Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[dc11786]

 

As much as I enjoy 1994, the show made several critical errors in the second half of 1994 that really hurt it which didn't help the many full and partial preemptions in the summer of 1994 when the show was pretty solid. Some things were out of their control (Jessica Collins not renewing her contract), but the handling of Dinahlee's exit was bad. Curtis rigging Buck's plane which lead to a crash was such a bad, destructive move for the character of Curtis. By some twisted logic, I can forgive Curtis for trying to convince Trucker that Trisha was alive because, well, she was even if Curtis didn't know that. Trying to mess with a plane just took the character too far. By the time you have him shooting Gwyn, there is nothing left for the character. Elizabeth Mitchell was very green and was asked to carry a very demanding story where Dinahlee had suffered from injuries that required her to learn to do many basic life skills again. It was too much for Mitchell and the story is pretty hard to watch because its cringy. Also, killing off Janie Sinclair who I think had the potential to be the show's new longterm young female schemer was a terrible choice. Through in the Jeremy / Gilbert story and things really fall apart towards the end of Nixon's 1994 run. Also, I love the Cradle Foundation mystery and Cabot coming back from the dead, but its a story without the sort of gravitas that should have come from bringing this character back from the dead. Revealing that the Sowoloskys, and not the Aldens, were to source of AE's fortune had the potential to create long story for at least a year, but instead it ended up being over in a few weeks. Insantiy. 

 

As Ken R said, the Gilbert / Jeremy story is pretty bad. Jean LeClerc was a fine actor, but Jeremy never really fits into the "Loving" canvas. His relationship with Gwyn after Gwyn decides she needs to be independent from Clay and the Aldens is nice, but Jeremy's role could have been fulfilled by someone else. I remember some scenes where they seemed to be chemistry testing LeClerc and Hickland during the fall of 1993 after Nixon arrived. I suspect Nixon would have wanted to do a Jeremy / Tess / Clay / Gwyn story as some point, but none of that came to pass. I do think the quartet was used a bit during the beginning stages of the advertising storyline, but nothing was ever substantial or completely utilized the potential. 

 

Back to Jeremy / Gilbert, this is one story that I feel DID get better when Nixon left and the focus was more on Ava and Sandy's kidnapping and the psychological exploration of what caused Gilbert to become the man that he was. The ending that Addie Walsh and Laurie McCarthy penned is very dramatic, but also makes Gilbert much more human. It wouldn't play well in the current climate. Alex, egged on by the psychotic Denise Nostrand, is convinced that Gilbert will kill his wife and son. Once he tracks them down to the Hunter family church, Alex shoots Gilbert even though he has already let Ava and Sandy go as well as save Sandy's life when he nearly fell through rotting floor boards. Alex feels guilty about the shooting and Charles encourages him to cover it up. Ava actually lies for Alex saying that Gilbert had a gun. My episodes stop in January so I don' t know how the story completely wraps. 

[DeliaIrisFan]

 

One thing I couldn't tell from the ratings while watching on YouTube was which week(s) in September/October those reruns of all the murder episodes aired.  Am I missing something or was there not a significant decline in ratings during that period?

 

And does anyone who watched at the time remember what those reruns were about?  One of the comments on YouTube when the Loving murders were first posted said something about the sets(?) for The City not being ready yet so they had to stretch the conclusion out, but that seems unprecedented for the time—although perhaps a precursor to "A Daytime to Remember" when The City(?) was canceled a few years later.  But the strategy with Loving was to air episodes only a few months old of a show that, well, had been canceled due to low ratings, which seems...daring.  They also didn't seem to make a point of specifying when new episodes would resume, whereas I still remember Reba M talking about the debut of Port Charles nonstop.  Although I didn't watch the full Loving reruns, just skipped around trying to catch "Stacey's" cute/cheesy cameos, so maybe I missed the announcements.

 

 

Nancy Addison Altman's Debra was one character I don't understand why she wasn't a bigger part of the story.  Nearly everyone else in town was a suspect at one point—including, literally, the butler—whereas one of the victims was her ex and two of the others were her in-laws, and nobody ever even questioned her, I don't think.  Even after that amazing scene with Clay's corpse falling on her, thereby revealing to a cop that she was hiding behind his coffin for some reason, there was no follow-up.  To my point earlier, though, I can see the (cynical) logic in not giving someone like NAA more to do at that time.  I am (now) definitely not the age they were clearly targeting and, even with what little she had to do in these months, the idea of Debra enjoying her newfound wealth at the Alden mansion with the ghosts of her recently murdered former in-laws seemed way more entertaining to me than the stories they were foreshadowing on The City...

[FrenchBug82]

 

That would have been fun and I certainly think you have a point but here is my "defense" of their choice: as big a name and wonderful an actress as NAA was, Debra was a new arrival for the show. Less than two years by the time the show ended if my memory is correct.
When pressed for time and eager to offer closure, I understand why TPTB, if my reading of the Loving murders was that it was largely directed at the faithful fans who had stuck out the show throughout, would want to play the longterm characters that made the backbone of the show and maybe give less to a character that was fairly recent.
Half an hour is not a lot of time to play all the possible threads if they have a game plan. There were definitely weird choices and missed opportunities but that's inevitable when you try to wrap up an entire universe in a few months.

[DeliaIrisFan]

 

Oh, for sure.  But I would have traded the whole subplot—if you can call it that—of Debra blackmailing her way into a modeling job and everyone making fun of her during her photo shoot for just a few scenes in which she was considered a bona fide suspect.

[FrenchBug82]

 

I had forgotten that and ... yeah. Definitely.
I honestly never gelled with Debra. She was introduced as a plot device to make Steffy more sympathetic but they were writing her as a charmless bargain basement version of AW's Donna Love and directed her as comic relief most of the time.
Even when some of her storylines might have worked had they been played more straight. Anne Matheson's fall from spoiled rich woman to homeless on Knots Landing was beautifully done and there was potential to play it like that - which in turn would have made her scheming more tolerable if it was a story of survival rather than greed. But they chose to make her a caricature and it didn't work for me.
Watching back NAA on Ryan's Hope has been a revelation of how much of a waste that turned out to have been

[pdm1974]

Agnes Nixon spoke so much about the successes of All My Children and One Life to Live. But, I've never seen an interview with her that focused on Loving. It would have been interesting to get her perspective on why the show never caught on like her earlier creations. I read her autobio, and she didn't mention the show once. I mean you can't call Loving a complete failure. It lasted waaaaaay longer than the majority of TV shows ever do. It really was the little show that could.

Edited July 20, 2020 by pdm1974

[dc11786]

 

I find the relationship between Stephanie and Deborah one of the more interesting and dynamic relationships in the final years of "Loving," but I do agree that the flighty, ditzy persona didn't do Deborah any favors. When Stephanie is first introduced, Deborah is at the crux of her backstory. Stephanie's mother is a friend of Isabelle's and this is how Isabelle weaves Steffi into her plot to unite Cooper and Ally by undermining Casey and Ally's relationship. Stephanie is very provocative in the beginning under Millee Taggart and Robert Guza, but she is also a girl with some emotional scars. Steffi and Casey are able to connect because they both had mentally ill parents (Giff and Steffi's mother). Steffi had to take care of her mother. She had agreed to Isabelle's scheme because the Brewsters were broke and Steffi's mother was still trying to live in the fantasy that they had money. None of this is really contradicted by Deborah's arrival in December at the fashion show at Burnell's. I do think the mental illness piece is downplayed. Early Deborah is very cold and easily cuts Steffi with her words.

 

Steffi does evolve when Agnes Nixon takes over so I can see why you would say Deborah is introduced as a way to make Steffi sympathetic. I guess I didn't find the early version of Steffi unsympathetic. I actually think she and Casey were a viable option longterm, but I really don't have many issues with any of the possible romantic pairings among the quad. Nixon does downplay Steffi's sense of survival her ability to do selfish acts to attain what she wanted. Steffi definitely becomes less an agent of action and more someone who is just constantly knocked down by the world. I do think Steffi saw Casey as a chance to escape the cycle of misery that she had known since she was a little girl, and the realization that Casey would never love her the way he loved Ally did break her. It leads to her eating disorder. I felt like Deborah's introduction was meant to examine some of the psychological reasons that Steffi was so sick.

 

I think Deborah's comedic antics were meant to represent how delusional Deborah was, but there was more dramatic potential in dealing with how terrifying that could be. In early 1994, the dramatic ramifications of Deborah's antics manifest themselves beautifully. Hoping to live off her daughter, Deborah arranges a meeting between Steffi and Clay Alden in order for the older man to mentor her "lost" daughter, while coaching her daughter to sleep her way into the Alden family. When Steffi uses Clay to get even with Casey, Casey ridicules Deborah for pimping out her to daughter to Clay. Deborah is mortified by what she has done. I do enjoy that moment much more than some of Deborah's wilder antics. Also, Deborah's refusal to accept that there could be anything wrong with Steffi was such a tragic layer to Steffi's eating disorder. 

 

I really like the story where Clay was run down by a mysterious driver on Steffi's 21st birthday. I believe Addie Walsh and Laurie McCarthy were writing by this point. Clay has schemed to convince Steffi that Cooper and Deborah are sleeping together leading to a big confrontation at Steffi's birthday party which ends with Clay under the wheels of Steffi's new car, a birthday present from Clay. Deborah seems more human in that story, more of a complex villain. Deborah is often wrong, but she is driven by her desire to protect her daughter even when she hurts her daughter in the process. When Deborah is trying to convince Steffi she hasn't slept with Cooper, Deborah admits that she is furious with Clay because he has gotten between the mother and the daughter. McCarthy and Walsh follow this up several episodes later with a scene where Deborah (circa 1988) makes a not so veiled accusation of incest to Steffi's father, Malcolm Brewster, which is what Walsh and McCarthy imply is the reason that Malcolm was no longer involved with Steffi. When they play her as a complex being, Deborah is fascinating, but that isn't the way the character is portrayed often enough.

[FrenchBug82]

 

To clarify my point about Steffi, she was introduced as an antagonist for Ally, the center girl of the younger set and a spoiler for the "it couple". A bit scheming, a bit spoiled. 
Amelia Heinle played her very convincingly and is very good at exuding vulnerability even when the actions of her characters don't necessarily betray it (which made her a good choice for YR Victoria on paper and why it boggles my mind they have failed to use her talents and watered down the character instead but that's another story) so she quickly became more sympathetic than the initial writing was intending her to be.
You see her early storylines and you can easiy imagine Steffy becoming the soap trope of the scheming bitch trying to steal the heroine's man. Instead, AH gave her layers, had chemistry with her costars and so they developed her backstory and brought her mom on.

 

Your recap underscores how much interesting dramatic material there potentially was in the character - especially if they had kept the mental illness aspect as initially written and let NAA do her thing with the heavier material. But indeed, as you point out, whenever they would give her a serious beat, it wouldn't last and would be immediately undermined by hijincks and caricatural writing.

And it is clear that NAA was getting directions to play the character a certain way that I think was detrimental. I don't know what the show directors were thinking and what the producers were trying to do but it was a missed opportunity IMO.

 

And, to tie it back together, that is exemplified by the choice of involving her in that comedic modeling storyline in the last few months rather than give her a serious part in the overall murder mystery.
 

[DeliaIrisFan]

That is all so fascinating re: Debra.  Admittedly, she mainly caught my attention in these YouTube episodes because I knew Nancy Addison Altman from Ryan's Hope.  A Donna Love knock-off is probably not an inaccurate description of Debra's character, but I enjoyed what I saw of her...and, honestly, I got the sense that several characters, particularly in the Alden sphere, were similar to ones I'd seen before on soaps.

 

NAA just looked so great, and I kind of relished watching her have fun playing (what I took to be) a comedic, snobbish character.  She was indeed great on RH, but Jillian Coleridge was sooo long-suffering —and also snooty in her own right, even though she never got called on it.

 

I did think the scene with Clay's corpse was genuinely hilarious—which again made it so mind-boggling to me that Debra's few appearances in the subsequent weeks were demeaning and/or cheesy filler, when she was never once questioned about why she was hiding behind the coffin.

 

I didn't get any hint of mental illness regarding Debra, but of course Esensten and Brown didn't have a track record of treating that topic realistically or compassionately at all.  I did wonder about the backstory with Stephanie while watching the scene in which she inadvertently convinced Gwyn to go after Tess at the ad agency that led to the climax of the mystery.  Steffi insinuated that Gwyn knew something about her that explained why she didn't have enough self-confidence to press charges against Tess  That made no sense to me at the time, given that Steffi was not pressing charges so that she could (successfully) blackmail Tess, and I don't know that it makes any more sense knowing all this.  But it was a well-done scene and made me think there was substance to Steffi's character.

[ShanaSloane]

Loving Fans!!

Do you write Fan Fiction about Loving?

Did you have a wonderful encounter with an actor at one time?

Maybe you just have a question to ask your favorite actor or photos of yourself with one?

If this is you, please email me at

[email protected]

with any memories, questions, ideas or stories you want to share! I would love to hear from you about all your Loving Memories!

[danfling]

omit and standing corrected!

 

 

Edited August 5, 2020 by danfling

[Vee]

Again, you're thinking of Dan Wakefield.

[DRW50]

Are these clips from episodes already available or is this anything new? It's some Trisha/Trucker material.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-igTr5_Au1541PksASNQKw

[dc11786]

This seems mostly new to the Internet. I think some of it may have popped up some of the scattered 1992 episodes, but I don't think there has been much online. 1992 is mostly remembered for shift onto the younger set with the arrival of Cooper, Casey, Hannah, and the forgettable Staige and Kent. The actual highly touted sorority/fraternity storyline plays out for about three or so months before they simply drop that angle. I'm not a huge fan of Trucker and Trisha's storyline in 1992 because its mostly Trisha and Trucker fighting over custody of Christopher and Giff going crazy for the sake of maintaining Trucker and Trisha's true love. 

 

These clips all cover the second half of 1992 when it's unclear who really was writing what. Walsh is credited throughout 1992 and into the first half of January, 1993, but accounts from actors, Walsh departed shortly after Haidee Granger took over. Granger is the one in charge who basically dumps Richard Cox for Jean LeClerc, which, in my opinion, never ended up being worthwhile. I will say it's not until I watched the early 1993 episodes where Trisha and Trucker are happy with Christopher, living in the Tides, and dealing with a cutesy story where dweeby Arthur has a crush on Trisha that I really see the appeal of the couple. I like the 1991 storylines with losing baby Benjamin and the affair between Trucker and Dinahlee, but both stories are very heavy. Honestly, I think I would have been completely fine with Trucker and Trisha going in different directions. 

 

I've been watching spring / summer of 1994 episodes not sequentially. I really wanted to get to the end of the Cradle Foundation storyline, which was worth it. I made several interesting discoveries in the process. Nixon departs as headwriter in August, 1994. She's immediately succeeded by Addie Walsh and Laurie McCarthy, who had been the associate headwriters when Nixon was headwriter from September 1993 until August 1994. With Walsh and McCarthy as the headwriters, Nixon steps into a new title., executive storyline consultant. I have the script from September 1994 and Nixon still receives top billing on the scripts. I've never claimed to be a huge fan of Walsh. I think her work is pretty standard with nothing that stands out. She seems better at generating story than character. I know others have said she has done better at "Search for Tomorrow" with Walsh.

 

Anyway, Walsh's run with McCarthy is slightly stronger in my opinion than the 1992 material, but she has essentially been working with the canvas for awhile so she isn't making massive cuts the way she did in 1992, but the cuts are still deep and leave scars. Either in the final Nixon episodes or the earliest Walsh/McCarthy episodes, we get the start of the undoing of Curtis. Curtis rigs the plane, the plane crashes, Janie dies, and Dinahlee barely survives, loses the baby she is carrying, and suffers a traumatic brain injur leading to cognitive issues. I don't know how Curtis is suppose to recover from that. I don't know if I can even make it to October when Curtis shoots his own mother. In her final weeks, Nixon seems to be building up a nice little relationship between Curtis and Stacey that had the potential to be really exciting, but its completely scrapped. Similarly, the revelation that the Sowolskys were behind the marketing that lead to the success of AE had the potential to completely shake up the canvas. Instead, it was a minor tremor that was quickly abandoned. Such a waste. 

 

On the brighter side, I do appreciate that Walsh tends to be a much more dramatic writer and avoids some of the more cutesy aspects that show tends to embrace. I just wish the stories were dramatically more interesting. The younger set does well. McCarthy and Walsh develop Casey's mental health concerns stemming from his relationship with Giff and his descent into cocaine use as a means of coping with all the stress. It really cultivates a nice longterm conflict between Casey and Ally and ties nicely into different parts of the character's history. Similarly, Steffi and Cooper's romance continues to develop nicely and bleeds beautifully into Clay's hit and run. These two stories create a perfect little quad for Casey, Ally. Cooper, and Steffi who have all had sordid history with one another that is used pretty well. Ally and Cooper unite when Tyler finds cocaine in Casey's camera bag, and Casey and Steffi have a drug fueled photography session to escape the pressure from their respective partners. While the dialogue tends to be cringy at times, the show is starting to develop that modern feel that I feel Harmon Brown and Essensten really take to a whole other level. 

 

On a side note, it has been interesting noticing some things play out that I know we've talked about in this thread before. When Augusta Dabney returns in August, 1994, as Isabelle, Isabelle is still that cold bitch. She immediately dismisses Deborah, which is quite wonderful. Isabelle and Clay's motives for keeping Cabot hidden away are two fold: they claim they initially wanted him to die in peace not surrounded by reporters, but Cabot makes it clear they kept him hidden in the family compound in Florida because Cabot wanted to reveal that the Sowolskys were the true source of the Aldens fortune.

 

Deborah also is much less wacky under Walsh and McCarthy. The material during the hit and run is played mostly as a cool, calm, and collected Deborah who is upset that Clay has manipulated Steffi into thinking Deborah and Cooper are sleeping together. Earlier, under Nixon, Steffi makes references to her mother's delusions implying that they keep her from having healthy interactions in the real world. While the rest of the world sees Deborah as trouble, Steffi sees her more as troubled. 

[victoria foxton]

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