Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[Soaplovers]

Were Ned, April, etc....college students? 

 

Didn't teri polo play a character on the soap during that time period?

[dc11786]

Ned Bates was part of high school set built around Kelly Conway, Lorna's stepdaughter. Kelly was involved with Rob Carpenter, who was a punk with a careless mother. At the time, Jim Vochek had amnesia  and was working at Corinth High because he no longer remembered being a priest. Initially, Ned is interested in Kelly before April is introduced. Also introduced around this time was Dave Hindman, the basketball playing son of Lt. Art Hindman. Dave had academic difficulthy the basketball coach, MacDonald, made sure that Dave would pass. Jim took an interest in Dave and was determined to make sure he would be able to go to college.

 

There may have been a change in writers (from Bill Levinson to Ralph Ellis) in the spring of 1987 because there are some signficant story shifts. April Hathaway is introduced. April is living with her alcoholic cousin, Marty, who took an interest in Jim Vochek. April had been knocked up by a boyfriend, had an abortion, and was kicked out by her parents. I believe the boy's brother was the Alan Howard character who would later kidnap her. This backstory sounds similar to Ralph Ellis' backstory for Jenny Deacon, woman who was pregnant by a wealthy boyfriend, got pregnant, and became a prostitute. Nixon touted April and Ned as the show's new couple to watch when interviewed about the show's fourth anniversary. 

 

By May, Kathleen Fisk was dropped as Kelly. Kelly was sent to live with Zach and Lorna in San Francisco. Zach and Lorna had left earlier in the year on their honeymoon and never came back. During this time, Kelly was living with the Aldens. Kelly was replaced with Teri Polo's Kristen Larson, who was initially helping out Dave Hindman to pass his classes and then set her sights on Ned. Rob Carpenter also sort of disappears from the synopses around this time. His mother had abandoned him and come back only for the Carpenters to be evicted. Terry was leaving town to live with her new boyfriend and Rob seems to be left trying to find a place to live. 

 

My guess is the plan was initially to transition this group to Alden University, but clearly that never happened. Most of these characters are completely forgotten. April is trying to escape prostitution, then she is stalked by Alan Howard, and then she ends up being kidnapped by the man. When she started on "Another World," Alexandra Wilson declared that April had no real sense of identity and that "Loving" was extremely melodramatic. I don't think she was wrong. From what I've seen of Ellis' 1982 "Search for Tomorrow" run, Ellis can tell some very good character based stories, but he also has characters with extremely loaded backstories. He also could write very poor action adventure tales. I know some of the Alex/Clay and Ava clips feature a story about the duo crashing in the woods. Seems like Ellis was replaying his South American plane crash story from "Search for Tomorrow."

 

In general, I don't think the teenage prostitution angle was the best story to explore less than a year after suggesting that Dolly Jones' daughter was the star of child pornography. At the same time you had April, Lily Slater did return to town. It may have been too heavy for the show. 

 

[victoria foxton]

@dc11786Just wanted to tell you that your Loving posts are awesome. Until today i've never heard of most of those characters. All the comings and goings made my head spin.The teen scene sounded promising until the change in HW's.

Edited July 1, 2020 by victoria foxton

[Soaplovers]

 

I've seen clips off Ned, April, etc...they looked too old to be high schoolers lol

 

Character I'm intrigued by was Cecelia cause the three actresses playing her were so different.

[Manny]

Well considering that Luke Perry went on to play a high schooler Dylan McKay three years later on 90210, I guess him playing a high schooler on Loving is fine

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[Ken R]

Alan Locher did a reunion of GL and ATWT writers that included Millee Taggart and James Harmon Brown. In addition to talking about how she transitioned from acting to writing, she talks a bit about Loving—she recalls writing Kate's cancer story against the wishes of the network. She really wanted Kate's cancer to work as a vehicle to redeem Ava, but ABC was against a "disease" story. Her comments on this begin around the 35:47 mark.

 

James Harmon Brown doesn't give many specifics from Loving, but he does mention purposely bringing Laura Wright over to GL because he loved her work on Loving and The City.

 

Courtney Simon is also part of the conversation—she wrote briefly under Taggart—but doesn't say a lot about Loving. But it's one of the more Interesting reunions Alan Locher has done.

 

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[antmunoz]

THE LOVING MURDERS have unfortunately vanished from YouTube. 

[amybrickwallace]

 

And, of course, the two women were longtime castmates on SFT.

[DRW50]

 

I never did finish them...it's hard for me to watch a lot of that period. I hope someone may put them back up as I sure don't think anybody is taking down Loving for copyright issues.

[Vee]

A travesty. I'm glad I finished them when I did. That story was propulsive, dark yet full of soap and it got me through much of the early months of the hell that is this year. I never thought I'd get to see that story again as an adult and it holds up. If Disney/ABCD ever wises up and monetizes the old archives, I'd pay for it.

[OzFrog]

 

Sorry to bring it off topic for a moment, but I didn’t even realise until the other night reading old SFT synopses that Peter Simon was Scott Phillips to Courtney’s Kathy. It sounds like they had amazing chemistry and were a big factor in SFT’s popularity in the 70s.

 

Yeah sadly the Bob TV channel got totally deleted

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, which is a shame because he had some absolute gems up there, of which the Loving Murders was one. And like Vee, it was pure escapism for me in the first few weeks of lockdown here in London. So extremely grateful I got to watch them all.

[victoria foxton]

 

 

  

[Forever8]

New Loving Reunion Alert!!!

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Chris Marcantel & Peggy Ellis of Showrunner Productions present: "The Men of LOVING"... a LIVE streamed interactive event featuring: Chip Albers (Curtis Alden #4), Christopher Cass (Jack Forbes), James Horan (Clay Alden), Randolph Mantooth (Alex Masters), and Christopher Marcantel (Curtis Alden #1) The event will be moderated by "LOVING" historian and Super Fan - Tricia Shatney.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DRW50]

Weird as we were just talking about Chip. Maybe they read the boards. 

 

James was so underrated as Clay.

[OzFrog]

It just occurred to me... if there was ever a Harvey Weinstein biopic made for whatever reason, Chris Marcantel would be perfect from a resemblance perspective

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