Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[FrenchBug82]

Maybe I was projecting but my impression at the time - which tracks with what I thought about Carly - was they were intending to set them up as the "end game" in term of rooting interest and make their separation romantic and have Ava's usual scheming be an obstacle on top of the existing one about Michael.
But that the audience didn't really buy it, the way they didn't buy into the expected Carly/Ava dynamic. So while the ending was just an easy lazy way to write them off  it was probably the plan they had at the outset (not for them to leave, but for them to end together) and it didn't happen until the end because Carly didn't gel the way they expected and, insufficient writing be damned, Lisa Peluso was selling the hell out of Ava/Paul.
But you are right about his chemistry with either. Joseph Breen did a good job with the paralysis and the Louie story but his heart never seemed to be fully into either pairing for some reason.

I know he used to have a website where he shared the story of how he got fired because CBS found out he was HIV+ (which you would think should be a bigger better-remembered scandal in retrospect) but did he ever give an interview where he just talked about his work in soaps? I wonder how he lived his Loving years.

Edited June 22, 2021 by FrenchBug82

[dc11786]

Flynn left twice. In the story, he left town in February. Several weeks later, Carly moved to NYC. She and Flynn reconnected abd became engaged. Shortly after, Carly abd Flynn had a fight about Paul and he was hit by a car and died. 
 

Carly and Paul left for New York with Michael in May 1992. Carly returned in July for a single episode to announce she and Paul married. 
 

When Ava was in a coma in spring of 1994, Carly came to visit.

[DRW50]

Is this Lauren Marie Taylor in the K-Mart ad near the end? 

 

(lots of static)

 

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I think I've posted this one before, but it's funny to see Christine Tudor (I think) in the Bounty ad early in this reel.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2021 by DRW50

[Forever8]

It does look like Lauren Marie Taylor!!! 

[DRW50]

I saw that this was uploaded. Sorry if it was already around and I missed it. Not sure of the date. It's a Celeste Holm episode.

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[Forever8]

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An Episode from 1992 - @dc11786

[amybrickwallace]

This coming Thursday (7/22), Laura Wright will be interviewed for her 30th anniversary in soaps. 

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[Forever8]

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Another episode from October 1992 

[dc11786]

@Forever8 Thanks for tagging me. I find 1992 to be a very mediocre year. I don't negate the importance of the college crew, but the original 1992 stories are so poorly done. It doesn't help that you have so much turnover. 

I watched what I could of these episodes, but they don't really appeal to me. I'm not the biggest Trisha/Trucker fan. I think both actors are very good, but I don't think they needed to dominate the story the way they did. I didn't really care for the pairing of Stacey / Trucker, but I was even more disappointed that they spent a year building it up only to not go there. 

This reaffirms that Staige was basically the precursor to Stephanie. I had forgotten the family financial issues, which would also plague Steffi leading to Staige and Ally rooming at 35 Maple Street. Eden Atwood was out by early November when they sent her character back home to whatever state she came from. 

I really don't like Larkin Malloy as Clay. I believe he is gone by the end of October. I think Clay and Dinahlee had potential to be interesting if they had left Dinahlee as this girl who was rough around the edges. Addie Walsh really did a number on the character. She gets a bit of her grit back under Millee Taggert, but Nixon treats Dinahlee as a central heroine archtype, which produces some good story, but doesn't showcase the best of Jessica Collins' skills. 

I've been watching some of the June 1993 episodes that were posted a few months back. Those were much more enjoyable. Taggert and Guza really revitalized the show in short order after a very dull year. 

[FrenchBug82]

Who does everyone think was the best and the worst Clay?

[DRW50]

For me:

James Horan > Dennis Parlato > Randolph Mantooth > Larkin Malloy. 

The first three are very good (Horan is blander than the other two but I think he still makes the troubled schemer work alongside the romantic stories and the fatherly role). Larkin Malloy is a fine actor and a handsome, charismatic man, but he just feels too broad and the writing is an absolute mess. That October 19th episode above is a case in point - when he's with Louis he seems like he's playing a Mirror Universe villain from Star Trek.

[Forever8]

I like Larkin Malloy in different roles. But of all the Clay's I've seen he is my least favorite. He was a good actor but he just wasn't right for the role. And as @DRW50pointed out the writing seemed to be a mess. 

I have to see more of 1992 but from the episode(s) I've saw the writing wasn't Loving at it's best. That was my first time seeing the character of Staige after all of the years of me reading about her on this board. She does seem like a precursor to Steffi. Though seemed more generic as a poor little rich girl. I like Trisha/Trucker and I thought the acting was good. But it seemed Stacey was a bit lost after Jack died. I wish they would've eventually revealed he was alive.  

Also I've been checking out those June 1993 episodes and I do like what is happening in them more than 1992. 

My favorite Clay was played by Dennis Parlato.

He seemed to have the right balance of schemer and patriarch of the Alden family. Though I think James Horan is a close second in terms of being the one who refused to grow up despite being someone with a family. 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Forever8

[dc11786]

I'm particular to Dennis Parlato, but I haven't seen all that much of James Horan's work consistently. To be fair, I have a hard time distinguishing some of the writing from how I feel about the character.

Those 1990-1991 episodes that have showed up have shown Clay as a bit cowardly and weak. I feel like Clay just sort of lets Trucker take the blame for the plane crash rather than actively playing a role in the set up, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Clay only becoming interested in Abril's baby because of the will was interesting. I would like to have seen a longer tale with James Horan's Clay married to Colleen Quinn's Carly while raising baby Tommy. I think the tension between the couple and Trucker and Trisha and the couple and Abril would have been very interesting. 

Larkin Malloy's Clay was written by Walsh who briefly played Clay as this lovelorn romantic lead which didn't suit the character. By the time Clay becomes menancing again, I just couldn't rectify this with the overly sappy Clay who was helping Dinahlee to pretend to be Trucker for Hannah's sake several months earlier. If Malloy had stayed, maybe my mind would have changed. 

Parlato plays Clay for the bulk of the gaslighting story and just embraces the darkness that Clay has within him beautifully. Then, Taggert and Guza humanize him a bit by making it clear he does care for Dinahlee despite all the terrible things he did. I think the potential of Clay and Curtis as rivals both romantic (for Dinahlee and maybe Tess) and business rivals (Curtis rejoined AE in July 1993 when Michael Lord took over) had potential. I wish the Clay - Cooper relationship had been developed more as I felt that was a dynamic that had serious potential to develop story. I also think Parlato did a good job selling the Clay / Steffi story which could have just felt creepy. 

Had the show not been cancelled in 1995 and hobbled along a few more years, I wonder what they would have done when Parlato left in 1995. I think it might have been good to rest Clay for a little bit and to bring back Anne Alden back into the story. Similarly, with Wesley Addy passing in January 1996, I wonder what the show would have done with the Alden family all together. 

[Forever8]

Throughout the episodes I've watched in the last few years. One thing is quite clear to me. 

Lisa Peluso is one of the unsung heroes of Loving.

I wish Christopher Marcantel can get to interview with her and possibly have a virtual reunion with Randolph Mantooth. No matter how bad this show got or which eighty-five regimes were writing/producing. She is able to deliver what it is written from comic to dramatic scenes. She was a force of nature and I wish she would've gotten the chance to continue acting. 

I'm curious if the show went past 1995 and they never did The City. I wonder who would've taken over and what some of the stories would've been? 

[dc11786]

I agree @Forever8 about Peluso. Her Ava goes through several character shifts and Peluso just seems to maintain a consistent throughline even when it doesn't seem logically possible. I think the Ava / Leo / Shana trianle was fun when it wasn't being absurd with some of the fantasy sequences. Peluso and LeClerc had nice chemistry, but I didn't care for Jeremy and Ava as a couple. I wish they had allowed the sequence where Ava learned that the Aldens had cheated the Sowolskys and Cabot turned over significant portion of AE to Kate and Ava. I felt like that had the potential to be the best Ava story, but instead they went with the Gilbert tale which seemed an early taste of the campy style plots that would overrun soaps in the next decade. 

I spent a little time last summer thinking about what could have been with "Loving" had it survived. I think the murders secured James Harmon Brown and Barbara Essensten their lengthy stay at the show (nearly 2 years which hadn't happened since Tom King and Millee Taggert in 1988-1991). Without the ratings bump from the murders, I figure they probably would have been out by late 1995 or early 1996. Personally, I would have liked to see if Millee Taggart and Mary Ryan Munisteri could have worked together. I also wouldn't have hated to see someone like Richard and Carolyn Culliton have taken over the show. Though I've read the monkey's paw, so if the show had lived, we would have been subjected to Megan McTavish's "Loving," which would have been nothing short of brutal.