@EricMontreal22 @Kane @dc11786 @slick jones @Franko @CrazySexyQ

Not an episode from an era we're missing much of (I reuploaded quite a bit of March 1991 on Youtube) but still, it's always good to find another "new" episode and I think this is one. I looked through the stuff I put up and the episodes put up en masse recently and couldn't find it. If I just missed it somewhere online my apologies.

March 20, 1991 has Carly leaving the boarding house with the bottle so I assume this is the 22nd due to Carly being wet and crawling on a dock with no explanation. (that must have been quite a scene to play).

This is also in incredible quality compared to many episodes.

Starts at around an hour and 2 minutes.

[Vintage TV] Star Trek TNG: In Theory (WPWR w/ads); Loving; All My Children; Channel 2 News at 10 (WBBM w/ads) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by DRW50

DAMN. I get an error code and a note that "this video file cannot be played"

The video played for me. It always feels like I'm discovering treasures when I see these old clips.

Thanks @DRW50

@EricMontreal22 Mary Ryan Munisteri (Loving's headwriter from August, 1991-early January 1992) was headwriter for Ryan's Hope for several months (looks like October 1982-February 1983) and Tom King and Millee Taggart (Loving's headwriters from September, 1988 - May, 1991 and then Taggart solo until August) were at Ryan's Hope from 1985-1987 (maybe March for both months).

Nixon departs as headwriter in August, 1994. I just checked I watched an episode dated August 30 or 31 where Clay begs Steffi to stay with him on the eve of the Alden Enterprises anniversary party, Dinahlee starts to miscarry after the plane crash with Jessica Collins still in the role, and Cabot is on the verge of revealing that the Aldens stole the formula for Lady Alden soap from the Sowolskys. In the episode end credits, Laurie McCarthy and Addie Walsh are credited as headwriters. Nixon is, as you later asked, listed as a story consultant.

McCarthy and Walsh were the associate headwriters for Loving when Nixon was headwriter in 1993-1994. The end up giving a lot of the previews during this time period.

While I wouldn't argue that Shana and Leo occasionally had a nice scene under Nixon, the meat of that story was under Taggart and Guza. I think Shana and Leo suffer the most under Nixon because they go from have deeply complicated characterizations (which I suspect Guza, in part, based on some of the Julie / Mason dynamic on Santa Barbara as well as some of his later misogynistic writing for characters like Sonny and Jason on General Hospital). The show never commits to whether or not Patti has developmental issues, which I think was more about the show being afraid that once they said she had something that they would have to stick to it. Leo, who was deeply misogynistic, was more insecure under Nixon, which I think could have been linked together, but never really was. The business loan element of their story is completed abandoned, which ignored a very intense power dynamic that was created by putting Shana in charge of Leo's business given Leo's sexism. A lot of the complexity of their relationship evaporates within weeks of Nixon's arrival. I think the short arc where Leo struggles toaccept Patti is powerful, but should have been part of a much larger story.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Curtis in the cage stuff. It's very campy and homoerotic (Thom Christopher would later embed some of the same subtext to the Carlo/Cristian brainwashing sequences on One Life to Live. The show got skewered in the press for having the sole Middle Eastern character on daytime being a villain. In Nixon's defense, Dante needed to appear to resolve the Curtis / Tess/ Buck backstory, but it just doesn't work for me. I do appreciate Tess sacrificing herself at the tail end of the initial arc in a rare moment of selfishness. I suspect Nixon wanted to bring back Dante later so that's why there was the vague resolution.

I am not even sure if the Gilbert stuff starts under Nixon, or, if it does, its in like her literal final episodes. As I stated earlier, all three parties are basically involved with the show between the two writing regimes, so it doesn't really matter who is credited for what as there seems to be a sort of overlapping creative force until Brown and Essensten arrive. I don't like the early Gilbert / Jeremy stuff, but I thought the final pieces once the show gets Ava and Sandy locked in the church with Gilbert is compelling stuff.

For the most part, I enjoy Nixon's run. I know @DRW50 has explained (validly) why he doesn't enjoy the Egypt / Ava murder mystery, which I do enjoy. @Kane has also made some analysis of that period regarding the story structure where a story will dominate for several weeks and then be ignored for a long stretch. I would also argue Nixon does a lot of chem testing which often shifts the story directions a little too quickly. For example, within four months, we go from Gwyn / Buck to Gwyn / Clay to Gwyn / Jeremy. The last shift wouldn't have been terrible if they had built a true quad around Clay / Gwyn / Jeremy / Tess who all had some connections to one another.

I loved what Nixon did with Steffi by having her become a model, which brought out a softer side of Tess, before having her develop an eating disorder and being pimped out by her broke status conscious mother Deborah to Clay while later falling for Cooper. Cooper and Steffi investigating the Cradle Foundation after Clay and Deborah's surprise wedding was a great sequence as well.

I loved Curtis gaslighting Dinahlee and Trucker into thinking Trisha was alive because, after all, she was. I didn't love Curtis' mental illness/PTSD story because I felt it was wrong for the character. It's hard to rectify early 1980s spoiled Curtis (Marcantel 1.0) with mid 1980s softened Curits (Ashby/Moses) as well as late 80s / early 90s romantic lead (Albers). Once you get to 1993 Curtises, the characters has just lived too many lives. I also liked the suggestion the show was going to revisit Stacey / Curtis in 1994 after Stacey punched out Curtis at Shana and Leo's wedding.

As we get more of the 1990s, I will say I am enjoying Jacqueline Babbins' messier Loving more and more even though it is flawed and imperfect. And some of the post-Marland, Nixon led material that has popped up on the Random Episodes channel is stronger than I anticipated. Though from the private listings of Loving episodes a few years back, I remember not hating what I saw from June, 1985 until the big AE board meeting in February, 1986, barring the Jonathan is the devil stuff.

Edited 12 hours ago12 hr by dc11786

I wonder if the change in how Curtis was written/presented had some to do with the change in head-writer from Marland to Nixon. Just like how the character of Ava changed after Nixon took over, I also think Curtis changed as a character under Nixon.

In regards to Leo/Shana... I viewed them as the classic case of Battle of the Sexes with a strong willed Shana verbally battling with the more traditional minded Leo. Back in the 90s, viewers actually enjoyed these types of relationships unlike the more puritanical 2020s where such buzzwords as misogynism are used so much to the point where most people are dismissive.

11 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@EricMontreal22 @Kane @dc11786 @slick jones @Franko @CrazySexyQ

Not an episode from an era we're missing much of (I reuploaded quite a bit of March 1991 on Youtube) but still, it's always good to find another "new" episode and I think this is one. I looked through the stuff I put up and the episodes put up en masse recently and couldn't find it. If I just missed it somewhere online my apologies.

March 20, 1991 has Carly leaving the boarding house with the bottle so I assume this is the 22nd due to Carly being wet and crawling on a dock with no explanation. (that must have been quite a scene to play).

This is also in incredible quality compared to many episodes.

Starts at around an hour and 2 minutes.

[Vintage TV] Star Trek TNG: In Theory (WPWR w/ads); Loving; All My Children; Channel 2 News at 10 (WBBM w/ads) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Star Trek TNG and AMC (in good quality) together in a video? My two favorites all in one, how lovely! Sadly, the video doesn't work on my end. I play it and can hear the audio, but the picture is stuck on Data. Even if I FF the video or try and play it from a different spot, the picture part of it still doesn't work.

ETA: Just tried it on my work laptop using Edge and it worked! (Not working on Safari for some reason.)

What amazing quality, I wish we had that quality available for the entire series. Thanks again for posting @DRW50 !

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by alwaysAMC

2 hours ago, alwaysAMC said:

Star Trek TNG and AMC (in good quality) together in a video? My two favorites all in one, how lovely! Sadly, the video doesn't work on my end. I play it and can hear the audio, but the picture is stuck on Data. Even if I FF the video or try and play it from a different spot, the picture part of it still doesn't work.

ETA: Just tried it on my work laptop using Edge and it worked! (Not working on Safari for some reason.)

What amazing quality, I wish we had that quality available for the entire series. Thanks again for posting @DRW50 !

Thank you for watching. Sorry it was so difficult. And that there wasn't more AMC.

8 hours ago, EricMontreal22 said:

DAMN. I get an error code and a note that "this video file cannot be played"

I'm going to try to put that episode on Youtube later if I can.

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

Thank you for watching. Sorry it was so difficult. And that there wasn't more AMC.

I'm going to try to put that episode on Youtube later if I can.

AlwaysAMC gave me an idea, and I tried opening it in Chrome and we're off to the races!! Gonna watch now that I have an hour to kill.

10 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

I wonder if the change in how Curtis was written/presented had some to do with the change in head-writer from Marland to Nixon. Just like how the character of Ava changed after Nixon took over, I also think Curtis changed as a character under Nixon.

Back when COVID first hit, I was involved in a couple (maybe 3 or 4?) Loving fan meets on Zoom which were so great--Bryan Cranston dropped in on one as a surprise, and a number of mostly 1980s actors were involved. They were completely free for fans, and in hindsight a wonderful opportunity and I wish we had recorded them. Anyway, one of the facilitators was Christopher Marcantel who runs a production company. I wish I remembered this stuff in more detail (but you all know how those early days of lockdown were,) but I did ask him about returning to Curtis and he said it was completely Agnes Nixon's idea to try to get him back and for his "pussycat" storyline--the show already knew of course that Curtis would be returning, but she was the one who came up with the storyline and concept (makes sense, it was one of the first stories when she starts being credited as HW.) He talked about being more surprised by everyone as he knew he wasn't soap opera leading man handsome (and joked about how surreal it was for Curtis to suddenly pop up being played by Burke Moses among others,) but relished the opportunity, especially to play such unhinged material.

11 hours ago, dc11786 said:

@EricMontreal22

McCarthy and Walsh were the associate headwriters for Loving when Nixon was headwriter in 1993-1994. The end up giving a lot of the previews during this time period.

Thanks!! That all makes a lot of sense, and how much they would have been involved even under Nixon (who more or less had retired after her 1990-92 AMC stint and taking that "exec head writer" credit for much of the rest of the 90s--when she did return to AMC in 1999-2001 there was a reason it was only as a co-HW.)

"A lot of the complexity of their relationship evaporates within weeks of Nixon's arrival. I think the short arc where Leo struggles toaccept Patti is powerful, but should have been part of a much larger story"

Fully agree and there's some great writing there--which seems totally like something Nixon would enjoy doing, so I dunno what happened there. When they are quickly written out during their Rome honeymoon (which I actually just watched) was it due to Susan Keith wanting to leave or just being written out, because I actually liked the Shana/Leo dynamic in their last few weeks better than I had at any other point--I think they got the characterizations just right.

I have to wonder about the whole "Phantom Tricia" storyline in general, and Agnes Nixon's involvement. Elements of it seem like she should have known better (like teasing a character's return when you don't have the actress) though she certainly made mis-steps before. And it seems obvious they used it just so they could stretch out the tease of Tricia being alive (only to have the disappointing way it finally ended in the final months of the Murders.) There's even something kinda smart (while being deeply stupid...) about Curtis gaslighting Trucker into thinking she's still alive to keep him from Dinah Lee when in fact she IS still alive. What I do think remains strong in Agnes Nixon's year or so, that Loving had often been missing, is again how she (or someone on her team) do a lot of small things to keep the stories interconnected. Characters in one storyline will still make appearances in other storylines (including the whole Ava coma story and the warnings she gets from Ghost Harry.) For a lot of the 90s, Loving is really not great at that. Also, while I know some people are not at all fond of it, re-watching the whole Steffi/Cooper/Clay/Deborah stuff it all just plays really well and I think they finally know how to make the actors' chemistry work (and yes, in comparison then it makes Ally and Casey just seem like dry paint.)

(Side note, I love how much they make use of the two story Alden mansion set for things like people snooping on others on the upstairs level, watching the others below, or even the outdoor two level set (both of which have been in use of course going back to day one.)

"I'm not the biggest fan of the Curtis in the cage stuff. It's very campy and homoerotic (Thom Christopher would later embed some of the same subtext to the Carlo/Cristian brainwashing sequences on One Life to Live. The show got skewered in the press for having the sole Middle Eastern character on daytime being a villain. In Nixon's defense, Dante needed to appear to resolve the Curtis / Tess/ Buck backstory, but it just doesn't work for me. I do appreciate Tess sacrificing herself at the tail end of the initial arc in a rare moment of selfishness. I suspect Nixon wanted to bring back Dante later so that's why there was the vague resolution."

It's a mess. And I love it and will continue to love it everytime I watch it. Maybe because I do just like when Nixon does this kind of stuff (like the similarly camp of the Jonathan/Devil story.) But I do think, objectively, it is used to make Tess a much much better character than she had been under T/G, as well as some others (it's even used to introduce Deborah in a clever way.)

I have it on very good authority that the Jeremy/Gilbert stuff was started by Nixon (and yes, it literally starts as her credit ends, but I think she had mapped out the story beats.) Some of this is in one of her Loving breakdowns I have a paper copy of (which is much more brief than her older ones but still plays out at least the first month or two of Gilbert,) and LeClerc also says that it was a gift from Nixon who had told him back on AMC he would get the chance to play a villain (of course actors often say stuff like this and it's not quite right--as I've said on the OLTL thread witness how much of Vicki, Erika Slezak seems to think was directly written by Nixon and I think almost likely was not...) but...

11 hours ago, dc11786 said:

For the most part, I enjoy Nixon's run. I know @DRW50 has explained (validly) why he doesn't enjoy the Egypt / Ava murder mystery, which I do enjoy. @Kane has also made some analysis of that period regarding the story structure where a story will dominate for several weeks and then be ignored for a long stretch. I would also argue Nixon does a lot of chem testing which often shifts the story directions a little too quickly. For example, within four months, we go from Gwyn / Buck to Gwyn / Clay to Gwyn / Jeremy. The last shift wouldn't have been terrible if they had built a true quad around Clay / Gwyn / Jeremy / Tess who all had some connections to one another.

I loved what Nixon did with Steffi by having her become a model, which brought out a softer side of Tess, before having her develop an eating disorder and being pimped out by her broke status conscious mother Deborah to Clay while later falling for Cooper. Cooper and Steffi investigating the Cradle Foundation after Clay and Deborah's surprise wedding was a great sequence as well.

I loved Curtis gaslighting Dinahlee and Trucker into thinking Trisha was alive because, after all, she was. I didn't love Curtis' mental illness/PTSD story because I felt it was wrong for the character. It's hard to rectify early 1980s spoiled Curtis (Marcantel 1.0) with mid 1980s softened Curits (Ashby/Moses) as well as late 80s / early 90s romantic lead (Albers). Once you get to 1993 Curtises, the characters has just lived too many lives. I also liked the suggestion the show was going to revisit Stacey / Curtis in 1994 after Stacey punched out Curtis at Shana and Leo's wedding.

As we get more of the 1990s, I will say I am enjoying Jacqueline Babbins' messier Loving more and more even though it is flawed and imperfect. And some of the post-Marland, Nixon led material that has popped up on the Random Episodes channel is stronger than I anticipated. Though from the private listings of Loving episodes a few years back, I remember not hating what I saw from June, 1985 until the big AE board meeting in February, 1986, barring the Jonathan is the devil stuff.

Ah I see you address some of what I talk about above (sorry, I replied to your great post while reading it.) I basically agree with you (and yes, I like the Egypt/Ava story, and actually again liked how it tied into Dante.) I also like the Angie stuff here--though what a waste with Janie (and I think that was still something we can blame on Nixon.)

Interesting about chem testing--one of the most interesting, and there's a video on YT of Oct/Nov episodes relating to this, is Trucker and Angie. He even asks her out and she gives a talk about how she wants a black father figure for Frankie (it's a bit better written than it sounds...) Yet, I think there seems to surprisingly be chemistry there, so it's all for naught.

(Nixon also seems to VERY quickly have Frankie move from the Jesse Hubbard black teen thinking everything is about race and running with a bad crew, to a much more happy go lightly figure obsessed with movies and making his own. It's too bad he doesn't have more to do, as I like the actor a lot.)

@dc11786 I know this may not mean much, but I have an airdate October 21, Gilbert heavy (actually on the page it's VERY creepy, with him kinda haunting his scenes like a ghost) script from Loving. Anyway here's the title page--check out who they credit as writers...

43 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

I have to wonder about the whole "Phantom Tricia" storyline in general, and Agnes Nixon's involvement. Elements of it seem like she should have known better (like teasing a character's return when you don't have the actress) though she certainly made mis-steps before. And it seems obvious they used it just so they could stretch out the tease of Tricia being alive (only to have the disappointing way it finally ended in the final months of the Murders.) There's even something kinda smart (while being deeply stupid...) about Curtis gaslighting Trucker into thinking she's still alive to keep him from Dinah Lee when in fact she IS still alive.

My theory is that the Phantom Trisha story was originally conceived as Robert Tyler's exit story. His contract expired in the summer of '94 but he ended up extending it for six months, ostensibly to "wrap up" Trucker's story, which I've always found somewhat odd since Trucker's actual exit just ends up being a variation on this story anyway and the show didn't really do anything interesting with Trucker once Dinah Lee was recast. There's literally an episode during the Gilbert saga where Trucker is tagging along with Alex and Charles and he's just... there, doing nothing.

I think the plan was going to be that Trucker would go off to Italy to chase after Trisha and Jeff, and Dinah Lee would get involved with Buck and there would be a brief Curtis/Dinah Lee/Buck/Stacey quad, then Dinah Lee would die in the plane crash. Part of the reason why I think so is that what plays out on screen is Trucker and Dinah Lee return from Italy, they immediately break up, Dinah Lee starts hanging out with Buck (and Philip Brown plays it like Buck is falling for Dinah Lee, and there's plenty of lingering looks between them), and then the crash happens. I don't think Janie was originally supposed to die because the show was doing a great job integrating the character into the cast and having her mix it up with various characters, and Dinah Lee's death would have meant a lot more to Ava (who predicted that someone would die). I think Tyler extending threw a wrench into things because it would have been brutal to have him not find Trisha and then have him lose Dinah Lee in the plane crash, hence the change to Janie being the one to die.

Just now, Kane said:

My theory is that the Phantom Trisha story was originally conceived as Robert Tyler's exit story. His contract expired in the summer of '94 but he ended up extending it for six months, ostensibly to "wrap up" Trucker's story, which I've always found somewhat odd since Trucker's actual exit just ends up being a variation on this story anyway and the show didn't really do anything interesting with Trucker once Dinah Lee was recast. There's literally an episode during the Gilbert saga where Trucker is tagging along with Alex and Charles and he's just... there, doing nothing.

I wonder when they learned that the show was being retooled rather than going on in its current form and that led them not to make much effort with Trucker while he was still there. Either that or maybe they thought they could get Noelle Beck sooner or for a longer amount of time than they did.

I have sometimes wondered if The City had lasted another few years if Noelle would have joined as Trisha or if the show had just moved on too much by that point.