Kane

5 hours ago, cassadine1991 said:

Do we know their names? Jacob’s family

His wife was named Teresa and his son was named David.

22 hours ago, Vee said:

Thanks for that. I saw some of Lisa's crazy villain stint awhile back, it seems so weird. (Didn't she mind control Charles and kill Casey?)

She hypnotized Charles into forgetting about the circumstances of the deaths of Jacob's wife and son. Casey's death was unrelated - he was killed by Pat Graham.

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

I wonder how quickly those plans were abandoned. I know Stacey does some sleuthing but I remember it with Trucker. 

I think the Hart to Hart comparison was referring to Jack and Stacey's role in the two Clays story. When Alex realizes that he was brainwashed when he was a POW, it's Jack and Stacey who end up doing the investigating and Stacey figures out what Alex's trigger is. I'm not sure how it played, but on paper it reads like busywork to keep the two characters busy in between stories of their own.

SOD's comings & goings blurb characterizes Nummi's exit as a show decision:

"Ron Nummi (Rick Alden) - Nummi, who joined the cast in 1987 as the Aldens' black sheep son, Rick, emerged as a central character when Rick became involved in a steamy illicit relationship with Stacey Forbes (Lauren-Marie Taylor). Now, however, the writers have opted to reconcile Stacey and her husband, Jack (Perry Stephens), and turn them into an amateur detective team, a la Hart to Hart, thus making Rick expendable."

However, when Fitzpatrick joined, SOD also made a point of the fact that Nummi was supposedly let go for lack of story and yet the character was brought back within a couple of months.

Although I haven't seen much of his time on the show, I've always liked Nummi in what I have seen and thought it was a shame that the show didn't try to take him in another direction after breaking up Rick and Stacey.

11 hours ago, DRW50 said:

A promo I hadn't seen before. I wonder if the date is accurate as I thought Ron Nummi had left by this point.

 

Those character confessional style promos are from 1989. I recall seeing other ones of Rocky, Trisha, and Trucker.

Nummi left in December 1989. In 1990 Rick was briefly played by Brian Fitzpatrick before the character was killed off.

13 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Not sure if this one has been up before. I am not sure of the exact date other than sometime in 1987 due to Steve and Luke Perry/Alexandra Wilson all being around. Unfortunately, it's not in English but I thought people would still enjoy it, especially as this period isn't well represented. You also get to see Shana in one of the most hideous sweaters I've ever seen on television. 

Thanks for the tag; always nice to see an 80s episode, even if it isn't in English. I think it's from late September/early October of 1987.

12 hours ago, slick jones said:

iI think that's April's Aunt, Marty Edison (Isabel Glasser). She was a photographer.

That's her. She becomes Amourelle's resident photographer not long before she and April are written out.

1 hour ago, dc11786 said:

She originally launches "Images" with Egypt Masters as the host, if I recall correctly. Is this the show that Trisha is hosting in 1990? 

It's a different show. Image folds as a result of the dual scandals of Egypt's pregnancy and Jeff going crazy and kidnapping Trisha. Afterwards Trisha and Stacey launch their own show called Helptalk, which mainly exists to propel the "Who Killed Rick" story, as Trisha and Stacey buy a gun as part of an episode about gun control and Stacey ends up taking that same gun to confront Rick after finding out that he kidnapped Heather.

1 hour ago, dc11786 said:

After really liking the idea of Stacey as a writer, I've wavered in recent years whether that was even an appropriate role for her. Soccer mom, car pool driving Stacey is quite effective and was a character type that was too quickly abandoned as the 1990s went on. I think Stacey's personality would have been appropriate, but I don't see Stacey enjoying that type of work. 

Aside from the initial story where she writes a romance novel and that gets used against her as she and Jack battle for custody of JJ, I felt like the show never really did as much as it could with the premise of Stacey being a writer. She could have written a Peyton Place-esque novel that exposed all the secrets of people in town, becoming a best selling novelist but alienating her friends and family in the process, for example. Or they could have actually followed through with having her teach a creative writing class at AU and gotten her involved in that scene, which is discussed at the end of 92/beginning of 93 but just ends up getting dropped.

2 hours ago, j swift said:

Poor Gwen was caught on VHS, and they waved around that tape for a year.  It was easier to indicate a secret when they could use a prop.

I'd be more sympathetic if Gwyn hadn't made the tape to begin with. The dual lesson of that plot is 1) lock down your blackmail material lest it get turned around on you, and 2) don't try to blackmail someone with something that could ruin your own life if it came out.

I'd like to add Paul to the list of unlikely hosts via his radio show, where he tells short, opaque stories about himself and Ava that are apparently all the rage with tweens and air live at random times through the day and night depending on what else Paul has going on that day.

Sticking with AMC, Charlie Brent. The show could never settle on who it wanted him to be and finally just gave up and wrote him out for good.

Tad's arrival probably threw a bit of a wrench on Charlie's development, as a teenage/young adult Charlie might have had some of the stories that Tad had if Tad had never existed. Charles Van Eman's version of Charlie seemed like an attempt to fill the void left by Tad during MEK's absence.

4 hours ago, dc11786 said:

For example, was the intention always to have Gwyn dressed as Trisha or was that a later development? 

I felt a lot of the comments ¨Trisha might look different¨ was in case the show couldn´t secure Noelle Beck for the final plot because it was hard to tell that story without Trisha appearing at one point. Your points though may be more valid. Similarly, I think the white suit stuff seemed to be an attempt to just make it clear that the mystery woman was easy to pick out... I remember thinking it was stupid that the ¨Trisha¨ at Dunellyn was not the same figure as Gwyneth. 

In terms of the POV, would Gwyneth be walking around in her Trisha getup while this was happening? Because Gwyneth´s final speech makes it clear that there was a part of her that was unaware that she was the killer. 

Although I'm sure that Gwyneth was always the intended killer, I'm not sure if Gwyneth dressing as Trisha was always intended as part of the story. Because of where the Killer POV shows up, Gwyneth couldn't have been disguised as Trisha in some of those scenes because she was around people who would have noticed.

I was surprised on rewatch by the detail that Gwyneth had bought the wig long before the family even received Trisha's letter. What was she doing with the wig before she started killing people? Playing both herself and Trisha and rehearsing their reunion?

4 hours ago, dc11786 said:

Regarding the failed momentum, I think this is the bigger issue I have. The destruction of Corinth was more engaging than the construction of ¨The City,¨ which is highly problematic. There was no story to carry over, and that was probably by design because TPTB wanted the premier to be an easy access point for new eyes that tuned in for the start of a new show.

The steam definitely runs out. I feel like the penultimate episode does a lot of stretching for time and that what happens in the last two episodes could easily have taken just one.

Another problem, as far as The City goes, is that if the point of spinning something off rather than starting from scratch is to carry over some of the existing audience, then they chose the wrong characters to make that happen. I mean, Debbi and Darnell would obviously generate interest with or without Loving, and Alex was Loving's leading man during both Randolph Mantooth's tenures, but Tony, Jocelyn, Danny, and Richard were all characters new characters, and Buck, Tess, and Frankie had only been around for 2-2.5 years and from what I recall of The City, it struggled to find stories for them. Did Buck and Tess even have a story of their own before her cancer story?

An exception is Ally, who had deep roots in Loving and had a solid jumping off point as a character trying to start anew after tragedy, but the fact that they were still trying to make Ally/Danny happen was a problem after everything the two had done to each other.

5 hours ago, dc11786 said:

I was surprised about Ewing until I realized he was the only one of the lot that didn continue onto ¨The City" so they had to use up his guarnatees. 

Ewing did have the advantage of playing a major part in the show's two big stories during its last months.

13 hours ago, j swift said:

Bravo @Kane !!!

Your blogpost software made it difficult to post a "like" on your Loving Murders wrapup, but it was so smart and much appreciated.

The connection between Medea of Corinto and Gwenyth of Corinth was fascinating to read.  I enjoy when an author can provide novel soap criticism, and even go beyond their own nostalgia, to write about a plot within the context of history.  Your humor, the photos you chose, the specificity of information, the appreciation for sets, and your editorial commentary made your blog a must-read for me every day.   I'd put it up there with anything written by Robert LaGuardia, Christopher Schemering, or even Roger Ebert in terms of pop culture criticism.  And I encourage fans old and new to read it as a testament to how internet media can preserve soap opera memories.

https://lovingsoapopera.wordpress.com/2023/11/10/wrapping-up-the-loving-murders/

I don't know quite what to say in the face of that much praise, so I'll just leave it at thank you. I'm glad you've enjoyed reading along as I make my way through what I have of the show.

@Franko The final count on Geoffrey Ewing/Debbi Morgan/Alimi Ballard is 135 for Ewing (+29 from 93/94 combined and #1 for 95), 129 for Morgan (+4 from 93/94 combined and #2 for 95), and 79 for Ballard (+4 from 93/94 combined and #8 for 95). Darnell Williams has 118 and is #4 on the year (behind Randolph Mantooth).

On 9/24/2023 at 1:56 PM, DRW50 said:

I uploaded about 6 episodes (one from 1988, three from 1992, two from 1995 [one being Stacey's death episode, one a few weeks before the murders started]) that were available elsewhere but not on Youtube or used to be on there and were taken down. I'll just put the link to one.

Thanks for posting those. It's always nice to see an episode with the original Jeff.

I hope one day an episode with Michael Maguire's Jeff will surface - I imagine he wasn't in very many. I saw a clip of him from Quando si Ama, but it was difficult to get a sense of his take on the character.

On 9/21/2023 at 3:49 PM, DRW50 said:

This channel put up three late May 1985 and one mid June 1985 episode. They may have been around before but I'd never seen them. (over the last day they also put up a 1986 episode and some from 90-91, along with various The City episodes). 

 

The May 1991 episode: I don't usually enjoy Carly scenes because I find her to be such a sour and unpleasant character, but the scenes between her, Kate, and Ava joking around with each other in Burnell's were nice.

Loving always moved plots at a fast pace, but it's still sometimes surprising to me how quickly they reset the characters emotionally. Just a few months before this episode Clay was framing Trucker for involvement in the plane crash, yet here's Trucker being totally nonchalant about Clay being around and Trisha considering reestablishing a relationship with him.

59 minutes ago, Planet Soap said:

One of the most polarizing characters in the shows history has been on for three decades. He was the show's lead from roughly 2000-2017.

Questions to ponder:

What was his best or worst storyline? What were some of Sonny's best/worst scenes? Who does he belong with, Carly or Brenda? Who were his best relationships besides those two? When exactly did Maurice's acting get bad? When did Sonny's charachter go downhill? 

If he had stayed gone after leaving Brenda at the altar, that would have been fine with me. I thought he was a good character during his first run and, having recently rewatched that period, I enjoyed his redemption arc (if it can be called that) when he and Luke were working together and he was first getting together with Brenda and there was lighter material mixed in with the darker material. Really, other than the Karen story, I can't think of a point during his first run where I wasn't interested in the character and his stories (even if I didn't necessarily always like him). Him returning and increasingly becoming not only the center of the show, but somehow the moral center, is part of what drove me away from the show for over a decade (along with Luke's never ending vendetta against the Cassadines and the show just generally becoming darker).

Best story was Sonny/Brenda/Jax.

Sonny belongs with Brenda. Carly belongs in the gutter. As for other pairings, I find his relationship with Nina surprisingly tolerable. Although I didn't like it at the time, on rewatch I think he had a nice, relaxed vibe with Lily.

This channel has been uploading a ton of Quando si Ama. The first 13 videos are material from 1983, and the rest have been 1984, with the most recent ones heading into 1985. Some points of interest:

13: June takes the stand at Jack's trial and remembers shooting Garth

14: Shana's introduction

23: Ann returns after a short absence played by Callan White

25-27: Roger's death and funeral

29: I'm not entirely sure if this is Ava's introduction, but it's the first video featuring Patty Lotz as Ava

33: Jim and Shana are in a cabin during a storm, unaware that Harry is lurking around outside spying on them

36-37: Doug and Edy's wedding

45: Jack crashes Tony's motorcycle after finding out Dane is his father

50: Jack sleeps with Ava

59: Roya Megnot takes over as Ava

73: After having a nightmare about Vietnam, Mike grabs his gun to shoot himself and is talked down by Shana

76-80: Harry kidnaps Shana

81: Ann and Dane elope

88: Trisha and Gwyneth arrive

8 hours ago, dc11786 said:

The decision to drop Merrill seems to come at a time where they've positioned Shana to assume a lot of Merrill's place on the canvas. Shana is an attempt at a similar character, but without trying to pigeonhole her into the role of a heroine.

It's funny you should mention that because I was looking over Marland's era not too long ago and it occurred to me that throughout 1984 he ushers in characters that seem like they function as his own spin on some of the characters he was handed.

You mentioned Shana and Merrill, who I think have a lot in common and, as you say, Shana takes Merrill's place on canvas in certain respects.

Dane literally takes Roger's place in several respects (he's Jack's father, becomes the owner of Forbes Construction, and Ann's husband).

Kate comes in and eventually supplants Rose as the salt of the earth, working class matriarch.

Trisha fills the void left by Lily as the innocent ingenue, and Garth's characteristics get split between Harry and Gwyneth, with Harry inheriting the violent tendencies, and Gwyneth inheriting the unhealthy obsession with her daughter's love life and the willingness to go full tilt against a rival who isn't even engaging, let alone retaliating (for Garth that's Roger, for Gwyneth it's Ann).

Ava comes on the scene right around the time that Lorna's short marriage to Tony ends, which is when Lorna transitions from being a character who makes things happen to being a character to whom things happen (the victim of the plots of Jonathan twice, Rebecca, and Jane). Ava takes over as the resident pot stirring schemer and Lorna gradually starts to become more of a heroine.

Of course, having said all of that, I've never read the show bible, so for all I know some or all of these things were planned from the beginning by Nixon.

On 7/24/2023 at 8:53 PM, dc11786 said:

As I think I've said before, I suspect Taggart and Guza submitted their story bible before it was public knowledge that Noelle Beck was leaving the show. As such, I believe the original plan was for a bigger takeover storyline with Curtis and Trisha vs. Clay like started onscreen but didn't go anywhere because Trisha "died." How that would have been impacted the trajectory of the paternity tale, who knows? I don't think Patrick Johnson or Michael Lord would have fared much better in those stories. Personally, I would have switched Johnson and Brown and made Johnson Buck and Phillip Brown Curtis. Brown's drawl probably wouldn't have worked for the character, but I think Brown would have handled a character like Curtis much better than the other two. 

I think you must be right about Taggart/Guza planning on Beck staying (and maybe exploring a darker version of Trisha, who taps into the power of manipulation that everyone else in her family has). For some time after she leaves, I feel like you can see the places where Trisha would have fit in to how things are unfolding.

I've also long felt like Buck was shoehorned into the Kuwait storyline at the last minute in order to give Trisha a reason to go racing into the night, which is why his role in her death is never really acknowledged or explored afterwards and all the characters just decide to leave the questions surrounding Trisha's death unanswered.

My dreamcasting for Curtis circa his first 1993 return is Mark Valley.

9 hours ago, j swift said:

It is interesting that at the beginning of the Loving Murders, Clay, Steffi, and Jeremy were all out of town at the same time.  Looking back, I wonder if that was to absolve them as suspects, or if it was a production issue prior to firing certain actors (like making an employee take their PTO prior to a layoff)?

For Clay (and maybe Jeremy) I think it could be a question of pacing. If Clay is in town when Stacey dies, then he and Gwyneth have that conversation about the possibility of Curtis being the killer right away. With him being out of town, that conversation gets delayed to draw things out.

3 hours ago, j swift said:

@Kane I appreciate your deep dive into the Loving Murders on your blog.  It is so much fun to read the weekly wrap up to see how you could eliminate multiple suspects from the start, given where they were shown in certain episodes.  From the first week when Gwyneth tells Clay that Curtis is not the killer, it seems like she is struggling with the internal conflict to confess. 

Will you continue into The City, or will you stay Corinth-centric?

My plan is to finish 1995, take a short break, and then recap the rest of the Loving episodes I have (I have the last 10-ish weeks of 1991 and most of 1992). After that I might recap what I have of The City, but to be honest I don't have very many episodes of it. Thanks for the plug, glad you're enjoying the murders discussion.

1 hour ago, dc11786 said:

The Clay paternity story reads like the plot Walsh cooked up for Bradley Cole and one of the French characters on "Riviera," which Walsh had written for directly before heading over to "Loving." I think it was damaging to the show's canvas, even moreso than the serial killer. It was an unnecessary move that rarely resulted in much drama.

I hate that storyline so much and instead of steering out of it, Guza and Taggart doubled down by having Gwyn find evidence that made it geographically impossible for Cabot to be Clay's father. And other than Clay's attempt to destroy AE, which abruptly ends after Trisha "dies," and a couple of mentions after Cabot comes back, it never gets mentioned again and doesn't actually affect anything.

Celeste Holm hated it, too. I was leafing through an old Digest relatively recently and there was a "why they left" article featuring Holm. This is what she said about the story:

Quote

I was asked to be on the show to bring my character's husband, Cabot, back as a ghost. They wanted to bring back the relationship that he and I had together. I thought that was just fine, if they could write it. That storyline went along for a while, but not very long. Then all of a sudden, they wanted me to trash the relationship. I said that I could never trash it, not after all the years of devotion. So I asked them to please let me try it my way. They said, 'Don't complain.' I said, 'But you are changing the rules now. This is not what I agreed to do.

The character began to get more and more devious, and again I said, 'No, this is not what I agreed to do.' Then along came a new producer and she didn't like what I what I was doing at all. So I said, 'If you don't like what I'm doing, then let's just get divorced as quickly as possible' - so we did.

[My leaving] had nothing to do with contracts or money. It had to do with concept. I was brought on to play one kind of relationship; then it began to change very subtly, but not in what I thought was a good way. The last thing I wanted to be in was a scuffling relationship, where they say, 'You can't do this, and you mustn't do that.' Look, if you want me, you want me. If you don't want me, then goodbye.

5 hours ago, dc11786 said:

I thought dropping Clay/Gwyn to go Gwyn/Jeremy was stupid. 

Christine Tudor and Dennis Parlato had chemistry for days and the dynamic they created between Gwyneth and Clay was so interesting. They were possessive of each other, but at the same time each seemed largely unbothered by the idea of the other sleeping with someone else (Gwyneth used Clay to honeytrap Tess, after all). If it weren't for the fact that this was an American soap, I'd say that they could have been used to explore a nonmonogamous relationship.

Gwyneth and Jeremy were okay, I thought. They had decent chemistry, Tudor and Jean LeClerc put a lot into selling it, and I can see from a character perspective how a relationship with Jeremy would have been a breath of fresh air for Gwyn, but that's also what made the relationship a dead end storywise. Once Clay was removed as a potential obstacle, there was no natural conflict in the relationship and the show seemed disinterested in creating new conflict for it.

On 7/16/2023 at 4:52 PM, 1974mdp said:

I didn't really start watching the show until the Allie/Cooper/Casey/Steffi years which I thought were, overall, entertaining and the actors had great chemistry with each other. Steffi's mom, Debra, was a great find!

Curious to know what some others thought was "the best" era of the show.

I'm very fond of the short Guza/Taggart run. There are some big flaws, but I thought they struck a great balance between heavy and lighter material and I find those episodes very rewatchable. It sort of unravels at the end, with a sense that they're throwing anything and everything against the wall and seeing what sticks, but even then I find the stories they're laying the groundwork for (a Trucker/Angie relationship, a Dinah Lee/Alex/Ava/Jeremy quad, a Clay/Gwyneth/Buck/Stacey quad) intriguing.

I'm mixed on Agnes Nixon's 93-94 run. I think the Dante Partou storyline is great umbrella story that draws the canvas together after the chaotic ending of Guza/Taggart's run, the Deborah/Clay/Steffi/Cooper story is one of my favorite Loving stories ever, and I think that Steffi's bulimia story is really well done in that instead of wrapping it up in a couple of months with a nice, social issues bow, it instead ebbs and flows through Steffi's other stories throughout the year and into the next.

On the other hand, the show feels less balanced during her run than it did during Guza/Taggart's because it tends to focus intensely on one story for a few weeks while characters who aren't part of that story just disappear for lengthy periods of time; and I dislike how several of the characters are approached. Egypt is brought back just to be destroyed, which was a waste (instead of ending Ava and Jeremy's relationship within a month of Alex's return, I think it would have been better to keep that relationship going until Egypt's return, see what kind of chemistry Linda Cook and Jean LeClerc had, and turn it into an Egypt/Alex/Ava/Jeremy quad with Ava and Alex ending up together and Egypt and Jeremy ending up together). Stacey is treated as though she's nothing outside of Buck and just languishes on the sidelines for months while he has a series of other stories. Dinah Lee becomes so reduced as a character that her relationship with Trucker becomes her entire personality. I hate that Curtis becomes the show's whipping boy, and I hate that the show gives up on Shana, who barely appears during her last six months on the show.

I'd really like to see more of Marland's years and more of the Taggart/King years.

22 hours ago, cassadine1991 said:

Speaking of Kevin, how long did ken kenitzer last? Only seen him sporadically in the July and August 1995 episodes 

I remember reading a piece in SOD, I think it was circa the start of Timothy Gibb's run, where they looked at each actor who had played Kevin as an adult and described what they had done onscreen. When it came to Kenitzer it just said something to the effect that he put on his coat and left, his stint having been so short that the character didn't do anything of note during his portrayal.

2 hours ago, Franko said:

Let it be noted that Geoffrey C. Ewing likely appeared in all 23 episodes of Loving that aired in May 1995. @Kane's site doesn't have a recap for May 18, but we can make an educated guess that Ewing appeared that day. Also, Ewing, Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams will end the month as the three actors with the most appearances. And assuming that she appeared in the May 18 episode, Debbi was in 23 straight episodes from April 20-May 22.

I have mixed feelings about Brown & Esensten, but one of the positive things about their regime is that they actually wrote for and prioritized the black cast members. I won't be at all surprised if it turns out that Alimi Ballard had more episodes in 1995 than in 1993 and 1994 combined. Ewing, too, actually.

11 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@Kane @dc11786 @victoria foxton @danfling @slick jones @soapfan770 @Paul Raven @Vee @SFK @Sapounopera @j swift @Franko @Soaplovers @Joseph @FrenchFan @Soapsuds

 

 

Thanks very much. I believe this episode is from the week of October 19, 1987.

Couldn't help but laugh at 19 year olds Trisha and Steve showing up dressed like an old married couple while Stacey stands there dressed like a tween.

31 minutes ago, Vee said:

I still don't understand how the Scott/Karen reveal happened with him already off the show IIRC. What the point of it was.

To underscore how pointless it was: Rhonda wouldn't even let Karen tell Lee and Gail about it, reasoning that that should be up to Scott, so there wasn't even a scene where they react as proxies for Scott. And Karen is so weirdly nonchalant about being forbidden from saying anything and about the fact that Rhonda kept her from having any family beyond her. Given how rough Karen's childhood was, you would think that she'd be pretty mad that she could have had a father and grandparents in her life, especially with Gail being a psychiatrist who might have recognized that something was wrong when Ray came into the picture. Instead Karen just sort of shrugs it all off and then leaves with Jagger.

36 minutes ago, carolineg said:

For the life of me I can't tell you why Damian/Scully were screwing up Deception's shipments or why that was profitable for them.  I almost want to say it was Sonny/Luke trying to distract Scully away from the earnings from Luke's club that he thought he had a right to and I think Lucy was game because she wanted to help or a distraction.  The details escape me, but it was something like that. 

I think the Damian faking his death might all be part of the same story or at least the continuation of it.  

 

If I recall correctly, Damian wasn't trying to make a profit, he was just doing it to mess with Lucy (and ELQ). I can't recall what Scully's motivation was, but afterwards Lucy was trying to get revenge against them by teaming up with Sonny and Luke against Scully, who had come into town and expected a piece of the action from everything Sonny was involved in, including the club. The story ended with Scully kidnapping Lucy, Luke and Sonny rescuing her but getting caught by Scully, and Mike coming along just in time to take a bullet meant for Sonny, who then shot and killed Scully.