Thank you everyone for the photos and great discussion!
That photo of the triangle is from such a pivotal scene. I mean who can forget the look on Val's face when her suspicious minds are proven to be right. Gary is having an affair with Abby. I don't think Gary intended to hurt Val or wanted to be caught. I am not even sure Abby intended to get caught or what do you think?
Either way her facial expression totally changes when Val walks in and she looks down, almost like she is embarrassed.
Then as for the photo itself it's interesting. I mean Abby has Gary now, she stands close to him but Gary and Val's facial expressions still matches while Abby is looking away. I am sure someone put a lot of thought into staging this image.
I think Season 4 is my favorite Gary & Val season for me, because it is their first full season apart, yet neither is able to really move on and they are clearly still in love with each other. I am re-watching this at the moment, and their splitting up dominates the whole season and other characters' story arcs, even though Gary and Val themselves don't have that many scenes together.
Wow! Thank you for your excellent analysis of Val & Gary in season four Julia's Gun. You make an excellent case for why that season is your favorite and points out a lot of moments that I also love like the scene in the parking garage and the scene on the beach with Mack and Val when she admits Gary is her weakness until the end of the season where Val convinces Gary to fight back and not just stay in jail to punish himself. All great scenes. The one thing I hadn't thought about before that you pointed out that is also true is how Karen and Val's conversations about "cheating with the neighbour" absolutely match. That is a great observation!
Always liked the storyline of Val going nuts and running off to TN. No one else could retrieve her but Gary. I liked how no matter that they were married to other people, they would drop everything to help the other.
You know I think that season six might be the season where Gary and Val had the strongest storyline even though they were not together. I love how it all plays out from the beginning to end. On the surface they have moved on, Gary is married to Abby and Val is with Ben. But we all know that Val is pregnant with Gary's babies and naturally they still belong together. There is always that tension, will she or won't she tell him the truth?
He tells her that he wish the babies were his. Yet she doesn't confess. He somehow ends up at her birthing class even though Mack was supposed to be there. There are all these little hints.
Abby naturally feels threatened when she finds out Gary is the father and talks to the wrong person and then we have the kidnapping and lie that the babies were stillborn.
Poor Val is inconsolable and yet the one person she turns to is Gary. I think that scene in the Thanksgiving episode when he comes to fetch her for the party is poignant where she tells him that she wish they had never gotten remarried since then this wouldn't have happened. Gary doesn't know that the babies are his but Val does.
Then we come to Val's running away from home and becoming Verna. This is Val that is regressing to a person she was before Knots Landing started. She is back to being a waitress, back to her roots. The change is obvious in her choice of wardrobe that becomes more girlish like in season one of Knots. Val thinks she is Verna and she thinks she loves Parker and yet when Gary shows up he gets to her and subconsiously she knows they belong together even when she denies it. I love that scene when she tries on the wedding dress and fantasizes that she is dancing with Gary. It is such a sweet fantasy. Also the suspense when she is about to marry Parker and at the last moment Gary reaches her and she snaps out of it and realizes who she really is. Val and Gary are not married here and yet it is so obvious that they have a connection that nobody can severe. They still belong together.
Then finally at the end of the season the babies are found and naturally Val and Gary are both there when they find them. I think this whole season just plays out brilliantly. The drama keeps us hooked and wanting to see what happens next.
Another season I also have a soft spot is season 13 when Gary and Valene are finally remarried again. Although I hate how Gary loses the ranch there is something special with how Gary and Val's story sort of comes full circle and they are back where they began at the house his mother gave them as a wedding gift. So I love the fact that they are back together again. I am not sure if I would say it's my favorite season with them. But it's among my favorites.
I think Gary & Val still have their happy ending we saw in Knots Landing. Because the show was severed from Dallas when Bobby's death became just Pam's dream. At this point, in Knots Landing, Bobby was still dead, and our beloved characters were living in their own alternate universe, that we love and know.
The Gary & Val we saw in TNT Dallas are the ones from the original universe/reality : Bobby never died : no death, no will, nothing to give to Gary. It changed surely a lot Gary's life, and to the extent his relation with all the others Knots characters.
Yes, I also subscribe to the "Divorce" school of thought with respect to Dallas and Knots. The characters who arrived in TNT Dallas were not the Val and Gary we saw reuniting and having their happy ending on KL in 1993, since those two assume Bobby Ewing died in the mid-1980s. It's probably why I didn't even bother to watch TNT Dallas when 'ersatz Gary and Val' visited and behaved so oddly. KL Gary and Val are off living their best lives in a parallel universe that 'spun off' around the time they learned Bobby died.
Obviously it was a lot easier for me to subscribe to the Divorce theory since I only saw the KL version of G&V, not Dallas G&V.
That is an interesting observation. I guess it's plausible. Although I tend to think of Dallas and Knots as belonging to the same universe where the only difference is that on Knots Bobby remained dead but on Dallas he was alive. So everything that happened on Knots also happened on Dallas and vice versa minus Bobby getting killed. Oh and obviously JR's alternative universe in the final episode of Dallas is not canon either!