I loved Gary! He was the best developed character in "Knots Landing", along with Laura. Most of the others changed for the writers´ convenience (yes, this happened here too): Val, a best-seller writer (come on!), Paige, a role model for young women (when she was a pathological liar and a user at first), Mack, a volatile professional who didn´t know what to do (at his age), Ginger, obsessed with having a baby and when she has one, she decides she wants to sing! (ha!), Anne, someone who can´t make a living without the Matheson money (not even marrying someone from L.A.? Isn´t that what socialites do all the time?), and Greg gets all bitter and Howard Hugues-esque instead of the politician hungry for power that he was.
In the beginning, Gary was a tad boring. It was hard to see him cheating on Val, especially with that woman who looked like a man. But he made a lot of mistakes so he learned a lot. What I adore about his relationship with Abby is that the writers really made him marry her as a sort of "punishment" for treating Val so bad. He thought he deserved it, the poor thing. He kept on growing until the awful "Sally´s friend" storyline. The next season, when Val gets the brain virus (...), he simply becomes Bobby, at long last. The rest of the seasons he still is Gary, trying things and making mistakes, but not drinking again. The Reunion ruined this a bit with the stupidity of Kate´s baby with him... Lame lame lame...