Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[Franko]

Such a shame. The impression I'm getting is that LOVING had turned a corner. Wasn't it also getting some positive press in SOD? Talk about a bad time for a cast exodus. Oh well, at least we didn't get grim but gentle deaths for Trucker and/or Cooper ...

[titan1978]

The first time I remember Loving being in soap mags often was Ally’s relationship with Casey and his sad death on the show.  I also remember some activity when Debbi Morgan moved Angie to the show.

 

Especially in Soap Opera Weekly as opposed to Digest.  They really were covering the murders a lot too.  I remember because I wanted to watch it.

[dc11786]

Since there were questions about Trisha's exit from Corinth. These are her last  few episodes starting with her funeral and the reveal she survived the crash.

 

 

 

 

[SFK]

 

Indeed, I'm also a Marylander and I met one of Laura (then) Sisk's childhood friends at a Britney Spears/P. Diddy concert at the Verizon Center, of all places. This was back when one could smoke indoors at the bar. We were shooting the [!@#$%^&*] about television and this lady who looks like Kelly Coffield in glasses shares that she grew up with Laura... small world. I believe Laura and her husband/former husband (I don't know, I don't keep up) met in College Park. I'm from Silver Spring where Evangeline's family was from on One Life to Live.

 

*  *  *  *  *

 

Apparently, Roberta Flack was making the NY soap rounds at this time. This must have been after Hold on to Love on Guiding Light so I guess there was no non-compete clause.

Edited April 16, 2020 by SFK

[Franko]

How do you like that. I never knew Donna McKechnie was on Loving. And that church set!

[OzFrog]

God damn, Darnell Williams could have a scene with a box of hair and it would still be more captivating than anything we see on daytime TV today!

[John]

I wonder why AMC didnt have Darnell play Jesse & Jacob in 2008 esp with Cassanfra in town. Not long term but to tie things up

[OzFrog]

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[Vee]

Wow. Legit had no idea there was a super-90s cyberpunk-flavored virtual reality sitcom interlude in the middle of the Loving Murders. In which Clay reimagines his family life with Gwyneth and the kids as Leave it to Beaver, by way of VR with laugh track! VR was all the rage at the time in media, with over the top demonstrations of its supposed fantastical capabilities in scores of movies and TV like The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, Brainscan, VR5, even an episode of Murder She Wrote. Today even Oculus Rift can’t manage Clay’s imagined past. There’s no credits or record but I’m also willing to bet that was Joseph Cross as the child Curtis. The VR thing was such a bonkers, demented little bit and I loved it - especially young Trisha’s creepy little line about wanting to see Rome, where she’d abandon her family and shatter it for good.

 

Dennis Parlato is excellent. I’ve often thought he’s an underrated soap player. I guess the attempt to recast him as Roger Thorpe would never have worked but he’d be as good a shot as they could ever have. The summation of Clay’s character pre-death is on point and very candid for a soap, and his commenting on how their family disintegrated when Trisha walked away strikes at the core of this very early. Gwyneth’s reminiscence with Jeremy is also spellbinding.

 

As a horror buff, it surprises me to only just now realize there is a ton of similarity to the Italian horror “giallo” subgenre in this story. Giallo was popularized by the hyper-stylized films of Mario Bava, Dario Argento and others in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and often featured a black-gloved mystery killer murdering people in bizarre ways, usually accompanied with some sort of musical motif or cryptic recurring bit of physical business at the scene. (The clicking sound when the killer is on the scene here qualifies.) I still don’t remember what significance the origin of the sound had, though I know what it is. The shredded pieces of the mysterious picture at the crime scenes is also very giallo - hints are always strewn throughout giallo films to add up to what is often a convoluted gothic reveal usually based in dark past events or past traumas. Anyway, it’s all great.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Vee

[DRW50]

 

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Edited April 17, 2020 by DRW50

[OzFrog]

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[DRW50]

You're right.

[DRW50]

I finished the 1992 episodes on the Facebook page. 

 

The Dinah Lee and Clay story is nonsensical, all this expensive, elaborate scheming just to protect Hannah's dreams for her sister (and Hannah is of course as saccharine as possible to justify this writing), but Jessica Collins and Larkin Malloy do have chemistry, and Jessica more than manages to sell Dinah Lee's insecurities and starry-eyed nature. She and Robert Tyler are absolutely wonderful together in their scenes from the April episode,. Thanks to Collins, and some of the writing, Dinah Lee feels very real in moments like that, not as generic as Trisha could sometimes be.I also liked how Stacey (who was so well written in this episode) stuck up for her, in spite of the dislike she felt.

 

Christine Tudor steals the show. As this was soon after her taking the role back from Elizabeth Savage, they tapped into a sexier side of the actress, which she certainly delivered, but the vulnerability is what stands out most. Her scenes with Larkin in that last episode are the standouts - their chemistry is phenomenal. The throughline for Clay and Gwyn through all the years and all the recasts is forever heartbreaking, for reasons best shown here - I love the bit where Clay asks why they have to start fighting any time they get close. 

 

It was nice to see so much of Bernard Barrow's Louie, but the wedding seemed like too much for the story to me. Unearned. Well filmed though, and the first dance between Clay and Dinah Lee was perfect.

 

Giff is such a fascinating character in these glimpses. I'm so sorry they made him into a generic psycho.

 

I think @dc11786 had had some criticisms about the Carly story. I can see why now. It's so excessively maudlin and melodramatic. The basic story of Carly using Flynn to avoid her feelings for Paul and Flynn angrily dumping her for this would have been better and easier to connect to than a car accident that felt like something from one of those anti-drunk driving PSAs. All the stuff with her boozing and breakdowns - nah. And while Joe Breen and Colleen Quinn played the material as best they could, Paul seeing her at such a low point and telling her he loved her and pushing kisses on her made them both look awful. Their selfishness helped send a man to his death. I guess they were both leaving so the show didn't care about how they came across, but considering how good some of Paul's previous story was, this left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Vee]

It is embarrassing how much they turned Gwyneth into a frump from '92 to different periods I've seen in '93-'95 - the difference in look and mannerisms is striking in Tudor's '92 return vs. sad sack menopausal Gwyneth in the final two years, though I suppose the wild veering shifts suit the character's core ultimately. Susan Keith's Shana also ended up a crunchy sweatered housewife, IIRC - part of it was the earthy styles and down-home cozy aesthetic of the early-mid '90s, but it certainly managed to defuse a lot of spitfire women on soaps.

 

Overnight Wino Carly is hilarious.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Vee

[dc11786]

 

The church was a hold over from Trisha and Trucker's 1992 wedding. It's a nice set. I believe it is used one more time. Someone gets stranded there during a rainstorm. I want to say it is Trucker and Dinahlee, but that would be a guess. 

 

Dennis Parlato is very good and had the ability to make truly terrible stories tolerable. When he came on, Clay was gaslighting Stacey and had tricked her into marriage. It's a really bizarre story that has bits of Shakespeare and Carmryn Manheim thrown in there for good measure. Anyway, he sells it as best he can, but its pretty bad. This is during the tailend of the year Addie Walsh is credited. When Guza and Taggart come on in January 1993, the story is quickly wrapped up and Stacey is thrown at Jeremy Hunter. Parlato's Clay is left to pine for Dinahlee, who is, naturally, pretty disgusted with him. In those funeral episodes, you can see that Dinahlee and Curtis become involved. If I can find time, I'll try to get the ones including Trisha's death on there. There is a good Clay / Cooper scene and some nice Clay self loathing that is pretty memorable. 

 

Parlato plays Clay perfectly. I think he plays Clay with a tragic self awareness that the writing (at its best) really supports. 

 

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OJ is was 1994. "Loving" was preempted a lot. Not for entire shows, but for chunks. I'm not sure this was so much a case of actual catching the audience up as much as it may have been a chance for the production staff to have an extra week to create the sets for "The City." They were filmed in the same building weren't they?

 

@DRW50 Collins manages to sell a lot of story she shouldn't be. At times, I think of her like Arianne Zuker. Two actresses who have mostly bad storylines during their times on their respective shows, but manage to make the character stay when they could have easily been tossed away. I don't hate Malloy and Collins, but it's such a weird take on the characters. Malloy comes in with Addie Walsh in January 1992 and Noelle Beck is out for maternity leave in February 1992. Walsh backburners Ava / Paul / Flynn / Carly in preparation to write them out and play this storybook romance. It's bizarre. Its a story that works if you accept Larkin Malloy's romantic lead version of Clay, which is clearly how the character is written. Those spring 1992 episodes are mostly interesting in the sense that it shows what the pre- college revamp looked like. In context of Beck's maternity leave, I think they played up the Hannah angle, which would have been less necessary if Trisha was on the scene. 

 

I am the one who complained about how Walsh handled Carly / Flynn. In a month, Carly connects again with Flynn, they become engaged, Flynn dies, and Carly turns to alcohol. It's a little much. I suspect that Walsh followed whatever outline Mary Ryan Munisteri left for the storyline, but just didn't spend any time developing it the way that Munisteri did. There is quick storyline (briefly talked about by Carly in that first episode) where Michael develops a heart condition. I speculate that Munisteri, a student of Claire Labine, may have been the one to develop a child in a medical crisis storyline. Maybe I'm wrong. When it came to Munisteri, there was more character working and emoting than under Walsh. Walsh seemed to move the story along at a quicker pace, but I struggle to get emotionally invested in the characters. 

 

The Louie/Dinahlee relationship is very sweet and Larkin Malloy/Bernie Barrows also play well off each other. I don't think Parlato and Barrows had many scenes together, and Clay doesn't even go to the offscreen funeral for Louie. 

 

What happens to Tudor is awful, but also typical "Loving." She comes back in April/May 1991 when Tom King is leaving. By summer, Taggart is also gone as is Jacquie Babbin. Under Sears/Munisteri, Gwyn is still a sexually desireable. Richard Cox's Giff Bowman is brought on for her. They have a great dynamic, which is why I am rather disappointed they did what they did to Giff. A triangle in 1994/1995 with Cox / Parlato / Tudor-Newman would have been dynamite. Anyway, Walsh ends it Gwyn and Giff in January when she arrives and never looks back. Walsh planned to redo the "let's force Gwyn and Clay to remarry" plot which had been abandoned in 1991 with the turnover in writing, producers, and cast (Horan and Herrera both departed). In many ways, this is the start of the decline of Gwyn as a well a renaissance.

 

While Walsh doesn't overemphasis Gwyn's love life, there is an intense introspection into her personal life. Gwyn reflects a lot on being the poor daughter of a minister who arrives at the Alden mansion as Anne Alden's charity case and ends up marrying into the family. Isabelle grooms Gwyn to take over Alden, but it seems mostly to be a ploy to get Clay back in AE. Some of the strongest scenes, in my opinion, of early Walsh is Gwyn looking back on how she has come to be where she is in her life. It's just a shame she couldn't have done it with Giff Bowman at her side. 

 

By those spring 1992 episodes, they are still playing Gwyn as a threat to Clay and Dinahlee's happiness. When Gwyn and Clay do remarry, it is summer of 1992 and now Haidee Granger is in. This all changes rather quickly. Walsh's major plotline seems to be Clay's paternity story. So Clay stays at the center, but Dinahlee and Gwyn kind of get lost in the plot. Gwyn marries Clay in June and has annulment in July. Clay leaves Dinahlee after learning Tim Sullivan was his father and comes back to Corinth ready to make people pay. Dinahlee ends up collateral damage in the Stacey / Clay marriage though Clay remains a threat to Curtis / Dinahlee. Gwyn is always around Clay, but I imagine in the same way "Search for Tomorrow" would have Stu and Jo improve phone conversations. Gwyn/Clay was a nice relationship to fall back on.

 

After the Dinahlee/Clay/Gwyn story ends, Gwyn is given a C-level romance with Armand Rosario, who is the Alden lawyer who initially represented Trisha in her custody hearing. Armand remains on contract through August 1993, but Guza and Taggart dump the romance pretty quickly into their run. Gwyn is portrayed as more pathetic under Guza/Taggert. Her relationship with Buck is often treated like she has scored herself a gigolo and there are jokes about Gwyn being a grandmother. Nixon, like most writers, dumps the Buck relationship pretty quickly to focus on Gwyn and Clay during the Dante Partou story. It is a nice story thread, but it doesn't develop into anything big in terms of their relationship. By January, they've already teased both Clay / Deborah, Clay / Steffi, and Gwyn / Jeremy, which brings you well into 1994. I do like that Steffi views Gwyn as a legitimate threat to her happiness with Clay and I suspect Nixon had Gwyn / Clay as endgame with Jeremy ending up with Tess. Yeah, the constant dropping of Gwyn's relationships creates this façade of Gwyn being frumpy and certainly the clothing choices don't help. 

 

Susan Keith doesn't do well under Walsh or Munisteri. Munisteri uses her as a lawyer. Walsh gives her a brief romance with John Schneider and then has her on the backburner the rest of her run. Taggart and Guza give Keith the Shana / Leo / Ava story which definitely plays on the idea that Shana is less sexual than Ava, but more attractive. James Carroll and Susan Keith have some rather intense love scenes early on in the romance. Shana and Leo are well written. They start to peter out in the tail end of Taggert/Guza's run, but the show was transitioning from the second act of the story (the baby might have developmental issues) to the third act (Shana takes over the reigns of Burnells'). Nixon doesn't play any of the Shana takes over Burnells' story instead focusing the story solely on the baby's problems. Also, a lot of the fire in the Shana / Leo relationship came from Leo's characterization; a more typical Guza male, openly chauvinistic and needing be in control. A lot of their energy came from Shana playing against it and more often than not proving Leo wrong. Nixon immediately waters down Leo, which, in turn, gives Shana less to do. 

 

I apologize for rambling.