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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TommyK" data-source="post: 63987" data-attributes="member: 107">continued from aboveAt least Karen, from the start, has fire -- and a brain; Ginger, in the pilot, is a dumb bunny. We learn she teaches kindergarten, and it feels like a joke; is this really who's shaping young minds in Southern California? Ginger isn't even included in some of the early episodes -- she and Kenny are basically set up to be expendable, and that's how they'll continue to be till Season 4, when they're well-used and then discarded -- and when she appears, she's mostly defined in response to her husband. But as a foil for Kenny, she's well-defined, the young wife longing for a stable marriage and a family, but wedded to a player. In the season's sixth episode, the A-plot, like several in the first season, is bland (this one addresses why Lucy doesn't come live with her parents in Knots Landing -- Tilton answers the question the moment she opens her mouth and can't gel with the rest of the cast), but the B-plot is excellent, as Kenny throws a party for the band he's producing, and expects Ginger to accept all the ogling and advances that come with being a young wife in the music industry. She objects to the "managers and musicians with their hands all over me" and storms out, but Kenny doesn't go after her; he's got a party to host, and busies himself at the mirror: undoing a shirt button to see if he likes it, and then, when he decides he does, undoing another. Ginger gives the series its first whiff of feminism in her bid for self-respect, but notably, as much as the show admires Ginger, it doesn't judge Kenny for decrying sexual conformity: for feeling it's the product of another era, a bygone from when sex was for procreation and not for pleasure.Jacobs reveals that an early plot called for Kenny to pimp out Ginger to his boss, for his own advancement, but he couldn't get it past the network. But that sort of plotline, a husband egging on his wife to make nice with a colleague, becomes a B-plot for Richard and Laura in episode 2. Once again, the A-plot, this one guest-starring J.R., is weak, full of the kind of hyperbolic dialogue that would have been right at home on Dallas (J.R. to Gary: "I'll break ya -- again"), but the B-plot has some power, as Laura runs into a one-night stand, and passes him off to Richard as an old friend. When Richard encourages her to rekindle their friendship to land him some business, we're left wondering just how far Laura is willing to go to help her husband, and just how far Richard expects her to go. The story-line allows for ambiguity, and invokes some of the salaciousness of Dallas without sensationalizing it. The ending is a bit pat, and diminishes Laura by having her dotingly declare, "Oh Richard, I love you so much," as if she's Nora in the doll's house -- but it's the first time you start to glimpse what the show could be.You get another glimmer, via Laura, two episodes later. When one of her dalliances leaves her visibly shaken, and Richard notices, she covers by declaring she was attacked: the victim of a serial rapist who's been targeting the women of Knots Landing. Laura has a wonderful monologue about her mother's death when she was 12, and how she's been struggling since then to find affection and affirmation from others -- in particular, other men. "The Lie" is very much a product of its time, and as a result, it's a hazier episode now than it was in 1980. From a modern perspective, it's clear that even if Laura lied about the identity of her attacker, she was in fact assaulted by the man she hooked up with. But law enforcement didn't view it that way then, nor did the writers, and neither does Laura herself. She was simply promiscuous, things got a little rough, and she paid the price. But as with her B-plot in episode 2, it raises questions about the boundaries of the new sexual freedom. (This aspect of Laura's personality will quickly be toned down, and by the second half of the season, her penchant for infidelity will be transferred onto Richard. Was the network more comfortable seeing a man with a roving eye?)One of the fascinating aspects of Season 1 is that the lead couples are clearly Sid and Karen, and Gary and Val, but it's mostly through the other characters that Knots starts to fall into place. And it's not just the other couples: it's also Sid and Karen's oldest kids, Diana and Eric. Claudia Lonow and Steve Shaw are Season 1's secret weapon. They're not adorable, precocious, or even well-groomed; they're about the most believable teenagers we'd seen on American television. (Jacobs based his next show, Secrets of Midland Heights, around a group of equally awkward adolescents.) Lonow is a marvel: her hair a rumpled, curly mess; her face naturally settling into a pout. And Shaw -- in his infatuation with Ginger in episode 6, and his tentative romance of her younger sister a few episodes later -- is shy and sweet, endearing without being precious. Jacobs hits all the right notes with these two. Both are dealing with the standard teen issues -- trust, peer pressure, "the first time" -- and often, they're doing it on their own, because their parents are trying so hard to be trusting and enlightened that they're not giving them the guidance they need. And worse, they're coming of age while seemingly everyone in the neighborhood looks on. (Karen and Ginger, two characters who rarely interact one-on-one, have a nice exchange late in the season, where they gossip -- and Karen frets -- about Diana and her new boyfriend.)As the season progresses, the cul-de-sac itself takes on a real presence. At the end of "Small Surprises," Karen comes home from the hospital, having miscarried, and as she and Sid pull into the driveway, their neighbors are outside, either awaiting her return or simply on hand to witness it. Seaview Circle isn't just a community where neighbors are always there to lend a shoulder; it's a community where they're always there, period. Ultimately, you come to see what distinguishes Knots Landing from Dallas and from Family. Season 1 is about the awkwardness of human interaction at a time when the restraints are looser, in a setting where the confines are closer. It touches down at the tail end of the sexual revolution, in a claustrophobic cul-de-sac, and asks, how does the institution of marriage survive? In some ways, it presages the internet age, with its easy access to infidelity that's both titillating and terrifying. "Good fences make good neighbors," the expression goes, but what happens when the fences come down?Throughout the season, you see how sexual liberation has altered attitudes, mores and even behavior. In the pilot, it feels like everyone in the cul-de-sac is coming on to everyone else. In episode 3, a teacher with an unorthodox manner of engaging his students proves a point by kissing Karen at a PTA meeting; later, he joins a couple of the parents at a diner, where he and Karen flirt in front of Val. (Although Valene looks uncomfortable, the script makes it clear that she'd better get used to it: in Southern California, flirting is the new "hello.") When Laura goes out of town in episode 8, Richard wastes no time cozying up to Sid's ex; while Kenny's away in the following episode, the policeman investigating Ginger's stalker case decides to hit on her. And in the episode after that, Karen and Sid let Diana and her boyfriend make out in the bedroom upstairs while they're downstairs playing poker with the adults. And make no mistake: Karen and Sid are meant to be seen as good, responsible parents -- but they remember what it was like to be young, and don't expect their kids to abstain till marriage, or even hold out for "the right one," as TV parents would have done five years earlier (and will do again in five years' time, once Reagan conservativism has permeated the airwaves).This sense of sexual freedom is the best thing about the first season of Knots Landing. It's not there to generate "buzz" or goose the ratings; it's simply, for better or worse, what the world has become. And the new code of conduct extends beyond sex. In episode 11, Diana discovers that her boyfriend has stolen money from her father to get his motorcycle repaired. And she's ready to ditch him, but Sid intervenes. In a speech that turns the traditional-father role on its ear, he argues she should give the guy another chance: "Betrayal is a terrible thing, but I want to tell you something -- and I hate to say this, but it's true: betrayal's not all that rare. I mean, it happens to everybody -- sometimes, even people that love each other very much. Husbands and wives are unfaithful sometimes, businessmen cheat their partners, and friends betray secrets. When you find out, it always hurts, but it doesn't mean it's the end of a marriage or the end of a partnership or the end of a friendship. Sometimes people forgive." In Knots Landing, people expect to be cheated on; if you're going to embrace a looser morality, you have to expect and accept the consequences.Episode 11, entitled "Courageous Convictions," is the season's high point. It's written by Rogers Turrentine, a disciple of Larry Gelbart and veteran screenwriter Howard Browne (and exactly the sort of person who should be writing Knots Landing), yet it's a largely unheralded episode: the splashier ones -- Laura's date-rape, Karen's pregnancy, Gary hitting the bottle at season's end -- get more attention. But "Courageous Convictions" is the episode that gets to the heart of life in Southern California. On the surface, Knots Landing celebrates its setting, a coastal community in Greater Los Angeles. (It's there in the sunshine, the fashions, the food they consume and the drinks they order, the excursions to the beach and the backyard BBQ's.) But so did half the 1979 primetime line-up; most shows then filmed in (and were set in and around) Los Angeles, and they understood well both the look and the lifestyle. Most TV shows "got" Southern California; hell, Barnaby Jones "got" Southern California. But Knots understood that nowhere else does the gulf between the rich and the poor seem wider: that it's possible to presume, as you stare at the million-dollar mansions in the Hollywood Hills, that you're the only person in the city who hasn't made it big -- and so you keep pressing your way into the upper classes before you're absorbed into the lower ones. Everyone on Knots is struggling to better their station, hustling to improve their standing (everyone, of course, except Sid, because he's Sid). Because in Southern California, it sometimes feels like the most miserable place to be is stuck in the middle.And so in "Courageous Convictions," Richard has made some lousy investments and owes money to all the wrong people. He holds a barbecue to hit up his neighbors, and begs Laura to ask her father to bail them out (and not for the first time). As Richard is drowning in debt, Laura reminds him how they got there: "We've got a house we can't afford, we've got furniture that we don't own, closets full of junk we don't need -- we're always stretching." And when he tries to correct her -- "striving for something better" -- she gets in the last word: "Richard, you're always looking for the shortcut, and it's always getting us in trouble." Laura ultimately does borrow from her father, and writes Richard a check, but it comes with strings: from now on, she'll manage the money, and what's more, she's going to look for a job. The writers use Richard's financial woes to embrace the part of the sexual revolution they'd been overlooking: the rising tide of female equality and empowerment, the re-entry of women into the workforce, in a way the country hadn't seen in a generation. And Richard concedes to Laura's demands, but not before admitting, "I hate being ordinary," exquisitely capturing a malaise endemic to Southern California. "Courageous Convictions" isn't just about what people will do to get out of trouble; it's about what people will do to get out of the middle. It takes on both class and sexual warfare, ultimately pitting them against each other, in a way that American audiences hadn't seen.At its best, Knots Landing Season 1 encapsulates a sexual freedom emblematic of its time, and a middle-class malaise specific to its setting. And it explores them with an acting style that's naturalistic and theatre-based, as Family did so well. But although the series is steadily improving as it reaches the end of Season 1 (the final four episodes are among its best), you recognize the challenges that lie ahead. In an age and an arena where people are allowed to flirt and even cheat without guilt, and where even betrayal will be forgiven, where do you mine the drama? At the end of Season 1, Ginger is convinced, rightly, that Kenny is having an affair. The episode stresses, it's not going to go the traditional route, where Ginger "learns of her husband's deception." Ginger is no longer the airhead we met in the pilot. She gets that Kenny is a player; it's not something she likes about him, but it's something she accepts. The question the script asks isn't "when will Ginger find out?" -- it's "when will she have had enough?" When will she decide that her needs -- for constancy, security, a family -- trump his? But that's a tougher question to dramatize, unless the writers are prepared to show months of daily indignities (hardly possible in a one-hour drama splitting its focus among eight people). So the show goes where shows have always gone: she catches her husband in flagrante delicto -- and then she decides she's "had enough." And you're left thinking: what's the point of creating contemporary characters if you're just going to fall back on the same old contrivances?And that's the dilemma that Knots faces as it reaches the end of Season 1. Now that you've re-imagined married life in a way that speaks to present-day audiences, how do you update the story beats as well? Once characters have grown comfortable with the flirting and even the promiscuity, where do you turn for conflict and suspense? And if seemingly nothing is taboo, what's going to stop the characters from acting on every impulse -- and if they do, will the writers be able to rein them in? The end of Season 1 finds the writers on an exciting yet dangerous precipice. What's most remarkable is that they don't seem to notice; as they head into Season 2, they seem unaware that -- in a perfect metaphor for a domestic drama about to go serialized -- they are figuratively hanging from a cliff. Will they survive?To be continued, in Season 2...Want more Knots? I write up Seasons 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 14 at my blog, <a href="http://thatsallsiknow.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://thatsallsiknow.blogspot.com</a>. I also take on everything from Classic Doctor Who to Humans, from The A Word to Cold Case, from Grantchester to Gilmore Girls. Come on by!</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?