Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[Franko]

I'm glad! It's fun to play detective.

[dc11786]

I'd agree it was by design, but I struggled to find it worthwhile at my current age. In the past, I really enjoyed watching the scenes of Tracy paying a group of working actors to play her family. The concept is hysterical and the execution of drunk Lila, gay Edward, and twink Ned is well done, but at the end of the day it fails to capture the real tragedy of this: Tracy was cut off by her family. Watching Tracy's 1993 exit, this is such an emotional wound that there needed to be at least a beat or two covering the real pain that was attached to all of this. Not just it being ammo for Tracy to use to emotionally manipulate Gino. 

Everything I watch from late in the run is so catty and bitchy. Maybe watching it for a half-hour a day its entertaining, but I found watching stretches of episodes to be bleak. There was a need for humanity that was grossly missing. Or if it was present, it needed to be played up.

And also, in my defense, my material gets very spot in the last six months.  

[Vee]

I don't remember if you were here when some of us marathon-rewatched the Loving Murders in their uncut entirety back in COVID 2020 (and I rambled on about it for page after page), but the bizarre episode where Clay enters a virtual reality simulation/dream/fantasy? of his perfect Father Knows Best life with his wife and children (complete with little Trisha saying she's always wanted to go to Paris) is dark, surreal and genuinely unsettling.

I totally understand people's issues with the arc and some of the characters or transitions to The City, but I think the murder saga coupled with the absolutely dynamite frontburner Black quadrangle of Lorraine/Charles/Angie/Jacob make it one for the books. (Even if I became an Alex/Ava stan during the rewatch, despite my love for Lisa Lo Cicero and her '90s bleach-red hair as Jocelyn ever since first watching LOV/TC as a teen.) I also think the nihilism and evil is as baked into the show in a way as its many cozy, warm elements from the early '90s, because I think the evil side of Corinth goes as far back as the pilot and the very creepy one-shot story of Lloyd Bridges and Geraldine Page's characters that kicked the whole show off. I don't think it ever fully shook it, especially in the '90s as you saw more and more of Gothic Agnes (or Guza, or others). Loving begins with murder and familial secrets and trauma (incest, etc.) and ends the same way. 

Edited February 3 by Vee

[DRW50]

I do think they took Marcantel for granted - he was much more charismatic in the '94 episodes than given credit for.

I haven't closely watched what of B&E is out there pre-Murders. I can see where people would feel the show was too dark and mean, not helped by characters like Tess (who seems to lighten up on The City). I know the person that uploaded a lot of 92-95 episodes would go on in the comments about how much they disliked B&E's run.

From the bits I've seen I also think they wrote Stacey's stories as being too immature for where she should have been in by that point in her life. Who cares about repeat money stories with Buck and his insecurities?

[Vee]

Tess Wilder made Lindsay Rappaport on OLTL look like a whiny drip, and I liked latter-years Lindsay. But Tess is possibly Cat Hickland's sharpest work. They would've had to humanize her a bit, because on LOV '95 she was ice cold lol. But I haven't seen much of TC in many years.

I do feel bad about Stacey and Curtis - I don't think they had to die. I do think the pre-Murders story with Lisa Brown(??) as an evil FBI agent is comical and silly, from what I've seen.

Edited February 3 by Vee

[dc11786]

I think there is an argument to be made for darkness throughout the show's run, but the show is barren physically and emotionally in those final months. I don't think a lot of those other stories cited can claim that. 

None of the telefilm plot carried over into the day to day, even though it should have. The original incest plot and even Jonathan's deal with the devil were embedded to the show's fabric, not the entire canvas, which is basically what the serial killer story becomes. In ending a series, the powers that be decimated its history and eliminated the hopes of the people who had watched by eliminating any hope of life continuing on in Corinth after the show had concluded. 

I found a lot of the writing choices during the serial killer were early of a systemic problem in daytime in the 1990s onward: the brief glint of energy from obliterating years of longterm story and characters without putting any effort into what was to come afterwards. If the show didn't downplay the grief, I think I might have been more interested. Or if the Lorraine / Charles stuff spilled into the City than maybe, but it doesn't. Lorraine arrives and is shifted elsewhere. 

I am glad Christine Tudor Newman got a chance to shine, but otherwise what a waste of a legacy. And, as much as I enjoy the final performance, it doesn't make any sense what was going on with Gwyn. There was some kind of split because part of her knew it and part of her didn't. God bless Tudor Newman for comitting to the material even while in Trisha drag. 

I think the "Loving" murders reached the audience it wanted to, and left the ones who had supported it in the dust. I think it was deemed okay because "Loving" didn't have a massive fanbase. If any other show ended that way with a similar tale, 

[DRW50]

I haven't watched it all either (The City) - I think the more human moments are late in the run. But even early on when they have her behaving in nasty ways they seem to try to add more humor (there's a hilarious and weird scene where she breaks into Syndey's apartment, finds a Thighmaster, and does it while using a German or Swedish voice).

I do think killing off Stacey was a good way to kickstart a mystery. I kind of think they could have kept Curtis alive and just institutionalized. His death didn't add much beyond more of Gwyn's despair, and we would have had that anyway with him being locked away.

[DRW50]

I always try to keep in mind that the story being my intro into Loving means I can't react the way more longtime fans could have. I wish some of them could be interviewed or could have been interviewed about how they felt.  

[dc11786]

Tess was best when Agnes Nixon wrote her. A cunning career woman who's outer hard shell hid the pain of low self esteem that had resulted in her pre-Corinth life in an eating disorder during her days as a model and an abusive marriage to the very dangerous Dante Partou. Nixon's Tess could bed down with barely legal Cooper because she understood some of his disappointments in life and could unintentionally play into his past trauma. The brittle Tess of later days lacked finesse. She was painted with a narrow palette which limited her relatability and her longterm entertainment value. 

I think Curtis' death was plot driven. He was brought back as a red herring in Stacey's murder and then he was killed off so that he could be eliminated as a suspect. I think my other issue with "psycho" Curtis is that it was such a small part of Curtis' history on the show and it also negated the root cause (his experience with Dante). I think if they delved into how Curtis was trying to protect Stacey from Buck, who had screwed him over in Kuwait, there would have been more natural ways to explore Curtis' rationale. If I ever were to revive "Loving," it would open with Curtis Alden coming out of a multi year coma and revealing that the final year of "Loving" was a figment of his imagination. And his psychologist would be Lily Slater. 

I think "Loving" was smart to kill off the characters quietly in comparison to more higher profile deaths like Alice Frame Winthrop on "Another World" in the same period. 

My introduction to so much of "Loving" was the old RATS board postings. The very small online audience was pretty chill with all the ups and downs in 1992-1994, but the wheels started to come off when Brown and Essensten started even before the murders. I don't think they were loving "Loving" from what I recall. 

[DRW50]

That does make sense about Curtis. I just would have had him locked up and more doubt going on about whether he was the killer. Maybe even had Gwyn frame him. His being the last Alden, or reuniting with a Tricia who could not remember him, would have been poignant to me.

That Youtube Uploaded I mentioned did complain about some of those early '95/late '94 stories, especially Trucker's exit period. And the whole Danny intro is a mess. I do appreciate what B&E did with the black cast.

[chrisml]

I would say Jeremy had the cruelest death, but it was quick and it was not something that was the focus of an entire episode. It was not directed to focus on the relentless pain and brutality of the death like Frankie's death on AW. 

[EricMontreal22]

I wasn't here (I don't think?  COVID is kinda a blur to me) but will have to look those posts up. 

I think you're right that it had that element from the start (I wonder if some of that is Marland's influence.  As much as we associate him with families, etc, in ATWT he always seemed to have that angle--as of course New Day in Eden makes clear.)  And that said, I do think the show still had moments of heart (I mean The City now)--like Angie and the baby storyline, etc.  I also thought that it had one of the better realized younger casts on a soap at the time (of course I was 15-16 watching 20somethings so am not sure how much of that would have actually been realistic.) 

DC your point about Tracy's storyline missing the beats about how she genuinely was upset about being cut off from her family make sense.  I admit, I wasn't (and have never really been) a GH watcher, so the character was new to me when she joined The City--it was only AFTER The City's cancellation that I saw her on A Daytime to Remember.

I think this is a fair take, although I will say as a teen viewer I found it riveting.  And part of that was because Loving had never gotten any love--as I've said already I didn't even know it existed until the Carter Jones crossover with AMC--Growing up in BC Canada, we used to get ABC via the Seattle feed and Cindi Rinehart (who I just realized recently passed away

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) used to cover all of the soaps.  Except Loving--even though it aired on her station.  The only time I remember it coming up was when the AMC crossover happened (and back then for some reason our VCR couldn't record KOMO--I was fine with AMC and OLTL because they were simulcast on CBC in Canada.  So I actually reached out to the mother of one of my brother's friends who I knew was a big soap opera watcher and asked if she would record it for me--so for a month she recorded every episode...)

Anyway where was I

[EricMontreal22]

I agree with all of that.

It's interesting, obviously I started watching Loving before I was on the internet, so I wasn't really aware of any reaction.  I did start being aware and making notes (because I'm a nerd) of when the headwriter listing changed.

I did always wonder if there was a reaction to the AMC crossover and if it made *any* impact on ratings?  To be honest, I'm not sure why Loving didn't try to have a crossover from the start. 

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(That video links to a nice scene between Kate, Dinah Lee and Louis.  Even if it is about Gonorrhea LOL)

I'm not sure that anyone would recommend Pine Valley as a place to take a vacation from trauma...

[Franko]

If you hadn't found it by now, the discussion starts at page 129.

[DRW50]

I suppose it was a happier place to vacation in than it would be later on. There were likely international travel advisories against Pine Valley by the mid '90s.

The crossovers likely only happened because it seemed to be an ABC Daytime mandate in the early '90s, for the New York soaps anyway - wasn't this also around the time Adam Chandler and Dorian Lord met? That did happen, didn't it? They really should have had these in the '80s. I'm not sure why they stopped (I know there were several in the '70s). Lorna would have been a natural for an AMC stint.

The best part of all these AMC/Loving crossovers was probably getting to see Ruth Warrick get in some prime Phoebe and interact with her fellow '50s soap queen Pat Barry as Isabelle...although they should have had Phoebe say that Isabelle looked a little familiar...

My favorite part of this is always that nerd-until-you-take-off-his-shirt guy who was in love with Trisha geeking out over THE Claudia Cohen arriving. I'd guess even many of the people who had Regis and Kathie Lee on in the background every morning wouldn't care if they met Claudia Cohen.

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Oh and this channel has a few old Cindi segments (in the full episodes, including one lengthy, cringeworthy episode involving Jeff Bezos wearing a cowboy hat and piggyback riding with a man).

retrovancouver - YouTube

Edited February 4 by DRW50