Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Now that you've brought that up, it makes me wonder if Gwyn has deep seated hatred towards her daughter. That would've been interesting to explore. 

[Vee]

 

I think her behavior during the Loving Murders and her confession to Steffi made it clear she deeply resented (and loved) Trisha for leaving her.

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Why the Loving Murders annoyed me at times, I do have to admit that it is some of the best material to emerge from around that time. Sucks that ABC didn't realize how precious Loving really was. 

 

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[Soaplovers]

Those final months of loving show what happens when a network doesnt interfere..and let's the writers focus on their jobs.  ABC wanted a spinoff/revamp..so the last headwriters went about doing that with a well written murder mystery, plus a logical ending to alex/ava with that annoying red headed interloper.  Im sure ava was written out due to cutting costs even though Ava vs Sydney would have been fun..imho.

 

Looking at scenes throughout the run of the show, Gwyn seemed aimless and unsatisfied..keeping up with appearances and maintaining status.  So it makes sense she would finally snap (there was a period of time in the early to mid 90s that her character tried to find herself..working as a bar tender, in a hotel, and finally at Tess' agency).  And her and Trisha never had a smooth relationship...she was always teying to control Trisha...who just wanted to live her life and didn't care about status..just love and contentment...a contrast to Gwyn.  When trisha 'died'..gwyn felt regret and transferred those maternal feelings to Janie then Steffi.  And when Trisha turned out to be alive...she thought she had a 2nd chance to repair things with her daughter...only to have her daughter not remember her and reject her.  That was the straw that broke the camel's back.  The final writers took the various misdirection of the Gwyn character and put it to good use.

[DRW50]

I can see why @dc11786 said this was a good period for the show, as I enjoyed that episode quite a bit. The writing felt very intelligent in a way you wouldn't get much of the time (not now, and not even then), like Dinah Lee still having a tangled relationship with Jack even as the attraction with Trucker was growing. Giff sort of egging it on and pushing Trucker's buttons while also being a pal to him was interesting. Giff had the potential to be a strong and complicated leading man, like Alex - it's a shame they threw that away.

 

The scene where Kate comforts and supports Matt's mother is also very good and helps the material feel more heartfelt than the usual young couple against a mean mother trope. 

 

The only part that drags a bit for me is the Carly stuff, as her material is always so heavy, although Colleen Quinn was a good actress. 

 

Who was the woman she saw at the end?

[John]

who wuld fire Celeste Holm and bring on Patrica Barry. Horrible move. If Augusta wasnt gonna return in 1992 they should have kept Celeste as Isabelle

who is the guy with Ally and how long did he last?

[victoria foxton]

That's Matt Ford he was on from (1991–1992). Matt was jettisoned for Jeremy Hunter and the college kids at Alden University. A shame they dumped him. Matt had chemistry with Ally. Plus he could've made a great addition to the AU College crowd. 

[John]

who played him? The actor is quite goood

[victoria foxton]

 Eric Woodall who's now a casting director. Matt was abused by his stepfather so he run away. A homeless drug addicted Matt lived at the mall. Where he met Ally and Louie. Matt went on trial for a rape his evil step father committed. I forgot how they wrote him out.

Edited October 12, 2017 by victoria foxton

[Vee]

 

I'd like to know more about this, as I had no real concept of Ava and Alex back then like I do now, and details are scant in episodes available online. I know she freaked out about the case and took the kids to Florida, but it seemed like they just shuffled their longtime female lead off stage left at the end of the story after those two had been together years. Also, how did Jocelyn first get woven into Loving? I know they allegedly wanted to bring Peluso onto The City had it lasted. (And when did Danny die and Tony arrive? He sure got over Steffi and moved on to Ally fast when Heinle left TC).

 

I do think Gwyneth's arc makes sense with the murders capping it off, but the mishandling of Trisha over years is just bonkers to me. I don't know how anyone thought it was viable to leave her off somewhere amnesiac wandering the earth for years, especially at the very end when they had options. It's up there with how carelessly OLTL handled Marty Saybrooke's final exit, though they did attempt to put a hasty band-aid on it months later with an off-camera mention.

[DRW50]

 

That's pretty much what they did with Ava. Some soap magazines at the time criticized the decision and said that it was OOC for Ava to react that way. I'm not sure I agree, but I do think she deserved a better exit. I think Lisa wanted to leave but I wonder if it was mutual as there was a push for new, hot faces, even though Ava would have fit The City very well.

 

I think Jocelyn came to Corinth to help Danny after he was arrested when Ally lied that he'd raped her. I think Tony arrived after Stacey was murdered - he was brought in to help with the case. 

 

The oddest part of everything with Trisha wandering around as an amnesiac with her psycho ex Jeff (I can't see an ending like that being put through today) is that Jeff went on a South African soap, Egoli. I don't believe there was mention of Trisha and I'm not sure they mentioned Jeff when Trisha popped back up on Loving. Apparently Jeff was a good guy on Egoli. I'd love to see some of that. Knowing what I have seen of South African soaps, which have some men who make Victor Newman seem like a pussycat, I guess I can see why he might have mellowed out.

[Vee]

To be clear I did watch during the Loving Murders as a kid, but my memories from back then of almost anyone who didn't go on to be on TC are vague at best. So yeah, my knowledge of Ava is mostly from YT. The most I remember from pre-murder Loving is Angie and such - Debbi Morgan hooked me.

[Paul Raven]

TV: 'LOVING,' NEW ABC SOAP OPERA

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR

 

THERE is a new soap opera in television town. It's called ''Loving'' and can be seen weekdays at 11:30 on ABC, representing the first new ''daytime drama'' that the network has commissioned in eight years. One of the architects of the plot is Agnes Nixon, the so-called soap queen whose successes include ''All My Children'' and ''One Life to Live.'' Credit is also given to Douglas Marland, who, as head writer on the project, is clearly in charge of ongoing developments.

''Loving'' remains true to the basic construction that is the hallmark of all soap operas. Instead of a hospital setting, through which can pass a variety of sterotypes, the new show revolves around a university campus situated in a geographically vague Northeastern town called, of all things, Corinth. Moving right up into the 1980's, the heroine is a television news anchor named Merrill Vochek, product of a modest family background but obviously destined for bigger things. She is described in one network release as ''idealistic, caring and ready to fight for what she wants out of life.'' The going, needless to say, won't be easy.

In a special two-hour television movie that launched the series Sunday night, Merrill found evidence of a prostitution ring involving students at Alden University. Unfortunately, her initial informant was later found dead in a motel room. Scrawled across the bathroom mirror in lipstick was the message: ''Whores Must Die.''

A classic bit of soap dialogue was exchanged between the two investigating policeman: The first: ''What a waste, huh?'' The second: ''You telling me?'' Details of the prostitution business were kept rather hazy. It seemed the recruits were poor students who could not exist solely on skimpy financial grants from a work-study program. But the very subject was a signal that ''Loving'' is going to tackle ''serious'' stuff. Reportedly on tap for future plotlines, for example, are explorations of alcoholism and AIDS. More to the point, the prostitution gambit provided a vehicle for introducing most of the major characters.

Merrill can move easily among different groups of people. She is having an affair with her childhood sweetheart, Douglas Donovan, the boy next door who is a model of innocent goodness. Douglas is the kind of guy who, when finding Merrill and his mother in the family kitchen, can exclaim, ''Well, my two favorite women in the world!'' Merrill loves Douglas, but not quite enough to marry him. Meanwhile, Douglas's brother, Mike, is a cop who is not necessarily impressed with the powerful and their ''fancy shindigs.''

At the other end of the social scale, there are the Forbeses. Roger Forbes, son of a self-made millionaire, is a former Congressman with Presidential ambitions. He becomes the new president of Alden University. Someone helpfully notes that a similar position didn't hurt the careers of Woodrow Wilson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the process, Roger bumps to the lesser position of dean Garth Slater, one of the more slimy villains to grace a soap-opera stage in recent times. Roger and his wife have two children: the beautiful but dangerously scheming Lorna, and the handsome, athletic Jack who, in addition to running around in skimpy shorts most of the time, happens to be adopted.

Sunday night's movie also included the one-time-only characters of Roger's father, Johnny, and his former love interest Amelia Whitley, secretary to the university president. Scorned by Johnny, Amelia was desperate for revenge and, as it turned out, she was the organizer of the prostitution ring. After finally killing Johnny, she was hauled off, one hopes to an appropriate insitution. Giving this utter nonsense a modicum of interest was the casting. Johnny was played by Lloyd Bridges, Amelia by Geraldine Page, who kept lurching about wearing crazy hats and puffing on odd cigarettes. Faced with a hopeless situation, Miss Page evidently decided to unveil her own special impersonation of a Russian empress.

As the writers would have it, on the special and on Monday's first episode of the series, idealistic Merrill and rich Roger are falling in love with each other. She has qualms because he is married. He is determined. Daughter Lorna is watching carefully, eager to make trouble for everybody in sight. Meanwhile, son Jack is falling for delicate Lily, daughter of the abominable Garth. Finding her alone in the garden, Jack says, ''Hello, there.'' Smiling shyly, she responds, ''Hello.'' This pregnant exchange was followed by a commercial break. Returning to the story, Lily reveals, ''I want to be a concert pianist some day.'' Still waiting in the wings to be introduced are Merrill's brother, a priest, and Douglas's sister, a star college athelete.

In case anybody missed the point, an announcer at the end of the first episode boomed on rhapsodically about ''the warmth of the Donovan family, the mystery of the Slater family, the conflicts of the Forbes family - the passion, the power, the drama of 'Loving.' '' What the world needs now, especially the world of soap opera, is a good, unvarnished sense of shame. The one note of interest in this entire enterprise is struck, against formidable odds, in the solid performance, at times suggesting a wicked parody of Jessica Savitch, of Patricia Kalember as Merrill. Joe Stuart is the producer of ''Loving.''

[SFK]

I'm pretty sure Celeste Holm left on her own accord, tired of the soap grind, or at least that's what my mother told me according to her soap magazines.  I remember thinking it odd that she "left her husband behind."  If they did in fact fire her, that must have been awkward with Wesley Addy still on the show having to act opposite his wife's replacement.  My mom quipped about how Isabelle's face in the portrait with Cabot kept changing.

I think I have an episode on tape of when Cabot came back from the dead, plain clothes and baseball cap on a park bench talking to somebody.  I'll post it when/if I find it.

[amybrickwallace]

 

Laura Wright said in an interview for SOD some time back that she and Eric Woodall are still good friends to this day.