Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[dc11786]

The extended Alden family was being widdled down to Clay and Gwyn's nuclear family most likely because of the success of the Trisha and Steve pairing. The show's big couple, Shana and Jim, were written off within a year or two of Anne's absence. The show definitely seemed more focused on the romantic entanglements of Trisha and the mammouth Clay Alden saga which played out for much of the late 1980s/early 1990s when it came to the Alden family.

Britt Hefler, the Lily in this video, is Lily#2. Lily was off canvas for a good three years before she returned. Wasn't Ashe already playing Meg Snyder at this point and time?

[DRW50]

So Steve was killed to bring Trucker in? I know Shana and Jim were written out around 1993 or 1994. Shana seemed very unique to me, so it's too bad she had to go. One of the reasons I was drawn into Loving when the show was winding down was their interesting female characters (Ava, Gwyn, Deborah...even Steffi and Ally, to a degree).

In the 1987 episode I didn't know what that was about with Gwen and the young man Ann and Ava accused her of having an affair with. So apparently he was her son. Did they ever bring him back? I'm surprised he wasn't killed in the Loving murders.

What did you think of Robert Duboc as Alex?

I was looking at the 1991 recaps and saw that Ally had been involved with a man who was falsely accused of rape. That's interesting, since she falsely accused Danny of rape later on.

Ann Williams' children put up a few clips of Ann's work as Lily Slater's mother.

It's interesting to see Jennifer Ashe as Lily. I think Meg suited her a bit more.

Patricia Kalember has a unique style for a young soap heroine. Was she the one with the priest brother? And Patricia was fired because she cut her hair, right? That seems silly.

[EricMontreal22]

Wow thanks for those clips! So that was some of the infamous incest storyline they were apparently forced to botch?

[DRW50]

I guess it must be. I didn't know they were forced to end it. That's odd, since ABC was more progressive than ATWT/P&G, yet that show allowed Marland to do a long, very painful incest story.

Or perhaps this was because Loving had just started out and they wanted happier stories for ratings?

Were Jack and Stacey the couple from early on or was Lily his original love?

[Paul Raven]

Re the incest story.I read that ABC was premiering the TV movie Something About Amelia starring Ted Danson,which was being touted as a breakthrough in dealing with this topic.

ABC daytime got the word to drop the story as primetime wanted the movie to be hailed as a landmark and not some low rated daytime soap.

[DRW50]

That sucks, especially since, from what I've heard, some people felt that movie was a copout, especially the ending.

I wonder if this is one the reasons Marland left.

[dc11786]

I don't think Steve was sacrificed for Trucker. I believe there was a bit of an overlap. Trucker was brought in as a part of the Clay/Alex tale. Clay had paid Trucker off to take the fall for some crime he committed. The tale was very convulted from what I've read and I don't think I've ever understood the whole thing. Something about hypnosis and bullseyes and a corrupt Maine sherriff.

Jim died in 1990. Shana and Jim left town with their baby, Jimmy, in 1988 or 1989. Shana returned to Cornith solo and watched Jim and Jimmy's plane crash. Shana suffered amnesia and was duped by Dane into an engagement. Shana later married Leo Burnell, suddenly Burnell's was no longer an Alden entity but a business created by a self-made man, and had a daughter Patti. Nixon wrote out Shana and Leo during her 1993-1994 stint. The cast was becoming bloated, but it was a shame. Leo and Shana are who you are thinking of and they ended up in Rome.

Rick did come back and was the next chapter in the Stacey/Jack saga. Rick and Stacey became an item after learning of the infidelity. I believe Rick plotted with Jolie, Jack's love interest, to keep them apart. Anyway, Rick ended up fathering Stacey's daughter Heather and Stacey penned a romance novel about her love for the Alden cousins. When it looked like Stacey and JAck were going to reunite, Rick kidnapped Heather and was involved in a shady business deal to extort money from his father. Rick ended up murdered, Stacey went on trial, and it was all revealed that the business associate Denny was behind the scheme.

What I know I've gathered from reading weekly newspaper columns online by people like Jon-Michael Reed, Lynda Hirsch, Seli Groves, and others. Duboc's Alex was more involved with Egypt. I think the Clay/Ava/Alex story was more interesting than Ava/Alex/Egypt.

Matt Ford was a runaway. His minister stepfather raped a young woman who accused Matt of rape. Ceara and Jeremy Hunter helped Matt when they were in town in 1991, a year before Jeremy permanently relocated to Cornith.

Funny, I never heard the cut hair story. I know the show made a big deal when they scrapped the Merrill/Roger love story claiming that the story played out the way it was intended and that Shana and Jim were going to be the show's it couple. I call BS. No one would play out stories in the first six months that were going nowhere. THat would have been foolish on Marland and Nixon's part. Ultimately, I wonder if Marland didn't want to tell a politically heavy story bouncing between D.C. and Cornith as the show did in the opening months. Roger was only presumed dead, a body was never found. I suspect Marland left that open for future writers.

How Marland came to Loving still puzzles me. Marland claims that when he wrote General Hospital he worked with Nixon at the network because she was a consult for all of ABC. Nixon says that when Wakefield had to leave, she thought of Marland from those meeting about General Hospital. Yet, at this point in time, Marland's soap "A New Day in Eden" would have barely hit the airwaves. Flannery claims the show was a moneymaker, and I found another article from Michael Jaffe talking about how "A New Day in Eden" was not going into the red, yet in some pre-premier press for "Loving" Marland claims financial arrangements were going to do the show in.

Marland bounced around a lot. I suspect he may have liked that but settled into his role at As the World Turns because of the lack of network hassle he was given, but that's personal speculation.

Merrill's brohter was Jim, the priest.

The first clip is more June's alcoholism/Lily and Jack's first meeting, while the second is from Jack's trial where he was accused of killing Garth Slater. All threads were tied into the incest storyline. I believe these scenes are from June and Lily's final weeks. Despite being labelled December 1983, I'm almost positive that was simply the tape date. The trial wrapped up in January.

Marland said they weren't allowed to reference the storyline after January 15th or something and then learned of the Something About Amelia movie. I do know that Lily was mentioned in February 1984, and her progress wasn't good.

Jack and Lily were the original 'it' couple with Curtis Alden as the third wheel. Curtis romanced Trista, Lily's slutty alter, who ran off to New York wiht Curtis during Jack's trial. I believe Stacey pined for Jack early on, even though Jack had just returned to Cornith, but her first major love interest was Tony Perelli, Jack's boarding school pal who attended on scholarship. Tony ended up briefly married to Lorna when she got knocked up and later aborted her baby to pursue her modelling career.

Marland had a two-year contract to write "Loving." This all played out in the first six months. 1984 was a rough year. Stories and characters were dropped on a dime. Warren Hodges, the D.A. in the trial scenes, was romancing Noreen Donovan and talking about moving his teenage daughter to town. Then suddenly Warren and Noreen were both written off. After Merrill left, Doug was suddenly involved with an old flame Edy Lester and was marrying her in May only for her to end up dead after a labrynith murder mystery set in San Francisco involving Edy's secret husband Jonathan Maitland. Doug's novel was suppose to become a movie or TV series and he gained a writing partner Stephanie Smith who was helping him solve the murders. It all went nowhere. Curtis' romance with Colby Cantrell hit a snag when it turned out Burnell's model Sasha Hale had starred in some pornographic films Curtis had financed during his days in Europe, but this really didn't go anywhere.

[DRW50]

Thanks for all the detailed answers. It's odd that a show with Nixon and Marland would become such a mess so quickly.

The Donovans, they faded away as a family fairly quickly, didn't they?

Did Agnes Nixon do the plane crash which Jim and Jimmy died in? I know she did one at AW to kill off a bunch of characters.

That seems somewhat gruesome to kill off a young child. Was that an issue for Shana later on? I guess I can see why Nixon would write out characters who had been around for some years, but Shana did seem compelling to me.

I can't remember where I heard that about Patricia Kalember, but supposedly she got her hair cut without asking permission, and they fired her. Perhaps it isn't true, I don't know anything about her exit from the show.

[dc11786]

I don't think it really came together until the final six months of Marland's tenure. Dane Hammond finally snared Alden Enterprises in a plot with the Beecham brothers, which caused conflict for Lorna and her lover, Linc Beecham. Dane paid Ava money to buy a baby so Jack would marry her. Shana and Mike's relationship was complicated by the return of Noreen. Curtis and Colby continued their love affair. Rita Mae was involved in a younger man-older woman affair with Tony Perilli after Tony and Stacey's aborted wedding. The show gelled very well.

Nixon alone didn't seem as exciting. She wrote the Jonathan Maitland sold his soul to the devil story. Keith ended up romanicng a hooker named Dolly who had a baby by her pimp who she thought was the star of child pornography. Doug Donovan returned and hooked up with Shana for a Shana/Jim/Doug triangle. Most of it didn't seem to make a lot of sense.

I think Rose and Patrick were dropped to recurring fairly quickly. The Donovans went to Florida in Janaury 1984, but would pop up occassionally. Merrill left in March or April. Noreen left in June with Warren, but returned in March 1985. Doug left in December 1984 before returing in September 1985. Noreen and Mike remarried and left in the fall of 1985.

Millee Taggert and Tom King wrote out the Vochek clan in May 1989, and were there when Shana returned in September 1990 only to watch her husband and son die.

Nixon's 'plane crash' is a bit of urban legend from what I understand.

Shana didn't have much of a love life after Jim and Jimmy's deaths. She was engaged to Dane when she had amnesia, but after that she didn't have much of a story until February 1993 when she decided to have a baby via artificial insemination. Leo Burnell agreed to be the father and then they had sex and fell in love.

[EricMontreal22]

The first clip (re Lily's mom alcoholism) says it's from the first episode--I wonder if the postr has the full episode and could be politely persuaded to post it all or just has her mother's scenes. (I have seen the pilot movie, with Lloyd Bridges or whoever and Geraldine Page -- which aired in primetime the night before--though I wish I could see that again as well)

The way I had read it I assumed Lily's incest story was dropped altogether--I'm glad it at least got some sort of payoff in the court scenes. the first year or half year of Loving seems very good to me--a good mix of old school AMC (which I think was part of Agnes Nixon's concept for creating it--and may have been its undoing as no one really wanted early 70s style AMC as a soap by then) with some of Marland's trademarks.

It does seem in the 90s, with Addie Walsh and then Agnes writing in a way they returned to this style--the show at least seems more like the very early Loving I've seen in feel in those 93-94 eps than the 1987 Loving clips here (when one of the writers was Amy Lippman who went on to create Party of Five).

Edited December 27, 2009 by EricMontreal22

[Paul Raven]

Has the Loving premiere movie aired as a rerun in the states?

I know it has overseas as a standa alone title through the distribution company Fremantle.

[EricMontreal22]

It was briefly available on NTSC VHS--I rented a copy from a local Blockbuster when i was first soap obsessed so around 1991. It may have had a slightly different title. I wish I could track down that historical miniseries Agnes wrote around the same time.

[Paul Raven]

That was The Manions of America which starred Kate Mulgrew and Pierce Brosnan.

To the best of my recollection it aired just before Fall Premiere week,up against repeats and some premieres and did OK in the ratings.

[EricMontreal22]

But was it any good? I think one soap critic said it showed she should stick to soaps--still I'd love to see it.

*edit* it must not be too obscure and seems to have lots of fans (probably partly cuz of the actors) as youtube is litered with clips and fan vids to it.

Edited December 27, 2009 by EricMontreal22

[SFK]

WoST ran the Loving movie a few years back. Getting to see the late great Geraldine Page do a soap where she wore hats and smoked Nat Shermans was by far the best thing about it (imho).