And DALLAS´s sister was born:

The first episode was aired on December 27, 1979 on CBS too. With the original series´ creator in charge of the scripts and production, the new show started off its TV running centered around the everyday life of EWINGS from California and their neighbors KAREN and SID FAIRGATE, turmoiled LAURA and RICHARD AVERY, and lastly, young GINGER and KENNY WARD. The main stars, besides TED SHACKELFORD and JOAN VAN ARK, originally were DON MURRAY and MICHELE LEE. He became famous playing the cowboy infatuated by MARILYN MONROE in BUS STOP. During 2 years, he played SID, a used cars´ salesman who, together with wife KAREN (multifaceted MICHELE LEE), gave support to their new neighbors.

On the greedy side was ABBY CUNNINGHAM, a manipulative woman impersonated by spectacular blond DONNA MILLS, possibly the actress who got most famous thanks to KL´s success. Completing the cast were CONSTANCE McCASHIN (LAURA), JOHN PLESHETTE (RICHARD), KIM LANKFORD (GINGER), JAMES HOUGHTON (KENNY) and, from the Year 4 on, KEVIN DOBSON as MACK. JACOBS remarked in 1990, about the show´s earliest years: “KL had problems at the beginning, though it never was a flop, it was not a hit either, it simply stood up without an identity of its own, or ignored by the press, or seen as the little sister...Even so, it did what had to be done to go on: it was a survivor.”

Season 3 premiered with SID´s death: “I had always seen KL as a lot of intertwined pieces - MICHELE reminisced later-, but all of them part of a well-built puzzle. However, I enjoyed the next year as an actress, since KAREN went through the process of re-discovering herself.” One of the supporting actresses, LISA HARTMAN (CIJI), had to come back at one time by the audiences´ request, after her character died, curiously playing another role (CATHY). Likewise, it was published that CHARLENE TILTON was going to get her LUCY character back on KL, though she had just been fired from DALLAS because they had run out of ideas for her.

At the beginning LORIMAR asked several DALLAS´s stars to make a small appearance on KL: so BOBBY introduced the show on episode 1, J.R. gueststarred on 2 and LUCY on 6. “When LARRY visited KL – confessed JACOBS - , we invariably met an episode NOT working. J.R. was like “them” easily shadowing the “us” of KL.” Also GARY came up once in awhile on the original series, until BOBBY was “resurrected” and the “crossovers” became impossible for the KL writers. One of the characteristical KL trademarks before other supersoaps was the story used to develop among middle-class people, at first.

“We weren´t going for a big show - explained TS – This show talked about people like us, living the same dramas that may affect our lives: divorce, alcoholism, adultery...”. One of the producers, LAWRENCE KASHA, stated about the subject: “We keep the show as middle-class as we can. Our rule is that anything that can happen in real life, then can happen on KL.” Following this pattern, throughout the earliest episodes, one of the main female characters was raped, but did not dare to tell it to her husband; another wife found out that was unexpectedly pregnant for the fourth time. Every episode revolved around a specific story from the day one.