Bradley's Buzz

The Good, The Bad & The Knutty

If you want to watch the lives of Desperate Housewives in full glory; you don’t need to look to ABC for it. Way before Bree, Lynnette, Gabrielle, Mary Alice and the ever so slightly annoying Susan popped onto our screen, five very delish women started dishing the secrets of their neighborhood. In the ever so fashionable and desirable suburban dream of 1979, Knots Landing debuted and we were allowed to follow the lives of Karen Fairgate, Valene Ewing, Laura Avery, Ginger Ward and eventually Abby Cunningham – the woman who blew eye makeup procedures out of the roof.

Knots Landing was originally the story of four couples living in a “quiet” cul-de-sac in the ocean side community of Knots Landing. At this early beginning, with the exception of Ginger Ward, the women were all housewives, but as the years progressed so did they. And if you want to talk about desperate, you need only to look over at 16966 Seaview Circle where Valene lived. Her life is what gothic novels are made of.

Abandoned as a child by a mother who longed to be a country singer, raised by an elderly father until his death, shipped off from one Southern hick relative to another, meeting and falling in love with Texas oil heir Gary Ewing, getting pregnant at 16, losing her baby to the evil “boys” of JR Ewing who felt no Ewing should be raised by such white trash, re-aquatinting with Gary, moving to Knots Landing, catching Gary cheating, divorcing Gary, getting pregnant by Gary, losing the twins to a black market baby adoption ring, having a long lost religious nutcase brother, marrying and remarrying… I friggin’love my gal pal Val…. And these storylines only happened to one of these lovely women.

Karen Fairgate came upon our screen, hair in a bun, driving a station wagon and declaring her and her family as “the Brady Bunch.” Through the years those psuedo Brady’s would go through a hell of a lot more than Carol ever had to contend with. Karen’s husband Sid died during surgery after his brakes failed (due to a stolen auto parts storyline set into motion by Gary and Sid’s sister Abby), Karen remarried – a little happily for my taste, lost her beloved barf face daughter’s love to a con man who killed my favorite character, Ciji Dunne – as played with uber brilliance by Lisa Hartman. Karen then had to contend with sons Eric, who was so much like his father, and lacked any real storyline, he might as well have died on that operating table as well, Michael, was so in the closet anyone with half a brain would’ve realized the reason he slept with his step father’s daughter and his brother’s wife was he was really looking for a boning from any of the male leads. Distraught through it all Karen ended up addicted to pills (Michele Lee’s finest moments on Knots in my opinion), ended up getting shot, kidnapped and forced to cut her hair, stalked, but through it all she remained the “every woman” and didn’t feel bad about shoving that notion down our throat. Yes, I loved me my Karen as well.

There are so many interesting and fun characters, its hard to describe how these fake people touched my life. Laura “Red” Avery, my favorite of them all, was not only the sassiest of the girls, but the one who seemed the most realistic. She was the first of the housewives to get out and get a job, she turned from mousy and put upon housewife of slimy Richard, to successful real estate agent and ended up marrying the most powerful man in the show – Gregory Sumner.

Then there’s Abby, the elusive “monster” of the show, who was drawn so realistically you never really hated her. She wasn’t Alexis or JR, but she did get what she wanted in just about any way she could. With her blonde tresses and over the top eye make-up Donna Mills was Abby Fairgate Cunningham Ewing Sumner, and through all of the shenanigans her devotion to her children, and her sense of style kept everybody tuning in.

And Ginger Ward – poor, poor Ginger Ward. We meet Ginger and Kenny in the pilot and they are the cool, the hip newlyweds who were married on “an incoming wave”. But with little to no storyline through four years, those poor Wards just kind of evaporated and for the most part people barely remember the characters let alone James Houghton and Kim Lankford, the actors who portrayed them. But believe me, I remember them and I remember them well.

But the real kudos from me have to go to Lisa Hartman. I had seen Knots Landing once or twice as a wee tyke and remember certain scenes like season 1’s visit from Val’s Mama Lilimae in which Val has a flashback of when JR took her beloved baby Lucy, I remember Sid driving off the cliff though I don’t remember his death, I remember a strange little Hitchhike episode where Sid picked up a very unscrupulous teen that he had felt sorry for, and then I remember tuning one night and there in a faboo 80s haircut and outfit was Lisa Hartman singing a rock song.

As Lisa sang number after rocking number, I fell in love. With both Lisa and the show. When Ciji’s dead body washed up on shore near the season four finale, I just about died. I thought I was never going to watch again. But the things that unfurled because of the murder kept me coming back, then in a surprise move, the next season Lisa Hartman was back – due to fan’s love for her no less… she was now Cathy Geary (C.G. get it) and she had some secrets of her own.

From the moment Lisa sang those first lines of Journey’s “Open Arms”, I was obsessed with the show. I watched religiously all through the 80s and the 90s. The show lasted a whopping fourteen seasons and I seemed to have watched them all.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a somewhat obsessive compulsion when it comes to the things I love. One of them is Knots Landing – a very unhealthy obsession it is, for I know where every character lived, who they slept with, when they left town and how, what they drove, where they worked and for the character of Gary Ewing – the color of underwear he preferred. Yes, it is an obsession over 25 years in the making and thanks to Soapnet, I have been able to recapture all the glorious years of Knots Landing.

But alas, the bastards that run that place have screwed with us Knots fans one too many times. First after running the show a wonderful 3 times, thus enabling me to get it on VHS, and start my DVDR collection, they opted not to start at the beginning at the last run but rather with season 8 – a season I’m not too fond of, as Lisa Hartman has left and even though the show remained good until the end, it’s glory days were seasons 4-7.

As we near the end of season fourteen on Soapnet, the channel has announced they will no longer run the series. They have the option for five more years of airing but feel they have outrun the show! Well I can’t stand it, perhaps because I want all them on DVDR but mostly because those early seasons are what really make the show. We need to see those original four couples in order to see how the characters evolved, how the neighborhood changed from that early sunny morning in 1979 when Valene said to Karen, “How do”, ever so eloquently wearing her little girl white gloves.

So as we near the end of the series, we know that Karen and Mack will be all right – they will live on forever talking about their wonderful marriage and how to raise a child in this ever dangerous world, Val and Gary will remain forever a tad kooky but in love, no matter who or what comes into their twisted little world, Laura will rest in peace forever knowing she was really loved by us all, Cathy Geary will remain on tour for the rest of her life and I will boycott Soapnet until they bring my show back!

Stay tuned when I come back with more news about my beloved knuts, as I actually talk about the wonderful (though lacking in some aspects) reunion show from December 2nd.

posted by swivek @ 9:07 AM