Gary Ewing

Garrison Arthur "Gary" Ewing[1] is a fictional character from the CBS soap opera, Knots Landing, a spin-off of Dallas.

The character of Gary Ewing was first played by actor David Ackroyd in a two-part Dallas season two episode "Reunion" in 1978.

Shackelford played Gary Ewing in Knots Landing for its entire fourteen seasons (1979–1993), while continuing to make occasional appearances in Dallas during that time.

Once the show became a success after the 5 episodes that made up season 1, the producers decided to expand the roles of certain characters.

[2] After the success of Dallas, Jacobs' presented his initial idea again and created Knots Landing, with some alterations of his original script.

Gary was often considered the black sheep of the family, as he was mostly influenced by his mother and embraced the Southworth tradition of ranching on Southfork and had no interest in Ewing Oil.

Unlike J.R., Jock liked Valene, but demanded that Gary face up to all his responsibilities as a husband and father.

Valene fled to Virginia with baby Lucy, and later to her home state of Tennessee, hoping to have her mother, Lilimae Clements, care for her child, but was refused.

For the sake of his ex-wife and daughter, Gary tried to make things work in Texas, but soon came under the old pressures of living up to Jock's expectations and J.R.'s deviousness.

After the initial glasses of champagne, Gary's drinking quickly turned into nasty mood swings and a full blown alcoholic binge.

Gary's drinking quickly caused him to hit rock bottom, where he would become extremely aggressive and violent in his desperation for more alcohol, even to the point of possibly killing somebody, and stealing a small bottle of beer from a sleeping homeless man.

When Jock was declared legally dead as a result of a plane crash in South America, Gary stood to inherit millions of dollars.

In 1992, after Val was kidnapped by mafia gangsters in Florida and supposedly killed in a car crash after Gary had tracked her down, a grieving Gary entered into a short-term relationship with a much younger, Kate Whittaker, who was over 25 years his junior, as Kate supported him and his children through their grief of losing Val.

[1] In the 1997 series Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac Kate reveals to Gary that he is the father of her young daughter, Molly Whittaker.

Gary returned to Dallas in 2013 to help his brother, Bobby, stop their nephew, John Ross, from drilling for oil on Southfork.

Later, Sue Ellen calls Valene and she comes to Dallas, where she and Gary reunite and return to their home in California.