Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[Franko]

Certainly. The second video comes from the week of April 1, 1985.

[DRW50]

Thanks!

[Franko]

Rewatching the two 1984 episodes, it looks like they're actually from approximately a week apart. Ernie Anderson's voiceover promo over the beauty shot of Lorna and Jonathan mentions the premiere of Who's the Boss? (Thursday, Sept. 20). Sorry for any confusion.

[Kane]

Thanks for sharing these! Nice to see some clips of the Edy Lester storyline, which is one I've always been curious about.

Always nice to see more of Marcantel's original run as Curtis. It's fun to imagine the direction the character might have taken if he hadn't left in 1985 - particularly if he had been in the role when Curtis got together with Ava. Instead of him shifting into a hero, he and Ava could have joined forces as schemers.

[EricMontreal22]

 

Thanks for posting these--I'm not sure why YT wouldn't let me.  They were given to me by Chris Marcantel himself, who during the pandemic was such a cool guy, trying to bring together the Loving cast, etc.  Unfortunately I had hours of episodes from that time that have been lost with my old laptop

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So I'm happy these are out there.

Chris Marcantel says that Agnes Nixon asked that he return to the role when she took over as HW in late 1993.  Before then he had resigned himself to not being "hot enough" to be a leading actor on an ABC soap.  Which says a lot...

[DRW50]

Thank you so much for letting me have them! I'm not sure why either - there were some song issues but I think most places can still see the episodes, so I just left them in for now.

Thanks to Chris as well. I wish I'd been able to watch the reunions he put together. They were gone before I ever could. It was nice of him to try to bring everyone together at a time when we all did genuinely think harmony might be a possibility. His time on Loving is very underrated, in part because most of what is available is just Curtis as the heavy/having breakdowns. 

Sorry to hear about the lost episodes but maybe they will show up someday. The main thing is you did have some to share with everyone and I can't thank you enough. I remember SOD having a quote in the mid '90s from a fan who called Loving "the little soap that could." That we are all still trying our best to share our memories and theories and assemble pieces (there's even an awesome, very detailed blog for the show) all these years later proves just how right she was.

Edited February 1 by DRW50

[EricMontreal22]

I was lucky to be a fly on the wall for many of those Loving zoom meet ups--but it was clear how much everyone involved loved Loving (and seemed clueless about why it wasn't catching on, though they mentioned how erratic the writing was.

[DRW50]

I never did get to those but I'm glad they were at least around for some to see and for the cast to enjoy. I'm sure they must have expected more - if they had started a few years earlier they might have taken more advantage of the ABC soap boom. I know it must have been odd to have more fame in Italy than in the US, where they could barely even get magazine covers. I don't think the show ever really found the "moments" that would have generated blowing up, but then with the timeslot and affiliate issues and how hard it was for a new soap by then (other than B&B, which benefited massively from Y&R), there wasn't much of a chance. 

You probably already saw it, but Lauren Marie Taylor talked about some of the public response or lack thereof in a Locher Room interview last year. 

[Kane]

I can't say I'm surprised at ABC's upside down priorities in casting, but they really lost sight of the forest for the trees where Marcantel was concerned. He was so charismatic in the role and had such a great vulnerable quality that I always find myself rooting for his version of Curtis, even when he's doing something terrible. It was a huge mistake to have him cause a plane crash and write him into a corner instead of going the route of a Curtis/Stacey/Buck/Tess quad.

[DRW50]

The irony is ABC is the network that set the whole notion of casting unconventional leading men, with Tony Geary. Yet they didn't pay attention to their own lessons. Loving got lucky with Robert Tyler and they did a good job casting younger men in the early '90s, but they often got it wrong with Curtis. They tried over and over but it never clicked (I guess Linden Ashby was popular but he only stayed a few years). If they had actually tried to write for Chris' Curtis properly instead of making him a headcase and heel, it would have opened up the canvas. 

[dc11786]

Nixon is clearly trying to replay Mike / Shana / Jim with Curtis / Dinahlee / Trucker in 1993-1994. I just don't think Curtis going to war was ever the best solution to any problem. I think resetting the character after the failed romantic entanglement with Rocky during Stan Albers run made sense especially with Rick Alden dead. Though, traditional romantic lead wasn't the original construct of Curtis. 

Curtis / Stacey had such potential. When Stacey punched Curtis in Vegas, I was shocked and delighted. Marcantel and Taylor were very natural together. I think a slow burn of those two together would have been dynamite. I liked Stacey and Buck, but I think there was a lot of space to explore with Curtis/Stacey especially when Jack returned. Also, Nixon had set up the reveal that the Sowolskys were entitled to all of the Alden fortune so having Curtis in a position to either go after Ava or allign herself with her while also involved with Stacey would have tickled me. 

Jessica Collins was great as Dinahlee, but I would have dumped Dinahlee in August, 1994, when Collins decided to leave. I would have let Trucker leave town with her and let Tyler out of his contract early. I would have kept Shana and Leo instead at least long enough to play out Nixon's answer to the BeLieF formula for "Loving." 

I think tonally Laurie McCarthy / Addie Walsh was more appealing than Walsh / Ryder in 1992-1993. The gothic conclusion to Gilbert's reign of terror (more than likely inspired by the Jonathan Maitland and/or Ryan Chamberlain) worked well for me. They also wrote really well for the younger set with Casey's mental health induced cocaine issues and Cooper / Steffi's romance against the backdrop of Clay's hit and run. I just wasn't a huge fan of the decision to ignore the set up that Nixon had built with Ava taking over AE being so quickly dumped. 

[EricMontreal22]

I completely agree.  I guess they were replaced due to Brown/Esenstein already taking over with The City, and I admit watching the Loving Murders, for all its issues, *was* exciting.

It's frustrating because Chris Marcantel was by far the better actor--and on a superficial level, I think pretty cute.  But it sounds like ABC wanted "soap opera hot" which they did get with Robert Tyler.  Curtis was always meant to be the anti-hero anyway, as written, so I'm not sure why ABC didn't see the example of Tony Geary as someone worth casting.

[dc11786]

McCarthy and Walsh had also been associate headwriters under Nixon. So she basically had trained them in the vision she wanted. I don't always agree with their execution (almost everythign for the older crowd was trash except for Clay's hit and run). I thought Walsh "got" this version of Cooper / Ally / Casey better than she had in round one. I also think there was a sense of immense satsification getting to have the scenes in September 1994 where Cooper admits to Steffi that he had been molested, and not that he "wanted it" like Walsh had more than likely been forced to say in July, 1992.

I find Brown and Essensten's stuff very hard to watch. There are some interesting stories (I think Lorraine and Brianna Hawkins were intriguing additions), but there is such nihilistic (maybe that's the right word) tone to their writing that I find it very hard to engage in. Even with the best of "The City," there is such a nastiness to all the proceedings that it hard to truly enjoy and connect with the material for me. 

I feel like Marcantel circa 1994 was approaching the hot suburban dad mode for me. Marcantel was hotter than ABC gave him credit for and Robert Tyler was a better actor than ABC expected him to be. Also, other than December, 1984 - June/July, 1985 Marcantel and Noelle Beck never got a chance to interact which seems like a huge shame. 

If Marcantel's Curtis had landed a strong pairing, they might have given him more of the Geary treatment. Marcantel and Peluso would have been dynamite together, but the timelines didn't intersect until 1993. 

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks for doing this--Chris himself didn't seem to know when they were from!

I agree with your last statement.

And... I agree that Brown and Esensten's stuff WAS nihilistic--by design, I would argue.  I ended up really liking The City in its final six months, but I completely understand your sentiment.

[DRW50]

I think the closest they get to Chris' early Curtis is when they bring in Chip Albers. I wonder if Chris was ever considered at that time, unless someone at ABC really liked Chris on AMC. I like what I've seen of Chip's work (even if it took me a few minutes to separate from his years in softcore), but Chris could have played that run well, even if the writing wasn't up to much.