1 minute ago, DRW50 said:

Dennis was very good (I'm sorry that he didn't seem to get soap work after his impossible tenure at GL), although my favorite Clay was James Horan. I think he gets many of the difficult nuances of the character. I like Larkin Malloy well enough but if they got rid of Horan for him it was a mistake. Maybe they didn't as I think there is a months-long gap.

Oooh. I just did a Google search. Yikes. He was set up to fail.

Speaking of the Clays, did Randolph Mantooth's make any impression on you in this role?

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by CrazySexyQ

3 minutes ago, CrazySexyQ said:

Do you mind going into detail about this?

Speaking of the Clays, did Randolph Mantooth's make any impression on you in this role?

Just that he took over for Michael Zaslow after Michael was fired due to his illness. Fans were never going to accept him, although he tried. He was there for about a year. I don't think he had any regular soap work from then on.

I haven't watched all of Randolph's run as Clay but Mantooth's charm and screen presence is heavy. He also has a lot of chemistry with Roya Megnot. The layers in some of his relationships like Gwyn aren't there the way they are with later Clays. When the real Clay returns, there's an emphasis on how much nicer "Clay" was, but I haven't seen a lot of that in how he treats various people. I guess his kids, especially Trisha, he did have a kinder heart for, although the real Clay also loved Trisha. I am trying to remember how they compared in how they treated Curtis and Rick.

He also seems nicer to Ann. Is Ann still around to interact with the real Clay?

@dc11786 @Kane This reminds me. In some of the March 1989 recaps I see mentions of Isabelle admitting she knew Alex was an imposter all along. Was this ever said onscreen or just thrown in after the reveal? From what you've said, Isabelle was barely around for a lot of 87-88 anyway.

This should have been mentioned during the whole story about Clay not being Cabot's son. Clay saying you hated me so much you preferred Alex over me. I guess Alex was gone and not mentioned at this time.

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by DRW50

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

I wonder if Walsh was talking about Arthur fantasizing about Tricia - doesn't he eventually confess his love for her?

This thread and the Loving blog have given me more interest in Walsh than any of her work I ever watched, due to the thoughts on her writing for Cooper and Ava (and how other writers let the characters down).

I really like the idea of Heather becoming close to Gwyn because Stacey starts to focus more on an injured JJ. Stories that could have written themselves and it would have been more interesting than the Buck drama either lady had.

Arthur fantasizing about Trisha is about a year later under Taggar and Guza. I believe they toy very briefly with a Arthur / Staige pairing in the fall of 1992 right before they wrote out Staige. I imagine that Arhur's story would have been some sort of Ugly Duckling tale where they would have made him handsome and probably paired him up with someone like Staige. Or maybe they were going to have Arthur fall for Casey before they settled on him and Ally.

Walsh's writing for Ava was pretty bad. The first six months are basically the winding down of the Paul / Ava / Carly story and storyline limbo before they put Ava at Burnell's with Casey where they sorta tease a Casey / Ava flirtation before settling on Ava / Leo, which would have been a forgettable pairing had Taggart and Guza not thrown Shana into the mix.

One of the few characters who were served well by Walsh I would say was Gwyn, but she has no story, just decent character writing.

I like Buck and Stacey more than I thought I would, but I will say I do find the money story, at times, a little shallow. I think if they were going to delve deeper into Buck's need to be a provider based on the fact that his father had been a wanderer and the fact that Stacey was raised in a rather large, stable Irish Catholic household that I think there would be story to mine from that. I appreciated the Buck / JJ dynamic and that scene from March, 1994, where Buck tells Heather he is leaving breaks my heart. It just is often a very surface level story amplified by strong acting, emotional beats, and strong, moody background music.

32 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Dennis was very good (I'm sorry that he didn't seem to get soap work after his impossible tenure at GL), although my favorite Clay was James Horan. I think he gets many of the difficult nuances of the character. I like Larkin Malloy well enough but if they got rid of Horan for him it was a mistake. Maybe they didn't as I think there is a months-long gap.

The more I've seen of Horan, he has grown on me. I think he does a good job playing a lot of Clay's pain and is saddled with a lot of byzantine backstory involving spies, espionage, and hypnosis. He is a real contender in those 1990-1991 episodes when his story is more grounded in the complicated relationship he had with Cabot and his layered romance with Gwyn (both Elizabeth Savage and Christine Tudor Newman).

I believe Larkin Malloy appears as Clay appears from like January - July, 1992 and then returns in September with Dennis Parlato assuming the role in early October. I think the month gap starts and ends with Malloy, but I may be wrong.

And speaking of recasts, I'm not hating what we are seeing of Robert Dubac, but its a very different version of the Alex character.

14 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I haven't watched all of Randolph's run as Clay but Mantooth's charm and screen presence is heavy. He also has a lot of chemistry with Roya Megnot. The layers in some of his relationships like Gwyn aren't there the way they are with later Clays. When the real Clay returns, there's an emphasis on how much nicer "Clay" was, but I haven't seen a lot of that in how he treats various people. I guess his kids, especially Trisha, he did have a kinder heart for, although the real Clay also loved Trisha. I am trying to remember how they compared in how they treated Curtis and Rick.

He also seems nicer to Ann. Is Ann still around to interact with the real Clay?

@dc11786 @Kane This reminds me. In some of the March 1989 recaps I see mentions of Isabelle admitting she knew Alex was an imposter all along. Was this ever said onscreen or just thrown in after the reveal? From what you've said, Isabelle was barely around for a lot of 87-88 anyway.

This should have been mentioned during the whole story about Clay not being Cabot's son. Clay saying you hated me so much you preferred Alex over me. I guess Alex was gone and not mentioned at this time.

I also haven't seen a whole lot of Randy Mantooth as Clay, and, to be honest, anything I would see would probably be biased based on the story that comes later. I don't think Clay was particularly kind to Rick as he rejects Gwyn's claim early on. I don't remember if I have seen much of Mantooth with Burke Moses' Curtis, but I don't think there was a lot of overlap with them either (maybe 6-8 months). You'd think there would be some juicy material with Clay romancing Curtis' ex-wife, but I don't know. By the time Ava and "Clay" marry, Burke Moses has been gone for a bit.

I think there should be some overlap in time with Ann and Clay, but I'm never really clear when Callan White leaves. I think she returns briefly in 1990 for Trucker and Trisha's wedding or maybe it's Jack and Stacey's so she and Clay would be in town then.

The Isabelle scene is from March/April, 1989, and can be found in the recent uploads. I think King and Taggart try to frame it is as "a mother knows her child," but personally it felt like a plot device to negate some of the hostility Cabot was bound to feel towards Ava for keeping quiet about "Clay" being Alex. Isabelle goes on and on about how she did it to keep her family from falling apart. It is a bit of a stretch, and bless Dabney for trying to sell it.

Don't get me started on Clay is Tim Sullivan's son. It was such a bizarre story decision. I know when Walsh did the story on Riviera it was meant to negate an incest plot between an illegitimate son and the family's princess daughter. It also wasn't revealed until one of the final episodes. I could see how the reveal could have created real hostility for Shana and Clay, but I don't know what they were going to do with it as Shana is sidelined for most of 1992. I think there was some weight to be made about Clay being raised an Alden just like Jack was, but it was such an odd decision. This also climaxed during the rumored Haidee Granger ghost writing period so its possible we didn't see everything Walsh had originally intended. There is one decent scene from October, 1994, when Cabot gives the diner to Clay and Clay confronts Cabot about his paternity.

3 hours ago, Khan said:

Twenty characters on a brand-new soap opera? Mother of God.

Thanks, @EricMontreal22 , for posting this article!

Especially ironic given, as Nixon says here but as she has said elsewhere, one reason she was convinced to take on Loving was she genuinely missed writing a 30 minute show! (Bill Bell at some point said something similar about doing B&B)

Thanks for all your answers @dc11786

I had some memory from a recent watch of Malloy being Clay when Trisha "died." Clearly not.

The comments I saw about Walsh and Ava were that she wrote more about her career whereas in-between Ava spent more time crying over now having a man. Maybe I misunderstood what they said.

Looks like Horan left in August 91 and Malloy debuted in January 92, so that was the gap I was thinking of. I'm surprised they left Clay off the canvas for that long.

Sometimes I forget just how long Shana was on the show with her lengthy periods of underuse.

3 hours ago, Khan said:

I think production problems are always to be expected whenever you launch a new series. Reading this article, however, I do suspect Nixon, Douglas Marland, Joe Stuart and everyone else involved might have bitten off more than they could chew.

Agreed. I guess since all three were (to varying degrees) at the top of their game, soaps were at their peak still, etc, that both the network and they themselves just seemed to think everything would work out. Still, management issues like the mix up with making sure they had a studio are pretty unforgivable. I respectfully disagree with @dc11786 that the Nixon article is a rant and unflattering... I appreciate its honesty and matter of factedness and after all, I assume the assignment was TVGuide wanted to know what it was like to launch a soap!

You're right that Marland seemed to forget that they bring up the Lily story again a few months later. However, I don't think that really changes what Marland says as one assumes after that TV movie aired (did anyone watch it?) ABC wouldn't really care or be paying attention to what they do.

I did find it interesting how he insists he WANTS to only be at one show for a few years at a time. Have other writers said this? Is it because most of the shows he worked at weren't his own and maybe he wasn't as attached (though we could argue Loving was one he helped shape and of course there's New Day in Eden :) ) At any rate he did end up of course at ATWT for a significant amount of time, and I've always assumed the assumption was that he'd have stayed there, if he hadn't died, as long as they would have let him.

1 hour ago, EricMontreal22 said:

You're right that Marland seemed to forget that they bring up the Lily story again a few months later. However, I don't think that really changes what Marland says as one assumes after that TV movie aired (did anyone watch it?) ABC wouldn't really care or be paying attention to what they do.

I did find it interesting how he insists he WANTS to only be at one show for a few years at a time. Have other writers said this? Is it because most of the shows he worked at weren't his own and maybe he wasn't as attached (though we could argue Loving was one he helped shape and of course there's New Day in Eden :) ) At any rate he did end up of course at ATWT for a significant amount of time, and I've always assumed the assumption was that he'd have stayed there, if he hadn't died, as long as they would have let him.

The Lily story plays out until the end of January, well past the airing of There's Something About Amelia, but the trial itself wraps up that week. In late January, Lily's alter tries to kill Jack at a cabin before she is sent to Oregon for treatment. Jennifer Ashe seems to depart in late January with possibly making two more appearances. In late Febraury, there is a note about Jack going to see June as she is selling the house. The summaries continue to mention Lily on occasion through late March when Jack is informed that Lily is not progressing well. I believe June returns to deliver that note. This occurs the same week, I believe, as Merrill's departure from Corinth for the news correspondents job in Washington, D.C. so contracts are up.

While I agree that the network probably wasn't micromanaging the scripts at that level, I imagine part of the reason the show was not allowed to continue the story was so they could the "never before on television" angle to promote the film for awards, for which There's Something About Amelia won several.

Its worth noting that as the Lily story ends, Ann and Roger disappear from the canvas about the same time and Patrick and Rose Donovan are shipped off to Florida for some time (I think they return sometime in the spring). By mid February, Jack is in charge of Lorna as she is hiding her pregnancy and the only other reference to Roger and Ann is a mid-March reference that they oppose Tony and Lorna's wedding plans, but I don't necessarily think they were onscreen for that.

I do think there were story elements that were also revised because of the network's insistence. I believe the Stephanie Payne role in the Jonathan Maitalane / Edy Lester story was suppose to be a recast Merrill Vochek. Stephanie, if I recall correctly, was a journalist of some sorts who had been investigating the San Francisco murders and was helping Doug with the development of a television series. Merrill investigating Doug's wife for the murders would have carried a bit more weight and the impact on the Lorna / Jonathan leg of the story with Lorna and Merrill's history due to Merrill's affair with Roger and Lorna's attraction to Doug would have been more layered than what was played out onscreen.

In the case of Marland not wanting to stay long, I always come back to something Richard Backus stated; Marland had expensive tastes. I think one of the few ways to make money in any industry is to shop around for new jobs to get a higher starting salary. I have to wonder if Marland chose job stability for insurance reasons as he got older.

2 hours ago, EricMontreal22 said:

Especially ironic given, as Nixon says here but as she has said elsewhere, one reason she was convinced to take on Loving was she genuinely missed writing a 30 minute show!

I could believe that Agnes Nixon created (or co-created) LOVING, in part, because she missed writing the 30-minute format. But she (and Douglas Marland) loaded LOVING with so much that it would've been impossible for ANYone to come in and know what the show was about.

If you want to "break new ground" and depict the turbulent goings-on at an Ivy League-ish university (which isn't really breaking new ground, amirite, BRIGHT PROMISE?), then write that. If you want to explore the socioeconomic and other differences among several families in a small East Coast town, then write that. But you can't write 'em both, especially on a brand-new show that's only 30 minutes (or so) and is filled with characters whom the audience doesn't know or care about.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Khan

50 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

In the case of Marland not wanting to stay long, I always come back to something Richard Backus stated; Marland had expensive tastes. I think one of the few ways to make money in any industry is to shop around for new jobs to get a higher starting salary. I have to wonder if Marland chose job stability for insurance reasons as he got older.

I think Douglas Marland stayed as long as he did at ATWT, because he finally had an EP (well, two) who supported him and his writing fully. AFAIK, he didn't have the kinds of fights with Robert Calhoun or Laurence Caso that he had had with the producers at all his other gigs. They just left him and his work alone and concentrated on producing the show.

24 minutes ago, Khan said:

InterI could believe that Agnes Nixon created (or co-created) LOVING, in part, because she missed writing the 30-minute format. But she (and Douglas Marland) loaded LOVING with so much that it would've been impossible for ANYone to come in and know what the show was about.

If you want to "break new ground" and depict the turbulent goings-on at an Ivy League-ish university (which isn't really breaking new ground, amirite, BRIGHT PROMISE?), then write that. If you want to explore the socioeconomic and other differences among several families in a small East Coast town, then write that. But you can't write 'em both, especially on a brand-new show that's only 30 minutes (or so) and is filled with characters whom the audience doesn't know or care about.

Yep yep, in this case I don't disagree at all. And I think that was part of the problem? A desire to return to basics while also I think trying to instantly appeal to the current ABC Daytime audience, or something? This review of Loving though when it started is interesting--the foundation DID seem solid. And then.... (This also is a short article where Marland mentions how Nixon was a consultant on GH when he wrote--something that was talked about briefly--when she sold AMC and OLTL to ABC she became their overall daytime creative consultant, but I've never heard details about. Interestingly it does make public the issue with Dan Wakefield, and says Marland and Nixon will co-HW. Also I'd love to have seen Nixon supporting Marland in meetings with Gloria Monty)

I don't have the date of the first news article, but the latter SOD review is from May 1984.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by EricMontreal22

9 minutes ago, Khan said:

I think Douglas Marland stayed as long as he did at ATWT, because he finally had an EP (well, two) who supported him and his writing fully. AFAIK, he didn't have the kinds of fights with Robert Calhoun or Laurence Caso that he had had with the producers at all his other gigs. They just left him and his work alone and concentrated on producing the show.

It's interesting that--in terms of writing decisions, etc--Joseph Stuart doesn't get discussed much when it comes to Loving. Maybe with Nixon supervising/interfering with Marland there was no room for him to do so too.

11 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

And I think that was part of the problem? A desire to return to basics while also I think trying to instantly appeal to the current ABC Daytime audience, or something? This review of Loving though when it started is interesting--the foundation DID seem solid. And then....

I think it was one of those situations where everyone agreed that the show wasn't working. However, instead of regrouping and refocusing (maybe eliminate the class conflict angle and concentrate solely on the AU campus, the element that makes it distinct from the rest of daytime?), they hacked away even parts that had potential and just kept going but with huge chunks missing.

19 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

It's interesting that--in terms of writing decisions, etc--Joseph Stuart doesn't get discussed much when it comes to Loving. Maybe with Nixon supervising/interfering with Marland there was no room for him to do so too.

Think about it: in one room, you have Joe Stuart, who worked successfully at two different soaps and won an Emmy for one of them, but who also has a reputation for being an asswipe, especially toward women who aren't named Jacqueline Courtney (allegedly!); Douglas Marland, who is a brilliant writer, with three Emmys and loads of critical acclaim to show for his brilliance, but who also doesn't take too well to being told what and how to write and who will quit at the mere whiff of interference; and Agnes Nixon, who is arguably the genre's most successful storyteller, after Irna Phillips and next to Bill Bell, but who has gone to battle many times with the male "suits" over three decades and who has the scars to show for it. You think that's a collaboration that's gonna end well, lol?

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Khan