"Even though there is a lot of melodrama surrounding our characters," David Jacobs said of 'Knots Landing', "their lives are easy to identify with. The audience always has a sense that what is happening to them could happen to you or I. When you watch 'Dallas', you see how the other half lives, despite their money, they've still got a lot of problems. But when you watch us, you see ordinary people involved in extraordinary circumstances."
David pointed out, "We're not afraid to run risks with our characters, to turn someone like Karen, the moral anchor of our show, into a prescription-pill addict. In fact, we purposefully look to make our characters do the opposite of what is expected of them."
Of the storylines -
Hit 1982-83: "If I was teaching a course in television, I’d use this as the perfect example most shows face: tying all their characters together."
Miss 1984-85: "I hated every minute of that storyline with Val’s baby twins being stolen. It was ugly and even though it was effective, we'll never do anything like that again."
Lawrence Kasha emphasized, "We are always asking ourselves could it happen this way. We keep young couples living in tiny apartments. We add drama while characters are doing everyday chores – folding laundry, cleaning the house, preparing lunch, getting their children ready for school, things happen in the supermarket. You don’t see this on the other shows."
David added, "We always like to add these young, very popular characters so that, God forbid, if we ever lost a leading actor, like Donna Mills, who we don’t have any indication we will lose, we will have strong players to slide right in. I learned that lesson when we lost Don Murray and had no male lead, no strong central character until Kevin Dobson was brought in."
