Although it had outlasted all of its contemporaries (even Dallas (1978)) and was still in the top forty ratings, the network and the producers mutually agreed that that the show's fourteenth season (1992-93) was to be its last, as further budget cuts would have to be made, should it have stayed on the air for a fifteenth season. The producers and the network decided that less episodes would be produced (nineteen) for the final season, and all actors and actresses were required to be absent from at least some of the episodes to save money. However, Michele Lee offered to forgo her usual salary, and film some episodes for union scale pay. She therefore became the only actress to appear in all three hundred forty-four episodes.
Michele Lee divorced her real-life husband James Farentino during the show's early days. In the scene where her character Karen Fairgate took off her wedding ring at her husband Sid's grave, she was actually taking off her real wedding ring from her marriage to Farentino for the last time, in order to make the scene appear more real.
Two cast members remained with the series from the first episode in 1979, until the final episode in 1993: Michele Lee and Ted Shackelford. Lee is the only actress to have appeared in all three hundred forty-four episodes, which was a record for an actress on a prime-time drama at that time [though this has since been surpassed by S. Epatha Merkerson, who appeared on Law & Order (1990) for seventeen seasons, and (at least) three hundred ninety-one episodes]. Joan Van Ark appeared in every season of Knots Landing, but only in the final episode of the show's last season.
The series' signature cul-de-sac, Seaview Circle, was actually Crystalaire Place in Granada Hills, a suburban street in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, about twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean. The opening credits during the first two seasons were edited in such a way to make it appear that the cul-de-sac was closer to the ocean. The owners of the houses allowed filming to take place on the exteriors of the houses, but all interior shots were filmed on a studio soundstage.
In 1985, Gary Ewing (Ted Shackelford) got a phone call telling him his brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy) was dead. However, when the producers of Dallas decided to retcon Bobby's death the following year, by making it all a dream that Pam Ewing had, the producers of Knots Landing chose not to go along with its parent series in order to not confuse viewers. Bobby Ewing's "resurrection" therefore was never mentioned on Knots Landing, and the series never associated itself with Dallas again, with the exception of Gary and Val's appearance in the "Dallas" series finale.