Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[Forever8]

Lauren Marie Taylor (Stacey Donovan Forbes) posted a TBT of herself and Phillip Brown (Buck Huston( on Instagram. 

 

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[victoria foxton]

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[DRW50]

Thanks.

[victoria foxton]

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[FrenchBug82]

Everytime I rewatch those old episodes, I am reminded what gems Christine Tudor and Lisa Peluso were. Loving was low-rated and generally poorly regarded but it is a shame the broader soap community doesn't treasure them the way they do other leading ladies of defunct shows.

[victoria foxton]

Those ladies always gave a 110%.

[Paul Raven]

Lisa had been acting on soaps almost 20 years at that point so she knew what she was doing in the genre.

[DRW50]

 

Christine left the public eye after Loving, although at least she did that reunion last year. 

 

Lisa is someone who may have had the misfortunate of being a big part of shows that were in their last years or not well-regarded. Still, I think she has her share of fans. 

[dc11786]

The 1991 episode is from November, 1991. I think this was online before in a partial form. I really liked Giff and Gwyn as a couple. I think Cox and Tudor Newman had nice chemistry. This episode also includes the reference to all of Giff's marriages and children, which is something that often got ignored. I believe later Casey mentioned Giff's multiple marriages, but I don't think his siblings were ever mentioned again. Ryan Munisteri set up Revel's arrival in her final episodes in December 1991 or January 1992. Revel was a musician and suppose to show up shortly into the new year. I assume this was delayed because Mary Ryan Munisteri left. 

 

Early Dinahlee is so much fun when she was scrappy and more complex. Dinahlee was sleeping in her car before she crashed in the art studio at Alden University. Her affair with Trucker was very interesting, but I can see why Trucker and Trisha fans would rebel. Neither character came off well during that storyline, but they were more human than in most other sequences I've seen.

 

Mary Ryan Munisteri seemed to be okay with showing different sides to characters. I believe at one point, Ava actually told Kate that she hoped that Carly never found Michael. Matt's overdose was also rather hard to sit through in that Eric Woodall just played ever angle of it (the physical pain and the realization of what he did). I know Munisteri has a rather bleak history as headwriters, but I would have liked to see version continue. 

 

The 1992 episode is January or early February 1992. Addie Walsh has been there for about a month or less. Michael having heart issues was never really played to its full potential. Walsh almost immediately dumps the Carly / Ava / Paul / Flynn quad. It goes from A-story to C-story in a very short time. 1992 is a bizarre year transitioning from Fran Sears and the college reset to Haidee Granger's super generic melodrama which included the ghost storyline, Giff's descent into madness, and the "All My Children" Carter Jones crossover. 

 

I'm glad more episodes are showing up. I would love to see more of the missing gaps of 1991 in particular.  

[slick jones]

 

 

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This is the only actor I didn't recognize on Loving.   I believe it's actor Ben Hammer.  I think the character is Ewing Spencer, Merrill's boss from old synopses from SOD.  Can anyone help verify the information?

 

[DRW50]

 

Yes, I remember this episode too - just without commercials, and in better quality. It was good to see the episode again...as you said, Giff had so much potential as a character and such natural chemistry with those a round him. I never understand how characters like this are so easily sacrificed. What I like most about the Giff and Dinah Lee scene is when she tells him she's the only person in Corinth not related to the Aldens, and he reminds her he is in the same position. The concept of Corinth having a higher class and people tied to them, then "others" like Dinah Lee, is so much more compelling than Dinah Lee going through various Alden men or the husbands of Alden women. 

 

Carly is such a draining character. Any time she's onscreen I just feel a weight hang over the room. I think Colleen Quinn was a fine actress and she worked as Ava's sister and Kate's daughter, but that whole story with Paul and Ava is just very good actors coping with middling material.

[FrenchBug82]

Oh yeah I totally get how it happened that they became overlooked but it is a shame. I don't think either of them are particularly resentful and seem to be doing fine.

But I do love them

 

I remember being fascinated by Carly at the time - not in a good way necessarily but I thought it was captivating to see a story ostensibly built around the traditional good sister/bad sister dynamic where surprisingly they were writing the GOOD sister as very unlikeable to the point we are rooting for the "bad sister". I'd like to think it was clever writing (since CQ was a good actress so it couldn't have been her) rather than bad writing that lucked into a dynamic that could be tedious to watch at the time but admirable in retrospect.
Of course now I suspect it was the latter - and I hear you that it didn't make for fun viewing when the show didn't quite notice Carly wasn't very pleasant to watch and used her more than they should have
I never cared for Paul for a variety of reasons - some shallow but the main one being my personal allergy to anything mob-related on soaps. Immediately loses the rooting value of a character. 
But it gave LP good material at times and interesting character moments for Ava and Kate so I look back at it with indulgence.

 

[DRW50]

 

That isn't shallow at all - we all have our own tastes. I have barely seen most of his mob period but if I didn't like Joe a lot as an actor from his ATWT run I'd probably be less interested, as most of the time they don't do a great job showing the love between Paul and Ava. 

 

That's a very true point about Carly. Maybe that is what they intended. Either that or they just put the character through such a wringer, the material had an unintended consequence for viewers. By the end of her run it's just 100% angst and crying and binge drinking.

 

I don't really buy that Paul was still in love with her, either. I guess they just had to get him off the show in a hurry.

Edited June 21, 2021 by DRW50

[dc11786]

 

Giff was sacrificed by Addie Walsh. She didn't get the character at all. When Walsh arrives in January 1992, Giff and Gwyn break up over something pretty minor in the scheme of things. Giff then proceeded to be put in a short arc with Ally where she faked a pregnancy, which was beyond stupid. Giff then remains support for Trisha before he suddenly goes psycho. I do appreciate what Walsh did with Casey when she returned in 1994 with cocaine and mental health issues. I felt that was a good way of taking advantage of very poor storyline from her first run (which I suspect might have been a Haidee Granger issue). Richard Cox was dumped in favor of Jean LeClerc, but truthfully, the show had the same issue with LeClerc that they did with Cox. Giff at least had ties to Casey. Jeremy just floundered. 

 

The class element was definitely there with Jacqueline Babbin and Millee Taggart/Tom King. The use of Kate's as an actual boarding house helped. Mary Ryan Munisteri shifted the dynamic a bit making it a college town and playing up the line between those attached to the university and townies. The bowling alley and Checkers both really made that dynamic clear in comparison to things like the Alden mansion and the Tides. Haidee Granger didn't seem to get that and just took away a lot of the sets that added character. 

 

Carly's story was very narrow, which didn't help. By the time of these episodes, she doesn't have a job, her relationship with Flynn was superficial, and she had no life outside the Rescott clan. At least under Taggart and King, there was the marriage to Clay, her friendship with Abril, and the obvious complications in the Abril-Clay-Tommy situation. When Clay and Abril leave, Carly's world is so small. The show tried to build a Shana-Carly friendship under Mary Ryan Munisteri, but Shana had absolutely no life so it didn't help. Given where the canvas was at the time of Munisteri, I think I would have tied Carly to the university somehow. Maybe had her take her alimony and take classes at Alden University to play against all the younger characters. I don't know. 

 

I do like Michael. He was a fun pain in the beginning. The heart problems story was underwritten though and once Walsh took over all the personality was drained from Michael. I was really interested when it was being suggested that Michael was more street smart than book smart and that he would probably take after Ava. I liked the potential of that. 

 

There was potential for Paul and Carly to be a couple, but Walsh didn't play it. I don't think Paul ever learned that Ava had kept Carly's secret. Carly agreed to remain mum about the fact Ava had purposely hid knowledge about Michael and had known about Michael's existence and remained mum for a significant length of time. Pair that with Ava keeping mum about Paul's sterility and you had the potential to drive Paul and Ava apart and draw Paul back to Carly. I feel like Mary Ryan Munisteri left projections for Paul, Ava, and Carly and Walsh just used all the plot points without any of the rich characterization that was there for Ava and Paul and lesser so Carly and Flynn. 

 

And if the show needed to get Paul off the show quick, they should have had him leave town to start a new life with Flynn. 

 

 

[j swift]

Can you remind me how Paul, Carly and Flynn exited Corrinth?