A Reflection on
Season Five of KNOTS LANDING (1983-1984)
Back
when I reached the concluding moments of season four and wrote my reflection on
that particular season, I declared it to be the best season of the show up to
that point and a tremendous step-up from the somewhat schizophrenic and tonally
inconsistent season three. Happily
enough, this upward trend continues with season five, which is yet another
brilliant year of television that everyone in the world should see and enjoy.
This
is the first season that I really noticed the beginnings of something that will
become standard by the time the series ends, and that is the way that the first
handful of episodes of the season continue the stories going from the end of the
previous season, tidying up affairs with all those cliffhangers before starting
to move on to new business near the middle of the season. To reflect a bit, I’ll remind you that season
one didn’t end on a cliffhanger and, when we picked up season two, we were just
sorta jumping back into the world of KL
and seeing our cul-de-sac friends again, but there weren’t any really major
story points that had to be continued and addressed at the beginning of the
sophomore year. Then, the big
cliffhanger of season two was, of course, Sid Fairgate going off that
cliff. Okay, so yes, season three did
pick up directly where that left off as we watched Sid struggle to survive and
then not make it in the first two eps of the season. However, after that, the season went off in
many strange, different directions, not necessarily getting new stories all
revved up and ready to go, but rather giving us viewers a mix of serialized
storytelling (such as the continuing disintegration of Richard and Laura’s
marriage or the constant flirting and near-adultery between Gary and Abs) along
with bizarrely standalone episodes like, say, The Three Sisters, to name but one example. Then, the big cliffhanger of season three was
Val catching Gary and Abs in bed together and throwing him out of the
house. When we picked up with the start
of season four, obviously that was still a very important storyline that was
building and growing, but really the first five eps of that season heavily
focused on tidying up affairs from the end of season two by finally having Karen see Sid’s killers brought to
justice. Then, of course, all the
Ciji/Chip Roberts shenanigans got started right around the time that stuff was
finishing up, leading us directly into our season four cliffhanger, which of
course leads us directly into season five. For
me, season five is the first season to very clearly spend about half the year
continuing and concluding the lingering stories from the year before and then
immediately propelling us into a new and exciting story arc with the wicked
Wolfbridge group. This is all done very
organically, so that just as you are starting to get tired of all the Chip
stuff, BOOM, he dies and they bury him and we move our focus over to new stuff. I feel like this template will be pretty much
followed throughout the rest of the series, though I will keep my eyes open to
see if I’m proven wrong.
One
thing that’s very interesting to me as I do this epic rewatch is that I’m
discovering every season seems to have its own style and flavor that’s unique
to itself, even though in the past I’ve tended to lump certain years together
as one era. So far, I think the two
seasons that feel stylistically the most similar are the first two; aside from
the lack of Abs in season one and the fact that season two kinda sorta gets us
started with serialized storytelling, those two seasons do kinda blur together
for me, possibly because they are the two seasons to have the same cul-de-sac
opening title sequence, possibly because Don Murray is around for both of them,
I dunno. But anyway, I’d somewhat lump
those two seasons together and say they are the simplest years, if that makes
sense, probably the years when the show feels the most grounded in the real
world, with lots of domestic problems for the characters to deal with that we
could probably relate to. Season three
had a distinctly dark and sad quality hovering over it thanks to the death of
Saint Sid right at the start; his ghostly presence seemed to hang over proceedings
the whole year and I would say this will probably remain the saddest season of
the show just because of how we watch Karen cope with being a single woman
after nearly two decades of marriage.
Then season four comes along and I would say the flavor of that season
is rather transitional. We are
introduced to Mack for the first time but we still have no Sumner and we still
have Kenny, Ginger, and Richard in the main cast roster for the entire
season. This season nicely bridges the
gap between seasons three and five, because I feel like if you jumped from the
style of three to the style of five without a little transition in between, it
would be rather whiplash inducing.
Which
brings us, of course, to season five.
What’s the flavor of this season?
I’m gonna steal the word used by the brilliant Tommy K in his brilliant
television blog (please click HERE to read the brilliance and genius for yourself), in which he described season five
as KL’s most “operatic.” I can’t think of a better term for it,
because that’s exactly what it is. This
is easily the most dramatic and soapy season we have seen thus far, and the
excitement gets cranked up to a fever pitch that pretty much never lets up, all
ending in that cliffhanger-tastic season finale which seems to leave everyone
in some form of jeopardy. However,
the amazing thing is that even as the series starts to expand before us, even
as we start to see more wealth and money being thrown around by the characters,
even as we are introduced to new, lavish settings like Westfork or Abby’s
fabulous palace office, even as we start to bring evil mastermind criminal
organizations into the picture, the show still does a remarkable job of feeling
very grounded even amidst all this drama and I am not quite sure precisely how
they do it.
I’ve
mentioned to my friends before how if you just described a season of KL to someone, it would probably sound
rather ridiculous, but there’s something about the way the show is put together
and the way the actors and the writers and the directors and the showrunners
work their magic that always keeps it feeling rather realistic to me. As a little example of my whole “ridiculous”
theory, let’s do a quick rundown of how you would describe the events of season
five to someone. “Oh yeah, it starts
with Diana on the road with evil murderer Chip Roberts, and then he gets
arrested but let off, so Lilimae hits him with her car, but he doesn’t die;
instead, he slips into a coma for awhile and then, just as Diana is ready to
testify against him, he awakes from his coma only to fall on a pitchfork and
die a few episodes later. The stress of
all these events sends Karen spiraling down into a pill-addiction and she
starts popping the pills like crazy until, finally, she overdoses on them in
her shower and has to be sent to a rehab center. Meanwhile, Mack is hard at work trying to
bring an evil organization to justice, but they start to threaten him with
violence against his family, so he decides he needs to fake Gary’s death and….” Well, you get the picture. When you say it out loud like that, it just
all sounds so very absurd, but when you’re watching it, it completely and 100%
works.
Season
five is also a big year of change for the show, which is why many fans continue
to designate it as something of a revamping of the show’s style (I continue to
argue that this revamp actually began with season four). We lost Kenny, Ginger, and Richard, but as we
started the season we gained first Ben and then Sumner. Ben was a character I remember being kinda a
snooze but he really worked a lot better for me upon this viewing; he brings a
certain strange realism to his character and I like the way he’s introduced
without us knowing too much about him, so that when he tells us little stories
from his past, we feel like we are sorta piecing things together.
As
for Sumner, well come on, what is there to say?
It almost feels weird to think that it took us 78 episodes to get him,
because as soon as he’s on the show, he is so vital and brings such wonderful
charisma and energy that it’s hard to imagine the show even existing without
him. For the rest of the series, Sumner
will remain one of the most fascinating and intricate characters on the whole
series, and he is introduced for the first time in season five and immediately
fits into the cast as if he’s been there the whole time; it’s really rather
remarkable.
Along
with meeting Ben and Sumner for the first time, season five also reintroduced
us to Lisa Hartman in the form of Cathy.
Again, this is a storytelling move that really should feel a lot more
ridiculous than it winds up feeing; it’s done in such a great, entrancing way
that we just sorta buy the idea that Ciji’s exact doppelganger would suddenly
appear on the scene just a few eps after Ciji’s death. I also think getting Lisa back to the series
was just a good idea inherently because she radiates a certain warmth and,
despite her glamorous ‘80s clothes, always seems like a very real-world
character, someone I might meet on the street at any time. In fact, if there were to be one thing that kinda irked me about
season five and could have possibly made me like it less than season four, it’s
the fact that Lisa barely sings in this season.
I loved how season four would take time out of its episodes to let her
sing entire songs, and I always loved listening to her sing and watching her
get that tranced out look on her face where she would close her eyes and sorta
thrust her head upwards towards the sky.
In that season, it felt like every episode would unveil a new song for
Ciji to sing. Cathy, however, only gets
to sing once in season five, that Journey cover song she does in the bar with
her old friends, and we also get a quick scene of her singing while playing the
piano, but that’s it. Mark my words,
seasons six and seven will rectify this problem by bringing her songs back into the focus, but I
definitely missed them here. At the same
time, I think the writers were playing it smart by not having her immediately start singing great ‘80s
covers in every episode the way Ciji did; they’re biding their time a little
bit. Obviously this is a microscopic
nitpick that probably nobody besides myself would even notice, but what can I
say, I like listening to Lisa sing and season five didn’t have too much of
that.
Aside
from the rather bizarre way that Diana seems to vanish from the show for a
period of time near the middle-to-ending portions of the year, I thought all
the main cast members were very adequately represented this year; everyone has
great material to work with and great stories and the Wolfbridge investigation
did a tremendous job, much like the character of Ciji the season before, of
keeping everyone in the cast linked together and involved in a storyline as a
group. This is another thing that I’m
gonna pay attention for as we move onward to the next seasons: How often do
they have a great central storyline that works to link all the characters
together? I can already tell you that
season six is going to have a mondo one (Val’s babies), but honestly the rest
is kind of a blur. Will seasons seven
and onwards continue the trend that began with season four and the Ciji
story? I really admire this type of
storytelling and marvel at how hard it must be to pull off, let alone to do it
so well, and I hope to see it continue in later seasons.
Honestly,
this season is so good that I almost don’t want to do the highs and lows of the
season the way I have done in seasons past.
What could I possibly say was the best episode of the year? I thought pretty much all the eps were incredible. However, after going through my notes and
reminding myself of the 25 episodes contained within the season, I think I’m
gonna pick Secrets Cry Aloud for my
favorite ep of the year. You’ll recall
that this ep was absolutely packed with
material and I even said how it almost felt like a double-length episode only
because, when it was over, I couldn’t believe how much had happened within that
48 minutes. As for least favorite, I
think I’m gonna pick Reconcilable Differences, mostly because I thought it lacked a bit of style and seemed
to try too hard to finish storylines and shuffle them out the door as fast as
possible. It was still solid, but if I
must pick a worst ep of season five, I suppose it would be that one.
So
yes, in case you couldn’t tell, I am pretty over-the-moon about season
five. Of the first five seasons, I’d
definitely say it’s the best, and it’s the kind of year that, once it gets
going, there’s just no letup. Of course,
the most amazing thing is that I would argue our best season is still lying in
our future, our very near future. I remember thinking season six was the
greatest season in all of KL and a
total masterpiece of television, but will I feel the same way upon a
rewatch? We shall all find out very
shortly when we dive into the season six premiere, Buying Time.