EricMontreal22

Love that video remix -- and it goes to show how you can make a GOOD video with zero budget when the label is being arses and you have to fund it yourself in the middle of a major tour

Still really into Myleen Farmer's new album--the album more than the single but I still like the video

Interesting--sadly I only saw Taggart's later era teamed up with Guza--but I think she's a great writer. I didn't realize they wrote for RH and ATWT together

Well the first 6 months of City *were* weak--maybe not weak but they were obviously trying to find their footing--and I guess that's when Harding watched? However, even then with Nick, Angie and Jesse, etc I'd argue he was wrong. And he did say he disliked it--which I obviously don't./

Haha love your new opening (I always smile when I see how you've inserted yourself into it--very cute). i agree with everything you said. I know Haridng Lemay apparantly told ABC, when he was consulting, that it was an awful show and proved that you needed families to be the center of a soap--I don't htink he coulda been more wrong. They managed to show how you DIDN'T need families to be a core and couls still have a sense of community (setting it in the same building was a spectacular idea). I admit it's nearly entirely my lvoe of this show that gives me so much patience with Brown and Esenstens's other projects.

While I liked Morgan Fairchild on the show--it only really came together when Tracey joined. I didn't know her or her character from Gh but I was enthralled--I seriously have thought about becomign a GH watcher a few times just to watch her again but...

A few things to remember about the City. I still don't think it was given its fair chance. It started off rocky--and making a serial killer storyline that was a close clone to the just ended, and superior Loving Murders was an idiotic move--but the last 8 months or so were pretty much brilliant by my mind--it did exactly what it had set out to do.

It also at the time was the ONLY ABC soap to see its ratings consistantly climb each week in those last months--albeit by very small degrees. But they had already decided it was to be replaced. Apparantly it was an expensive soap to film--and I think the fact that many considered it still more Loving, a soap that had been given more than ten years to succeed, and for whatever reason ABC didn't own it but Agnes Nixon's company did (ABC owuld own Port Charles--and they could shoot it on GH's sets) was a big factor for hte quick cancellation.

It was repeated on our local ABC at 1am or so and I actually thought the late night was an even better time for it. That's another factor--it was force into the loser time slot that already was bad for Loving but maybe even worse for a "youth" soap.

It's kinda funny people are already calling this a comeback when it doesn't seem to be any change or progression from her last album...

It sounds like a weird mix of two album tracks from her last album--Radar and Ooh Ooh Baby

I've seen 6 or so eps of the show--it was reaired a few years back on Hallmark Channel orsomething and I *loved* what I saw--it definetly had potential compared to some other shows that tried for Dallas' success.

And the old movie is a classic (although less soapy than I expected all things considered)

Well Addie did play up the college setting (something I liked) which is true for these eps--as you say. It was only a month after the new and final openign came in--which was Fran's doing wasn't it?

Thanks! The episode I found on video had no end credits--but was from March. The other two stories left me just as baffled and with no memories of them--Trucker and Stacey investigating some secret place of Caboott's with a crazy lady threatening to shoot them--and AVa Rescott withher husband in a wheelchair talking to her mom worried about Carly being in Chicago--then flash to Carly wandering the streets of CHicago, drinking from a bottle and flashbacking to running over some guy.

I started watching Loving briefly around the time I was started AMC--Fall 1991 when Ceare and Jeremy first crossed over (before Jeremy stayed) but then musta stopped till the following Summer or Fall when the week long Carter Jones/AMC cross over happened and that's when I became a regular viewer

I just found an episode from late march, 1992 and was wondering if anyone remember what was going on? it's the wedding at Pins between Dinah Lee and "trucker". But "Trucker" is really Clay Alden--and it's all being staged for Hannah's benefit--with Gwenyth helping and threating Clay to make Dinah Lee leave or she'll tell Hannah. I don't remember this story at all and was wondering if any fans on here remembered why they were hiding Clay's identity from Hannah?

I wish I could get SoapNet--as idiotic as the station's become I would definetly record and watch all of RH

So did SuBe, especially in 1999. Remember how many times Richard flashbacked to him finding the videotape and had the same scenes over and over when he had the stroke.

Wsa that the year JER consulted? ;)

You're right SUBE did but for whatever reason I NEVER found it as slow moving and repeititive as Passions. EVen when they did do repeated scenes it felt playful to me--like they were campily aware of it. I know on Passions they musta been too but you wouldn't know it

Wasn't NEtwork quite a bit before Marriage? I know a LOT of people (especially famous critic Pauline Kael--hardly a typical feminist of the time) found NEtwork overated and extremely mysoynistic (I'm undecided myself--part of the movie is brilliant, part feels patronizing and obvious in its satire and the role of women I think is poorly handled).

As for Marriage--I'd LOVE to see an episode, but I don't think any exist. It just seems like NOBODY (Except maybe ROsemary Prinz who returned to soaps for it) liked the show even a bit. Every book, from the time to now, calls it a bold attept at a show that just seemed to be forcing these issues down people's throats with no sense of story or character to make them interesting.

Well he shoulda stuck to consulting--though I actually didn't like his consulting era the best. My prob with Passions compared to Sube was Sube moved at a fun pace and had GREAT witty, campy dialogue. Passions moves at a snail's pace, repeats the same scene over and over so that they no longer are fun, and for nearly tis whole run had awful dialogue with one or two fun lines thrown in.

They changed the opening soon after cuz they thought it felt too primtime soap with the darker music etc--I loved it.

It's funny I've never been a huge Spelling fan but I really enjoyed SB (especially when Margaret DePriest was writer)--to me it was the campy, silly, FUN soap that Passions shoulda been but never was.

I should prob post it in an AMC thread but yeah--itneresting to see. I recently found a SOD article from AMC's 20th annviersary where Julia Barr and the woman who played Natalie seem to agree that 1988-89 was a rough patch for them

I know this is an odd place fro it, but since we discussed DePriest's era at AMC here, Snarksweighsin just put some AMC with her listed as HW (Lorrained Broderick AND Megan McT are also writers) from 1989. I believe (I have't watched it all yet) it may have some of the infamous Erica's father is a clown story.

Snark Weighs In put a 1989 episode up just this week on youtube. Episode one :

Anyone remember the stories? What's going on with Jack and Stacey? It took me a while to realize she didn't jsut have amnesia or something but now it seems like Jack and her had rules about not going too fast again. and I don't think I even remembered that Trisha had a bastard brother called Rick--is he played by an actor who played Matt's closeted soap star boyfriend on Melrose Place? I recognize him from somehwere

I know most of the Alex pretending to be Clay story though from descriptions I've read I could never completely untangle it--but I never remember seeing this Clay (they recast the role quite a bit like all Aldens it seems--I think Lorkin M was in the role when i started). --Gotta love Alex's hair! Lisa Peluso is a bit of a different Ava than I remember her in the 90s--which reminds me, what happened to Ava at the end? Was she killed off in the murders? I can't remember...

I had never seen this opening so clearly--I like the song though I find the vocals pretty cheesy for 1989--but never realized there were drawn images of many of the couples in the credits--kinda Y&Rish. Sadly no writing credits

Yes AMC was far more successful rating wise in the early 90s--from 90 or 91 to about 95 it was almost always the number 2 show. I loved it. I also loved OLTL under Malone--some years it was prob the better show, but one thing peopel seem to forget, Malone and Griffith and Gottlieb got OLTL talked about and respected and awarded, but not hugely watched--it was consistantly the seventh or sixth highest rated show under that team according to Soap Opera Encyclopedia.

I actually think Loving and AMC had a similar feel for some of this era. I became a Loving fan as a young teen because of the Carter Jones crossover month really with characters going between each show (I believe Summerish 1992 though Jeremy and Ceara had already made a brief crossover the fall before, and Jeremy would stay after Carter Jones). I also didn't find Loving purely escapist--even before Casey they delt with youth drug use, sexual abuse (though the Cooper storyline was botched I still found it powerful at the time) etc. Granted things like AVa and Jeremy later on running from GH's Faison through Universal Studios weren't very realistic but AMC and OLTL had moments like that back then. (I still think Loving, to get ratings, shoulda been aired between AMC and OLTL as intended originally).

As for ANgie--I thought they messed that up by not having her come back to AMC briefly FIRST and then go to Loving. If you didn't watch Loving or see the ads and were an Angie fan, you'd have no idea she was on a new show. Still I loved her on it, even liked Jacob even if I agree with you about Charles, and I know Agnes Nixon had always been trying to get some colour on Loving (She offered to bring Carla, Ellen Holly's role over from One Life to Live when Rauch fired her but I think Ellen saw goign to a lower rated show as an insult). Jeremy's cross over, though they never really seemed to know what to do with him on Loving and his twin was pretty awful I thought, made sense too--he was a popualr character who literally had run out of stories and mates on AMC.

Thanks for such good memories of the Brown/Esensen Loving era. I have a lot of 90s Loving muddled up in my mind. OK I'll agree with you it was a step backwards--but I'd argue, besdies some major cast departurs, probably from near the beginning B/E knew they were there essentially to clean house and move everyone to The City. Characters like Tony and Danny always felt introduced to me largely just so they could go on to The City. ANyway I actually at the time really liked all the dark Casey stuff, though I get your point. I didn't even remember Charles and Lorraine--all my Lorraine memories are her troubled pairing with Nick (Roscoe Borns) on City which I liked a lot.

I do agree that Brown/Esensten seem best as brakdown writers--I hope they get a job in that capacity. That said I found the whole show during the serial killer storyline thrilling (I meant that that seemed to be the main purpose of their writing the show, even when they first came on it seemed to be building up to that), and while the first 6 months of The City were a mess (I heard ABC pressured them to spike the ratings by doing the Masquerader serial killer storyline but having a serial killer story on a new soap, some 5 months after you'd just had a great one on your old soap really was a poor idea), I thought once Tracey QUartermaine moved to the City it clicked. I saved the last 4 months of the show on video and rewatched it when I was pretty sick a couple of years back and still hold that opinion.

Jeremy also stopped thru Llanview on his way to COrinth from Pine Valley where he saved some of Dorian's paintings from a fire. I think COrinth?pine Valley just had more crossovers because Agnes Nixon was still more connected to them

But the serial killer plot was most of it. I remember it being quite good--but yeah that's basically all I can remember of if lol. Were they chosen solely cuz of their work on... Dynasty I trhink? I wonder where Burke came from

I'm pretty sure he said somethign similar in All Her Children--they also talk about their son playing a role

Wasn't Wisner a producer at AMC first? THey interview and talk to him a lot in the 1976 book All Her Children and I think he basically says he was there from the start.

I think Wikipedia is kinda wrong with their AMC writing credits but it's hard to know. Certainly Agnes was VERY involved thru the early 90s--but there were periods where she went and wrote full time at Loving etc. Furthermore, despite what listings on here and Wikipedia say, in the actual TV credits Lorraine Broderick was HW for at least a few years in the 80s, as were others. Of course when the show would be nominated for an Emmy, Agnes would still lead the nomniation credit as head of the team (somethign I think she did thru the mid 90s even--)

So it's hard to know...

And then when did B/E come in?