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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Knots Blogger" data-source="post: 79107" data-attributes="member: 392">A Reflection on Season Six of KNOTS LANDING (1984-1985)<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k5s8HsdFcmg/WTG779yOCtI/AAAAAAAACsY/Cqk49bAIXHEAz-i8cNyoXotZYd0skYWOQCLcB/s1600/cast%2Blineup.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k5s8HsdFcmg/WTG779yOCtI/AAAAAAAACsY/Cqk49bAIXHEAz-i8cNyoXotZYd0skYWOQCLcB/s400/cast%2Blineup.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>And so we’ve come to the end of season six, the season that, upon embarking on this voyage with My Beloved Grammy, I was most excited to revisit, the season that I remembered being the absolute best of the entire series run.  Were my memories accurate?  Absolutely yes.Honestly, I don’t even know where to start on this reflections essay.  How can I even begin to demonstrate how fucking amazing this season of television was?  I guess I’ll start off by saying that, for one thing, there’s not a single bad episode in this entire season.  Of course, I think I said the same thing about season five, but season six is even more impressive because it leaps up to thirty eps after season five had a 25 ep count.  A good deal of my respect for this season comes from the fact that it’s so long, that the creative team have to fill thirty solid eps with dramatic material and storytelling, and yet it’s never, not for a single moment, boring.  Dallas was also doing thirty eps per season by this point, and when I think of those seasons, I think of really long, boring, drawn out storylines that take forever to get finished with but essentially lead nowhere (this is the last time I’ll ever bring it up, but Jenna Wade’s trial, oh dear God Jenna Wade’s fucking trial).  This is absolutely not true with season six of KL; every ep feels dynamic and alive and really moving us along in the story, yet at the same time the length of the season allows plenty of time for the characters to live and breathe and feel like real people.  Look at how well done the whole portion of the season was in which Val ran off to Tennessee and turned into Verna, for instance.  That storyline alone is good enough to be a full season on some other show, but with KL it’s just a series of eps near the middle of the season, yet it’s stretched out in such a way that we really feel like we get to live and breathe in this world with Val/Verna for quite some time, and that helps it all to feel very realistic and truthful, versus having to rush through the story like you would have to do with a shorter season.Really, that’s also a good portion of what inspired my awe for this season, which is that so much stuff happens.  There’s enough drama and excitement in this season of KL to fill three seasons of any other show, and by the time you reach “They’re gonna take the babies” in the concluding seconds of <a href="http://www.knotsblogging.com/2017/06/knots-landing-episode-130-of-344-long.html" target="_blank">The Long and Winding Road</a>, the season finale, all the shenanigans with Karen shot and in the hospital and Abs kidnapped by Mark St. Claire from <a href="http://www.knotsblogging.com/2017/03/knots-landing-episode-101-of-344-buying.html" target="_blank">Buying Time</a>, the season premiere, feel like they happened eons ago; it’s rather amazing to reflect and realize that it’s all been a part of the same season of television.  But drama for the sake of drama is not enough; plenty of shows can claim to have a lot of drama but you never feel all that impressed when you watch them, and that leads me to my next point.  This season has easily the greatest storyline in KL history, and that is of course Val’s babies.  I remembered this being the best storyline from the show, and it not only lived up to my expectations, but exceeded them.  The first time I watched this, I was basically just drooling and staring at the screen and trying to cram as many eps into one day as I possibly could.  I was watching so fast and was so compelled by the sheer dramatic force of what was happening, that I don’t think I was able to pause and reflect on why it was so compelling.  Now I am older and wiser and realize what makes this storyline so good, and that’s actually a number of things.<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-elcDq8R0iYQ/WTG86LxT00I/AAAAAAAACsk/cxxIFimvtQAu4JdbPdySXpvrZaKWPlvUACLcB/s1600/vals%2Bbabies.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-elcDq8R0iYQ/WTG86LxT00I/AAAAAAAACsk/cxxIFimvtQAu4JdbPdySXpvrZaKWPlvUACLcB/s400/vals%2Bbabies.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>First off, this storyline continues in the grand tradition of the Ciji story from season four and the Wolfbridge story from season five, in that it really brilliantly manages to use this central storyline as a way to link the entire cast together.  Absolutely everyone in the series is involved in the saga of Val’s babies, yet it doesn’t feel like the writers have to stretch to link them.  Instead, it feels super organic and well done, and this would also probably be a good time to mention that season six has easily the best cast lineup of the entire series.  Every single person in the opening credits this season is an extremely interesting character played exceptionally well by the actor bringing the character to life.  There are still characters I love that we haven’t even met yet (Paige and Anne Matheson spring immediately to mind), yet the cast as a solid, full unit will never ever be as perfect as it is at this exact moment in time with season six.  Watching the scrolling squares for season six (which, random interruption, I’ve actually decided I like even better than the season five version, so I’m officially voting for the season six opening of KL as the greatest opening credits in television history), I feel like I’m looking at royalty pass by me, that these are all awesome people who I love and want to spend as much time with as possible.<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5fuvWffI4DI/WTG9qRUVoKI/AAAAAAAACs0/LhbkZAxOxkcy6ZlVC4X02-kOxrbXV8oFACLcB/s1600/ven.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5fuvWffI4DI/WTG9qRUVoKI/AAAAAAAACs0/LhbkZAxOxkcy6ZlVC4X02-kOxrbXV8oFACLcB/s640/ven.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></a>However, the absolute star of the season is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005521/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1" target="_blank">Joan Van Ark</a>, who gives the best performance of anyone in the cast during this season.  When I first started doing this blog, I said how Karen was my favorite character start to finish and that I predicted that would never change, but now I’m realizing that it’s silly to just pick one character out of such a huge cast and simply say “She’s my favorite and that’s that.”  Now I’m realizing that the different seasons really emphasize the different characters in a pretty profound way, that I might have a favorite character during a particular juncture of the series and then I might have a new favorite during another portion.  While I’d say Karen was my favorite character and the best actress on the show during season three, during season six it’s easily Val.  J.V.A is stunning throughout this season, and it’s such an incredibly marked improvement from where we began in season one, when I was kinda making fun of her for hamming it up during certain eps and scenes.  Here, she is perfect, and I can’t believe anyone could  watch this season and not feel just devastated for her and for all she goes through.  She has so many moments that are simply incredible, but one of the first to spring to mind is when she gets the news that her babies are dead, and that look on her face that tells us she knows this isn’t true.  She’s equally amazing just a few minutes later when talking to Karen and Mack and realizing that her friends won’t believe her when she says the babies are alive.  J.V.A played all that stuff so quietly, but you could understand everything just by looking at her, and then of course we have her giving some really Emmy worthy stuff in eps like <a href="http://www.knotsblogging.com/2017/04/knots-landing-episode-111-of-344.html" target="_blank">Distant Locations</a>, where she does that one-take scene with no cuts of scrubbing all the makeup off of her face, and then of course the Verna Ellers stuff that I love so much that occupies the next chunk of eps.  Ugh, there are just too many great moments to name, so hopefully I’ve done them justice when discussing the season episode-by-episode.Another reason that the Val’s babies storyline is so good is that we’ve built up to it.  If they’d done this story in season two, it simply wouldn’t have worked, and that’s because we wouldn’t have had the necessary time devoted to fully understand Val and her past.  By placing it in season six, we begin the season with exactly 100 eps under our belt and we’ve had 100 eps (plus those early Dallas appearances) to get to know Val and understand Val and see how her life has been.  We know that she had baby Lucy when she was fifteen or sixteen and that Lucy was taken away from her, and we’ve seen five seasons of her wanting so desperately to be a real mother to someone.  We’ve seen this through her relationship with Olivia as well as in tons of other ways throughout the prior years, so when we get to the point where her babies are taken away from her and she is told they are dead, we fully understand how devastating this is for poor Val (POOR VAL!). TO BE CONTINUED</blockquote>

Verification: 6 + 4 =