Knots Landing Premiered 43 Years Ago Today

I wonder if anyone has figured out which cul-de-sac exactly was used for that intro?

If I win the lottery I will buy out the cul de sac and hire a group of drag queens to reenact the scripts.

How fascinating! It's got me all sentimental. And famished!

I must be getting old. Everything under the sun seems to be done already. Enjoy!

I remember it as if it were only forty three years ago.

Gary’s dick caused perpetual unrest in the cul-de-sac.

[quote] Gary’s dick caused perpetual unrest in the cul-de-sac.

And in my teenage loins!

Pat Petersen’s appearance on 1986’s Circus of the Stars was a revelation. His blue tights are something I haven’t forgotten in 36 years. His segment begins at 52:10.

Val and Gary starred on Wonder Woman earlier that year.

My mom loved that show. I was in 1st grade when it came out, and she made me watch it with her - so inappropriate, even though I didn't understand 90% of it, of course.

......

One of the GOATs.

R10 - I remember seeing that clip before, but I thought it was in one of the Faces of Death videos.

Poor Pat, they never really gave him much to do but play a dizzy blond. I'm sorry they scrapped the story idea where upon learning that he's really the son of Abby and Sid, runs away to become a megastar at Catalina Video. Ahh, the 80s.

Faces of Death???

Not all the stars were successful on the high wire...

R18 Examples?

Just when you think there’s no one around who’s carin’.

Just when you think there’s no one around who’s sharin.

Just when you think you’re all alone and can flick your bean - you’re not.

I loved "Knots Landing." I watched it long after I gave up "Dallas." Like many a gayling, part of the appeal was Gary Ewing. Gary might have been the "sensitive" Ewing brother, but there was a reason Valene kept coming back for that Ewing dick, as well as Abby and all those other women in Knots Landing.

Sarah Paulson should do the Joan Van Ark story.

The VPLs at r10 are spectacular.

Indicative of a far more naive time. Today they’d be dissected on SM in real time.

If anyone watched broadcast TV.

Michelle Phillips as Anne Matheson.

Grifter extraordinaire, relentless golddigger, duplicitous mother.

But never quite successful at any of the above because she just wasn’t evil. And you almost had to root for her as her schemes inevitably collapsed around her.

Even at its worst, Knots was the best.

Wow. Imagine premiering a network TV series two days after Christmas now.

And when it was at its best, it was the VERY best.

Favorite scenes?

For me it has to be Jill terrorizing "Poor Val" with her murder plot. They were both great, and even though you knew they wouldn't really kill off Val it was tense and suspenseful. And damn it, Jill had a point.

Second favorite had to be 5'2",100lb Abby dragging the corpse of 6'2", 190lb Peter throughout Lotus Point resort, all the while in high heels. Then she buries him in the dead of night without so much as a smudge of dirt on her Channel business suit or breaking a sweat.

So much fun.

R19 - Really? Are you being obtuse? It was obviously a joke.

The reveal and Val's pivot as her stolen babies are driven away is seminal.

Laura's memorial, which I just discovered some things about that I never knew.

I love the season 3 episode "Three Sisters" when all the women spend the night in a haunted house. There was some interesting foreshadowing in that ep.

Lili Mae protecting Cathy and admonishing Joshua as he falls to his death off the roof is classic.

I also love when she ran over rat bastard Chip.

I can’t believe Pat Petersen’s penis didn’t get a bigger response. I know my audience.

^ Everyone is waiting for Ted Shackleford in circus tights.

R1 - I thought the cul-de-sac and the exteriors of the houses were shot in Granada Hills, which of course is nowhere NEAR the ocean. The opening credits were a composite of that neighborhood (aerial) matted with the ocean.

I know people always called this the middle-class soap opera, but seriously, how the fuck were any of these people middle class? They had 4 bedroom houses on a private street mere yards from the Pacific Ocean in a suburb of L.A.. Even in 1979, those houses would have cost a fortune. There was a business owner, a lawyer, a recording producer, a realtor, and an oil tycoon heir. I don't see any of them clipping coupons. The only one with an honest middle-class job was Jill, a kindergarten teacher.

And also, if the neighborhood was so middle-class then just how fucking cheap was Miss Ellie? She's sitting on millions, and that's the best she can do for her favorite son?

The cul de sac is in Granada Hills-the real street name is Crystalaire Place.

If I remember correctly the shots from the opening credits are of a housing tract further south, in Palos Verdes I believe.

Why doesn’t anybody ever mention me?

Kim Lankford was good friends with Robert Durst victim Susan Berman. Five days before she was killed, Berman told Lankford that Durst had confessed to killing his first wife.

R36 - Did you skip R34?

The actor who played Harold fucked Demi Moore the night before her wedding to another man.

And speaking of Harold…

Let’s catch up with Tonya Crowe.

In the mid-2000s, Carafotes lived not too far away where I owned my retail business, and would come into my store frequently (he was friends with the owner of a pub on the street). He was still as handsome as ever at the time (early 40s), and I told him I knew him from KL. I can assure you, my gaydar was pinging whenever he was near me. Not 100% convinced he's straight. He was very flirty.

Karen's house sold in 2021 for about a million. If you go to street view, all of the houses are there. Gary and Val's, Sid and Karen's, Richard and Laura's, Abby/Claudia's, Kenny and Ginger's.

I loved this show. I even watched the repeats on Soapnet. That was a really good channel.

It's been nearly 20 years since the disastrous (poorly handled) DVD releases of seasons 1 and 2. But everything is streaming now. Fuck I can find long-forgotten, terrible sitcoms from the 60s easier than this show. Just put it up for streaming already.

All of the DVD and streaming issues can’t be resolved because of the music right issues during the Ciji years.

R45 - I don't believe that for a minute. Plenty of old TV shows are packed with hit songs of the day, and I'm sure no one thought about getting DVD or streaming rights back in the 70s or 80s. Besides, it's not like Hartman sings in every episode, it's 3-4 tops. Edit it out if they have to. No one watched Knots Landing to hear Ciji sing.

R34 The interiors of the same little houses eventually became bigger than they had been earlier. They all became very upper middle class to wealthy as the 80s became more materialistic.

The man who owned the house next to “Val’s” was pissed that his house wasn’t used for one of the characters, so he parked his big obnoxious motor home in the driveway and on the street during filming.

I think Knots, while never as popular as Dallas or Dynasty, is considered by many to have maintained its quality the longest. Do you remember how bad Dallas was the last couple of seasons?

Knots stayed consistently good, with the back half of the 12th season/first half of the 13th season a notable exception, when David Jacobs and the Lechowicks left to produce Homefront. It was improving in quality during the last season and probably had a few more seasons left in it.

In contrast, Dallas went to shit after The Dream; Dynasty fell apart after the Moldavian Massacre; and Falcon Crest never recovered from Melissa’s death.

Knots' later years were like watching a beloved elderly relative wither away. The show wasn't the same without Laura, Abby, and Lilimae. And worse yet, the replacements were God-awful. Kathleen Noone and her moonpie face? Stacy Galina who had to wear a cowbell so you noticed her on screen? The usually entertaining Lynne Moody relegated to little more than a walk-on? Meanwhile Karen kept getting younger... made you wonder if there was a painting of her in the attic going to shit. It was still watchable at the end, but they were definitely losing steam.

And every time they brought on a new hottie boy, they threw him aside: Paul Carafates, Boyd Kestner, Mark Soper, Lance Guest... God damn it!

When they were featuring Sam Berhens/Danny, Penny Peyser/Amanda, Kathleen Noone/Claudia, and Stacy Galina/Kate(?) I wanted to kill myself. The characters were bad enough, but to cast such milquetoast actors was insulting. I needed a little more flash (and flesh) in my soaps. A little more Lar Park-Lincoln, if you will.

R46 The article is from 2015 but it more or less spells it out.

Such a great, great show!

R27 posted the season 5 cliffhanger — which was great! Maybe even slightly better was that season 6 opens with the same scenes (it was still the same day in Knots Landing) and some of the actors (notably Donna Mills) had completely different haircuts.

James Houghton gave a rare interview this month. Some juicy details about the show and his coworkers.

[quote]The reveal and Val's pivot as her stolen babies are driven away is seminal.

My pivot was sublime.

R56 - I know I’m in the minority, but I LOVE that opening. I also LOVE Connie Mc, at any size/weight.

R53 - Thanks for the link, and I am familiar with this reason being given, but I don't think it fits for Knots Landing which was not a music-heavy show.

The article reads, "In this case, a company has a handful of options. It can try to excise the music entirely. If the problem is on the recording end, rather than the publishing end, it can try to find a cover version. It can try to find a song that has the same mood or vibe. Or it can fill with original score."

What would that mean to Knots? Fewer scenes of Ginger, Ciji, and C.J. singing middling covers of Journey hits? So what? Those scenes were essentially shot as cutaways, so it would hardly disrupt the episode as a whole. Or they could just sync some cheaper song if necessary. As I said before, no one was watching to hear them sing pop songs now and then. The two shows chiefly referenced in the article (Wonder Years and WKRP) are very different examples.

If I remember correctly, Ciji was repeatedly shot singing “Open Arms.” And later, when Cathy was on tv her character was singing a top 40 song almost weekly, which was used in montages involving other characters.Then lastly, when Paige was introduced a lot of those flashback scenes included songs from 60s.

I think there was more pop music on Knots than you’d think, certainly more than the other three primetime soaps.

Possibly I just blocked most of Lisa Hartman from my mind.

As a gayling, I was transfixed by Kenny.

What am I, chopped liver?

In the interview at r55, Jim Houghton says John Pleshette was an ass to him.

That's because Jim turned John down...

Interesting tidbit from a fairly recent Donna Mills interview online:

Apparently Alec Baldwin was fired from Knots. Not for what would seem to be the obvious reason, but because producers felt he was prone to pudginess and looked fat on screen. Who knew David Jacobs was a habitue of Datalounge?

Speaking of James Houghton...

Here's an article about the then-daytime heartthrob in 1976

I thought Alec was canned because his character had become a self-righteous asshole with rage issues, like Alec himself

R65 - I hope that isn’t true. It probably is, but I hope it isn’t.

Let us consider long-lost relatives of Knots Landing. They appeared once or a few times, only to never be mentioned again:

Sid's first daughter, Karen

Sid and Abby's brother (yes, there was a third Fairgate)

Jeff Cunningham (bio dad to Olivia and Brian)

Jill's baby sister, that slut

Karen's equally annoying brother from "back East"

Which reminds me, did anyone ever tell Meg she has two half-brothers?

Whoops, Sid's oldest daughter was Annie, not Karen (his wife). Although Michele was quite a bit younger than Don...

"Stephen Macht as Joe"

I always thought Stephen Macht was sexy. Like a softer version of Fred Ward.

Weren’t they teasing an attraction between Ginger and Joe? Joe and Karen’s banter was similar to Mack and Karen’s later.

Val needed to sage her house. It was always stocked with lunatics-Chip, Joshua, Danny….Ben ended up going nutty at the end and poor Val wasn’t particularly stable.

I think dropping Lotus Point was a huge mistake, as it gave Gary and Karen a reason to interact with Greg.

A gay Knots fan weighs in on the rooftop exit of Alec Baldwin.

Anne and Claudia.

R73 - And Karen should have opened a day care. At varying times she housed Annie, Diana, Eric, Michael, Mary Frances, Paige, Meg, and Jason. Did Karen live in a shoe?

Karen was the den mother. And one of the great things that Knots got right, is that she stayed the den mother through the entire series.

R77 - Or, as Paige so succinctly put it, Karen was a yenta.

Constance Mccashin posted this today.

R79 - thanks for posting that! Love it, and LOVE McCashin!

Good to see that they've all remained friends these many years later.

Are the obese soap twitter queens bringing back KL? Will KL return as a podcast?!?