby nods, leaving Gary, stolid and spineless, to offers his apologies to Val: "I'm sorry, I guess I got a little carried away." Valene watches in confusion as Gary and Abby scamper off. And then she awakens in her bed on Seaview Circle, crying. It's been three years, but it always comes back to that moment, doesn't it? The moment Abby showed up and took Gary from her. The moment something precious was stolen. The loss of Gary and the loss of their babies are seemingly unrelated, but to Val, they've already become inseparable.

It's deliberate and it's fitting that we begin the episode inside Valene's head; that's where we'll spend most of the second block. The previous episode had left us with the possibility that Val had reverted back to the days when she and Gary were married. But the writers instantly course-correct. That would be too pat, too neat; they have something bolder in mind. Ben offers to take her for a drive, and they wind up on a cliff overlooking the ocean. He feels awful that he wasn't there in the delivery room: things might have gone differently. But she knows better: "Nothing would have stopped them from taking my babies from me. Just like it was with Lucy -- took her away from me too." There's a cold wind blowing, but the real chill is in Van Ark's voice. For Val, it's no different from J.R. and his boys stealing Lucy away all those years ago: "I wasn't fit to be her mother. I was just poor white trash from Tennessee." Ben tries to separate the two incidents; he reminds her that what happened with the twins was no one's fault: it was a premature birth -- there were complications. But she's unyielding: "That's what they say."

Gollance remarked to me that one of the challenges of writing Val was that she was always "the victim" -- and how do you keep that fresh? (He's partially wrong, of course, because Val only becomes a perpetual victim in the soft reboot of her character midway through Season 4.) But the brilliance of this particular story-line is that it uses Val's knowledge of how she's been victimized. Unlike most soap characters, who forget the last crisis once they're caught up in the next (because otherwise it would seem absurd that so much drama keeps happening to one person), victimization becomes part of Val's make-up -- and she knows it. (You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you.) Valene sees herself -- accepts herself -- as someone who's consistently persecuted. And thus, whereas another woman -- upon being told her babies were stillborn, even if she heard them cry -- might presume she was mistaken, and accept the doctor's diagnosis, Val has come to expect duplicity and deceit: to have everything she loves stolen from her. Not merely to lose everything, but to have it actively taken. If you're Val and you lose your twins in childbirth, the most likely scenario is "they took my babies away." And once you realize that, but can't verbalize it to your friends and family without inviting skepticism and resistance, how do you handle it? How do you accept it and process it?

It's enough to drive you crazy. Val's breakdown doesn't seem arbitrary or fanciful: the sort of thing that happens to soap characters when the writers are straining for story-line. It seems tied to her backstory; it's part of her make-up. Since she and Gary remarried, it's felt like one cruel, intentional blow after another -- yet she's quick to remember that it wasn't always like that. She opens up to Karen about how she and Gary met, when she was 15 and working as a waitress just outside Fort Worth, and we understand intuitively that what she's feeling is that that's the last time she was genuinely happy: meeting Gary and hoping to share a life with him, before Lucy was stolen. As played by Van Ark, Val's breakdown eschews the histrionics common to TV drama. She's paranoid, embittered, delusional, suspicious -- but there are no fits of rage or hysteria. She's just shutting down, and shutting people out. And that night, overwhelmed by her isolation, Val packs a suitcase, sneaks out of the house and boards a bus bound for Nevada.

The following evening, alone in her hotel room, Valene stands before the mirror. She's done blaming the Ewings, or questioning the doctor's diagnosis: she turns her rage inwards, verbalizing her self-loathing, assaulting her own physicality: "How could anybody love you? How could anybody want you? Flat as a board. Arms skinny and scrawny." And in the next scene she decides to fix herself, so she applies lipstick -- too much -- and rouges her cheeks and perms her hair and stuffs her bra with tissues -- and transforms herself into Abby. Abby, for whom everything comes so easy. ("I think you've got something that's mine, Val.") Abby, whom no man can resist. ("I'm not saying we're having an affair, and I'm not saying we're not. I am saying I can have him anytime I want him.") Abby, who's no one's victim. It's a scene everyone remembers -- "Valene Ewing, you're gonna get yourself a man" -- and Van Ark is so marvelous in her uninhibited role-playing (even echoing Abby's most famous line, when she taunts a women at a bar, "I could have your husband anytime I want") that you don't fully register that if that's where the writers are heading, towards a raunchier, more garish Valene, it's a horrible mistake. (It will be just that -- a horrible mistake -- when Lechowick and Latham go there in Season 12.) But it's not where they're going at all; it's a marvelous misdirect -- it's the best possible bluff.

Gollance himself wrote this particular episode, "Distant Locations." I have long laid claim to Richard Gollance being the single best writer on the series, and after talking with him, I would double down on that opinion. Everything with him sprang from character. (Tellingly, he says he was always the one in meetings asking, "But what is the scene about?" -- meaning, there always had to be something subtextual that the actors could play.) "I though it was very important that the characters had dimensions that were recognizably human," he notes. "My philosophy was that you start with bigger-than-life stories, and then you write them for the most part naturalistically." No one had quite the flair for language and the gift for making everything character-driven that Gollance did, and he's the rare writer whose work on the series got stronger the longer he hung around: once he'd lived with the characters a while, he could dig even deeper, and take more risks. (His final four scripts are the Season 5 cliffhanger, "Negotiations"; the Season 6 Thanksgiving episode, "We Gather Together; "Distant Locations"; and the final chapter in Val's recovery, which I'll address in detail later, "Rough Edges." He penned ten episodes in just over two years, but those four alone would secure his status as the series' finest scribe.) Because his stories all stemmed from character, it's fitting that when the writers were breaking down Val's breakdown, he booked a session with a therapist to make sure he was doing it justice. "I asked him: what's the process when someone goes through a dissociative personality disorder? What are the steps along the way? And I remember one of the things he said was, 'It's usually not a clean journey from Point A to Point B -- they'll try different things along the way.' And from that came 'she becomes Abby' -- at least on some level. She tries out Abby -- not consciously, of course -- to gain mastery over her life, and over what's happened."

But of course, Val isn't Abby -- she can assume her swagger, but she lacks Abby's finesse, and the evening ends with a thrashing from the woman she taunted. "She's humiliated," Gollance notes, "so her mind goes, 'OK, Abby doesn't work.'" So Valene reinvents herself anew. And thus, in a classic Knots ploy, the writers briefly go where soaps traditionally go -- here, the leading lady develop a split personality, and in no time flat, the lady is a tramp -- and then they go somewhere else entirely. The next morning, in one of Van Ark's favorite scenes, she wipes off the rouge and the lipstick and the eyeliner: she realizes that's not the life that's going to make her happy, or shield her from the pain. What is? We're not told. But as the make-up comes off, so do the years fall away. The worry lines vanish. The neuroses dissolve. And it's as Verna Ellers -- fresh, unspoiled Verna Ellers -- that she boards the next bus bound for Shula, Tennessee, where she takes a waitress job: one, we suspect, not unlike the kind Val was working when she was 15.

It's tempting to focus solely on Valene's time in Shula, because it's the most assured and daring part of the season. But there's plenty else happening back in Knots Landing. Left unresolved from the first block is a bullet fragment lodged in Karen's spine. Karen had been told, in the first few episodes of the season, that if she left the hospital without having additional surgery, her chances of survival would basically drop to zero. She leaves nonetheless, and when paralysis starts to set in a half-dozen episodes later, the writers remain firm in their diagnosis, one we know is unrealistic. We don't believe for a second that Karen is going to die midseason; Gary already "died" the previous season, and we fell for that one. Fool us once, right? So what is the point of Karen's story-line? Gollance's initial impulse was -- like all his Knots stories -- a character-based one: not merely someone dealing with a bullet fragment in their spine, but someone dealing with the fact that their time is limited, and asking, what do I want to do with that time? How do I want to be remembered? Gollance's inspiration was the 1952 Akira Kurosawa film Ikiru, about a terminally-ill bureaucrat and his quest to find meaning in his life. Gollance recalls, "That what I wanted to do with Karen. I thought it was a rich idea, and since she had the bullet in her, I thought it could be a very moving story-line." But although something of Gollance's original plan survives in Karen's commitment to completing Lotus Point, and leaving it as her legacy, the idea was ultimately discarded, as the powers-that-be "didn't want to have [something that dark] hover over her for too long." But without the emotional underpinnings that Gollance hoped to bring to it, Karen's story-line ends up flirting with that soap cliché: the life-threatening condition that you know won't be life-threatening.

And given that, the great thing about the episode devoted to Karen's second round of surgery (written by Peter Dunne) is that even as the doctors continue to wail that Karen might not make it, Dunne admits -- almost from the start -- that he's giving us precisely what we want: a tidy resolution, so we can move on. Karen is facing death, but the mood of the episode isn't grim: on the contrary, there's playfulness (Joshua and Cathy chasing each other around the house with a can of shaving cream), suspense (Abby spotting Sumner and Galveston in Sumner's limo, and trying to glean the connection), romance (Verna and her beau Parker taking things to the next level), action (Mack in a high-speed car chase), and dirty dealings (Abby's private investigator threatening blackmail). Karen's surgery is pretty much the least of it, and in fact, a lot of her beats are played for comedy, as when Mack sets her wheelchair careening down the hospital hallway, or when Karen tries to steer it herself and keeps bumping into walls. (There are only a few scenes that feel overbaked: when Karen comes to Lotus Point to say goodbye to her colleagues, and delivers one of those "I think I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow" speeches to Gary -- and later, when she arrives at the hospital in a gaudy blue dress with matching cape, a real Travilla travesty, and she might as well be Norma Desmond announcing, "I'm ready for my surgery.") But otherwise, it's an exquisite episode that shouldn't be. (Hospital episodes are typically static and dire.) It's exactly what happened the last time Dunne scripted an episode (the arrival of Joshua's father, which also could have gotten downbeat and dour, but didn't), and you realize once again how invaluable his voice and his guiding hand have been. It's his final Knots script.

While Val is serving customers in Shula, and Karen is dealing with her bullet fragment, Abby is trying to ensure that whatever happened to Val's babies, she's in no way implicated. You admire Abby: you admire her determination to track down answers, and you admire her resolve to cover her tracks once she realizes that that's not going to happen. The danger with Abby in Season 6 is that events are spiraling out of control, but she can't seem at the mercy of them. (That was never a good look on Donna Mills, and in fact, Gollance recalls that that was one of Mills' directives: "It was very important to her that Abby never be a victim.") But the scripting is shrewd: as much as she has to fret about -- the disappearance of Valene's babies, her inability to find Scott Easton, the needling and the threats from Paul Galveston -- Abby sees to it that she always lands on her feet. Paul Galveston, the most formidable combatant Abby's faced in five years (the only one who'd dare call her "cookie"), doesn't diminish her; he gives her a bigger obstacle to overcome. And overcome she does, in a scene that I mentioned to Gollance was straight out of The Little Foxes. ("An homage to The Little Foxes," Gollance was quick to correct me, laughing.) Abby and Galveston are alone at his ranch when he gets one of his headaches that have been plaguing him for months. He begs her to call his doctor, but she laughs: "Are you kidding?" And when he pleads with her to bring him his medicine, she scoffs, "Get it yourself, cookie" -- and leaves. (She doesn't know it at the time, but just like Regina Hubbard Giddens, she's left him to die.)

"There was a line of dialogue in the Season 5 cliffhanger," Gollance recalls, "and when Donna Mills saw it, she told me it was very much the key to her character. It was during the fight with Ted in the hotel room, where he's blasting her for everything she's done that season, and she says, 'I didn't think of it as lying. I never thought of it that way.' And for Donna, that was the core of the character." But Gollance had his own ideas. "I said to her, 'I think of Abby as a control freak who, in her need to control, inadvertently causes things to fall apart around her -- which ultimately keeps her from getting what she wants.' That's how I came to see the character over time. I didn't walk into the show with that, but as I continued with it, that's how I came to view her. And Donna liked that: it fit with her own take on the character, and it gave her something to play." And indeed, that's just what you see Mills playing, brilliantly, in Season 6. Early in the second block, the writers -- anxious to establish why Abby, once she finds Val in Shula, would choose to leave her there, and keep her whereabouts a secret -- have Paul Galveston taunt her about how close Gary is to his ex-wife, and the threat that Val poses to her marriage. But it's unnecessary motivation. Later that night, when she instructs her private eye to close the case on Verna Ellers, Mills tells us everything we need to know with just one look: Abby leaves Val in Shula because Abby likes being in control. But her decision to keep that information to herself -- and to use it to her advantage -- just makes it that much harder for her when the truth comes out.

Season 5 was about Abby building an empire; Season 6 is about ensuring that it doesn't collapse. In Season 5, Abby dismissed the people she deceived as necessary collateral damage; there was no resolve to hurt them, and if it happened, she "never thought of it that way." But in Season 6, she's doing damage control, and although each step of the way, she could make her life easier by being honest and coming clean, that would mean ceding power -- and Abby can't do that.

That said, although Paul Galveston proves an effective foil for Abby, he's a problematic character. He works his flattery on Gary a bit too easily. "You've got vision and power, that's all it takes," he tells him, and later, "You've got brains and guts." Although we understand that Gary sees Galveston as the mentor he never had, and that Galveston is taking shrewd advantage of Gary's obsessive need to prove himself, the fact that everyone can see through his "community of the future" except Gary feels a little plot-driven. Gary's gullible, but is he dense? Karen realizes early on that "there's got to be something wrong," given the low price that Galveston is offering for his land. She sees it, Abby sees it; even Ben, who's only peripherally involved, comes to recognize that Empire Valley is being used as a cover for something bigger. Why doesn't Gary see it? (Answer: because there'd be no story if he did.) But was there ever a season quite so aware of its failings, and how to overcome them -- or so astute at reading its audience? Just as Karen's surgery was scripted without the usual "life-or-death" theatrics, our potential resistance to Paul Galveston -- and his easy manipulation of Gary -- is assuaged three episodes into his run, when we're let onto the fact that he's living on borrowed time. So we don't fret about his running roughshod over the core characters; we know he'll be gone soon. We don't even fret when Mack's investigation into Galveston Industries, which consumes him for nearly twenty episodes, hits a dead end because the head of the company dies before Mack can bring him to justice. The writers told us Galveston's days were numbered, so we don't follow the investigation expecting Galveston to be tried and convicted; we settle for enjoying how many of the core characters -- Gary, Abby, Karen, Ben, Greg, Laura -- are caught up in it. And ultimately, of course, Galveston's function isn't to build a community of the future, or to provide a new target for Mack; it's to keep William Devane on the show, and in that sense, it's shrewd and successful.

The story of "Karen's final days" never really gets told; the Paul Galveston plotline has its excesses and its failings. But through it all, there's Val in Shula, single-handedly elevating the middle block of the season. Stop to think, for a moment, what a radical plotline this is. Typically on soaps, the goal is to devise plots that embrace as many of the core characters as possible; Val's story-line effectively isolates her from the rest of the principal cast. And it sets her on what's as much an internal journey as a surface journey, secure that the actress will pour her soul into the story-line -- which she does. Van Ark, in wiping away the last twenty years of Valene's life, doesn't play Verna as an adolescent, but she infuses her with qualities common to teenage girls: she's both shy and flirtatious, quick to pass judgment and quicker still to forgive. Even though she's committed to Parker, she'll still make eyes at every handsome guy who passes by -- including Gary, when he makes his way to Shula. (He's stunned that she doesn't remember him, and she teases, "I wouldn't forget a face like yours, sweetie.") Her Southern accent as thick as the gravy she's ladling out, Verna is irrepressible and irresistible. As she bonds with her boss and his wife, and charms and chides her customers, and finds herself falling for a new beau, she seems fully realized in just a few episodes. (And although Shula is a small Southern town, it never becomes Smalltown USA; the writers are careful not to satirize it or sanitize it. It's simply a world where life hasn't yet gotten complicated, where laws may be broken but traditions are upheld, and where people still take the time to get to know each other, as you imagine they have for centuries: archetypal rather than stereotypical.)

But when Gary turns up, and Verna gets a momentary glimpse of the life she left behind, all of Val's terror resurfaces. (Verna instantly ages twenty years; it's an astounding piece of acting.) Gary's presence in Shula unnerves her. On the eve of her wedding, as she dons her gown and admires herself in the mirror, she has a vision of Gary appearing behind her. Gently, they waltz -- her in her wedding dress, him in tails -- to a music-box accompaniment. (Even in Shula, Val can't get out of her own head.) Ultimately, she comes to realize that, as painful as that part of her past might be, she needs to return to it, to figure out what went wrong. Valene may not be strong enough to face her problems, but Verna is. And once she returns, it's Abby, of all people, who proves the voice of reason. As ever, the writers understand these characters so well, they're able to utilize them in unexpected ways: here, by having Abby, the only character who doesn't care about Val, see her most clearly, and realize that as long as Gary keeps rescuing her, she'll never learn to rely on others -- or on herself. And even as Gary struggles with Abby's diagnosis, he empathizes with Val's confusion: "Our trouble," he confesses to Val, "is that we always lived in our past, when you were 15 and I was 17. It was so good then that we tried to recapture it, and we couldn't." And once Val is able to stop romanticizing the past, she can begin to heal.

But first, one last marvelous misdirect. The final episode of the second block, "Rough Edges," begins back in Verna's apartment in Shula. Verna enters, puts away the groceries, arranges some flowers and calls her boss to tell her she'll be late for her shift. We fear that Val is regressing: perhaps her dreams are drawing her back to Shula. But no: we hear Val start to narrate the scene as it plays out, and we realize she's reliving her time in Shula for her therapist, to help jumpstart her memory. The first image of the second block (Val on the dunes, with that kite soaring behind her) had been a dream masquerading as a memory; this one turns out to be a memory masquerading as a dream. The bookending is inspired. It's as if the whole middle set of episodes has taken place inside Val's head -- which of course, in a way, it has.

"Rough Edges," Richard Gollance's last Knots script, is one of the great ones. Valene discovers that regaining her memories is, in some ways, as painful as the events that led to her breakdown; she's forced to relive parts of her life that she's happily buried, and it's as if she's experiencing them for the first time. Val's mental collapse had been largely free from histrionics; it's here, as the memories start to return, that she lashes out in pain. "How do you think I like having a mother who's a tramp?" she screams at Lilimae, as incidents from her childhood resurface. But she realizes the only way to make peace with her memories is to talk them out, and focusing first on her relationship with her mother, she relates one of Gollance's most charming creations: a story of Val, as a girl, being put on a bus by her Aunt Edna, so she could go see her mama working as an assistant to a magician, Alfonso the Great. "I remember the theatre smelled old and dirty, and it was mostly empty. When I went backstage to see her, she was in this terrible flurry. She had to run across town and audition an act of her own. She didn't invite me along -- she didn't even ask me to stick around so that we could talk later. I was just in the way. So I took the next bus back to Aunt Edna, and I lied about the wonderful time I'd had."

And from there, the memories come flooding back. (Van Ark has hit a lot of breathless highs in the last ten episodes, but this montage of her recounting story after story, as she comes to terms with her past, might boast her most virtuosic performance.) And when her session is over, she leaves her therapist's office, and Ben is waiting for her. At the start of the second block, as Ben and Val sat on a blanket overlooking the ocean, she had stared off, and he was terrified for her, because he couldn't reach her. Now she lets him know, obliquely, that her memories of him have returned ("Is it still the red food and the green food?" she asks, referring to the proper feeding of his beach-house orchids), and it feels like an event: one every bit as momentous as Karen being shot, or Abby kidnapped, or Gary "murdered." In great part because of Gollance's guiding hand, no season has been more adept at making character beats feel like events.

Sadly, Valene returns to us just as others depart. Peter Dunne had left the show near the end of the second block (he was offered the chance to run Dallas the following season); Richard Gollance leaves after "Rough Edges." And although Joel Feigenbaum and Joyce Keener stay till the end of the season, there's a noticeable shift in the style of the story-telling. "Rough Edges" had ended with Val's realization that a part of her life was being returned to her. The following episode begins with Ben driving Val to a stretch of Empire Valley that interests him. As they look around, Val cuts her hand on a chain-link fence, and they rush her to the local hospital for stitches. And there Ben gets an earful about how Galveston Industries has poisoned the town's water supply. And we get an earful of plot.

In the final block, characters are too often subordinated to story-line, and plot points that had been deliberately vague or agreeably ambiguous become heavy-handed. Joshua, who'd been growing darker, turns loathsome: bullying Cathy, undermining Ben, preying on Val. (He even starts to deliberately sabotage Val's recovery.) The writers keep telling us, via Lilimae, that "deep down Joshua is still the same sweet boy," but we see no evidence. Cathy, too, keeps excusing the worst of his behavior, much of it directed towards her, by insisting, "He's not really like that." She talks about how he used to be, a mere twenty episodes earlier, and says those good qualities are still there somewhere, but we don't have any reason to think that, and realistically, neither does she.

And the Empire Valley story becomes ludicrous: both the scale of the project itself and Gary's unwavering obliviousness. It turns out Galveston's planned community is indeed a front -- for an underground communications center "that will have the ability to process and manipulate electronic information on a global scale." (Amusingly, when I mentioned the underground Empire Valley complex to Gollance, who didn't keep up with the show once he left, he responded with surprise, "Wait! You mean underground [as in secret] or underground [as in below ground]?" I replied, "Both," and described what the "planned community" ultimately became, and he had only three words: "Oh, my God.") And even though Karen latches onto the truth in episode 21, and Abby figures it out in episode 22, it takes Gary another twenty episodes to come to his senses. In fact, he's led even further astray than he was in the middle block. Madison Mason joins the cast as a foreign diplomat prone to impressing people with his vocabulary ("superciliousness does not become you"), who gains Gary's trust by revealing exactly what Empire Valley is, but insisting that the men running it are working outside the boundaries of the government -- and that he needs Gary to go undercover and report back. And so Gary, for the final block of the season, basically believes he's a spy. (The name is Ewing -- Gary Ewing.) By the end of the season, he's become so paranoid, he's convinced he's being followed and that his phone has been tapped. (A sign of how bad this particular aspect of the Empire Valley story is: it's not just abandoned after Season 6, it's undone; once Season 7 begins, Gary is back to believing he's creating "a community of the future.")

Other misguided plot points? Well, we're informed that Paul Galveston bought Sumner the election; it's not a character observation, it's stated as fact, and it's misjudged: after we spent an entire season immersed in Sumner's campaign, what a letdown to learn the whole thing was rigged. Sumner is suddenly making decisions -- big decisions -- without consulting Laura, including the one to relinquish his Senate seat. In the first two-thirds of the season, he'd discussed everything with Laura (she felt well cared for, story-wise, because his decisions became theirs). Now, when the stakes are highest, he shuts Laura out; she doesn't hear from him for days, and when she comes to his hotel room, she finds security guards packing up her stuff. (And then he wonders why she's upset.) It's drama for drama's sake, as is his mother Ruth taking an instant dislike to Laura; it feels manufactured to ensure the couple break up by season's end (as they do). And after a trio of episodes showing Val regaining her memory and her strength, we discover she's falling apart again. Why have Val regress? It seems a betrayal of all the time we've invested in her recovery. Did the writers think that unless the twins were needed to help Val regain her sanity, they wouldn't be worth searching for? That somehow, a hunt for stolen babies wouldn't seem as "important" if they weren't crucial to a character's well-being?

And despite all the publicity her appearance brings the show, Ava Gardner doesn't do it any favors. Paul Galveston had seemed more of a plot device than a character, but Howard Duff essayed his role with modesty. You never felt a Hollywood star was gracing the set with his presence. The same can't be said for Gardner. And, it should be noted, it doesn't seem to be as much her fault as it is the reverence with which she's treated. Her first appearance, when she literally steps out of the shadows, is a bit much, and by the time a row of dark-suited businessmen is lined up to welcome her into a scene, like some MGM production number, it's become much too much. (She, of course, is in white, and bejeweled.) Ruth is prone to suggesting they attend parties because "we'll make a great entrance," and her attitude seems to prompt Travilla, who up to that point had costumed the women with a modicum of restraint, to kick it into high gear, as he blinds us with one monstrosity after another. There's a dinner party at the Galveston ranch, with Laura, Karen and Ruth riotously overdressed (including Karen in gold lamé), and as your eyes take in the wide brim hats and full-length mink stoles and footlong shoulder pads, you're aware that any point to the scene has been lost, and that all it seems to be about is a celebration of wealth and ostentatiousness. Squint and you have no idea which nighttime soap you're watching; is it Dynasty? Knots is losing its identity, an issue that will be compounded the following season.

These are flaws that hobble the final third of the season, and they're not insignificant. And it's difficult to say why the style of story-telling changes. (I mentioned the issue to Gollance, and he didn't have any clues, not having kept up with the series after he left.) The loss of Peter Dunne and Richard Gollance only explains so much; Joel Feigenbaum and Joyce Keener were still there, and they were both fine writers, schooled in the Dunne-Gollance aesthetic. It's hard to imagine that incoming producer Lawrence Kasha came in with strong ideas in terms of a new "direction" for the show, and creator David Jacobs was mostly off doing Berrenger's that season. But co-executive producer Michael Filerman, who'd been absent during Season 5 (launching Emerald Point N.A.S.) was most assuredly around, and it's always worth remembering that Ann Marcus, never one to mince words (and a reliable witness), characterized him as someone "whose main talent was to tear apart a story once it was written." Is the final block of Knots Landing Season 6 a mark of where Filerman might have taken the show, left unchecked? (He certainly doesn't do Falcon Crest any favors when he takes over as active showrunner in Season 8.)

The final block of Season 6 is a disappointment, but by no means a disgrace. It's buoyed -- as is the whole season -- by the continuing saga of Val's twins, and ultimately, by the ongoing hunt for them, which becomes a fine story for Karen: exactly the kind of moral mission at which the character excels. (And it yields a particularly good scene where Karen inadvertently belittles her son Eric -- as she'll do often during the show's run -- by being so wrapped up in her own issues, she ignores his.) And even when the characters are subordinated to the plot, they remain vivid. There are any number of underwhelming story-lines in Season 6, but you don't find yourself focusing on them, because even when the story arcs disappoint, the character beats -- from moment to moment -- are never less than inviting, and often engrossing. And even as the plotting starts to overwhelm the characters in the final third of the season, you'll have marvelous scenes like the one in Val's kitchen in Keener's "The Deluge," where Val is brainstorming her next book for Ben, as Lilimae busies herself at the stove -- and in walk Joshua and Cathy with Chinese take-out. And as Joshua and Cathy squabble about the kind of material she should sing on his show, Lilimae -- recalling that her mama's favorite hymn was "Rock of Ages" -- launches into an impromptu refrain, which Ben, full-throated, then takes up. And suddenly the kitchen is awash in a cacophony of sound that seems, like so many of the best Knots moments, carefully sculpted yet utterly spontaneous. And although you can't make out the individual voices, you recognize that the scene is less about that than it is the warm feeling of family, and the embracing sense of community. Knots' welcoming spirit will be lost early in the following season, but Season 6 fairly bursts with it. Despite its issues, it's a hard season to resist.


Want more Knots? Check out my posts on Season 1, which establishes the characters and struggles to set the tone; Season 2, which pretty much mucks up everything; Season 3, in which the show finally masters the challenges inherent in its premise; Season 4, a shrewd and ultimately successful reinvention; Season 5, the show's annus mirabilis; Season 7, in which Dallas scribe David Paulsen, newly installed as headwriter, shows an astonishing lack of affinity for the characters; Season 8, in which the characters return, but the plotting goes haywire; Season 9, in which the show once again gets back to basics, after a couple unrecognizable years; Season 10, the year the ratings rose; Season 11, in which the show jumps the tracks -- then jumps back; Season 12, a shot of pure adrenaline that soon fades; Season 13, an epic fail, and an epic save; and Season 14, in which Ann Marcus, who'd guided the series during a critical time in its history, gives it a glorious send-off.

29 comments:

  1. What a fantastic write up! I have read every one of your Knots' recaps, and this one doesn't disappoint. The addition of some behind the scenes info from Gollance is icing on the cake!

    Season 6 for me has some overwhelming issues that I find extremely difficult to ignore. Essentially it's the pacing of the thing, and the striking lack of plot. As you've rightly noticed, everything anchors around the story of Val's babies, and frankly I think everything else suffers majorly because of it. Perhaps the additional complication was that this was Knots' first 30 episode season, and it certainly feels like the show had only enough plot for 25.

    The season does suffer from a slow start as you've noticed, but I feel that slowness (outside of Val's storyline) never really escapes the show this year.

    Mack spends around 20 episodes involved in an investigation that sucks up so much screen time, and so many characters (I dread to think how many Karen/Mack scenes their are purely about the Tidal Basin murders), without any grounding or emotional connection that it is flabbergasting. To this day, I can't really describe the Tidal Basin murders, the link to Galveston, and how it all comes together. And I wish it was treated as a McGuffin to propel character arcs forward, but it wasn't. Details, plot-twists, primary, secondary and tertiary characters get sucked into a plot that (a) feels like a carbon copy of Wolfbridge without any of the character and (b) has absolutely no pay-off, because it doesn't matter. Because Galveston dies. Then Mack promptly forgets the whole thing and begins to help Karen in her investigation into the babies.

    You've noted the issues around Karen's bullet story-line, and I couldn't agree more. Again, it takes 14 episodes to play what essentially could have been a 6 episode arc, played at the top of the season to wrap up just in time for Val to deliver her babies. Yet the show stalls, the character stalls (remember, Gary knows Karen is 'dying' from early on, yet promptly forgets again for all we know), and the story-line goes absolutely nowhere. Although it is really interesting to hear what Richard Gollance had planned for that story, I do feel like both Val and Karen exploring isolated inner-turmoil at once would have been too overwhelming, although a part of me would have loved to have seen it.

    Season six missteps with Cathy in a major way. Although Season 5 didn't do the best job at her character beats, it did paint a picture of where she came from, the trouble of her past, her deals with Abby, her ex-husband and did a relatively good job of broadly painting her character. Enter Alec Baldwin, and she's immediately cleansed, and presented as a brand new character to pair with him, save for the odd reference of her days with Gary at the ranch, and a weak blackmail attempt by Abby later in the season. It's disappointing, but what's even more disappointing is that they forget to replace Cathy's personality with anything at all! She becomes nothing, simply becomes a victim, a plot point for Alec's story line, followed by Ben's in Season 7, and her character never recovers.

    I'm sure I'll have more to say when I think about it. Don't get me wrong, the story line of Val's babies is fantastic, and most character beats are strong. with the breathless history and richness of the core characters shining through. But it has some real letdowns for me.

    I hope to post again soon, more positively! (Trust me, I enjoyed the season more than this post made it sound!)

    PS. I'll also ensure I leave enough time to edit my next post!

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    1. So glad you dropped by, glad you've been enjoying the Knots write-ups -- and doubly glad you decided to leave a comment. Please, never worry about disagreeing with me, or posting negative if I've gone positive, or vice versa. I sometimes fear that because these essays have gotten so expansive, people are hesitant about disagreeing with me -- but I love the back-and-forths, and never pretend that my opinions (strong as they are) are anything more than just my opinions. It's funny: you said, "I enjoyed the season more than this post made it sound." I wonder, because of my adoration for Val's story-line in the second block, and because of all the space I devote to it, if I didn't end up doing a write-up that came off more positive than I intended: I suspect I actually enjoy the season LESS than this post made it sound! I think there are great elements, and the characters -- at least while Dunne and Gollance are there -- are as rich as ever (and that redeems even the weakest plotlines), but I have always felt it was quite a letdown from Season 5, and I do hope I expressed that clearly. And that said, I know several Knots fans for whom this season is easily their favorite, and who find very little fault with it, and I look forward to hearing from them as well!

      It's funny: every time I rewatch, I'm struck by -- as you said -- how lame the Tidal Basin investigation is, but after a few episodes, once they announce that Galveston is going to die soon, I stop minding it. In some ways, I do find the whole Galveston story-line becomes a MacGuffin that's merely about keeping Bill Devane on the show -- and as I said, I think the writers were aware, too, of how lacking that story-line was. (After talking with Gollance, I don't think there's anything he ISN'T aware of.) And until I read what you said about Cathy (and heaven knows, I don't disagree with a word of it), I hadn't noticed that I barely discuss Joshua and Cathy at all, and I really should have devoted a little time to Alec Baldwin, as he is -- from the start -- remarkable. But the truth is, I don't really pay much attention to their plot until it gets oppressive in the final third of the season. As I mention, I don't pay attention to a lot of the issues -- Empire Valley, Joshua and Cathy, Travilla's costume design -- during the first two-thirds of the season, because Dunne and Gollance ensure that the character beats are so strong, I can overlook a lot. But once those characters start being subordinated to plot in the final third, all the flaws become so distracting.

      Anyway, I'm starting to write another tome. So glad you stopped by. Write more anytime, here or elsewhere -- so glad to hear from you!

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    2. Well I think season six is the greatest season of television ever made....

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    3. I know you do! When I alluded above to "fans for whom this season is easily their favorite," you were obviously one of the folks I had in mind. I am a season behind reading your blog -- have only gotten through the end of Season 5 -- so I look forward to catching up and "comparing notes."

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    4. The final third of the season is interesting in it's own special way. After the brilliant sweeping character study of "Rough Edges" it is underwhelming to be sucked into a conspiracy regarding the poisoning of an entire town by Galveston, who just won't go away.
      The overwhelming misstep as you've rightly pointed out Tommy is Empire Valley. What on earth was their vision for this story line? I'd love to understand where they had planned to take it because for something so massive that it could effectively start to control the world there are an awful lot of scenes of characters in suits standing around and talking, or Gary and Greg shouting on a building site (who knew that millionaires become so involved in the intricacies and logistics of building operations? Who thought that we wanted to see it? Give me Knots Landing Motors over the Empire Valley Building Site any day). Was the vision for it to become operational? For Greg to start controlling the World to meet his own needs, with Laura trying desperately to rein him in?

      A few out of nowhere ‘character’ plots creep up, KLM being put up for sale, and the saga of Eric’s girlfriend Whitney, seem out of place and don’t really go anywhere. But I welcome them simply because it’s better than another scene of Empire Valley, the uttering of the word Galveston or the Tidal Basin investigation.

      However, there are some gems in that block. Look at “A Price to Pay”, directed by David Jacobs. Oh what David does for Constance McCashin! Season six struggles with Constance in a major way as she becomes seconded to Greg and loses any sense of self. While the Greg / Laura scenes are enjoyable, they were also slightly uncomfortable simply because Laura’s identity had been stripped away and her motivations are lost. Particularly after Season 5, where she was used so well, her motivations for becoming involved with Apolune so clearly defined. The final block however finally begins to shape her role in the show moving forward, and that is as the conscience to Greg, the one to keep him grounded, to keep him sane. It makes sense for Laura’s character because, like Richard before him, she values men to need her, and Greg subconsciously desperately craves to be saved, to be human. The bath time scene in “One Day in a Row” sums it up perfectly. Laura’s new role in the show is clearly articulated through Ava’s character, and the chemistry between them both helps make those scenes incredibly satisfying to watch (in a guilty pleasure kind of way), and how it ultimately dovetails into Abby’s strand in finding Val’s babies is a pleasure. In addition, Laura’s quips and sense of humour come back in full force. Although Jacobs’ directed “A Price to Pay”, the character of Laura comes through so strongly here that it’s hard to believe he did not have a hand in moulding the script to showcase it on screen. He also dedicates the middle of that episodes to the re-imagined four couples; Karen and Mack, Val and Ben, Laura and Greg and Joshua and Cathy – and although nothing of note happens, it’s beautiful to watch.

      While Val unfortunately gets placed into the background of the babies’ investigation, becoming ‘Poor Val’ as required to make the finale pop, the other two leading ladies get a renewed sense of purpose. Karen goes from exploring the possibility that Val’s babies are alive to, much like Val, simply knowing they are alive just by watching Ackerman’s reaction to her questions. And we buy it, because we know Karen. Abby meanwhile, remembers she has a conscience, and through a clumsy heavy-handed car accident involving her kids, decides she cannot do nothing and starts a parallel journey to find out where the babies are. Watching her duck and dive the Empire Valley saga and juggling Gary, Greg and Ruth’s motivations (Abby once again trying desperately to stop everything crumbling around her) are satisfying to watch.

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    5. I have never seen an interview with anyone -- Jacobs, Filerman, et al -- where they suggest where they intended to take Empire Valley once they came up with this whole "secret communications center" notion. And David Paulsen pretty much makes it clear that when he took over, he had two instructions before he could carry out his vision for the season: get rid of Empire Valley and get rid of Joshua. So it's entirely possible they had no idea where they were going with Empire Valley, which is counterintuitive to us as viewers, who like to think that the outcome of story-lines is fully formulated before they're even underway, but not, from what I gather, atypical of the Knots method at all. Sometimes, they had no idea where they were going with stories, and often, that led to spontaneity and inspiration that yielded marvelous results. And sometimes, it yielded -- Empire Valley.

      I think I disagree with you about Laura. I actually went into more detail about Greg and Laura in an earlier version of this essay, which, terrifyingly, was 50% longer. I find her better used in the first two-thirds of the season than in the final third. In the first two-thirds, as much as she's tied to Greg, the script is very much concerned with her building trust with him, forging a life with him, thinking about uprooting her family. Making choices between loyalty and power that, in some ways, mirror his own. She and Sumner seem equal players to me. But at the end of the season, and particularly into Season 7, she becomes his sounding board and attaché, and that's when it really bothers me. And it particularly bothers me when he shuts her out of decisions just to generate arguments, in order to generate their late-season break-up. It feels very writer-driven to me. As does Ruth's dislike of Laura. I'm never convinced that there's a real reason that she sees her as unsuitable for her son (or heaven knows, that he and Abby would be a better match), except that's how they decide to script it. Oh, I know what they SAY -- that Laura is a Girl Scout, and that's not what Ruth thinks Greg needs; I'm just not sure I buy it.

      One of the things I've noticed about these essays is that I often peter out near the end, because I feel like I'm hammering home the same points over and over, so I inevitably give short shrift to the final block. (I did it in Seasons 7 and 8, and I do it here, regrettably.) I think in an earlier draft, I had a whole paragraph about the plots in the final block that go nowhere, including several that you note, plus Mack's Senate seat offer, a real dead-end plot. I absolutely agree that you can feel the writers struggling with the expansion to 30 episodes. The final block feels like so much filler -- and even where story-lines are engrossing (like the hunt for Val's twins), I don't really need to see Karen wait an entire episode for Dr. Ackerman to take a break from his bridge tournament.

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    6. You're too hard on yourself Tommy! I think your posts are excellently written, and you get the themes you are trying to convey across with no problems.

      I never knew that those were David Paulsen's instructions upon taking over Season 7, so that's really interesting to me. I wonder, was the instruction to get rid of Joshua due to Alec Baldwin's rising fame? Or because they had exhausted plot with him? He certainly hadn't gotten to the point of being irremediable by the end of season six, so I never thought it was about plot. I had always thought that Joshua was always planned to come in for a finite period of time, but must admit that I haven't looked too much into it.

      We'll agree to disagree about Laura! I just felt her spark come back to life, and noticed I felt it missing for a long time (not since season five).

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    7. With regard to David Paulsen, I think I'm inferring more from what he DOESN'T say than what he does. When asked about Joshua and Empire Valley, as I recall, he pretty much changes the subject, as if the outcomes of those story-lines were predetermined. I get the feeling that, although he probably had a hand in deciding how Joshua was going to go, the character's exit was a given by the time he came on board. I remember Alec Baldwin did an odd TV Guide interview at the time where he said "it smells like death" for him, or something like that. It was such an odd remark, I got the impression his tenure on the show turned out to be shorter than he'd initially expected. (Richard Gollance certainly didn't remember that when Baldwin came aboard, it was intended as a "limited run.")

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    8. Donna Mills was asked about Baldwin in a televised interview some time after she had left the show (Larry King, maybe?), and she flatly said, "They didn't like him." She implied that it was the show's loss, as he had obviously done so well for himself. It was not clear whether "they" didn't like his performances or didn't like the personality he showed behind the scenes.

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  2. One thing I must say (and I do find myself doing this more often with several things lately) is that despite the fact that I've always called Season 6 my favorite season, I can definitely see many of the critiques that have been pointed out here.

    You and I have talked about it some already but after letting it sink in some, I do have to concede that perhaps the season isn't as strong as I normally would say it is.

    The kidnapping is a fantastic storyline and there is no denying that it buoys up the season in such a strong way (almost in the same way Jill going crazy would work wonders during Season 10...although that storyline does suffer a little with that ever present "Look how clever we are!!" winking that only Latham & Lechowick can provide). I think Joan Van Ark was royally robbed of award consideration for this season; an episode like DISTANT LOCATIONS is prime Emmy submission material and that's not even counting stuff like WE GATHER TOGETHER, MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, or ROUGH EDGES...and I am sure there are a couple more that would be acceptable. It's a shame that Latham & Lechowick weren't too fond of the Val character because watching them destroy her with each passing season was one of the most painful things to witness as the series progressed into its later years. Season 6 represents the true peak of JVA and it's sad to see it end.

    Karen and her paralyzation dilemma was always a storyline I had issues with and both you and TV Reviews nail it: it comes on strong and then almost seems forgotten and then it just comes right back in. Could that have been intentional on the writers' parts to take us by surprise? Perhaps...but nevertheless, it always left me a little cold and it also made me feel horrible for Mack.

    The introduction of Joshua is such an interesting development. It's pretty standard of Soaps to throw in long lost and estranged characters and often times, it can feel like a cheat or a retcon of sorts. Something about the Joshua storyline never really bothered me and I suppose that's a testament to the writers and also how strong Alec Baldwin was in the role and the many wonderful moments it gave Julie Harris. It's sad how Lisa Hartman truly does become a token victim and naive to all the signs that Joshua may not be the best person to pursue a relationship with (first the rather cold religious views that soon became violent).

    I suppose it's very telling that I have trouble remembering the events from the final third of the season aside from Karen pushing to search of the truth on the babies and the more domestic aspects (like the mentioned "Rock of Ages, cleft for me" scene)...not to mention the delicious cattiness between Constance McCashin (god how I love her!) and Ava Gardner.

    I am hoping to get through my new rewatch of the season in the next few weeks (damn hectic schedules), but I am very excited for the upcoming season posts!

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    1. I love how much you love Season 6 -- and in no way do I want my views to diminish your own. But I do think it's very easy to be so dazzled by Val's storyline -- and what the writers and Joan Van Ark bring to it, working in perfect tandem -- that one slightly overrates the rest. I know I do. You talk about being annoyed that Joan Van Ark got no serious awards consideration that season -- I couldn't agree more: I consider Van Ark's performance in Season 6 to be one of the greatest continuing performances by an actor in a TV drama that I've ever seen -- and as you know, I'm really, really old and have seen a lot of TV drama... And what primetime soap but Knots would have dared that kind of story-line: one that lifts a core character out of the show's customary setting, moves her to another state, and builds a whole town around her? What show but Knots would see to it that her journey is as much internal as geographical? Only Knots, and I'd say only Knots Season 6. The boldness of the design, and the glories of the presentation, continue to astound me. I think that whole story-line, which begins with Val in the delivery room and continues through to the final frames of the season, is so strong, one is willing to overlook quite a lot.

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  3. I’m curious to hear the thoughts on the finale – I know some people blast it as a bunch of people driving around and gathering together and that’s it. But to me, it is a masterpiece, all the individual threads relating to Val’s babies align outside that Fisher house. The emotion, the anxiety, the secrets all at bursting point. And while one could argue that nothing of note happens, watching Val hear the crying of one of her babies for the first time sense the delivery room still sends chills down my spine, and you realise this season has all been worth it.

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    1. The Season Six finale was fantastic from the moment we see an unknown figure (though its pretty obvious it would probably be Mack, which it is) tearing up the now deceased Dr. Ackerman's office up to the slow motion twirl of JVA as she stands between each of her twins: one crying in Sheila Fisher's arms and the other about to be rushed away by Harry Fisher.

      What I think is a major triumph with this cliffhanger is how intriguing and engrossing it is despite not involving any crazy drama such as "Who shot Bobby? Did they mean to shoot JR instead?" or anything that may involve a fire or death. Val went through a season of pure hell and in that final moment, she was able to see she was right all along and the vindication is overwhelming....and you know that they are probably going to face a lot of resistance to get these twins back....and that's understandably so. Perhaps we aren't entirely sure at that point what to make of the Fishers but in reality, they just wanted children and with a lot of their personal baggage getting in the way, they had to take drastic measures to do it without realizing that it was costing a woman her own children. Making these two victims in the story was definitely a master approach as opposed to making them truly connected to it.

      After having a finale in Season 5 that felt heightened and busy, it was amazing how a freeze frame of a woman standing in a front yard looking at a baby in a station wagon could be a chilling emotional peak.

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    2. I too love the last episode of Season 6. I love everyone gathering, car by car, at the Fishers', and I love Val's slow-motion twirl at the end. And that said, at the risk of inviting hatred, I will say that something about the final shot always bugged me, and I could never put my finger on it until Anthony's comment got me thinking about it. And I realize it's this: I don't know why Sheila's line to Harry ("Harry, go! They wanna take the babies!" -- or whatever it is) is also in slo-mo. I think I would like it better if Sheila screamed to Harry in "real time," and then, when Val realized that she'd come face to face with not one, but both her twins, the slo-mo began: as if we'd once more gone inside her head, and it felt for her like time was standing still, as she turned frame by frame. I think that would have felt like the culmination of an internal journey that's lasted twenty episodes -- whereas I think when the effect starts early, on Sheila's line, it comes off more like a directorial stunt than a character beat. Anyway, I just came to that realization and -- given that it's one of the most heralded moments in Knots history -- I am prepared to be tarred and feathered.

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    3. Hahahaha I know exactly what you mean Tommy with the Shelia's slo-mo voice. It's funny, because although it 100% distracts me and takes me slightly out of the moment, I also wouldn't have it any other way because it has became such an iconic (lovably mocked) moment in Knots' rich history.

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  4. I actually think that the criticism of the slow motion line delivery is completely justified. I am surprised that I didn't bring it up myself but I guess I just internally let it slide.

    I do like the idea of having her say it normally and then suddenly have Val go into this slow motion reverie. It would the make the moment more jarring in a good way because it would seem sudden and, yes, like we just entered into the headspace of Val one more time.

    It actually reminds me of, although this next case is a bigger offender, of the scene on TWIN PEAKS were Bobby and James begin to fight at Laura's funeral. James runs towards Bobby and the shot turns to slow motion but the dialogue is played at normal speed....then the dialogue becomes slow motion. "You're a dead man!"....then "Yooooouuuuu aaaaaarrreee Deeeeaaaaaadddddd!"....and then all snaps back to reality. That was obviously just a random directorial choice much like the slow motion "Haaaarrrrryyyyyyy!!!!!"....and I say that as someone who is as passionate a TWIN PEAKS fan that you can find.

    But I digress....

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  5. For me, Val going crazy and retreating from the reality of Val makes perfect sense character wise when 'losing' her twins in the same way she lost Lucy all those years ago. To me, Val could handle not having Gary in her life.. but having her second chance to be a mother taken from her was too much for her to cope with. I also truly think season 6 should have been the season where Gary/Val had closure with no chance of getting back together. That seems pretty apparent during the conversation where Gary tells Val that they tried to make it work, but just couldn't. In the real world, Val's true love would have been Ben...but in a soap opera.. that isn't to be. I still think having Val/Gary as co parents while both are with other people would have been more interesting in the long run.

    The most ironic thing about season 6 was that Abby was an objective voice of reason when it came to Val. She knew that Val couldn't truly get better if Gary and others were coddling her. Yes, she told Gary this for selfish reasons.. but sometimes an outsider can see things clearer then people closest to someone. Plus, we have to remember the Val of season 3 and most of season 4 gave as good as she got with Abby. She was the one to tell Val her babies were alive and to take her to them.. while the others didn't bother to let Val know because they didn't think too highly of her. Ironic that Abby thought Val more capable then her closest friends.

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    1. I always love your fresh perspective, Jayson. I truly had never thought about it: a version of Knots where the endgame WASN'T Gary and Val's reconciliation. But the moment you said it, I saw the wisdom, and I agree: Gary telling Val in Season 6 why their marriage had failed -- because they were always obsessed with recapturing a past that couldn't be recaptured -- should have been the end of their love story. You don't offer such an eloquent explanation for why they didn't work as a couple, and then, within few seasons, start to tease their reconciliation, as if they had some perfect marriage. The truth is they were a troubled couple. (When Karen tells Val, in Season 12, that she doesn't think of Gary and Val failing at marriage, she thinks of them failing at NOT being married, I don't buy it at all.) I will ask Richard Gollance, when I speak with him about Season 5, if he and Peter Dunne ever saw Val and Gary reconciling, or if that was something that the writing regimes that followed began to view as the series' "ultimate goal." It's funny: when I watched originally, it was clear by Season 8 that the writers saw Val and Gary's reconciliation as a given, and were just prolonging it as long as they could -- but I don't remember ever thinking myself, "Gee, I hope Gary and Val get back together" -- and I don't remember friends ever saying it either. I think part of the problem was, by re-defining Val late in Season 4 as the woman "who'll always be in love with Gary," for whom "Gary is an addiction, the same way alcohol is for him," you really limit her options. She sort of gets stuck with that mindset till Ann Marcus comes back in Season 13 and restores her independent streak and her spine.

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    2. I will say watching reruns that season 9 was the start of the show teasing Gary/Val getting back together. In season 8, they are completely in separate stories with little to no interaction until the final episodes of season 8. And that's when you got the Abby speech to Jill about the first Mrs Ewing never going away because for season 7 and most of season 8.. it was Jill/Abby eyeing each other/shading each other over Gary.. with Val/Jill being cordial with one another.

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    3. Ah, you're right, of course -- I misremembered. It's early in Season 9 that "Val and Gary" starts to dominate again as an ongoing story-line, and a potential re-coupling, with "Love In" and "Weak Moment" really cementing that notion.

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  6. I've just finished watching season 6 and I'm so glad I stumbled upon this piece. You captured the essence of the season block by block, and your insights and musings (really, I thought I was the only one who cared that much) were spot-on. I agree with Tommy Krasker that the slow-motion part of the finale could have been done differently, and I, too, would have had Sheila deliver the line normally, then go into slo-mo for Val's spin and reaction. Otherwise it was - as we all know - an excellent season, with some of the best writing on tv, period.

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    1. So glad you stumbled upon my essay, and I do apologize if you tried to sign in with your name, and Blogger wouldn’t let you. Blogger updated a few months ago, and it seems to be keeping people from properly signing in — including, sometimes, myself! And so nice to hear more love for Season 6. I’ve been making my way — yet again — through various Knots seasons, and I am definitely due a rewatch of Season 6. And heaven knows, we are not the only ones who care that much. My Knots essays have always been among my most-read and easily my most commented on. I remember when I joined the Knots Forum in 2007, there were zealous regulars there who would go into detail about characters and episodes and arcs and seasons, and so many of them had distinctive points of view that they expressed so passionately and eloquently. Most of those folks have since left the Forum, so it’s always nice to see someone like yourself — who cares so much — find your way here!

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  7. It is an outrage that knots isn't on dvd

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    1. Knots was always snubbed. Now it can't even get a dvd release.

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  8. Interesting recaps, thanks. I'll have to disagree with one major point about season 6 however: the great Ava Gardner deserved to come out of that shadow, and wear fantastic clothes, and everything else they gave her. You have to understand, she was a STAR. Better than Jane Wyman, Lana Turner, Ruth Roman, Joan Collins...whoever. NOBODY compared to her. She deserved it all.

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  9. Hi Tommy, I am taking on this herculean task of reading through all your KL blog posts, so won't say too much at this stage, although having just skimmed through this (as 6 is my favourite season), I have a couple of comments re the change of direction after ep 19. You mention that as incoming producer Kasha likely did not have strong ideas about a new direction for the show and point the finger at Filerman. I think that is a fairly safe bet. I recall an interview with David Jacobs who mentioned that one of the reasons Dunne was keen to move to Dallas was because he was having run-ins with Filerman at the time and the suggestion was their relationship was deteriorating - Filerman wasn't happy with the direction the writing was going this season and one might assume he therefore made his thoughts known to the incoming team. You also mention Filerman's debacle on Falcon Crest season 8. I was personally acquainted with Earl Hamner and spoke to him about his working relationship with Filerman on FC season 1, and Earl told me he found it impossible to work with Filerman ... he strongly implied Filerman's approach was too superficial for him. He added that to Filerman's credit, he recognised their incompatibility and so stepped back from the show (mind you he retained both his onscreen credit and his percentage payments). So my guess is you have hit the nail on the head with your speculation. More comments to come as I read through your reviews from season 1!! My god so many words on Knots!!!

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    1. Al, I’m so delighted you found your way here, and heaven help you trying to make your way through all 14 of my Knots essays. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you survive! :) Thank you for your insights into Filerman and Season 6. I confess, I had pretty much surmised that it was indeed his input that had led to the tonal change at the end of the season, for the very reasons you described. But when I wrote this essay in 2017, I felt a need to underplay my convictions a bit. Richard Gollance had been very candid with me about how miserable Filerman had made his life (and Dunne’s, by extension), but asked that the details remained off the record. And so I graciously obliged, but as I noted in the essay, I had spoken with so many *other* people who told me how brutal Filerman was to writers, it seemed very clear that it was his input that upended the end of the season. With Gollance having passed away two years ago now, I feel a little more emboldened to talk about things he asked me to keep off the record: not in detail, of course, but at least in a broader sense, to set the record straight on his behalf. Filerman was, by all accounts, not an easy man (that’s putting it kindly), and seemed to take fiendish delight in tearing apart some of the writers' best-laid plans. It was shocking to hear from Gollance how Filerman almost single-handedly tore apart Season 6 in its early stages, a season that — of course – is many people’s favorite. And I gather he had particular disaffection for the Val/Verna story-line, particularly the episodes that charted the loss of her babies through her ultimately adopting the Verna persona. (He did not understand the very concept of "Distant Locations.") For Filerman, it was all handled with too much depth, and as you say, he was essentially superficial. As I understand it, Dunne stood up to him and insisted the Val/Verna story-line stay as complex and rewarding and detailed as the writers had intended -- and thank goodness, as it remains one of the highlights of the series.

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  10. I've really enjoyed reading these blogs, thanks for posting these, and interesting to read these comments. I'm intrigued about how much input and influence Filerman had on Knots during its whole run. On Falcon Crest he managed to wangle an exec producer credit despite only being involved in a couple of it's 9 seasons. Not sure how well that reflects on his character? On Knots he I think he only had one or 2 episode writing credits, so he seemed to have much more of a backseat, or was involved more in production/budgets than in the creative part of the show? But I'm intrigued to hear what Gollance told you about working under him. I never knew about that. Is he the reason why Dunne left to do Dallas? That would be a shame, as seasons 7 and 8 of Knots would surely have been so much better if he had stayed on as producer. Filerman did an interview years ago on the soapchat/tellytalk forum and he came across as quite charming and funny, but others who have worked with him suggest otherwise. Plus Season 8 of FC was just awful. They made terrible plot mistakes, killing off Melissa and most of the episodes just dragged on an went nowhere - it was voted the Most Ruined Show that year. I wonder now just how much of Knots success was down to Filerman's input, or if the show's success was despite of him?
    Anyway, many thanks for the analysis, even though I loved pretty much all of Season 6, including some of the Empire Valley bits, except for Madison Mason!

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    1. Thanks for your kind words, Matt. As I think I mentioned above, Richard Gollance told me so many things that he asked me not to repeat. Some of them were private in nature, but a whole lot of them he was saving for his memoirs. And then he tragically died. During the two years I got to know him (after reaching out to see if he'd speak with me about Knots Landing), we became very good friends. Part of me feels he would want those incidents revealed, and part of me is still struggling with the notion of “breaking a confidence.” But I suspect, as months and years go by, I’ll reveal more and more here, on Richard’s behalf. As I think I’ve mentioned, not one person I talked to, on the record or off, had a good thing to say about Filerman. I’m not surprised to hear he came off as charming and funny; many sociopaths do, and that is precisely how I would describe him. I don’t think it’s just that he had a reputation for making writers’ lives miserable; I think he took delight in it. I’ve heard stories that sound downright sadistic. One thing I will mention, that Richard asked me to observe for myself, was that by the end of Season 6, all four staff writers had left the show. Richard said something to me, rhetorically, like, “Why do you think that was?“ And clearly he was saying it was Filerman (who had been hands-on in Season 6 in a way that he had not been in Season 5). As you note, can you imagine if Dunne and Gollance and Feigenbaum and Keener had stayed on for another couple of years? How glorious that would’ve been. When Richard read my essay, he loved that quote from Ann Marcus, that Filerman’s “main talent was to tear apart a story once it was written." That was almost his MO — to degrade the writers. (There was actually a shrink in Hollywood in the ‘80s who had, among his patients, several writers who worked on different shows that Filerman EP’ed. They were all there for the same reason: because Filerman was — deliberately, maliciously — making their lives so miserable.) With regard to your fascinating question – was the success of Knots because of him or in spite of him? — I would say the latter.

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