Derision runs high for this series, and in most ways it’s deserved. What started out as a modestly insightful little melodrama about the stresses and strains of suburban bliss became, over an unimaginable 14 seasons, wealth-fetishizing domestic tragedy porn that relied on the hoariest of soap cliches (the return of long-lost offspring and/or siblings, kidnappings, life-or-death surgical procedures, etc.) and resorted to character and plot turns that made no sense and wrecked what little credibility the show maintained. I blame Ronald Reagan — the series was just getting its legs when he was first elected — but then I usually do.

That big-ass caveat aside, Knots was frequently surprising in its emotional frankness and refusal to wrap up every story line with a neat, happy resolution. “Love to Take You Home,” written by series producer Peter Dunne, directed by Larry Elikann, and broadcast in November 1984, is one of the best examples of this.

It features a nice guest performance by Albert Salmi (one of my favorite TV character actors in one of his last roles), as the tight-ass Evangelical Christian minister father of semi-regular character Joshua Rush, played by an impossibly young Alec Baldwin. (As if that lineage isn’t hard enough to get your head around, Julie Harris plays Salmi’s ex-wife and Baldwin’s mother, and Joan Van Ark is somewhere in the mix, too.) Pops has come to rescue his boy from the debauchery of Southern California and return him to Tennessee, but Joshua’s not eager to go. Lisa Hartman’s his saloon-singing squeeze, so who can blame him?

What makes this episode memorable is how it painstakingly reveals the pain and loneliness beneath the elder Rush’s harsh stoicism, and uncovers the toll it’s taken on him and the rest of his family. Salmi has a great semi-breakdown near the end, and the tears Knots so shamelessly jerked in most of its entries feel earned for a change.

This is the kind of equivocal character sketch that soap operas, that most American of art forms, do best, and when Knots Landing dispensed with the shallow, sub-Dynasty glitz it lazily adopted in this part of its run it was tops in the form. It may have fallen short of its goal of consistently essaying the terror inherent in domesticity, but it showed what a committed cast and talented, largely unsung crew could do with an hour of television.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS – “Man From the South” (1/60)
THE UNTOUCHABLES – “The Rusty Heller Story” (10/60)
THRILLER – “The Hungry Glass” (1/61)
HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL – “A Quiet Night in Town” (1/61)
THE TWILIGHT ZONE – “The Invaders” (1/61)
ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS – “Incident in a Small Jail” (3/61)
THE TWILIGHT ZONE – “It’s a Good Life” (11/61)
ROUTE 66 – “The Mud Nest” (11/61)
THE DICK POWELL SHOW – “The Price of Tomatoes” (1/62)
ROUTE 66 – “A Long Piece of Mischief” (1/62)
NAKED CITY – “Today the Man Who Kills Ants is Coming” (3/62)
BUS STOP – “I Kiss Your Shadow” (3/62)
BONANZA – “The Crucible” (4/62)
ROUTE 66 – “Man Out of Time” (10/62)
IT’S A MAN’S WORLD – “A Drive Over to Exeter” (10/62)
THE DEFENDERS – “Madman” (10/62)
BEN CASEY – “A Cardinal Act of Mercy” (1/63)
NAKED CITY – “Prime of Life” (2/63)
THE FUGITIVE – “Never Wave Goodbye” (10/63)
PERRY MASON – “The Case of the Deadly Verdict” (10/63)
EAST SIDE / WEST SIDE – “Who Do You Kill?” (11/63)
THE BREAKING POINT – “And James Was a Very Small Snail” (11/63)
ARREST AND TRIAL – “Journey Into Darkness” (12/63)
DR. KILDARE – “Tyger, Tyger” (1/64)
THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR – “The Jar” (2/64)
CHANNING – “Wave Goodbye to the Fair-Haired Boy” (3/64)
CHRYSLER THEATER – “The Game With Glass Pieces” (5/64)
MR. NOVAK – “With a Hammer in His Hand, Lord, Lord!” (9/64)
THE VIRGINIAN – “Felicity’s Spring” (10/64)
12 O’CLOCK HIGH – “A Sound of Distant Thunder” (10/64)
THE OUTER LIMITS – “Demon With a Glass Hand” (10/64)
THE FUGITIVE – “The Survivors” (3/65)
CHRYSLER THEATER – “The Game” (9/65)
SLATTERY’S PEOPLE – “The Unborn” (10/65)
THE LONER – “The Homecoming of Lemuel Stove” (11/65)
TRIALS OF O’BRIEN – “No Justice For the Judge” (12/65)
COMBAT – “Hills are For Heroes” (3/66)
THE TIME TUNNEL – “The Day the Sky Fell In” (9/66)
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE – “The Committee For the 25th” (10/66)
STAR TREK – “The City on the Edge of Forever” (4/67)
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE – “The Seal” (11/67)
STAR TREK – “Journey to Babel” (11/67)
GUNSMOKE – “Stranger in Town” (11/67)
JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE – “To Kill a Madman” (11/67)
THE INVADERS – “The Ransom” (12/67)
CIMARRON STRIP – “A Knife in the Darkness” (1/68)
STAR TREK – “The Empath” (12/68)
MANNIX – “View of Nowhere” (12/68)
THEN CAME BRONSON – “Amid the Splinters of the Thunderbolt” (10/69)
THE BOLD ONES – “If I Should Wake Before I Die” (10/69)

The first regular episode of the series after the fine pilot movie. Caine is working for a beautiful widow (Lara Parker) who owns a small ranch. The widow has a sensitive young son. Caine has trouble keeping his eyes off the widow. A bounty hunter (John Saxon) has tracked Caine down. The climatic fight between Carradine and Saxon is beautifully handled by the actors, the stunt men, and the director. Carradine and Saxon have a lot of charisma and Parker is stunning. The series story telling is rather innovative, telling two parallel stories, one a flashback of Caine as a boy and the other Caine’s current adventure. The show is also visually interesting, something rare in the 70’s. A nice try for something different.

Bonanza: “The Crucible”. Written by John T. Dugan. Directed by Paul Nickell.

Lee Marvin thinks he is a better man than Pernell Roberts because he came out of nothing. Roberts was born with a silver spoon. The two men are alone in the desert struggling to survive. Who is the stronger man? A good actors duel. Marvin and Roberts had both played the heavy in Budd Boetticher westerns.

The New Breed: “Ladies Man” (1961). Written by Alfred Brenner. Directed by Walter Grauman. If I remember this episode correctly, Robert Redford played a serial rapist. Anne Francis was a victim and Martin Balsam was her husband. Leslie Nielsen played series lead detective Lt. Price Adams, just the kind of role Nielsen would skewer decades later. The subject matter was quite adult for a show that aired at 8:30 pm. The material was handled in a low key, non sensational way. Redford was very effective. Producer Quinn Martin surely would have recognized Redford’s star potential. I wonder if he offered Redford a series. Redford might have made a good Richard Kimble. Redford later made a fine fugitive in the movie “The Chase”. Meta Rosnenberg said she did offer Redford the lead role of the psychiatrist in “The Breaking Point”.

Five-0’s fourth year was spotty at best, as the series had long since settled into formula and was thoroughly dominated by Jack Lord at the expense of his co-stars. But this episode — the season finale, at least broadcast-wise — is a stunner.

The plot, about a Vietnam vet turned serial killer, is stock “Five-0″ fodder on the surface, but it imparts a genuine and surprising sense of loss for the murderer’s victims and their loved ones — and, more pointedly, for the families of American soldiers at that point still dying in Southeast Asia. It’s visceral and quietly damning of the war, and unlike anything the show had done up to that point. Stratton and Penn did some amazing work here, and the cast rises to the occasion.

For what it’s worth, this episode convinced me to keep going with the Hawaii Five-0 DVD sets.

This was the first regular episode of “Sarge”, and it appeared Levinson was determined to match his fine work on “The Senator”. Jack Albertson played a man who learns he only has a short time to live. Many years earlier Albertson had been brutally humiliated in front of his young son by a gangster (Roy Poole). Albertson has been brooding about this event since, and he now has a bizarre plan to humiliate the still very dangerous gangster as payback. Sarge tries to find Albertson before it is too late.

Mike Farrell played Alberton’s now grown son. James Wainwright and Barra Grant were other guest stars.

Forty-six year old George Kennedy was in top form as Sarge, a cop turned priest. Peter Falk got most of the attention that year for his amazing performance as Columbo, but Kennedy was in many ways just as cool.

One thing I didn’t like about “Sarge” was the freeze frame ending. Producer David Levinson was trying to give his shows their own distinctive look the way Quinn Martin did. The freeze frame had worked very well on “The Senator”, sometimes even to the point of being haunting. But on “Sarge” it just seemed trite, particulary since each freeze frame was always on a solo George Kennedy. It was probably in Kennedy’s contract. The guest star wasn’t even in the close up.

David Levinson had used no music background on “The Senator”, which was stunningly effective. On “Sarge” David Shire gave some effective, understated backgound music.

Sarge: “The Combatants”. Written by Walter Black. Directed by Walter Doniger. Don Johnson as a sweet, naive boy from the hills of Kentucky who has joined the Marines. Morgan Woodward was extremely scary as the near psychotic drill sergenat who has it in for Johnson. The episode ends with the hulking Sarge and Woodward fighting it out in a burning building. Randolph Mantooth gave a juicy performance in this episode as a cunning company clerk. Lindsay Wagner played Johnson’s girl friend. Tom Selleck was a Marine captain who is asked to help Sarge. Gordon Pinsent and Jeff Morrow were also in the cast.

The Fugitive: “Fear in a Desert City”. Written by Stanford Whitmore. Directed by Walter Grauman. This was the pilot episode in which 32-year old David Janssen created his hugely sympathetic portrayal of Dr. Richard Kimble. There were many great series performances in the 60’s, but perhaps none better than Janssen’s. Film director Paul Schrader once asked Christopher Walken to study old episodes of “The Fugitive” for an upcoming role. Schrader said Janssen was the only actor who could make being passive sexy. Director Walter Grauman probably deserves a lot of credit for helping Janssen to get the character of Kimble up and running. As far as I know, Janssen had never before given such a compelling performance.

The pilot has classy guest stars in Vera Miles, Brian Keith, Harry Townes, and Dabbs Greer. All the DNA for the show was already in place: Kimble’s tremendous decency, Kimble’s desire not to stand out, Kimble’s ability to attract the most magnifent women, and Kimble’s affinity for children. And best of all Kimble wasn’t a two bit hero who would win every fight and laugh in the face of danger. You could actually smell the fear on him. TV series drama is largely about great series performances, and this was one of the best. It was hard not to identify with Richard Kimble.