Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[Paul Raven]

Like other shows of that time going through constant headwrier changes (SFT,AW,GL) the new teams were too hasty in dropping characters for newbies instead of looking at what was there and how placing a character in a new story could work out well.

Often the new characters were basically replicas of the old and those characters could have easily been worked into the new storyline and provide viewers with more continuity.

[DRW50]

Thanks. I didn't even see any of the Hart to Hart material...

I would have rather they just let him leave alive than bring him back to kill him off. Nummi is an interesting presence who would have been better served focusing on his relationships with the Aldens rather than the not especially interesting drama with Jack and Stacey.

[Khan]

LOVING really was a throw-anything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks kind of show, wasn't it?

It doesn't even make sense!  Jack and Stacey as Corinth's answer to Jonathan and Jennifer Hart?  In what universe?

Edited March 22 by Khan

[dc11786]

The writers didn't change. Millee Taggert and Tom King were the writers from 1988-1991. The issue might have been producers though. I think Joseph Hardy left in late 1989 to head over to "General Hospital." He might have dumped Ron Nummi, and Mary Ellen Bunim might have hired Fitzgerald. Of course, I believe it was then Jackie Babbin who arrived and quickly fired Fitzgerald. 

I don't think resting the character of Rick was a terrible idea though I never can remember at what point in the story James Horan arrives as Clay. Clay was just meeting Rick so there was story to explore there especially given Clay's own outsider status, while I could also see Rick potentially feeling closer to Alex.

Ron Nummi should have been Curtis Alden. After Curtis had been softened, Rick basically became Curtis anyway. I think Nummi had nice chemistry with Colleen Dion as Cece, but that boat had sailed for a number of reasons. 

In the late 1980s, "Loving" was definitely throwing what it could wherever and seeing what landed. 

To be fair though, Jack and Stacey were characters who's layers had been stripped so the parts that made them interesting were no longer there to keep them creating natural conflict on their own. Jack was raised by the Aldens, but was the natural son of their enemy, Dane. Dane was really needed to drive conflict or at least Jack's divided sense of loyalty between the two worlds he existed in. Stacey ended up marrying her best friend's man, and then carried on an affair with him while he was married to Ava. Stacey wasn't 100% a good Irish Catholic girl like her parents had raised her. Stacey, too, should have been divided between her two worlds: her big loving family and the cutthroat tactics her husband would have to engage in at Alden Enterprises. Stacey also needed a career that suited her nature. I think Shana should have encouraged Stacey to pursue law or journalism rather than being a romance novelist.  

Also, the setup of Curtis, Stacey, Jack, and Ava could have, and should have, played out for years. 

[DRW50]

I wonder how quickly those plans were abandoned. I know Stacey does some sleuthing but I remember it with Trucker. 

I was thinking about your comments on the Johnny Mathis theme songs. They were very true. I prefer the second Mathis theme song to the first, but the lyrics are hilariously terrible. "Look into my eyes...I could use a little LOVING..." "The one thing we should cherish, now and forever, is L-O-V-I-N-G." 

On paper, Horan was probably the least dynamic Clay, but something about his portrayal always clicks home for me. I especially wish we'd gotten more of his dynamic with Alex. I liked that in that episode, Mantooth and Horan even have variations of the same hairstyle. Probably not intentional, but visually, it works well for where they were in their lives. 

You're so right about the characters of Jack and Stacey mostly being stripped bare. Most of the longtimers on Loving had that problem, except maybe Ava, and you just had to rely on the actors to keep the scraps together. 

I noticed Ann in the July 1989 episode. I had forgotten she lasted that far into 1989. She seemed very much like a spare part. 

Edited March 22 by DRW50

[DRW50]

Never mind - I got the dates wrong and Horan was in the July 1989 episode, not the December 1988.

[Kane]

I think the Hart to Hart comparison was referring to Jack and Stacey's role in the two Clays story. When Alex realizes that he was brainwashed when he was a POW, it's Jack and Stacey who end up doing the investigating and Stacey figures out what Alex's trigger is. I'm not sure how it played, but on paper it reads like busywork to keep the two characters busy in between stories of their own.

[BetterForgotten]

Poor Agnes tried so hard to make it happen too, coming in and out at various times (more than she did at her other shows really), pressing ABC hard to take RH’s timeslot, and it still couldn’t get itself together for very long. But strangely, this and The City are the only shows she maintained ownership over and never sold to ABC. 

 

Bless Millee Taggart, who came in and out of this show as well. Never a brilliant writer by any stretch, but a safe one that’s enjoyable enough without being offensive. 

[DRW50]

Thanks. That makes sense. Something they might have benefited from trying more often rather than where they ended up going with them.

[Khan]

It all goes back to the same problem: LOVING, and the people who created and developed it, never knew what they wanted the show to be.  Was it a college-based soap, with an emphasis on youth; or was it about class and other conflicts that arose among different families that lived within the same community?  And even though it started out with a back-to-basics approach that eschewed the kind of action/adventure plots that were popular in that day*, what was really so unique about LOVING that would have helped it to stand out even among the other shows on the ABCD lineup?

(*And which might have saved the show, if they had moved in that direction: action/adventure, mixed with high romance.)

Actually, @DRW50, it was Jeffrey Osborne who wrote and performed that "L-O-V-I-N-G" theme, not Mathis.  (But I do agree with the lyrics being terrible.  Between the generic, perfume-sounding title and the show's utter lack of identity, everyone who tried to compose a theme song for the show had zilch to work with, lol.)

[BetterForgotten]

I remember when I first watched LOVING and thought it was a watered down version of AMC. I think my first memories were of Lisa Peluso's Ava and thinking to myself "who is this woman pretending to be Erica Kane?" 

LOVING's problem seemed to be the rotating creatives in charge - no idea why a show that lasted about 12 years had to go through 9 different EP's and even more HW-ing regimes. Seemed to me there was never much faith in the show and ABC kept it on as long as it did out of obligation to Agnes Nixon. 

That said, its often generic brand of soap storytelling looks so much more appealing today when daytime is in the condition it's in. And despite the low ratings, the show always visually looked good and did cast some charismatic actors during its run. 

Edited March 22 by BetterForgotten

[DRW50]

Ugh. I swear I knew that, just half-asleep. Thanks.

I do wonder if that is one of the reasons why the show tends to get a lot more talk (on here, anyway) than some of the bigger soaps that were more successful (or at least more clearly defined). You can try to pick the show apart and put it back together. I feel a certain bizarre loyalty to it, maybe because the time I got into the show was at such a rollercoaster (the Loving murders). 

I suppose that is also why Agnes kept going back. (did she ever say very much about the show in her later years?)

[Khan]

I agree.  Plus, I think ABCD was reluctant to lose that half-hour to the affiliates.  I can't recall how much time elapsed between the cancellation and final episode of THE CITY and the premiere of "The View," but I do remember that the latter series used one of TC's sets for several years.

Curiously, she doesn't mention it at all in her memoir, which suggests to me that even Agnes Nixon had written off the show by the end of her life.  Just as I'm convinced that Douglas Marland took his name off the show before exiting, because he knew the show was a dud, lol.

Edited March 22 by Khan

[DRW50]

Thanks. I can see why she wouldn't, as it wasn't one of her successes, and you can't say it changed television the way OLTL or AMC did. I'm not even sure you can find the Nixon trademarks (other than a third generation Rachel and Ada and I suppose some of the gothic elements). Yet it is probably the Nixon show I am most intertwined with (along with OLTL), and honestly now that I think of it, it was Loving that got me into ABC soaps in the first place. So any annoying opinions I've had on GH, AMC or OLTL over the years, people can blame on Loving.

Edited March 22 by DRW50

[BetterForgotten]

I do think LOVING probably had more in common with a “sleepy/safe” P&G soap like SEARCH (no offense to it, there are eras I’m fascinated by with that show too) than much of the ABC Daytime lineup it was paired with.