KNOTS LANDING versus DALLAS versus the rest of them week by week

[Mel O'Drama]

I recall watching it when it was released on VHS and thinking, "Once is enough." I mentally filed it away it in the same category as "Conundrum". So the last thing I expected this time around was to totally enjoy it.

It's great when that happens.

how incredibly naff the naff bits are,

Not naff, per se, but I've always found the vision of 'Allo 'Allo's Gruber being on Knots a little surreal. I think he even trips over the furniture at one point, but carries on like a trouper.

the good bits - like the ending - hold up pretty well.

Yes. You'd have to go a long way to top the ending of the series, but fortunately the ending to BTTCDS is satisfying enough.

I think there's something about the feel of early 80s soap -- DALLAS and DYNASTY'S second seasons, maybe KNOTS's fourth -- that almost crosses over into '60s pop art kitschiness: the lurid closeups, the giddy pace, the frenetic score. It's all teetering on the edge of ... of ... something.

Now you mention it... yes. I hadn't really thought of it until you said.

Oh, now that's interesting -- especially that it was Val who said it first. Back then, she was the stable one.

Yes - it's quite the role reversal.

I kinda love that Gary and Val have traded the stability hat back and forth over the past nearly 60 years.

It's mindblowing to think of their relationship spanning six decades. That takes us back to before Victoria Principal was born(!)

it became one of those Val/Gary callbacks, right alongside Gary's frequent use of "give-us-a-kiss".

It's odd that I never really noticed the callbacks.

The Loudest Word was the first Knots episode I watched and, as a seven year old, I wasn't familiar with the expression "piece of cake" and had to ask my Mum what it meant. So it's stuck in my mind as one of the more memorable pieces of dialogue.

Incidentally, I've always thought of the expression as an Americanism (perhaps because of the Knots connection) but turns out it could well be a terribly British RAF thing.

 

[Seaviewer]

I know I'm in the minority here but I liked the Henery the Eighth scene. Like the two characters I remember when the song was a bonafide hit and I thought it was a nice way for two old friends to blow off some steam.