It’s hard to claim OHMSS is grounded when it’s about a man hypnotizing supermodel beauties to poison various harvests/livestock all over the world. If there’s any part of it that you can say is grounded it’s that it’s emotionally grounded.
I would have been curious of how DAF would have turned out under Lazenby. I really think it might not have turned out all that different from what we ultimately got. The PTS probably would have been the same but with a more overt connection to OHMSS in an emotional level. Lazenby then goes to Vegas on a diamond smuggling case as per the book, oh look Blofeld is alive, giving Bond more incentive to take him down.
Originally DAF was supposed to end with Bond chasing Blofeld from the oil rig to a salt mine where Bond ultimately kills Blofeld once and for all. This is why the climax feels so half assed, they literally ended it midway. However, the salt mine sequence was never filmed anyway. Supposedly it was felt Blofeld should never die, that he should continue being a recurring villain like Lex Luthor or the Joker, so they decided to “retire” the character indefinitely. They wanted to bring him back for TSWLM, but then McClory threw his weight around.
I must confess though: I genuinely enjoy DAF, if case my avatar and location combo wasn’t an indicator. It’s such a bizarre macabre installment. I’ve heard many say it’s a Roger Moore film that happens to have Connery, but I don’t see that. Moore’s films don’t have the same dark sense of humor, and Tom Mankiewicz even said he had to recalibrate his writing of Bond for Moore’s sensibilities, going as far as to say Connery wouldn’t have worked in LALD as he wrote it for Moore. His commentary for LALD should be listened to, it’s very insightful.