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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TommyK" data-source="post: 40042" data-attributes="member: 107">continued from aboveAnd then, in the final scene of the following episode, Anne discovers that she was never pregnant to begin with. (It's one of the series' great "gotcha!" moments.) And the lengths to which Anne goes to ensure that Greg doesn't find out until after the wedding (he doesn't) and that he stays with her even after he does find out (he does) actually humanize Anne. Like Claudia, Anne had appeared on the scene with a one-note agenda: willing to go to any lengths to get her hands on money. And as with Claudia, the Season 12 writers soon decided she needed more vulnerability and did it with the subtlety of a sledgehammer: in Anne's case, by making her homeless. (Like taking a woman with no scruples and putting her out on the streets would somehow make her "likable.") Marcus makes her sympathetic by revealing the very real insecurities that would, in fact, plague a forty-something former socialite raised only to be beautiful. And Michelle Phillips takes that scenario -- being in sexual competition with her own daughter, and all that comes with it (the fear of losing her looks, of being unloved) -- and runs with it, giving the kind of multi-layered, moving performance that was unthinkable just a season earlier.All the characters in Season 14 become relatable and compelling in a way they hadn't in years, as they fight for their families, or face the realities of growing old, or worse, the prospect of growing old alone; it's a far cry from underground spy networks and Mexican drug cartels and (in Season 13, no shit) a plan to save the world with tidal energy. I asked Lisa Seidman: was there a conscious effort to ground the actors again, in character-based drama that made them seem at once "real" and sympathetic -- or was it just natural brilliance on the part of the writers? Seidman's graceful and generous response: "It was Ann's natural brilliance." As in Knots Season 3, there are very few outsiders required to stir the pot; the characters -- as in the best soaps -- create their own drama.Joan Van Ark, meanwhile, created her own drama by electing to leave the show after Season 13. She was up for a couple of pilots, and feeling that one or the other might be picked up, opted not to return for Season 14. (Until Marcus returned, she hadn't had a decent plot in over three years; you can't blame her.) Her last-minute exit made for some speedy rewrites by Marcus, Seidman and Magnuson, but they managed to weave her disappearance into one of the season's ongoing plotlines, and Val, who had been in Florida at the end of Season 13 researching her new book, was kidnapped and ultimately killed in an explosion. And with her gone, that meant story-lines were needed only for Gary and for Kate. So they paired them: Gary, the beleaguered do-gooder, the former millionaire and failed businessman, father of a grown daughter and two nine-year-old twins; and Kate, the Twenties-something moppet with the pert disposition and miserable taste in men.But it worked. Kate's "crush" on Gary had been set up briefly back in Season 12 -- and to Gary, Kate embodied many of the qualities that had first attracted him to Val: her nurturing nature, her empathy and compassion, even that breezy optimism that too often seemed out of place in a cynical world. As with all the great Marcus couples, it was a relationship rooted in character. (And killing off Val paid dividends in other ways: it gave Ted Shackelford the best story-line he'd had in years, and he responded with his rawest, most charged performances since Season 4.)The characters are all well-served in Season 14, and the actors respond -- across the board -- with outstanding performances. (For Noone, Galina, Sheridan and Phillips, it's their best work on the show; for the long-timers -- Lee, Dobson, Shackelford and Devane -- it's their finest work in years.) But budget cuts, required to ensure another season, meant that each principal had to be written out of three or four episodes, and mapping out the story-lines around those absences was, according to Seidman, "insane ... a big part of our day-to-day story discussions." Sadly, the cast absences are one of the things most folks remember about the season -- and that tarnishes their memory. But they remember wrong. It's unfortunate, yes, but it's handled skillfully. The episodes are carefully sculpted to allow for the actors' absences, and sometimes the absences themselves actually impact the story-lines. When Mack is thrown in prison in episode 10, under suspicion for the death of Mary Robeson, he's MIA (it's Dobson's first episode off), and we see the whole episode through the toll it takes on Karen (which includes his stubborn refusal to see her). And again, two episodes later, when Mack jumps bail to go to Florida to solve Robeson's murder, Dobson's written out, and Karen's left to fend for herself and to imagine what he's up to. The payoff comes in the following episode, when Karen and Mack have the row to end all rows, over his inability to confide in her; the following morning, as she stands at the front door, bags packed and cab called, she tells him, "This was the biggest challenge we ever faced, and you shut me out." Couples in soaps always engage in hyperbole, but here, it rings true, because we've been watching through Karen's eyes, and shutting her out is precisely what Mack did. And worse, by the actor's absence, he shut us out too, and that's even less forgivable: it puts us firmly in Karen's camp. The writers use the budget demands to generate story, and even to dictate where our sympathies lie. It's remarkable.One of the other remarkable things about Season 14: how densely plotted it is. It doesn't waste any time. I always think of Ann Marcus seasons as having slow builds, but there's no time in Season 14 for slow builds. (The writers were given only nineteen episodes to tell their story; Seasons 6, 7 and 8 had thirty.) So the story-lines are stacked on top of each other, and come to a head sooner than you expect. The pacing feels swift, but never frantic. Seidman writes the fifth episode of the season, "Love and Death," which includes both Val's funeral and Anne and Sumner's wedding. It also manages to squeeze in a brand-new story-line, complete with new recurring characters, as Paige, still hurting over Greg, meets former major-league pitcher Bill Nolan (David James Elliott), who's pitching the Sumner Group the idea of building a new sports complex. Bill flirts with Paige, she rebuffs him, he persists, she beds him, and then Sumner -- rethinking his impending nuptials -- turns up at Paige's (using his company key), walks in on them making love (they don't see him, of course) and resigns himself to marrying Anne. It's lightning speed, it's all payoffs, but it's so firmly rooted in character that you don't question it. (Seidman recalls that they struggled with making Paige sleeping with Bill so quickly seem believable; all I can say is, the struggle was worth it, because the moment totally rings true. Seidman and Magnuson focus early in the season on Paige's grief at losing Greg, and on Anne callously throwing her engagement in Paige's face. Of course Paige would fall into the arms of a handsome stranger to avoid attending Greg's wedding to her own mother.)And the faster pace still permits a healthy dose of humor; in fact, it seems to encourage it. In Seidman's "Love and Death," Paige and Bill "meet cute," as -- in his first meeting with the Sumner Board of Directors -- Bill mistakes Paige for Claudia's office assistant, and suggests, "Maybe your girl can run out and get me some coffee." He notes he has a real sweet tooth, so Paige hands him a coffee cup and proceeds to dose it with serious sugar: "Hope that's sweet enough for you," she coos, before settling into her seat at the head of the conference table.Later, we have Anne visiting Mack in his office, to ask him to make sure Paige is at the wedding (she wants her daughter to witness Sumner being legally declared off limits). All nerves, anxious to get that ring on her finger, she inadvertently lets it slip about her false pregnancy, to Mack's disbelief:Mack: Does Sumner know?Anne: No.Mack: No. You're not pregnant, but the man who's going to marry you thinks you are, and all you're concerned about is whether Paige is coming to the wedding or not...Anne: You know, I don't criticize your life, Mack.At the wedding, Kate helps Anne into her dress, then joins her mother (who's always loathed Anne, and is mortified to see her marrying her brother Greg ) in the pews:Kate: She looks great. She has the most beautiful white suit on.Claudia: (Too loud) She's wearing white?!?!Kate: Shh! Mom! (looking at her) Why are you wearing black? What are you, in mourning?Claudia: (Settling in, resigned) Yes.While over at Paige's, Bill is persisting, Paige is resisting:Bill: So: you got a bedroom, or does the couch pull out?Paige: Yah, I got a bedroom. Why? You gonna paint it?And speaking of moving things along, when Greg decides to go through with the wedding, here's how it goes down: he shows up at the church, where a panicked Anne is growing increasingly certain that she's been stood up, takes one look at her and (as always with Greg) revealing nothing, simply says, "You look great, babe. Whaddaya say, you wanna get married?" And Anne responds, with breathless relief, "Why not?" End of episode. No marching down the aisle. No rings. No vows. No need. The drama has occurred; we can move on: swiftly and confidently.Knots Season 14 brings back two popular supporting players (the aforementioned Nick Schillace, and one of Paige's old boy-toys, Tom Ryan, the crooked cop), but they're used smartly: they play key roles in the season, and aren't merely there for nostalgia. The season seems acutely aware of every incident that's happened in the thirteen years prior -- past events and conversations are referenced with gratifying accuracy -- and another of the things that makes Knots Season 14 so rich is that it feels like the writers know the show as well as we do, that they're there to ask the questions we ourselves have wanted to ask. When Paige runs into Tom again, she asks, pointedly, "So how was Brussels," a plot-point left hanging in Season 12, and reminds him "you can't commit to anything," referencing their aborted Season 11 wedding. (There's a brilliant montage of clips of past scenes between Tom and Paige, set to "We've Only Just Begun," which Tom had serenaded Paige with in Season 11 -- and the clipfest isn't just there to elicit a sentimental response: it shows Tom falling back into old, bad habits.) When Karen leaves town, she goes to New York to stay with her daughter Diana, unseen since Season 6; when Abby returns to town, Greg asks, "How was Japan," and she asks Paige, "Are you still sleeping with Greg," plot points from Season 10. Late in the season, when Val turns up alive, on the run (Van Ark's pilots weren't picked up, so the writers -- in killing off her character -- had given themselves a clear and clever "out" in case the actress wanted to return for the series finale), she sends Gary a coded note, "I've never seen the ocean," referencing a line from the very first episode; when the two reunite, they fall into old speech patterns ("Give us a kiss" "Piece of cake") from Season 2.And a quick round of applause to Michele Lee and Joan Van Ark, who turn in the two best directing jobs of the season: Lee on episode 9 ("Some Like It Hot") and Van Ark on episode 15 ("Hints and Evasions"). No one understood the impulse behind Knots Landing better than these two: the middle-class domesticity that lay at the heart of each story-line, no matter how outrageous. As they do close-ups of the most mundane tasks -- Karen pouring a glass of milk for Meg, or Paige cleaning the underside of her glass dining-room table -- you're reminded of the ineffable yet wonderful "ordinariness" that is Knots Landing. But they also go for grand effects that pay off handsomely. In "Some Like It Hot," Claudia, having embezzled money from the Sumner Group, sets up Mack as the fall guy by filling Tom Ryan's head with half-truths -- and Lee shoots her mock confession in a tunnel, the two of them doused in blue lights and soaked in rain. It's a stunning sequence. In "Hints and Evasions," Vanessa, Nick's accomplice in crime, comes clean to Tom about the head of their organization, a man named Treadwell, and his plans to take over the Sumner Group -- and Van Ark shoots Tom and Vanessa at a carousel, first in close-up, and then, in a stunning crane shot, inching slowly away until, just as Vanessa is revealing the extent of Treadwell's machinations, the whole carousel is revealed. (Van Ark also captures what is perhaps the season's best piece of acting: Noone's searing performance when Claudia finds out that Nick has been setting her up the whole season. Actors directing actors: sometimes, there's nothing better.)There are precious few things wrong with Season 14. Some rail against a plot in which Greg, having quit the Sumner Group at the end of Season 13, is recruited to head up a task force to rebuild L.A. following the real-life 1992 riots; they argue that it's the kind of story-line Knots has no business dabbling in, since it can offer no real solutions. I don't have a problem with it. Sumner starts Season 14 in crisis, still mourning his long-departed Laura and fearing she'd disapprove of the man he's become; the task force permits the actor to engage with a new supporting cast, and the character to see if he can somehow redeem himself in the public sector. (It also permits Claudia, who takes over running the Sumner Group, to engage in the kind of mischief that would have season-long ramifications.) Ultimately, the task force becomes a bit of a MacGuffin that allows Greg to regain clarity and purpose, which leads him right back to his old job. The plot doesn't understate the grim challenges facing Los Angeles in the months following the riots, but ultimately, it's a story about a man, not about a city. It's admittedly the least of Season 14's plotlines, but it only lasts five episodes, and if Knots is going to touch on timely issues, I much prefer its character-based look at the challenges of rebuilding L.A. to its enervating takes on sexual assault, child abuse and adult illiteracy in previous seasons.As for me, only a few things about the season annoy me. James Magnuson departed after the first six episodes of Season 14, and Donald Marcus -- a leftover from the Romano regime -- returned. Although Ann Marcus (no relation) speaks highly of him in her autobiography, he was not as facile a writer as Magnuson, and his first two episodes -- "A Death in the Family" and "Call Waiting" -- are probably the season's weakest efforts. The former introduces the members of the L.A. Task Force, and the latter brings Sumner's involvement with them to a close; it's in part due to Marcus's limitations that the story-line seems flatter than the others. His first episode also includes the season's most troubling scene: a first date between two supporting players you couldn't care less about. (You think, "They're not really going to build a story around those two, are they?" Luckily, there's no follow-up.) I don't much care for the dialogue in episode 16, "My Kingdom For a Horse." It's the only Knots episode credited to Howard Lakin, who'd done sterling work on Falcon Crest and Dallas, but apparently had no idea how the Knots folks talked. (It's the episode with the most lead actors missing -- a full five out of eight -- but there's nothing wrong with the tighter focus or premise: one last fast-money caper for Anne and Nick, to strengthen their bond heading into the final episodes. It's the dialogue that lets it down.) The season would have been better-served with a two-hour premiere: the first episode is all the setups that pay off in episode 2. And the final two episodes, which welcome Joan Van Ark and Donna Mills back into the fold, should have aired separately, instead of being combined into a two-hour finale. There's a great surprise at the end of the first episode that would have elicited such water-cooler chatter that ratings surely would have risen even further for the final installment.But beyond that, Knots Landing Season 14 is bliss. And it ends with the most wonderful wink to the audience, with a moment harkening back to Season 3, the last time Ann Marcus was in charge, and the true start of the series. Marcus was there at the (true) beginning; she and her gifted team of writers were there to oversee the ending. Primetime will probably never see another soap with the enduring affection Knots Landing engenders; thank goodness Ann Marcus was there to set it on its course, and to see it safely home.Want more Knots? I write up Seasons 3, 4, 7, 9 and 11 at my blog, <a href="http://thatsallsiknow.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://thatsallsiknow.blogspot.com</a>. I also take on a host of other TV shows; there are now about fifty essays in all. If you're accessing from a smartphone, there is (regrettably) no "table of contents," but recent write-ups include my Top 50 Classic Doctor Who serials; my (scathing) take on the recent Gilmore Girls miniseries; and my 2016 TV year-in-review.</blockquote>

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