Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[j swift]

When we review the ratings book from the 1980s and 1990s, it is clear that 12-17 demo is not valued because they are frequently not recorded.  Therefore, it seems like saying that certain soaps were popular with tweens was grasping at straws for a PR move.  Like saying DAYS won the most SOD awards, or Santa Barbara was the "fastest growing” soap.  It implied that a soap was a sensation, but there's no validity to the praise, because that is not the metric that is valued by sponsors. 

As for the style of production and music on The CIty, it was undeniably cool, but it was rejected by an audience who didn't want that.   I loved the photographic opening and the slick interstitials between scenes.  And it was definitely not a case of style over substance, because the plots and characters on The City were fun and classically soapy.  I think it was simply not what people wanted in daytime in the early 90s when trash talk shows were more compelling to a young urban audience.  I mean, Ricki Lake looked like The City, both imitating a Soho loft, but the pace and the more realistic looking people were more appealing.  Ally and Steffi couldn't compete with a girl who lost her boyfriend to a woman who made Chicken Tetrazinni (IYKYK)).

Edited December 18, 2023 by j swift

[te.]

Ultimately, both have its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of a "found family" / work place / community soap is that you can just introduce characters without much explanation. You don't have to do a contrived backstory for someone to move in or to write someone off. It leaves less headache in terms of having to recast or introducing random cousins or secret children.

The disadvantage of course is that eventually you'll have to ask yourself why these characters are even talking to each other, or just doesn't move, especially when there's a notorious schemer amongst them? Even Melrose Place utilised the bad sister bond with Jane and Sydney. Family soaps of course are easier to explain in that way - families will fight and do bad things to each other, but will still be in others lives because blood is thicker than water and all that.

I said it before and I'll say it again - airing The City and Sunset Beach at noon was such a mistake when they obviously targeted a very specific demographic (ie people who liked the Fox Aaron Spelling soaps); not saying that either would've lasted for a long time, but it just felt like a death sentence from day one to place them there. They needed to be later in the afternoon. 

 

It's like when they moved old-fashioned Love of Life to an afternoon slot. Kids and college students coming home from school wasn't going to tune into that...

[Khan]

That reminds me of what John Pleshette (ex-Richard Avery, KL) said about KNOTS and the difficulties of getting the show's original cast (four couples, all living together in the same cul-de-sac in Southern California) to interact.  In real life, he said, neighbors don't become all that involved in each other's lives, so you end up contriving situations where they could be involved - like, for example, having Gary Ewing work for Sid Fairgate at Knots Landing Motors.

That's why I tend to prefer soaps centered around families.  Like you said, @te., family members might squabble with each other, but blood always will be thicker than water.  Also, stories about families are something just about everyone can relate to.  If you didn't come from a large or loving family, you can live vicariously through one on a soap.

In the end, I wonder if it was worth spinning off LOVING into TC at all, just because LOVING always had been a low-rated show with not much of a following outside of its' core audience.  Maybe Agnes Nixon, James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten would have been better off developing a brand-new soap that had no ties to LOVING whatsoever.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Khan

[Contessa Donatella]

I think a lot about it was in the area of "grand experiment". With only 2 years, though, gotta be called an epic failure. I really enjoyed it, but very few seemed to. 

[chrisml]

I think a lot of The City's problems go back to what a lot of people pointed out. There was no compelling reason to tune in if you were a viewer of LOVING. I don't know why they didn't carry the murders story over to The City. That way viewers have the ability to get invested in the new characters at the same the writers are finishing the Loving murders. When the new storylines didn't work, they resorted to another murder storyline anyway. 

[Soaplovers]

The time slot was the biggest problem, as well as stations having the power not to air a show at that timeslot.

Had affiliates not had so much power, The City could have worked at 3 or 3:00 PM.

[Khan]

And if you didn't watch LOVING, but you knew TC was spun off from it, you weren't going to tune into the new show, no matter what. 

IMO, the only things TC had going for it going in were Morgan Fairchild, Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams.  Otherwise, as amiable as the LOVING actors might have been on-screen, the start of TC was a big "So what?".

Maybe.  For one thing, TC could have pulled in younger viewers who didn't know the connection with LOVING and therefore could love or hate it on its' own terms.  Again, though, you gotta have story and incredible characters to draw viewers of any age in, and I just don't think TC really had that (at least, not at the start).

Edited December 19, 2023 by Khan

[Contessa Donatella]

I watched the last 3 weeks of LOVING in preparation for watching THE CITY. I didn't need to but I didn't know that ahead of time. I found the characters, the setting, the stories, the camerawork interesting, even compelling. Personally I think it could've worked but it needed: 

(1) To be tucked between AMC & OLTL or later in the day. (2) Sydney Chase for 2 or 3 years. (3) No connection to LOVING or Corinth. (4) Really fantastic promotion. and (5) More love in the afternoon. 

Oh, and it would have had to have clearances, too. I think it didn't work primarily because of timeslot & clearances. 

I think the example of what happened to PC's ratings the one time it was after AMC are instructive. 

[Vee]

I do think later would've helped. But there was no way they were gonna bump GH up or down the afternoon schedule for TC. GH by that time was already revitalized as the past and present flagship of ABC soaps, and kids everywhere (me included) flocked to it afterschool. (You don't wanna know how many school days I faked sick to catch OLTL an hour before, until I learned how to time-record a VCR.)

In hindsight it's kind of a wonder GL survived as long as it did during this period at 3 PM opposite GH, but that's another thread.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Vee

[chrisml]

I think she is an underrated actress, but I think they miscalculated in thinking Morgan Fairchild was a big draw for soap viewers (new or old). If she had been integrated into the last months of LOVING, it might have been ok, but the writers didn't seem to know what to do with her. And they resorted to the old sexist chestnut of rape to give a strong female character a storyline. IT feels like they got excited about hiring her and penned her entrance into the show, but didn't have any longterm plans for her after the big entrance. That's the biggest problem with the CITY. It felt like a collection of scenes that rarely came together into a cohesive unit. The sets and the direction were wonderful, but if the story isn't there, what difference does it make? Except for the one murder plot, I have no memory of any longterm story on the show.

I'm surprised this show has not been sold to a streaming service as it has a finite number of episodes.

[Khan]

ICAM, @chrisml.  James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten should have introduced Sydney Chase on LOVING in preparation for the spinoff.  Doing so might have helped give TC more of a "push" in terms of building suspense around her, and around the new show in general. 

I don't necessarily agree that the LOVING Murders needed to continue on TC, but I do think they needed to plant story seeds other than, "Hey, everyone, Corinth's been a real drag since Gwyneth Alden killed everybody, so let's all move to SoHo!".  (In retrospect, maybe they would have been better off just moving some of those actors over to AMC or OLTL.)

Furthermore, as I've said before, I think TC made a concerted effort in the beginning to steer away from telling the sort of big, melodramatic stories that we had become accustomed to seeing on soaps - to be "anti-story," in a sense.  I think that makes a sense if you want your show to be seen as a cutting-edge soap for a new generation.  But even if you don't want the kinds of stories that you could watch on your grandmother's old soap opera, you still need something that will keep people glued to their screens other than jaw-dropping sets and fantastic camera work and editing.  You also need strong characters with strong relationships that, in turn, will generate strong stories.

I also agree, @chrisml, that they might have miscalculated Morgan Fairchild's appeal in getting her to agree to star on TC.  Obviously, if you lived through the '80's, or if you watched SFT BITD, or even if you saw her play Sandra Bernhard's lesbian lover on "Roseanne," then you know who she is.  But I don't know whether that appeal carried over at all into the next decade.  If TPTB wanted a "name" to headline TC's cast, then they either should have swung a bit higher - maybe gone for someone like Jaclyn Smith*? - or, as I suggested eons ago, they should have (done the unthinkable and) spun off Erica Kane/Susan Lucci (with the provision, of course, that she still could appear on AMC occasionally, and that she could return full-time to AMC should TC ever be cancelled...which it was).

For some reason, @Vee, I was thinking 3:00 pm CST, rather than EST.  Yeah, I can't see ABC bumping even a flailing GH up or down on the sked for a new soap that was rising from the ashes of a cancelled, low-rated one.  They'd sooner put TC on after "Nightline."

 

*It's just a suggestion, since I can't think of any "names" in the same age bracket as MF's that held any cache in the mid-to-late '90's.  I ask you politely not to kill me.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Khan

[Vee]

Sydney was mentioned here and there in the final weeks/months of LOV as being a big deal and somewhat fearsome. But it wasn't really much and of course Fairchild didn't appear.

Nonetheless, The City had great style and production value ahead of its time, and a cast that I thought had a lot of potential - the stories just were poorly done.

[Franko]

I thought of two ladies who would certainly attract some onlooker audience members if either had played Sydney. In both cases, it would be playing against type (which might not be a bad thing). Farrah Fawcett (she still had a high Q rating in the '90s, didn't she?) and, making her triumphant return to TV and already New York-based ... Mia Farrow.

(Hey, go big or go home.)

[Paul Raven]

Launching a new soap at that time was fraught with danger as we can see.

The big problem was getting the affiliates on board and both RH and LOV had major problems in that area so I don't know what made ABC think TC would do any better.

The only way that more stations would pick it up was if it did super well where it was playing. Which, of course was unlikely.

At 12.30 they probably would have been better off with a game show or some other format that may have rated as well and been way cheaper, so more likely to stick around.

Just concentrate on AMC,OLTL and GH.

[Khan]

It's been so long that, unfortunately, I can't recall the exact chain of events anymore, but was TC developed and announced and MF hired before LOVING actually went off the air?  If so, then I think they had ample opportunities to have MF/Sydney appear on the former show.  For example, they could have had pop in briefly as a former dalliance of Clay's from way back, who runs into him again while on business in Corinth and has another romp in the sheets with him before his untimely demise.  Maybe Alex would have considered her a prime suspect until the next murder occurs, which lets Sydney off the hook, but establishes animosity between them.  I mean, anything that could have made the audience sit up, take notice and say, "Hey, I gotta start watchin' the new show when this is over, just so I could see what else this chick might be up to!".

I had thought of her, too, @Franko, lol.  Farrah would have been a much more interesting choice.

This is definitely where having a "name" actor among the cast members - perhaps, a name bigger than MF's - could have worked to their advantage, as more affiliates might have been willing to sign on if they had had someone big to help launch the show.