Episode Title: My True Love
Season 08, Episode 18
Episode 178 of 344
Written by Lynn Marie Latham
Directed by Lorraine Senna
Original Airdate: Thursday, January 15th,
1987
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Paige tells Karen she'd better worry about Anne's intentions
with Mack. She then packs and goes to stay with Peter. Anne tells Mack that
he's the only man she ever loved, but didn't tell him she was pregnant,
because she found out her father paid him $5,000.00 to leave her. Mack says
that isn't true. She says she's afraid she'll fall in love with Mack again.
Karen is jealous of Anne's looks, and they talk uncomfortably while waiting for
Paige. Anne says Paige did this to bring her and Mack back together and she is
snide to Karen. Olivia goes to AA with Gary, and apologizes to Brian. Abby
still wants to postpone the divorce, but Gary says no. Jean has Ben bug Greg's
office. They hear Peter ask Greg where he sent Sylvia on vacation, but Greg
won't tell him. Then Jean calls and says she wants Ben to break into Greg's
computer.
Welcome
back to the wonderful world of KL. I must confess that, yes, I still love KL and always have and always will, but
sadly it’s already becoming very clear to me that season eight is going to wind
up ranking very low on my list of all fourteen seasons and I’m finding it
rather difficult to muster up the energy and enthusiasm necessary to write
about these eps. I bring this up to once
again provide a little context for the way I am doing these writeups, so follow
me along here. My Beloved Grammy and I
gathered and watched a whole disk of eps, spanning The Unraveling through A Plan
of Action. After this, we parted and
I began to work on writing about those eps, but then My Beloved Grammy and I
wound up gathering and watching another ep of disks (Survival of the Fittest through Deadly
Combination) before I was finished writing about our previous batch. So now here we are and I’m sitting to write
about My True Love, but then I will
have a rather heavy load of seven whole eps left to discuss, all because I
allowed myself to get behind and we watched more eps before I was prepared to
do so. Will this negatively affect my
writing or my ability to remember all the nitty gritty and details? I guess we’ll find out cuz I’m gonna start
writing about My True Love now.
I wanna make sure and devote a
lot of special attention to our newest character, Anne Matheson, and the
fabulously fabulous actress who plays her, Michelle Phillips, but I think I’ll
try to cover the other story beats first and then save the best for last. Okay, so what’s going on in the cul-de-sac
right now? Well, you should all vividly
recall our last three or four eps and all that heavy focus on Olivia and her
predilection for nose candy. After Bobby
Briggs beat the shit out of B.A.G in the concluding moments of No Miracle Worker, Olivia seemed to finally
and fully reject her coke habit and choose the path of a better life. One might be tempted to wonder if this path
to sobriety will continue as we move forward, but I’m happy to say that we open
our episode in question at an AA meeting with Gary in attendance and Olivia
coming to join him. Ah, such bliss. Since I seem to be bitching so much about my
problems with season eight in general, I’d like to take a moment to say that I love this, and I love it for more
reasons than I can probably even express.
First off, I always love seeing
Gary at AA or having some sort of dialogue about his AA visits to help remind
us that he still goes to the meetings regularly. I flash back to the very final seconds of
season one when Gary made the bold announcement, “I’m Gary and I’m an
alcoholic,” and then I think of the voyage we have been taking with Gary since
that defining moment. We’ve seen him
have his ups and downs with AA (such as becoming the sponsor for The Other Paul Rudd and then almost immediately starting to shag his wife) and we’ve also
seen him fall off the wagon once (“WE’RE RUINING LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!”),
but then we hit season five and Gary started to become all cool and responsible
and self-actualized and a model citizen.
Now here we are in season eight and, as I look at Gary sitting calmly in
his AA meeting and showing his support for a fellow alcoholic (this one’s name
is Margorie and she hasn’t had a drink in eight months and sixteen days, so you
go, girl!), I just want to climb into the TV and give Gary a big old pat on the
back and say, “Good job, Gary, you haven’t had a drink since season four and
you’re doing great!” So yeah, I love
this scene for what it shows us about Gary’s continued growth, but then I love
it more when the music swells and Olivia comes walking in and Gary looks over
at her and you can tell he’s super proud.
The meeting is kinda crowded so Olivia isn’t able to sit next to him,
but she sits a few rows behind him and then Gary has this smile on his face
that is super cute and I love it and I want to write poetry about it.
Gary’s busy this ep because,
after his AA meeting, he also takes the time to speak with Abs about their
impending divorce. He tells her that now
that he’s lost the senatorial race and Empire Valley has stopped being a
storyline on the show, he’s ready to be officially divorced. I’d say he’s right to get the wheels moving,
since he first asked Abs for a divorce at some point in mid to late season
seven and now here we are in mid to late season eight and they are still
legally married. Anyway, we quickly see
that just because we saw some whole new layers to Abs character in the last
batch of eps, that doesn’t mean she can’t switch right back to being calculating
and wicked again, and she does it quickly here.
See, another reason Gary wants to get this divorce rolling is cuz he
wants to marry J.B., but Abs gives a lovely little speech here that is, in
truth, probably very accurate, starting with, “J.B. is nothing more than a
brunette Valene.” She continues by
telling Gary, “Of course being with J.B. was exciting, but not because you were
with her, but because you were cheating.
Cheating turns you on, not J.B.”
Even though I just praised Gary for all his growth and conquering his
demons throughout the last few seasons, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still a
few flaws in his character, and yes, this love affair that he has with cheating
on people is one of his less admirable traits and I’d say Abs is correct to
call him out on it. Will Gary wind up
cheating on J.B. just as he cheated on Abs and Valene before her? I wish I could tell you, but I honestly don’t
remember, and maybe, just maybe, Gary will be a really excellent husband this
time around. Oh yeah, and also, the
scene ends with the soon-to-be-ex-couple discussing the settlement Gary has
arranged and Abs saying, “I’ve very nice, but it’s not enough.” Clearly Abs is going to want something more,
but just what that something might be remains a mystery throughout the confines
of this ep.
Meanwhile, Peter Hollister is
still on the show, so I suppose we must talk about him even though he’s not
doing anything too terribly interesting at the moment (and I’m gonna make a
rather glass-is-half-empty prediction and say Peter won’t be given anything too
interesting to do for the rest of his time on the series, which shouldn’t be
lasting much longer). The only thing I
can really think of to talk about here is that, I think, Paige officially goes to move in with Peter. She arrives at his apartment eager to avoid
her mother, telling Peter how she was going to check into a hotel, but then she
thought she’d hit him up and see if she could stay with him. Peter says how it’s fine if she wants to stay
with him, and then some truly awful music (sounding both saxxy and yet tinny
all at the same time) comes blasting out of the soundtrack while Paige and
Peter exchange a rather pathetic bit of “sexy” dialogue. See, Paige asks if he’d mind her sleeping on
the couch, and he says, “No, but I think you’ll find my bed more
comfortable.” Then they start making
out. Can I go ahead and make a bold
declaration and say that it’s impossible for any scene with Peter in it to be
sexy? I’m not calling Hunt Block an ugly
man, because he’s not, and when he has taken his shirt off in the past, we’ve
seen clearly that he’s been hitting the gym on a regular basis, but there’s
just something totally unsexy about this character, and I’m starting to find it
rather funny how seemingly every woman in town is eager to spread her legs open
in front of Peter. Perhaps it’s just
that thing about power being the best aphrodisiac? Peter is hardly in the same league as, say,
someone like Sexy Michael, and yet all the women are wanting to shag him, so
I must conclude that it’s the fact that he’s a senator and has power. Anyway, this scene is not sexy, but then
neither were any of the other Peter shag scenes, including that silly one from
way earlier this season in which he and Abs shagged and the entire sequence
kept cutting to EXTREME CLOSEUPS of their various body parts. Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and call it right
now: I am ready for Peter to leave the show.
Whatever interest he provided for me back in season seven (and I do
remember finding him interesting throughout that year), that interest has now
expired and I’m just waiting for this character to be retired.
Speaking of characters being
retired, where the hell is Ruth Roman lately?
I’m glad you asked, because this ep answers that question for us….sort
of. Basically, we are having a scene
with Sumner hanging out on his ranch or whatever, and some character brings up
Sylvia Lean and how she’s Peter’s mother and whether she’ll be around at some
point, to which Greg replies, “Peter’s mother is permanently not available for
comment.” When I heard this line, I
immediately jotted in my notes, “Huh?
She’s just gone?” A little later
on, we get a few more details from Greg and he says that, basically, Sylvia
just wanted to go away and so she went away.
Boy, is this ever some clumsy writing.
Sylvia’s been around since the second half of season seven and she was
getting a fairly large chunk of material to work with in season eight, most
especially with Peter poisoning her for, you know, a few eps and then just, you
know, not poisoning her anymore (not to imply the writers were just desperate
to fill up time on the show or anything like that), and then she hung out at
Westfork for a little while, and then she gave that note to Olivia, and then
she just sorta stopped showing up on the series. Now we just have this tossed off bit of
dialogue from Greg about how she’s gone and she won’t be coming back, and uck,
I don’t like it. What really happened here? Ruth Roman is maybe not A GIGANTIC MOVIE
STAR, but I’d say she’s a known actress and was probably something of a get for
the series. Was she supposed to be in
more eps and then she didn’t renew a contract or something? Did she get sick and wasn’t able to finish
the season? Why on earth would you give
this character so much material for roughly a solid year and then just ship her
out inauspiciously and then, several eps later, throw in a quick line about how
she’s gone and won’t be coming back?
It’s shit like this that is really annoying me as we move through this
year, because I know for a fact that if the master genius of television Peter Dunne was still running the show, this kind of crappy storytelling would not
fly. Peter would be able to find some
way to organically ship Sylvia out of the series or build a really great drama
out of her leaving the proceedings; this is the man who ran seasons four
through six, when the show was brilliant and perfect and could do no wrong, and
he would never allow this kind of shitty storytelling to pass by under his watch.
Nor is this the only bad
storytelling that Greg is getting sucked into this ep. The ever toxic Jean Hackney is still hanging
around, hellbent on polluting everything that is good and pure about KL with her ridiculous dialogue and
stupid-as-hell story. At this point, you
all should remember that we viewers have been clued in on the fact that Hackney
wants Ben to kill Greg, but I don’t believe Ben is aware of that fact quite yet
(when it comes to putting the pieces together for this Hackney storyline, Ben
is moving very, very slowly). In this
ep, Hackney gives Ben the assignment to put a bug in Greg’s home office (like a
Nixon/Watergate bug, not like a spider or a cockroach), and of course no scene
with Hackney would be complete without some truly wretched dialogue. In this case, I kid you not, we actually begin a scene with her and Ben walking
through a park and poor Doug Sheehan being forced to spit out this line of
“dialogue”: “You’re the woman with a thousand faces and a million
disguises.” You can tell I really hated
this line because I wrote it down in my notes and then added, “Or some such
nonsense.” Seriously, this is bad. Every
single scene with Hackney is bad, but this is really really really incredibly
bad (oh yeah, and since I know you were all wondering what ridiculous outfit
Hackney was wearing in this scene, I shall tell you that it appears to be some
sort of purple leather zip-up jacket and a pair of blue gloves that don’t even
match the color of her outfit) and I again find myself feeling sorry for Doug Sheehan as I watch this unfold before my eyes.
After three years of finding Ben to be a remarkably amazing and
wonderful character that I adore watching, it hurts me to see him being handed
such pure human feces as his main storyline for his last year on the show, and
I find myself really watching his performance and trying to figure out what’s
going on. Okay, so the way he delivers
that “thousand faces/million disguises” line really makes it sound like Sheehan
can barely get this dialogue out without having to vomit, and so it creates
this weird effect where I can’t tell if he’s giving a bad performance or if the
disgust in his voice is supposed to register the character’s disgust. I’m
gonna have to say I’m leaning for the former option; I think it truly hurt
Sheehan to deliver this dialogue and I think you can tell he’s gritting his
teeth and tightening his sphincter as he tries to say these words out
loud. I keep saying this, but I feel I
must stress again how much happier I would have been if Ben had just run off
with Cathy and left the show at the end of season seven. Would our memories of Ben have been tainted
by the fact that he cheated on Val and then blew town? Perhaps, but at least we would have three
solid seasons of him being a great character and we would never have had to
hear the words “Jean” or “Hackney” for the rest of the series’ run. Also, even if the whole cheating/blowing town
thing did sully our esteem for Ben, it couldn’t sully it any worse than this
storyline, which has been dragging on for an agonizing eighteen eps and
counting, is already doing.
Ugh, I guess I have to talk
about this, so here we go. Hackney wants
Ben to put a bug in Greg’s office, and even though she’s “the women with a
thousand faces and a million disguises,” it seems Ben is the only person who
can handle this assignment since he’s currently on Sumner’s payroll and has
easy access to his home and office.
Anyway, the scene where she gives Ben his assignment comes and goes and
then we don’t really see Ben too much until we hit the final ten minutes of the
ep. We catch up with him playing the
piano in the living room in the loving company of Val, but then the phone
rings, he picks it up, and Hackney (dressed in a humongous brown suit thing
that would be right at home in Mike Brady’s wardrobe) tells him, “They’ve
gone,” obviously meaning Sumner and Laura.
Then we get another example of the writing forcing characters I love to
act stupid and oblivious, because Ben pauses for a second and then does a terrible
job of making it sound like he was on the phone with a magazine salesman,
delivering this way-too-long little speech about how, “I have so many magazines
I can’t deduct them from my taxes, and by the way, I don’t like people who
canvass for magazines.” Okay, so that
sucks because he does a terrible job of making it seem like a magazine salesman
was on the phone, but what sucks even more is that after this bizarrely angry
tirade he delivers to nobody, Val is just sitting right near him and is like,
“Did you ever have a chance to read my final draft?” Okay, so you’re gonna tell me that Valene
doesn’t notice her husband acting like a complete psycho to a “magazine
salesman” on the phone? She just lets it
come and go and doesn’t say, “Gee, Ben, what’s up your ass?” I’ll cut her a small break because at least
she puts up a protest when Ben abruptly grabs his coat and announces he must
head to the office immediately. Still,
it’s not enough. I believe Valene is a
smart woman and I believe she would be way more observant about her husband’s
weirdo behavior as of late, but that would overly complicate the story, so
instead the writers keep her acting stupid, a problem that I predict we will be
encountering a lot throughout the Latham/Leckowick era.
Anyway, Ben goes to Sumner’s
ranch and manages to make it past the butler guy and then we get a long scene
of him fiddling with Sumner’s computer.
Honestly, isn’t Ben’s plan already shot because he had to awkwardly
saddle his way past that butler? If this
bug is discovered, couldn’t Greg easily find out who planted it because the
butler would tell him, “Yeah, Ben showed up real late at night for some reason
and was acting super weird and made a beeline for your office and didn’t want
me to come with him”? Okay, but
whatever, let’s not think too much about that and instead focus on Ben putting
the bug in the office, a scene that lasts for fucking ever and is then repeated in the opening moments of our
very next ep, so we have to watch it twice (I will at least point out that,
when they repeat it, they do shorten it down fairly significantly so it isn’t quite as long). After a few hiccups and little flirtations
with Ben failing in his mission, the bug is successfully installed and we’re
all getting ready to breathe a big sigh of relief when, GASP!, the doorknob to
the office starts to turn! This is our
big cliffhanger for the next ep, but it’s far from one of the best we’ve ever
seen. The blaring music on the soundtrack
doesn’t help much, either.
I clearly hate everything
involving Ben and Hackney and all this gibberish, so let’s end on a positive
note by talking about something I have absolutely no complains about, and that
is the glorious arrival to the series of Michelle Phillips as Anne. Technically, she arrived in the last two
seconds of our previous ep, but this is really the ep that introduces her to
us, and she’s just perfect. I’ll go
ahead and spoil my thoughts (or at least my memories
of my thoughts) and say that Anne was one of my favorite characters upon
first viewing and I loved the humor she brought to proceedings and thought she
was one of the best aspects of the later years.
Due to my fond memories, I immediately light up whenever she is
onscreen, but I’m also already noting that this season eight version of Anne is
a little different than the Anne we will have in seasons twelve through
fourteen (and, I think, a little smidge of season eleven, as well). During that era, Anne is mostly a comedic
character, having funny dialogue and getting into adventures and shenanigans
with her friends and lovers. Here, as she’s first introduced, I don’t know that
she comes off as funny. In fact, the
immediate impression I get is that we are being introduced to another Abs, a
hot older blonde who is set on stealing a husband away from his wife.
It’s hardly a spoiler to say
that Anne is going to go after Mack, because it’s very obvious right away. When we first catch up with them in this ep,
they’re in that hotel room in New York (even though obviously nobody from the
production went anywhere near New York to film any of this footage and it’s all
set-bound) and she says something about how great Mack looks and then she sorta
sighs his name out, “Marion Patrick.”
Just the way she delivers that line tells us that she’s getting wet just
by being in the same room as Mack. We
also get a nice little hint of her manipulative nature right and quick, because
when Mack says how they need to get on a plane at four, she says how she needs
to take care of all these different something or others and they should take a
later flight, and Mack agrees.
I do want to say there are still
stupid aspects to this story, most notably the fact that it was completely
unnecessary for Mack to fly out to New York only to meet Anne and, um, fly back
to California? Why on earth couldn’t he
just call Anne and say, “You ought to fly out to California and see
Paige”? Why must Mack fly all the way to
the big apple only to then head to the airport and fly back? It’s pretty obviously a plot contrivance
designed to keep Anne and Mack together for as long as possible, but even so,
I’m still willing to go with it. In any
case, the two hang around New York for a little while and get some drinks and
Anne goes on about how Mack is the only man she ever loved, an exchange of
dialogue that both My Beloved Grammy and I found a bit perplexing. Surely Anne must know that Mack is married to
Karen, right? But she goes on and on
about her love of Mack and how much she wants him to slip it inside of her to
the point that it seems like perhaps she doesn’t know Mack is now
married. Also, Mack has plenty of
opportunities to jump in and be like, “I’m married, so you should probably stop
hitting on me constantly,” but he does not.
Anyway, I’m excited to see Anne and I’m glad Michelle Phillips is on the
scene now, but I’ll save more thoughts on her for later, since she’s going to
be hanging around and getting lots of storyline attention throughout this
latter portion of season eight.
I think that’s all I have to say
about this ep. I’m not even sure what to
say in wrap-up as far as whether this ep was good or not. Clearly it had many aspects that bothered me
and clearly I still detest the Hackney storyline, but I think I’m just starting
to get used to being underwhelmed by season eight. This ep is only okay, but I’d say it comes
off looking worse for following on the heels of the excellent The Unraveling and No Miracle Worker. We’re
done with the excitement of Olivia on coke, so now we’re returning to
proceedings a bit more standard, characters getting divorced, characters
shagging each other, characters attempting to shag other characters, all that
stuff. It’s alright and perfectly
watchable but, as seems to be the case with the majority of season eight, also
heavily flawed.
Shall our next ep prove better
than this one? Tune in for my next
writeup, which will be all about the episode called Never Trick a Trickster.
Every episode around this time feels like every other episode around this time.
ReplyDeleteI hate what Latham/Leckowick did to Val. They turned a complicated character into a crazy woman over the later part of the series. It was sad. And as everyone knows, Joan didn't like it either.
ReplyDeleteI was watching Knots Landing full episodes on youtube and they have all vanished. Can anyone help me find Seasons 8-14? Is eBay my only option?
ReplyDeleteAnne has the worst hair ever. If she's a zillionaire, she could afford a better stylist. Her hair looks like downy chick fuzz.
ReplyDeleteHer bad hair is riding neck and neck with Laura's awful glasses and Val's horrific makeup this season.
Poor Doug Sheehan. That's all.
ReplyDeleteKaren had the worst haircut..Using the kidnapping as an excuse to chop it off..
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if one of the reasons Gary put off the divorce from Abby was because of what was going on Olivia and her drug problem and he might have known him and Abby divorcing might not have been good for Olivia.However that Olivia admitted to having a problem and is getting help Gary might have known it was time for him and Abby to settle things between them and move on with their lives.Also i'm wondering if Gary substituted his addiction to alcohol to an addiction to women because since the first episode has he really been alone without a woman in his life?
ReplyDelete