Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[Soaplovers]

 

I think the focus on the University was a good idea, and that could have been the element to separate it from the other soaps.  About the going ons at the college..faculty, students (townies and out of town students), parents of the students, alumni, and financial contributors...could have been a strong soap, etc.  

 

However, the powers that be eventually went in the traditional family oriented set up..but had been done to death already. 

[EricMontreal22]

They also, especially under Tom Ellis, went heavily in a corporate business direction which felt devoid of character in the late 1980s...

I agree about the campus.  Agnes Nixon in her bible mentions how the campus will be used as the required "marketplace"--the term she always uses for a location where she can have characters interact, run into each other, etc.  Traditionally she admits to rather awkwardly using the hospital as a "marketplace" (which is still true of many soaps--cuz, you know, we all go to the hospital so often in real life) and how the campus setting will mean they won't have to use that "tired trope".  The campus also is a good excuse for different generations to mingle--students, young professors, older tenured professors and administrators, etc.

Edited May 21, 2020 by EricMontreal22

[dc11786]

@EricMontreal22 I'm sure they were trying to bank on Genie Francis' name value. Ceara's story runs perfectly in Corinth. She arrives to accept a public relations job at Alden University and takes residence at the Rescott boarding house. Ceara was running from her impending marriage to Jeremy because she was still dealing with residual effects of the sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of her father. In Corinth, she connected with Matt, who had only recently been exonerated of raping a young woman who had in fact been raped by his stepfather, Rev. Albert Ford. On AMC, Ceara confronted her mother about the years of abuse that went on noticed. On Loving, Ceara was there to witness a similar interaction between Matt and his mother. Ceara developed a very intense emotional connection to Matt, which Ally interpreted as sexual. I get the sense from Goodall's performance that there may have been a little bit of that there, but Francis made it clear that Ceara's intimate connection with Matt was motherly, not romantic. Ceara was not a true threat to Ally and Matt's relationship. It was actually Ally, jealous of Matt and Ceara's connection, who locked Ceara and Jeremy in the Rescott shed. 

 

Through her friendship with Matt, Ceara no longer feared that she could be a mother, which is why she had skirted her marriage plans with Jeremy. Ceara and Jeremy's reconciliation in the shed played out just as Matt was continuing to struggle with his emotions regarding his stepfather's influence on his life. Not only had Albert raped this one girl, there had been countless others. Matt talked about hearing the muffled screams and later being physically assaulted by Albert. This was all before the trial. Matt was listening to Paul Slavinsky's radio show and a caller rang in about Matt's situation. He basically said that Matt had no hope of having a normal life. Paul quickly cuts the caller off and tells him he's wrong, but the damage is done. It's too much for Matt and he ends up doing heroin and overdosing. Goodall performance during the overdose is pretty strong. Ally lets them out of the shed to help with Matt who she has found passed out.

 

I haven't watched much of the Carter Jones stuff, but I have it. It's just not a particularly good time for the show in terms of the build to it. The Carter Jones stuff was definitely bigger, but I don't think of "Loving" as a show that tells those kind of stories well.

 

Jeremy basically replaced Giff Bowman, who had to go crazy at the alter of Trucker and Trisha. It was Jeff Hartman, Part II. Jeremy came with too much baggage that just was bizarre (the mercenary stuff / the psychic visions). Jeremy's initial pairing with Stacey is just bland. I don't know what they thought they were accomplishing with that other than pairing someone from a higher rated show with one of the main heroines of the other. Millee Taggart and Robert Guza, bless their hearts, don't drop it immediately, but slowly pivot Jeremy and Stacey into the Ava / Leo / Shana triangle in a much more successful way than in the story that they were the focus (Hannah's crush on Jeremy leading to the accusation of sexual harassment). The Jeremy problem really continued no matter who the headwriter was. The Faison stuff is lame though the sexual tension between Leclerc and Peluso was exciting. They try to tag Jeremy into a lot of the police stuff which is so weird because he is an artist and that's not the angle they often played. Jeremy as the backer of Tess' ad agency and Gwyn's good-natured boyfriend worked best, but I can't imagine Leclerc was making scale for a role that didn't require him per se.  

 

No clue what happened with Munisteri. She may have been interim as I believe Walsh would have been finishing up the French soap "Riviera" when Munisteri stepped in. I don't know Walsh and McCarthy were let go. The statement from ABC was that their contracts were not renewed. Addie Walsh and Laurie McCarthy were the associate headwriters when Nixon was there and it Walsh/McCarthy, not Nixon, who would give the previews to the press. I imagine Nixon was grooming them to takeover. For me, Walsh and McCarthy is a mixed bad slightly better than Walsh on her own even with Fran Sears, but not nearly as good as the beginning half of 1994. They do do one really good story: Clay's hit and run on the night of Steffi's 21st birthday. Honestly, it was hard at that point to mess any of the Steffi / Cooper stuff up or Casey / Ally for that matter. I actually think they did the lead up to Jacob Johnson arriving in Corinth. Not sure when Nixon leaves and Walsh / McCarthy takeover or leave for that matter. 

 

@Paul Raven Meg Mundy wanted more money than ABC was offering her so she left. I think Dabney was let go during the Alden purge in the early half of 1991. She may have not renewed her contract, but it's also possible she was fired. Celeste Holms was fired by Haidee Granger. My guess was it was a budget consideration. Also, the version of Isabelle that Munisteri wrote and Walsh wrote were vastly different shades of the same character. Munisteri had made Isabelle savvy and calculating while also sentimental and mournful. Walsh played Holms' Isabelle as more of a heavy. She was manipulative and heartless when it came to protecting her secret from comin out. Sears brought Wesley Addy back for the coup of having husband and wife play husband and wife in scenes where Isabelle chats with Cabot's ghost. Through all but the final sequence, Isabelle and Cabot are loving and affectionate. In the last scene, Cabot lashes out at Isabelle over what she did all those years ago. Not subtle at all. I've read that Holms was pretty shocked by her firing. Pat Barry is basically playin the same type of character but without an ounce of subtly. To be fair, the scripts didn't call for it. Pat Barry's Isabelle would rant and rave about "those Mayberry girls." I can't see any other version of Isabelle going off like that. After Walsh's name is out of the credits, Isabelle appears infrequently. Guza and Taggart rest the character. She's still has her hands in the pot (mostly Ally's pregnancy), but nowhere to the extent she did before. Nixon uses her even less infrequently before shipping Isabelle off. 

 

Ironically, it's Nixon who abandons the college campus completely in her return in 1993. Haidee Granger definitely took an ax to by dropping Staige, Kent, and the sorority/frat plotline, but the rest of the gang is still in school. In one of their last stories, Taggart and Guza had Ava take courses at Alden University in order to better herself and spend time with Jeremy. Nixon shifts the stories from the college TO the hospital more than likely due to the arrival of Angie. With the number of issues based stories the show was telling (Curtis' PTSD, Steffi's eating disorder, Angie's HIV scare, Casey's descent into drugs related to mental health issues). the move to the hospital made sense. 

 

I hope that more of Ralph Ellis' period shows up. So much of "Loving" doesn't read well in summaries, but seems to play out much better onscreen. The little bit that has shown up is from a show that takes itself very seriously, which is something that was rare afterwards. I love imposter storylines so I really would like to see how the Clay Alden/Alex Masters story started before it went completely off the rails under King and Taggert. I've seen Ellis' work on "Search for Tomorrow" in 1982. It definitely has that drier Proctor and Gamble style with characters talking things over coffee and talk about their emotions rather than talking with their emotions. I think the romance between Cece and Rick looks sweet, but it was truncated. I've always heard good things about Lily's return storyline. It was very sweet seeing some of the end of Lily in that 1988 episode. I have no use for Dan Hollister and I love Susan Keith and Peter Davies seems more than competent, but most of the Shana / Jim stuff bores me. Again, maybe it would play differently than it reads. 

 

[amybrickwallace]

 

Absolutely. You have class differences, politics and scandal there already!!

[EricMontreal22]

Jeez--thanks as always DC for such a thoughtful recap.  I completely agree about Ceara's use in Loving.  I know that when Agnes Nixon created her character and got Genie to accept it, according to Genie, she was offered a role that she "couldn't say no to" and that would cross over to various ABC shows.  I suppose it was too hard to think of how that would work at GH...

I have a lot of affection for the Carter Jones/Loving crossover, but that's mostly because it was what made me a steady Loving viewer.  I can't say that it was a particularly strong time for the show.

[Paul Raven]

Agnes with Doug Marland and Joe Stuart

 

 

[gimmetoo]

These photos aren't showing up for me -- would love to see them.

[Vee]

Jeremy emceeing the Corinth press conference during the Loving Murders - talk about shoehorned.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vee

[Forever8]

 

[dc11786]

 

This is the next episode in that sequence

[DRW50]

Thank you @AdelaideCate007 and @dc11786 . I'd never seen Ava's penthouse before, or forgotten what it looked like. A beautiful set. The best material in these for me was probably the Clay/Steffi/Jeremy/Gwyneth contrast - Gwyn talking about the naive girl she had been while we saw Clay with another naive girl. Having Clay try to resist until he realized Gwyn had moved on was something I hadn't expected - I'm so used to just assuming later Clay was a perv. Christine Tudor does so much with her speech - she lights up the screen. I know that most of the Aldens chose to leave by the time Loving was ending, but they are much more vibrant than one would expect on paper for a family that supposedly had to go in order to bring a new lease on life. 

 

I don't have a ton of interest in Cooper scheming to win Ally back, but Cat Hickland is so luminous as Tess, just fascinating to watch, and she and Michael Weatherly have an intense spark.

 

I find the Curtis madness stories so depressing and a bit grimy and sleazy, so I'm not sorry we got little of that in these three. Thom Christopher is fun as Dante though. Probably not the right word. Chris Marcantel is hard to take your eyes off of - everyone in this triangle is charismatic and attractive. I wish they had gone another way. 

 

The weakest material in these for me is the Ava/Alex/Egypt stuff. I can see why Linda Cook was disappointed with the way she was portrayed this time around. Beyond Egypt's characterization it all feels like idiot plotting anyway - would Alex not be able to guess that there was an order for Ava to stay in city limits? Would he not ask Ava to tell him everything that the detectives said to her? And while I get they were trying to figure out how to use Shana, the idea of her being the best lawyer in Corinth made me laugh, given that she'd only been back a few years and had spent much of that time in corporate fare (maybe he was just trying to butter Shana up).

[dc11786]

I'll be honest. I tend to probably put more into the scenes than are intended at times. 

 

Steffi is such a complex character. I think the dynamic between her and Clay is much more richer than is typical described on paper. Clay does come off as pervy when you look at his later choices (Carly, Dinahlee, Tess, Steffi). I apologize if I went into it already but what Nixon does with Steffi / Clay / Deborah / Casey is pretty great and later when they switch out Casey for Coop it maintains that level of fun. Some of the initial Coop / Steffi stuff has a tendency to be a bit juvenile, and I'm sure that is the purpose, but it becomes very heavy handed. I haven't rewatched these. Is this the episode where Deborah makes a big revelation to Steffi? If it isn't let me know and I can try and find those episodes. 

 

A lot of the Gwyn and Jeremy stuff is simple character stuff, which is why I think why it works so well. 

 

The Curtis in the cage stuff is bizarre as it goes on for a bit. I think the PTSD element had the potential to be different as most kidnapping stories rarely seem to deal with those sort of ramifications. At times, I do think it becomes too much of a crutch at other times I think it makes sense. With that said, I can see how @DRW50 would see it as insensitive and I'm not a fan of the extremes the story takes in the late summer (Curtis rigging the plane) and the fall (Curtis shooting Gwyn thinking she's Dante). There are some episodes later where Curtis saves Trucker from an incident which helps humanize Curtis. I don't think the writing always shows the complexity of certain characters in single scenes but rather over the course of a story. 

 

I have little use for Tess, but I don't mind this version of Tess as much as I do a lot of the other versions. I felt that they were playing on Cooper's previous trauma by pairing him with Tess (i.e. the incident with the nanny). I think it may have been intended to make Tess more sympathetic. There's a very strong Tess and Cooper scene sometime in April where Cooper takes Tess to Belden Pond to go skinny dipping. When Cooper starts stripping down, Tess starts to freak out because she doesn't want Cooper to see her naked. During the early stages of the Steffi bulimia story, Tess revealed that she had been anorexic. At the pond, Tess explains to Coop she still deals with body dysmorphia. Given where the show was heading, Coop and Steffi, the Clay / Steffi and Tess / Cooper pairings worked as catalyst for later problems.   

 

I do get why the Egypt murder plot is controversial. I will say I had forgotten about how the arrest scene actually plays out. When I first watched it, I thought it was brilliant because I assumed Alex had purposely taken her out of town in order for her to break parole. At the start of the episodes, Alex tells Ava to stay put and she simply won't. I thought he took her out of town because the only way to keep her safe was to have her in jail. Clearly, this isn't how this played out in the actual episode. 

 

Shana's evolution as a lawyer is quite wide and varied. Even when she comes back in 1990 as "a champion of victim rights," she often gets pulled into a lot of corporate AE stuff. In the 1991 episodes I have, Shana handles Carly's search for Michael while still working at AE. Isabelle keeps threatening to send Shana to the Hong Kong offices. In early 1992, you still have Shana involved in the Take Off scam where John Schneider seduces her while bilking money from Alden Enterprises. After that, Shana seems more involved in personal drama. So you have her handling Trucker's attempt to gain custody of Christopher. She is involved in some of the work at 35 Maple Street which is definitely less corporate. When Shana is arrested in the summer, something involving Ava, she is being paraded through the courts and it is basically the chance for a bunch of court officers she pissed off getting a chance to sneer at her. Shana also represents Ally in the custody suit against Cooper. I like the Shana / Ava / Alex stuff because Ava / Shana spent so much time the previous year in a triangle and I felt it made sense to kind of show that Shana wasn't going to hold Leo against Ava. I also thought Shana and Alex were close in the late 1980s after it came out that Alex wasn't Clay, but I may be making that up. 

 

It's unfortunate that Shana is never treated as much of anything by the Alden, neither close relation or unfriendly animosity. There are only passing references to Shana's involvement with the family to the point you have Isabelle declaring the shocking revelation to Trisha that Cabot cheated. There seemed to be no real sense of Shana's conception.

[DRW50]

@dc11786 The quad isn't in the first episode. In the second we see them and then Steffi tells Clay that Deborah told her something about her past that really upset her. I'd love to see the other episodes if you have those.

 

You may be right about Alex's plan and I misunderstood what was going on. The whole thing confused me.

 

I can see the gothic appeal of Curtis' story, especially under Nixon's pen. I think if he'd had a happier ending (that wasn't down to Nixon, of course) I might not have as hard a time, so that is on me, not the show I suppose.

 

Thanks for the extra info about Shana. I didn't realize she was an active lawyer when she returned to Corinth. I guess she just went in and out. As you said, it's a shame they dropped most of her ties to the Aldens in that stint.

[John]

https://youtu.be/9h3MnzLAm4s

 

Ladies of LOVING Reunion

[EricMontreal22]

I loved Tess on Loving--never really liked Hickland on OLTL.

The Curtis stuff is kinda grimy and sleazy for Nixon--but I admit I have a soft spot when she goes out there with the Gothic drama and the story really appealed to me.