Irony is the stuff great stories are made of. But I highly doubt that the "final outcome" of the 14-year-running "Knots Landing" was decided on Day One. I think their decisions (like creating their own JR) were made out of necessity probably dictated by the network and not the writers. In every Knots-related interview we read "Abby was a JR with skirts who used sex as a weapon." Ok, this is the truth but an overly simplified one. I hate it when Mr. Jacobs and co. use this kind of clichéd definitions to remark how different (and so much better) "Knots" was compared with "Dallas", as if it was really necessary to put one above another.
The stories we had the pleasure to watch in the "Dallas" spin-off were ensemble stories with characters linked mainly by marriage ties, and the fact they all lived next to another (at least, until Abby and Gary got together and moved to the beach house) but not under the same roof, unlike "Dallas". Just this concept and how the business stories made these characters interact with each other, were a much smarter, wiser and endless concept for a new series than "Dallas" ever was. Even as the huge "Dallas" fan I certainly am, I admit this fact as one of the reasons the spin-off outlived its mother series and improved its formula.
But it´s frustrating to realize (as I´m doing right now watching KL for the first time chronologically along with "Dallas") that there was no need to simplify the relationships seen on KL because that´s its beauty: as in life, the cul-de-sac neighbors have their up and downs that have little to do with pre-conceived formulas. One day you can sleep with your neighbor, the next you are fired, and the next, you are diagnosed with unoperable cancer. There is no math here, but some kind of "snobbish" view of the series, even 30 years after its very end, seems to resurface once in awhile. We don´t talk in this forum about the "good" and the "bad" years of KL, as in the other forums, because we love the whole, or maybe because our favorite characters and stars managed to last until the last episode (Laura being the exception...).
So forgive me if I can´t express it in a better way, but I think that´s the right way to talk about a show: as a whole and without extreme criticism. Back to the Gary and Abby topic, I don´t buy the concept of Gary being "addicted" to Abby as I don´t buy either the concept of Val being addicted to Gary (or in reverse). "Knots" (and most soaps) are about emotions and feelings, and IMHO you can´t simplify it by using a cliché (and I´m only referring to the interviews about the show, not about any of us at all). "Good" and "bad" might be applied to the "Dallas" universe (and even so, up to a point, because the production issues eventually dictated the plot direction).
I envision Abby as a rather unsensitive woman who used everybody and everything, and who even left her own daughter pennyless just because she didn´t like her husband! If we are still talking about Abby and her relationship with Gary, is because Donna Mills is a Goddess of Acting and created a masterpiece thanks to a couple of TV idealistic but somewhat pretentious soap writers.
"Yeah, and I´m the Queen of England"
