Knots Landing - Behind The Scenes

Behind The Scenes

The actors had more input than actors on other 1980s primetime soaps. In 1987, the writers wanted Mack (Kevin Dobson) to have an extramarital affair with Anne (Michelle Phillips). Michele Lee, who played Mack's wife Karen, protested this to David Jacobs, saying, "There has to be one stable couple on the show." The extramarital affair storyline was nixed, and Michelle Phillips, who had been signed to a contract, was written out for a few seasons before returning in 1990. When she did return, Anne did not pursue Mack. William Devane, who played Greg Sumner, re-wrote most of his character's dialogue, to the point where, in co-star Michele Lee's words, "most people (on set) were (probably) frightened of him." The Gary/Val/Abby triangle that provided story throughout the mid-1980s was suggested by Ted Shackelford and Joan Van Ark in 1980, and the producers hesitated for a year and a half before going through with it in 1982. The famous 1984 storyline where Valene's babies got kidnapped was originally envisioned as one of scheming Abby's plots. Donna Mills, who played Abby, acknowledged that her character was evil but did not think she was that evil. Fearing the audience would never forgive her character for kidnapping another woman's babies, she asked the writers to make the kidnappings a result of Abby's actions, but only by accident, and the writers complied.

The writing team of Bernard Lechowick and Lynn Marie Latham (the head writers from 1986 to 1991) was controversial among both fans and actors. Their humor-imbued style of writing made them the favorites of Michele Lee, while John Pleshette felt they were "awful people." Pleshette, however, was not a cast member during their tenure and harbored resentment because the writing team, who had been represented by his wife, moved to a different agency. Joan van Ark, whose character was struck by a brain illness in season 12 and proceeded to thereafter go crazy, felt that Latham and Lechowick had turned her character into the "village idiot." Joan Van Ark and Donna Mills' favorite Knots Landing writer was Peter Dunne, who was responsible for making Knots Landing a top ten show in 1984.

In 1987, CBS demanded that production costs be cut. This meant the firing of two regulars, Constance McCashin and Julie Harris. Season 13 saw a large ratings drop for the show after writer/producers Bernard Lechowick and Lynn Marie Latham left to create Homefront and creator David Jacobs had a health crisis and pulled back his involvement in production. Jacobs has publicly stated that the way he knew the show was in trouble was when waitresses at his favorite diner, whom he had heard gossiping about Knots Landing every Friday during past seasons, suddenly stopped discussing the show in late 1991. He attempted to save face by shutting down production on November 20, 1991, firing head writer John Romano, and replacing him with Ann Marcus. Cost cutting again plagued the series in its final season, when only 19 episodes were produced, and regular characters did not appear in each episode. In one episode in the final season ("My Kingdom for a Horse"), only three of the fourteen regulars cast for season 8 appeared (Devane, Phillips, and Lee.) Not wanting to compromise what he felt had been a good run, series creator David Jacobs described its end as a "mutual decision" between Knots Landing's producers and the CBS Network, saying, "We don't know if they would have picked us up anyway...but even if they had, we would have had to pare away more to survive."