James Holmes reviews:

Season 1 - Episode 13. Bottom of the Bottle - Part 1

I have a confession to make - when it began in the UK back in 1980, I was a
little baffled by KNOTS LANDING. At that time, the entire country was in
thrall to DALLAS, then at its mighty, pre-"shooting of JR" best. Far more
U.S. programmes were shown on British prime time TV back then than is the
case today. We may only have had three channels, but the evening schedules were littered with Yankee cop shows and action heroes, while cosy
all-American family dramas (THE WALTONS, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE) took up the teatime slots. What all these pre-Ewing programmes had in common was that, no matter what drama occurred within the space of an episode, you were guaranteed that all would be resolved by the end of the hour, with the good guys flashing their toothpaste smiles in triumph.

DALLAS changed all that. During its first couple of years, it seemed to
rewrite all the rules of TV. I can still remember how truly shocking it felt
to watch a show that had someone like JR as its central character - not only
was he ruthless but, more often than not, he was victorious by the end of
the episode! As DALLAS fever swept the nation, we Brits watched literally
open mouthed with disbelief. How could this man get away with these
things?!! THAT is why the show such a phenomenon. Nobody had ever seen
television like this before; the cosy morality of mainstream TV drama had
been turned upside down and you felt that anything was possible on DALLAS.

Into this environment came KNOTS LANDING and expectations were high. On
first viewing, the early episodes were slightly disappointing. KNOTS felt
like a strange hybrid. On one hand, there were glimmers of DALLAS style sex
and intrigue, while on the other, as in the traditional dramas of old, the
loose ends of each ep were invariably tied up in time for the closing
credits.

Whereas DALLAS focused on a family at war with itself, a lot of the drama in
KNOTS during those early days came from elements external to the cul-de-sac:
biker gangs, serial rapists, hitch-hiking teenage temptresses, and other
white trash bogeymen of the era. These story lines spoke to the anxieties of
affluent white suburban Americans of the period. There is a sense of the
cul-de-sac being circled by various bands of greedy, envious poor people
just waiting to invade Seaview Circle and "take it all away from them."
Perhaps the point of these story lines was assuage these anxieties. The
message seemed to be that, no matter how great the threat, it could always
be confronted and securely dealt with within the space of a TV hour, usually
with the aid of a spot of neighbourly vigilantism or a well placed SWAT
squad.

Admittedly, there were other, more internalised, story lines going on in
KNOTS' first year. I was thirteen years old back then so a lot of the more
subtle moments were lost on me but, even if the cul-de-sac wives' occasional rumbles of discontent weren't always as easy to silence as the engines of the "Land of the Free" biker gang, you could at least be assured that normal service would be resumed the following week. After all, these girls weren't going anywhere; they were not about venture outside of the confines of marriage, or the show's episodic structure.

"Bottom of the Bottle" was different. To those of us who had been introduced
to Gary and Val back in the first season of DALLAS, this was the dramatic
pay off we had been waiting for. At the back of our minds we knew that there was a time bomb ticking away inside Gary, and in the KNOTS' Season One finale the fuse is finally ignited. It happens in an unexpected way. Whereas the alcoholics of DALLAS - Digger Barnes and Sue Ellen - had been depicted as being "driven to drink" by external factors (i.e. mistreatment at the hands of others), Gary's first drunken rampage in KNOTS is prompted not by a dramatic turn of events, but by a piece of everyday suburban GOOD news - a business promotion.

The Fairgates are having a party, and the booze is flowing. Gary declines
Richard's offer of a drink, explaining that he needs to be up early the next
morning to go jogging. (At this point, Gary's alcoholism has yet to be
revealed to the cul-de-sac residents.) Their conversation is interrupted by
Sid who has a suprise for Gary, aka the new vice president of Knots Landing
Motors. Gary is triumphant: "I did it without help from the Ewing money," he
tells Val. "On my own, on OUR own, just like we set out to do." As the
neighbours toast Gary with champagne, he spontaneously picks up his first
drink in two years. Worse soon follows: unable to resist the generic disco
rhythms of the Fairgates' record collection, Gary offers to show Val his
boogie. Everyone begins joining in, and the Fairgate living room is soon a
blur of polyester. (Laura, in particular, demonstrates her ability put the
funk in dysfunctional.)
Conspicuously absent from this orgy of uncool is Kenny, busy treating
"singer" Sylvie to a private boogie display. "I didn't know you could dance
like that," Sylvie purrs unattractively as they their sordid affair.

By the time the party breaks up, Gary is plastered. As he and Val return
home, so does his Southern accent. As Val gently suggests that he may have had enough to drink, the mood turns ugly. "I haven't had a drink in two
years," he snarls. Resentment, long dormant, rises up in Gary ("If you don't
like it, you just trot your little butt back to whoever rang your chimes
[during their separation].") and he drives off into the night in full view
of the neighbours - partly to continue drinking and partly to stop himself
inflicting further damage on a distraught Val, who has no choice but to out
him as an alcoholic. Sid is conveniently ignorant on the subject.

Val: Gary won't be coming back.

Sid: Of course he will!

Val: No, Sid, he won't. You got some notion we just had a little tiff and
he'll be comin' home anytime waggin' his tail behind him, bringing me
flowers and candy. Don't you know what an alcoholic is? They don't come
home, they don't stop! They just go on and on and on!

Val's subtext here might almost be: "Sid, Don't you know what an ongoing
soap opera is? Not every problem can be resolved in forty-five minutes! Some
story lines don't stop, they just go on and on and on! Believe me, Sid, I've
guested on four episodes of DALLAS and I know a two-parter when I see one!"

As Val has predicted, Gary does not return home that night and so she and
Sid set out the following day to track him down. By going from bar to bar,
they eventually encounter a barman played by Jerry Hardin, who eighty-sixed
Gary the night before with the line: "There's drinkin' to have a good time,
but you're drinkin' to get drunk." That's an AA maxim if ever I've heard one
and, without it being stated, it's clear that Hardin's character has "been
there".
(A wonderful character actor who is the physical embodiment of the word
"avuncular", Hardin would later appear on THE X-FILES as Mulder's Deep
Throat informant-cum-father figure).

Hardin's barman is the first of several "doom sayers" that Sid and Val will
come across during this two-parter. The second is a hooker whom they learn
Gary has spent the night with. They track her down to a nearby motel, by
which time Gary has split having sold his car (actually the property of KLM)
to the hooker for $400. That this is not your usual episode of KNOTS is
highlighted by the lack of emphasis placed on Gary's apparent infidelity.
(Admittedly, it is unclear as to whether he was capable of getting his
money's worth from the hooker). In any other Season 1 episode of "The Tale
of Four Marriages", any suggestion of adultery involving Knots' golden
couple would have been a major deal. In "Bottom Of The Bottle", however, it
is merely a by-product of a much bigger issue.
"That man of yours doesn't care about anything except that bottle," the hooker tells Val darkly.

Val and Sid's path finally intersects with Gary's as they arrive at another
bar in time to witness him being hauled off by the police after instigating
a brawl. Gary has deliberately baited a couple of barflies who complain
about his jukebox selection of "hillbilly" music (another reference to his
boozy Texan past.) "This is the music of this country! Don't you like this
country?" Gary bellows at the men before hurling himself in their direction,
practically begging them to smash his face in. Ted Shackelford plays this
scene as a cornered, wounded animal, and the contrast between the Gary we see here and the shy, All-American Boy of the preceding dozen episodes is striking. I'm reminded of Jack Lemmon's similarly shocking transformation in
the granddaddy of all booze movies, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES.

Interestingly, the most moving scenes in this two-parter aren't between Gary
and Val, but between Gary and Sid. Over the first twelve episodes of KNOTS,
Sid has become the father Gary never had. Whereas Jock Ewing raised his son with high expectations and always found him wanting, Sid immediately accepts and trusts Gary, offering him work and friendship, no questions asked. Sid's belief in Gary has helped Gary to believe in himself. Having been released into Val's custody following his arrest, a shaky Gary returns to work,
determined to stay sober. However, his self belief has now evaporated. Sid's
puzzled attempt to comprehend the destructive behaviour of his young friend
only serves to exacerbate Gary's shame. As pure as Sid appears, that is how
dirty Gary feels. Gary's sordid, ugly past is so far out of Sid's
experience! When Gary returns to work after a business lunch during which he has tried and failed to remain sober and tries to provoke Sid into hitting
him, he is really punishing himself for being unworthy of a father's love.
Realising that he can no longer blame Jock and JR for his drinking, Gary is
overwhelmed with self hatred and disappears on another binge.

Meanwhile, Val has come to a similar realisation: "I know now that Gary
doesn't need a special reason to drink. He'll drink for any reason. I used
to think that he drank because he didn't fit in, because his daddy and his
brothers said he was weak and he had no character because he wasn't a tough and ruthless Ewing like them, and so he believed them and he drank - a lot.
But now, see, now he does fit in. I mean, he's doin' real well in his job
and he's been a beautiful husband and, you know, we were really makin' it
together, and now just when everything's goin' great ..." As Sid has
provided Gary with a parental figure in Season One, so Karen now does the
same for Val: "We joke about you behind your back. We call you the little
engine that could."

Gary's walk on the wild side takes him (via a near death experience in a
liquor store) to the beach, where he encounters some of those white (and,
for once, black) trash bogeymen from earlier stand alone episodes. Gary is a
long way from home - not just geographically - and is in no condition to
refuse their demands for "greens, man!" Coming to under the boardwalk the
next morning, he drains the bottle of booze he has snatched from the arms of
a sleeping wino. It was only three nights earlier that Gary turned down
Richard Avery's offer of a drink, citing his jogging regime as the reason.
As he sits on the beach during the final moments of "Bottom of the Bottle,
Part One", grimy and dishevelled and in alcoholic despair, a white male
jogger, one of the beautiful people of affluent suburbia, runs past him

[BREAK]

KNOTS episode review: Season 8, Episode 27 "Break Up"

By the beginning of Season 8, each of KNOTS' principal female characters had
achieved some level of emotional and financial stability. Abby - the show's
principal mover and shaker, whose ambition for power and money had
transformed KNOTS LANDING from a quiet little suburban serial into a super
soap encompassing big business, politics, sex in saunas and any number of
trigger happy psychopaths - had finally achieved the status she craved, and
was content to relinquish the title of Mrs Gary Ewing. Each of the
cul-de-sac's original housewives now had their slice of the pie and had
settled into more or less happy second marriages. Even Lilimae had come to
terms with her wanderlust and made peace with the death of her son.

With this transformation of the show and its characters now complete, a
sense of status quo threatened to descend on Seaview Circle for the first
time since Season 1. Now, as then, it became incumbent upon external
characters to infiltrate this comfort zone and shake things up a little. The
programme makers chose to do this in the time honoured soap tradition of
introducing "Faces From The Past"; you know the kind of thing - old flames,
long lost relatives, forgotten college buddies, etc. Karen and Val's closets
having been stripped bare of skeletons back in the era of the stand alone
episode, it was now the turn the second generation of KNOTS LANDING men -
Mack, Greg and Ben - to have their pasts exhumed. While Ben contributed Jean Hackney, it was Mack who pulled off the nostalgia grand slam in Season 8, following Karen's Season 3 example by adding an old college friend
(kidnapper Phil Harbert), a long lost relative (daughter Paige Matheson)
and, most recently, his first love (Paige's mother, Anne) to the KL mix.

The character of Anne Matheson also belongs to a select "Faces From The
Past" sub-group, whose charter members include Susan Philby (the first Mrs
Sid), and Victoria Hill (Karen's college roommate turned NY fashionista).
This group we shall call the "Fancy Schmancy Sophisticates" - figures from
the Fairgate/Mackenzie past who pull up in the cul-de-sac, arch an
exquisitely plucked eyebrow as they survey their surroundings, and then
patronisingly congratulate Karen on her "adorably quaint" lifestyle. And of
course, by looking down on Karen - Karen The Everywoman, Karen The Audience Representative - these ladies are also looking down on the viewers at home.
Naturally, therefore, these dames, with their airs, graces and much stamped
passports, must eventually be exposed as lonely, unfulfilled neurotics, who
would secretly trade their last piece of Louis Vuitton emotional baggage to
have what Karen has, i.e. a nice suburban husband and/or some nice suburban kids.
Anne being Anne, and Season 8 being Season 8, the lengths to which she will
go to disrupt the Mackenzie marriage are far more extreme than those
previously taken by either Susan or Victoria (although spending a night in a
motel with the Hairy Backed Avery, and staging THAT fashion show still
qualify as pretty hard core), and this episode opens with Ms. Matheson being
released from the hospital after being treated for an apparently suicidal
overdose. Karen is unimpressed and calls her at Laura's house, (which she is
renting for the duration of her visit) asking her to "let my husband off the
hook ... Your suicide was carefully planned to fail. You just wanted Mack's
sympathy."

Anne: I did it so Mack would choose between us ... He'd never choose you -
you with your little tract house, your little dead end street, your little
dead end life, with your little outdoor barbecue and your "Kiss The Cook"
apron - it all makes me sick!

Using "Dedicated To The One I Love" by The Mamas and The Papas as source
music in this scene (Anne has it playing on a turntable) serves two
purposes. Firstly, it ensures that Anne does not hear Mack entering her
house in time to overhear the phone call, and secondly, it reminds the
audience that Anne is played by Michelle Phillips - a woman with a past at
least as salacious as that of the character she is portraying. Therefore,
when Mack later makes his choice: "I love my wife ... I love our house, I
love how quiet it is on a cul-de-sac," the message to Mrs Average Viewer,
sitting at home on her sofa with her stretch marks and cellulite, is: So
what if you're not Michelle Phillips? You still can be Michele Lee - even if
you never got to sleep with Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper and Roman Polanski, you can still Kiss The Cook! (By the way, by "Average
Viewer", I don't mean us KNOTS Netters, of course - no, we're far too
post-post-modern and deconstructionist for that. No, no, I mean Those Other People who watched KNOTS - the homely looking ones with the big hair who were interviewed on THE KNOTS LANDING BLOCK PARTY. Yikes, looks like I'm a "Fancy Schmancy" too.) All of this suburban self congratulation would be unbearably smug were it not for the expression of genuine sympathy on
Karen's face when she sees how crestfallen Anne is and, of course, Anne's
wonderfully cruel parting shot to Mack, as she prepares to go back East:
"You're not Paige's father, Mack. I'm not interested in Paige's real father.
I mean - Greg Sumner's not really my type." (Hey, never say never, Annie.)

Fake relatives abound in Season 8, and keeping up with who knows the truth
about whom at any given moment becomes a nigh on impossible task for the
audience. This results in some deliciously complicated plot developments. In
this episode, Sylvia, the fake mother of Greg's fake brother Peter, has died
in mysterious circumstances, leaving Peter in a genuine pickle:
"My mother gave Olivia that letter to give to Gary Ewing in case something
unusual happened. Don't you think that, to Olivia, drowning in the bath tub
might constitute 'something unusual'?"

Paige: What's in that letter, anyway? [Evidence that Peter is a fraud!]

Peter then receives a visit from Gary, his erstwhile enemy - and the only
person who knows that Jill is Peter's real sister: "I want you to invite
Jill to the funeral ... Sylvia was her mother too, and I don't want her to
go through life feeling guilty because she missed her mother's funeral ...
Don't worry about you and Jill, I'm not gonna tell anybody. As far as I'm
concerned, your secret can stay buried with your mother." Except that Sylvia
is not Peter's mother. Or Jill's. Remember? At any rate, Peter is not happy
that to learn that Gary now knows as much as he does - or rather, as much as he THINKS he does.

"I told him that you were my brother," explains Jill. "And since he believes
that you're telling the truth about who you are, he presumes I'm a Galveston
... You're a public official with a false identity. If Gary knew the truth,
the whole truth, he would feel a moral obligation to reveal that you are a
fraud."

Upon learning of Sylvia's death, Olivia turns to best pal Paige:
"I was thinking about the letter that Sylvia gave me ... I should give it to
Gary, but if Peter finds out, it might hurt his feelings. What should I do?"
The Olivia that we see here - naive, trusting, gullible - bears little
relation to the bright-as-a-button, wise-beyond-her-years pre-pubescent she
once was. As is the soap teen tradition, she has "matured" into an unstable,
self obsessed basket case. In this episode, she is less a believable
character than a walking plot device, swallowing everything she is told
hook, line and sinker - except the truth.

Karen: Did you know that Peter Hollister and Paige are seeing each other?

Olivia: That's not true! Paige is my friend. She would have told me, Peter
would have told me.

Paige, whose pre Greg persona tends to mirror that of whomever she is
sleeping with, is never more underhanded or deceitful than during this, her
Peter Hollister phase. She swears blind to Olivia that she is NOT sleeping
with Peter, and suggests Olivia gives Sylvia's letter to "a really good
girlfriend", i.e. Paige herself.

Like Olivia and Paige, Abby shows a different side of herself during the
1986/7 season. Gone are the trademark curls and the mischievous twinkle, to
be replaced by a more serious minded, conservative image. ("Come on, Greg -
this is no joke!" she scolds in this episode.) She has reinvented herself as
a "Martyr of Motherhood" figure, in the Joan Crawford/Lana Turner mould:
"Don't get fresh with ME, young lady!" Having already taken on her
daughter's drug problem, and been cast as "the older woman" in the
Peter/Paige/Abby triangle, Abby is about to plunge headlong into MILDRED
PIERCE territory, as she learning that Olivia's crush on Peter may not be
entirely unreciprocated.
She pays a visit to Peter's office: "If you so much as look at my daughter
again, I'll be on Greg Sumner's doorstep so fast it'll make your head spin,
and I'll tell him the truth about you."

Even as Peter is reassuring Abby, his phone starts ringing.

Olivia: There's something I need to talk to you about. Can I come to the
funeral?

Peter: Please do.

A handful of mourners gather at the cemetery for Sylvia's send off. "This is
kind of embarrassing. I thought the old girl was more popular," murmurs Greg
to Peter, thereby putting the "fun" into "funeral". Despite the sparse
attendance, Peter has his work cut out fielding some awkward questions.

Former colleague of Sylvia's: I never knew she had a son.

Peter: I - was away at military school most of the time.

Greg (noticing Gary and Jill's appearance): What are THEY doing here?

Avoiding the question, Peter hastily turns his attention to a very sexy
Olivia, dressed - perhaps appropriately, given that this is a funeral - to
kill. "I heard from [Sylvia] just before she died," he tells her, leading
her away from the funeral party. "She said she had given you a letter ...
She made me promise to tell you to give it to me and not to Gary."

Olivia: ... I don't know.

Peter: ... Don't you care about me the way that I care about you?

Abby materialises from behind a gravestone in time to see Peter stick his
tongue down her daughter's throat (quite daring stuff, really, given that
Olivia is still a minor), and makes good on her threat to spill the beans to
Greg - but she is too late: "I've always known Peter wasn't my brother,"
Greg informs her. "I never had a brother. [Actually, Greggie, you do and
he's also your nephew!] Peter benefits the both of us. You gain money, I
gain power - things we both love." He instructs Peter to wait for him at
home ("Stay away from Laura and don't touch anything."), while Abby appeals to Olivia's non-existent good sense: "I love you too much to have you get involved with something that's way over your head."

"Man, am I glad I'm not related to you," Greg tells Peter back at the ranch.
"I've known all along that you're not my brother. Abby knows it too but,
then again, you knew that didn't you? Don't worry, we're not gonna blow the
whistle on you. Abby has a letter from Sylvia all about you. She has agreed
not to show the press. In return, you will agree to stay away from Olivia."

Peter: I can't ... Sylvia wrote two letters, and gave one of them to Olivia.

Greg calls Abby to warn her ("He's not interested in your daughter, he's
interested in something she has"), but Olivia has already snuck away to
Peter's apartment. She is on his doorstep, just about to hand over Sylvia's
letter, when she spies Paige coming out of Peter's bathroom wearing nothing
but a towel. She beats a hasty retreat, scribbles Gary's address on the
letter, and tosses it in the nearest mail box...

The remaining story line in Break Up deals with a breakdown, as Solid Old
Ben's grasp on reality begins to crumble. Ben's "Face From The Past" - Jean
Hackney - may be gone, but she is certainly not forgotten as a nervous Val
(is there any other kind?) watches her pj-clad hubby slouching round the
house nursing a bad case of bed head. There is something very touching about the scene in which Lilimae gently attempts to persuade Ben to pull himself together for the sake of the twins.("I'm sure you think how they're seeing you lately.") This is Julie Harris and Douglas Sheehan's final two hander of the series and it's a poignant reversal of roles for their two characters.
After all, when Ben first started dating Val, it was he who attempted to
reach out to Lilimae, then in full post-Chip flip-out mode. Acting on his
mother-in-law's advice, Ben combs his hair and visits Abby to ask for his
job back at the TV station. Halfway through his spiel, however, he realises
that he has absolutely no desire to work for Abby again. This affords us our
only opportunity of the episode to see the old, fun loving Abster in action:
"Oh Ben," she pouts in mock disappointment. "I was hoping that you would ask for your job back. It would give me the opportunity of turning you down
cold. Now I'll have to settle for having you thrown out ... Don't forget to
remember me to Valene!"