Loving classic episode from its first year

[EricMontreal22]

Loving/The City has always been a pet obssession of mine--while I've watched AMC nearly as long (I started watching Loving when they cross overed with Jeremy and his wife moving ot Loving and then the Carter/Galen/Natalie mystery crossing over in I think late 1992 or 93) and aroudn the same time as OLTL, I've always had a soft spot for Loving. I think most of its run in the 90s was good to VERY good with a good feel similar to old school AMC before it became more about big businesses in the 80s (probably helped that the ehad writers for much of when I watched wtere Millee Taggert then Addie Walsh and then Agnes Nixon herself for nearly all of '94) and I loved the direction B&E and Nixon took it in when transforming it to City--even if I found it hard ot let go of a lot about the original show... Part of my affection is how similar it felt to me liek a little sister to AMC and part I admit is that ther'es just so damn little info on it out there. The various Soap books I have, never cover much of the story in detail like they do for other shows, it went thru so many producers and writers especially in the 80s, as well as characters, that it's harder for me to have a clear view of its backstory.

Anyway I've long searched for old episodes but never found one before from earlier than 1989 (except for the loosely related pilot TV movie)--so by chance when I was youtubing last night I saw that the best youtube poster for vintage soaps had posted an episode from near the end of its first full year--when I believe Doug Marland was still headwriter (he left pretty quickly after the first year, partly due to disagreements with Agnes). The episode is nothing special but I think has a huge charm and reminds me both of classic 70s and early 80s AMC, or what I've seen, and of DOug Marland's ATWT (the Donovon's House looks a lot liek the Snyder's)

So for those of you who didn't see this on youtube--enjoy--maybe it can start some Loving talk

7Hlii1Qejio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hlii1Qejio (part 1 of 5) The same poster has many clips from later Loving--the murders especially but those have always been easy to find

[Cat]

Oh, WashesWhiter is the one of the best contributors on youtube. I would watch the soaps he/she posts for hours, if I could. The fact that he/she has the network "rough cuts" of some of these episodes (and not something taped off the TV) makes me wonder if he/she is a former network insider!

This episode is indeed charming. I like the whole American Gothic vibe with the production design and decor, and the opening theme is so Old School ABC, I cannot get enough of it! All stirring strings and harps. Watching the show itself makes me realize how much soaps made a virtue of simplicity back then. Nothing beats just walking into a room and launching into conversation with another character (like Dane is doing with Shana). As long as the dialogue is rich and character-driven (as well as plot driven).

By the way, Shana reminds me a little of SuBe's Annie Douglas (if Agnes Nixon & Douglas Marland had written Sunset Beach, LOL).

I wonder why Loving never gets the mentions or the love that other ABC soaps got. Even Ryan's Hope (another half-hour soap) had a cult following. ABC really was the Agnes Broadcasting Company, though. She had three soaps on the air at one time. I'm surprised ABC never got Gloria Monty (she who saved GH) to create and run a new soap.

[Cat]

ETA: Oh, forgot to add... Shana and Dane were smokin together. I know she and Father Jim were the big Forbidden Love couple, but Susan Keith and Herrera generated some pretty great chemistry.

Stacey was the sort of sweetheart character we don't see on soaps so much anymore. Loved the actress, though.

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah the Stacey actreess was the only one to be on the show from day one to the end--and then I guess she retired from acting...

Ultimatley the love triangle became Shana/Mike/Jim. As soon as Marland left the show--I think even just a few months after this episode, it lost direction apparantly--within a year they introduced a new character who to get back at Father Jim sold his soul to the devil (!) he only lasted a year though. Then the show became too involved in international crime plots liek GH until Agnes Nixon finally head wrote it and maybe made it a bit too much of an AMC clone (though I liekd that aspect--she played up the Erica Kane based Ava Rescott). But by the 90s the show really found its style again--they built up the campus setting and characters, added more lower class characters (for a while in the 80s it was almost all Aldens) and added more older characters with emphasis on Ava's mom Kate and her marriage to Louis Sawalsky, etc. They also did a great job of tackling topics--when Iw atched as a yougn teen in the 90s I specifically remember being shocked and really moved by Cooper Alden's sexual abuse storyline, etc. Ah I just miss the show and wish more eps were out there...

I have to admit I get why people love Ryan's Hope and why Hope fans resent Loving but for me, it's Loving that I see as the best long lost soap...

Yeha i just discovered Washes Whiter's videos this week! some of them are episodes I already saw on WOST.org back when wost actually was free and I used it, but many are ones I didn't knwo were floating around.

He just posted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJKxFQRi0ng) an episode from One Life to Live's glory year, 1978 that i hadn't seen before even though I ahd seen a lot of other eps from that year.

[JoelMTL]

Like you Eric, I too had what one might call a soft spot for Loving. While never my all-out favorite soap, it was often one of my top 3. By the time the Loving murders started as a way to introduce The City, the show was dynamite. Had the current emmy nominating system been in place in the mid-90's, there's no way Christine Tudor (Gwyn) would have been passed up for the Lead Actress nod or Loving for best writing and series.

[EricMontreal22]

Nice to see a Montrealer

Yeah--what ws annoying about Loving was how even the soap press blatantly ignored the show...

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I never understood that, because Ryan Hope was also a 30 minute soap that didn't have very high ratings, yet it was an Emmy darling. I also hear ABC and Loving had quite a backlash when they switched RH's time-slot with Loving's, which effectively lead to RH being canceled. It seemed like Loving never quite had the chance to be taken seriously and was overtly ignored by the soap media for years.

[angel]

His name was Jonathan I think. He was played by John O' Hurley who was J. Peterman on Seinfeld and the current host of Family Feud.

I loved LOVING even though I only watched during the LOVING murders. I watched a few episodes from YouTube. I watched some promos too...I forgot who posted them. Did LOVING really go to Italy? Which characters went?

[EricMontreal22]

Noelle Beck's character was found in Itlay wasn't she? What was her name... I'm surprised she never went to another soap (that I knwo of) she was so gorgeous--her and Trucker were probablyt he most physically perfect soap super couple.

I know Loving was, for whatever reaosn, very successful in Europe, Italya nd France especially...

Ava and Jeremy had a classic/cheasy chase thru Universal Studios too...

[EricMontreal22]

Hahah I found a youtube clip devoted to the couple http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USb_o9YlIpc edit well actually more devoted to Trucker's abs...

[Andrew]

If anyone knows where Christine Tudor (Gwyneths) acting career have gotten, i would like to know.

Anyone Remembers Egypt & Ava!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.................????????????????.

[Cheap21]

^^^^^I loved Ava and all her fighting with Egypt

AMC's Carter/Galen/Natalie crossed over to Loving? What was the story there?

[EricMontreal22]

First Dinah Lee (and I think her sister Hannah played by Rebecca Gayheart) came to Pine Valley to stay with Myrtle--for whatever reason. Turned out Dinah Lee knew Carter Jones from before (he had abused her before) then afte rhaving natalie hostage he went back to Corinth for a week and held Dinah Lee hostage in the bowling alley--Trevor and Jeremy managed to rescue her (and they had a cute scene with Trevor and Shana asking if they had met before--since they got married after the show)

E

[Cheap21]

Oh thanks. I think I vaguely remember a promo about Hannah going to AMC. I loved Dinah Lee. She and Tucker were one of my favorite pairings on that show

[Sedrick]

Perhaps the sheer simplicity and "throwback to the old days" of soap opera that LOVING so excelled at under Marland is what was its downfall...

Basically in 1983 ABC pretty much had Agnes Nixon to in a de facto way expand AMC to 90 minutes...early LOVING was most certainly attempting to recreate the early days of AMC, and Nixon and Marland pulled it off rather well. Unfortunately, keep in mind that AMC debuted in 1970...LOVING was born into a totally different time and era in daytime. In fact in 1983 AMC itself, although structually and conceptually the same, was a different more advanced soap than it had been 13 years before. The 80's were all about bigger and better...take a look at the competing networks new soaps during this period...NBC had TEXAS and SANTA BARBARA, both expensive glamour vehicles designed to be a hybrid of traditional daytime drama and the hugely success primetime soap formula popularized by DALLAS and DYNASTY; CBS kicked old chestnut SEARCH FOR TOMORROW to the curb in favor of CAPITOL, which was perhaps thanks to John "I will give you the BEST production values EVER but forget a good story!" Conboy THE most lush and glamourous soap ever in daytime. Then you have ABC launching a simple DOMESTIC drama more in tune with the Labine and Meyer masterpiece of RYAN'S HOPE, which ABC at the time was basically imploding in an attempt to make RYAN's less domestic and old shcool and more like the silly cartoon that GH had become.

On top of that, LOVING was first scheduled at 11:30 EST/10:30 (!)CST, despite the fact that ABC pubiclly promoted the show as a production aimed at hooking a large youth audience right off the bat. I know that in the Houston, Texas metro area we only saw the primetime debut and nothing else og LOVING until October 1984 since our local affiliate, along with several other major market ABC stations, declined to air the show in that original death slot.

The reason so many of the RYAN's HOPE faithful (I am a member of the cult too) hold such never-ending hatred for LOVING is because point blank ABC made such a stupid move with the timeslot switch, a development that once and for all proved that the network treated the prestigious, most award-winning soap in daytime EVER up until that period worse than an unwanted stepchild. ABC KNEW its decision would kill RYAN's...the fact that LOVING was experiencing bad affiliate clearance trouble at 11:30/10:30 (a time period the network had been programming for YEARS prior to LOVING without such trouble) alone was enough to know that the affiliates were going to be DAMNED if they gave their own extremely profitable noon timeslot (at the time one of the biggest moneymakers for local stations) over to the network to air a soap that already had been drifting in the ratings...it would have truly been better if ABC had just cancelled one show or the other in 84 instead of trying to not only have its cake and eat it too, but then to try and steal someone else's cake just to be greedy! It still has never come to light exactly what deals were struck in the ABC boardrooms that led to the infamous switch...initially rumors ran rampant that LOVING was going to be cancelled in early 84 due to the subpar numbers it was bringing in in the morning...in addition, the show was owned not by ABC but by Nixon herself, while RYAN'S was network owned...the truly only real answer was to cancel someone (keep in mind EDGE OF NIGHT was still on the schedule bravely fighting to be seen in its assigned 4/3CST slot even though most stations by the time had told ABC to kiss their asses regarding THAT...how did TPTB arrive at the decision to keep all three shows alive and on top of that attempt to hijack the affiliates' prized local time? Perhaps we'll never know, just as we still don't know exactly what went down between Nixon and Marland that caused them to clash so dramatically as to where Marland's name was removed from everything associated with LOVING following his departure.

And despite RYAN'S HOPE's trouble at the time, all together (except for the disasterous tenure of headwriter Pat Falken SMith, which at the time was still in the early stages) RYAN's was a far superior and more proven talent that LOVING, which by the time of the switch had basically turned into a completely different show from the one that had debuted in 83.

I remember getting into LOVING in early 1985 (most affiliates who had not shown the show in its original slot did pick it up in the new one, including Houston) when I had half-day kindergarten and my nanny would eat her lunch after The Price is Right before settling into the CBS schedule at 12:30 for ATWT. I only did so because even as a small child I had fallen in love with RYAN'S HOPE (I had the biggest crush on Marg Helegenberger!)...luckily KTRK did carry RYAN'S at 11:00, so I just kept watching the station at 11:30...as I got older I stuck with the habit even in the summer time when my older sister and I fought over whether we would watch ABC or Y&R on CBS (which I hated because it moved as slow as a DEAD snail)...LOVING after Marland's departure suffered from being daytime's 'kid in the crowd no one pays attention to'...although the show had its good moments, notably the romance of Steve and Trisha and Ava's sleeping her way through the Alden family (daytime's forerunner to Brooke Logan!), too often the show was simply BLAH...it wasn't bad, but it wasn't something that you excitedly made sure to see or discussed heatedly with your friends like AMC, DAYS or GH at the time. Lots of people say one of the downfalls of RYAN'S HOPE was it's constant recasting of the Ryan kids, but LOVING had an even worse problem: roles weren't recast, they were just written off at breakneck speed! You needed a guide to keep up with the constant new characters from month to month and abandoned storylines...there was little continuity and a casual viewer could never get their bearings. For instance, I was totally into the Steve/Trisha romance, which began during the school year...by the time school was out for the summer, the third wheel in the triangle, Cecelia Thompson, had been played by 3 VERY DIFFERENT actresses and then written out altogether; then shortly after Steve and Trisha married in a beautiful wedding shot on location that had me on the edge of my seat thanks to the festivities being interrupted by bullets from a sharps shooter (redneck Eban Bates, played by Matthew Cowles, who basically brought his infamous AMC character Billy Clyde Tuggle to Corinth with a different name), thinking back now I remember that action-packed wedding was the one and only time besides the final LOVING Murders storyline that I was able to hook my friends and family on the show! Anyway, right after that Steve was killed off! ABC and Nixon should have known that there was no way LOVING would ever build a solid audience when they were introducing major new families every other month and then writing them out at the end of the actors' first 13 week cycle! Then the show sparked again with the fatal attraction tale of Jack, Lily, and Stacey...the plot cooked and the sexual chemistry between Perry Stephens and Britt Helfer was nuclear...and then as always the story didn't climax but rather dried up and was dropped in order to push the few mainstray characters into either boring and/or weakly dramatic tales that the other soaps had already done years before a lot better.

Anyway, I had given completely on the show my the time I hit my teens, having been partially seduced by the still-maddening slow yet stable Y&R..but when Fran Sears took over in the early 90's as EP and promptly turned the show into daytime's very own soap sitcom (and the show was truly LAUGH OUT LOUD material on a daily basis! I even got my stubborn older sister into the antics of Gwen, Stacy Norma, and Ava! For the very first time I really thought the show could actually turn out to be something worth caring about, and then the buzz started to get good in the press...and then within months ABC fired Sears and turned the show back into, as my elderly aunt Irene would say 'the same old soup warmed over'. Under Sears LOVING FINALLY broke out of the daytime pack and became unique...truly funnier than AMC in its heyday yet still grounded in the basics of soap opera drama...and then without warning it was as if I were watching a poor revival of 15-minute era LOVE of LIFE circa 1953.

To wrap, because I got so engrossed in this that I totally forgot I'm supposed to be editing a speech for church in a few hours...although LOVING had its moments and never was just trash and/or awful television, it simply did not present the kinds of tales/characterizations/themes at the right times to succeed. Add to that the whole debacle with the timeslots and resulting backlash and we arrive at the fact that it is simply amazing LOVING lasted as long as it did!