Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Reginald D. Garrard Unlike other nighttime soaps of the 80's and 90's, "Knots Landing" never really ran out of steam. With a strong cast headed by Ted Shackelford, Joan Van Ark, Michelle Lee, Donna Mills, William Devane, and Broadway legend Julie Harris. the show was filled with all the soap opera trappings but mixed with a bit of realism. Though the show deviated somewhat from its middle class beginnings in season one, the opulence that some of the characters had never seemed out of reach or over the top as in "Dallas" or "Dynasty". Even when "black sheep" Ewing brother Gary (Shackelford) fell into his own financially, the character never stretched into unbelievability.Many of the story lines reflected the day-to-day trials of normal life: wayward children, drugs, spousal abuse, child abuse, alcoholism, strained marriages, divorce, and death. The latter was no better handled when cast member Constance McCashin's character "Laura" died of cancer and left her grieving husband Greg (Devane) a previously recorded videotape. This 200th-show episode was one of the highlights in the series's long run.Even the real death of cast member Larry Riley was worked into the story lines, as characters had to deal with a "death in the family." Also, the show had its share of big names joining the cast for pivotal episodes; both movie legends Ava Gardner and Howard Duff appeared as the separated parents of Greg Sumner.The show was also a "stepping stone" for up-and-comers like Alec Baldwin ("Joshua Rush"), Halle Berry, and character actor Bruce Greenwood.With over three hundred installments, "Knots Landing" remains one of the best dramas in television history.

brandon_locasto Even though Dallas was much more popular, Knots Landing was a much stronger, more realistic, and better written show. First of all, shows like Dallas and Dynasty insulted viewers intelligence by constantly keeping a character and changing the actor. Remember how Barbara Bel Geddes turned into Donna Reed on Dallas, and then back again. Or how Jeff Colby went to bed with Pamela Sue Martin and woke up with Emma Samms on Dynasty. This is not Broadway where someone just takes over someone else's role. When Constance McCashin left Knots, did a new Laura come on...NO!...she died and we all cried. That's why Knots Landing was a far superior serial. For fourteen years, viewers were engrossed in these people's lives, because you felt like you knew them. The best characters on the show were Val and Abby. And they're friendship turned feud was riveting. It was actually Val who convinced Abby to move to Knots Landing early in Season 2 while they were on a picnic. And she grew a deep attachment to Abby's daughter, Olivia, mainly because she needed to fill the void left when J.R. took her daughter, Lucy, away from her. It was Val who comforted Abby when her ex-husband ,Jeff, stole her children. And it was Val, not their Aunt Karen, who was Brian and Olivia's second mom. All of this made it even more scandalous when Abby had an affair with Gary. These women lived across the street from each other, and cared about each other. But Abby wanted Gary. The best scene of the entire series is during the episode "China Dolls", when Val finally confronts Abby. The seconds when Val is walking across that street from her house to Abby's seem like hours. And when she opens that door and Abby comes down those stairs in that pink bathrobe...it was so HOT! When Val asks Abby if she is having an affair with her husband, she looks right in Val's eyes and says "I'm not saying we're having an affair, and I'm not saying we're not, I am saying I can have him anytime I want him". When Val slaps Abby in the face, Abby actually gives her a look like...I know I deserved that because I know what I'm doing is wrong, but I want Gary and I don't care, so I'll take the hit. You actually feel like your watching your neighbors fight. There are no women like this on television anymore. These ladies could act. Donna Mills makes Joan Collins look like a cartoon character. And Joan Van Ark makes Linda Evans seem like an empty vessel. The scenes between Val and Abby over the next few seasons continued to shine. Val finally gets her revenge by becoming pregnant with Gary's babies, who is now married to Abby. And then Abby makes a comment to Scott Easton saying that she wishes the babies were never born. The fact that Easton takes her seriously makes the way for the best storyline of the series, and it is when Abby finally comes to her senses that we see how she truly cares for Val. When Abby finds Val alone on the beach and tells her she knows where the babies are, Val immediately knows she is going to see her twins. If it would have been anybody else, she probably wouldn't have believed them. But Abby doesn't mess around. When Abby is driving Val to her babies, they are alone in the car together, and you can feel all the years of history these two women have together. They were once like family, then bitter enemies, but through it all they are still in each others lives. They may not like each other, but they KNOW each other very well! Years later, when Laura dies, Val and Abby hug each other, sharing the pain of losing someone so close to them. Even though they don't like each other, they are once again sharing a very intimate moment. When they hug, you can feel they are reaching out to each other, actually comforting each other. And when Jill tries to kill Val and everyone thinks she tried to kill herself, Abby genuinely seems devastated by the news. When Val gets out of the hospital, Abby confronts her in Karen's kitchen, offering to help her in any way she can. And she REALLY means it. And now having to deal with psycho Jill, Val realizes that Abby is not so bad after all. The dynamics between these two actresses was phenomenal and understated. While Karen may have served as the shows backbone, it was Val and Abby who gave the show life, and spice. Both characters added depth and layers to the show that are unfounded on any other soap. Joan Van Ark, as the passive-aggressive Valene, who manages to drag everyone into her dramas and make her problems seem like the greatest problems in the world. And Donna Mills, as Abby, the greatest bitch in the history of television. Joan Collins' Alexis, and later Heather Locklears' Amanda on Melrose Place, were nothing more than Abby wanna-be's. No other bitch in television history had the multi-layered humanity of Abby Fairgate-Cunningham-Ewing. Even though she was a schemer and a manipulator, she had morals. She loved her children, and she would hurt people to get what she wanted, but nothing they couldn't recover from. Mac Macenzie once said..."Abby doesn't kill, she gets even". And that about sums it up. How amazing for once to see a woman not be a victim, and not have to pay for not being a victim. Through all their fascinating story lines, Val and Abby seem most real when they are playing off each other. And their feuds were the most dramatic moments of the series. If there is ever another Knots Landing reunion, how nice it would be to see Val and Abby sit down together for a cup of tea, and reminisce about all the insanity they've been through together.

jpyates Knots Landing was many things over an extraordinary amount of television years....14 seasons is an astonishing feat for any television primetime show. It was the best of shows and at times the most frustrating of shows....Executive Producers Jacobs and Filerman pushed and tested the boundaries and constraints of serial drama by daring to be mundane where other shows were exciting and changing the fundamental landscape of the show three times.It is also worth noting that this show focused largely on it's female charactors and gave rise to one of the most popular women on television Karen Fairgate Mackenzie, played by the multi talented Michele Lee.The first four seasons of the show were an attempt to look at the lives of five family units in a suburban cul de sac in Southern California. There were great strengths of performances, notably from the stellar female performances of Michele Lee, Joan Van Ark,Donna Mills, the brilliant Constance McCashin and Julie Harris. Some of the episodes were gentle some of them were harder and gave the promise of what was to come in later years, but there is no doubt that without the early, subtle and largely ignored first years of the show it could not have garnered the huge audiences it did later in it's run.And so as the eighties swept in, so Knots Landing changed. Subtley and slowly over the fifth season, the producers changed the focus of the show from the cul de sac to the larger town. And while they changed the look of it, they didn't actually make it different. The sweeping dramatic music, the pathos, the drama and the humour all remained intact so that by it's sixth season when the writers came up with a bizarre and heartwrenching story, whereby Valene Ewing 's babies are stolen and secretly adopted, the show finally jumped into the top ten ratings and held it's time slot, beating off Hill Street Blues and later LA Law. In fact the show was the only primetime show around this time that didn't suffer a drop in ratings the next season.Many would argue that by it's eight and ninth year things were wearing thin and when budget cuts forced producers to loose some of it's core cast Julie Harris and Constance McCashin, writers and producers again shifted the emphasis of Knots toward a new set of characters. Looking back, with hindsight it's easy to see that this was a big mistake and one that the show never fully recovered from, although the 10th season is regarded as one of it's finest years.And as always there was a fine performance from the supporting new female lead Lynne Moody.And so it sailed into the sunset as quietly as it had begun. The later years had brought some fine performances from William Devane and Kevin Dobson, thanks to some terrific writing and a touching story involving child abuse. Other notables include the outrageous Anne Matheson character, played with glee by ex Mamas and Papas Michele Philips....Don Murray's gentle Sid Fairgate and Lar Park Lincoln's wickedly good performance as Linda Fairgate.But when all is said and done, and the re runs keep fans old and new tuned into this shows many facets, it's a credit to Jacobs and Filerman, Lee, Shackelford, Van Ark, Mills, Harris , McCashin and Dobson that this legacy of quality entertainment is still so fondly remembered.Knots Landing. Noises Everywhere. We will never see it's kind again.

floydsmoot I've always found it a bit disingenuous of (creator) David Jacobs and (executive producer) Michael Filerman to claim that "Knots Landing" was about real-life, middle-class American life. As much as I enjoyed the series as a whole, and feel that it is an excellent example of the prime-time soap genre, that description really only applies to the first 4 years of the show, when the focus was on the 5 families who lived on Seaview Circle. After the arrival of William Devane's Greg Sumner at the beginning of the 5th Season, "Knots Landing" started coming up with outlandish, ridiculous storylines (the Wolfbridge Group? Val's Babies? Empire Valley, anyone?) rivalling anything on Dynasty or Falcon Crest. "Dallas" in California is the best way to describe the show's transformation during this time. I found the 1983-87 years to be heartless and dreary as a whole, and the series reclaimed its footing only with the arrival of the Williams family (Larry Riley, Lynne Moody, and Kent Masters-King) on the cul-de-sac. Their presence helped to refocus the show back to its roots. The show's best storyline was the Chip/Ciji story in the 1982-83 season. My only complaint with that year was that John Pleshette, Kim Lankford, and James Houghton's characters were phased out by the end of it, and the wonderful Joanna Pettet was sadly underused as a sympathetic police detective. As wonderful as most of "Knots Landing" was, I still view it as a missed opportunity to side-step the conventions of the 1980s prime-time soap genre.