Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

Thanks for reminding me I never posted that mention here. It's at about 55 minutes and goes on for longer than usual. I guess ABC/Capital Cities wanted their money's worth.

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One of the most interesting parts about '80s Loving and up to about '91 is you will find completely random characters who will be in one or two videos and then I never see them again and have never heard of them. In this episode, it's Ava's beau, Tony (whom I briefly thought was the Tony that Stacey and Lorna were involved with - odd to re-use that name so quickly), and this girl Kelly who is talking with Shana and Jim. I can't find anything on her. Considering she was staying with the Aldens you'd think they had bigger plans for her.

[dc11786]

Those outlines from 1992 are very early in Addie Walsh's run. She started in early January. The team is comprised of Mary Ryan Munisteri's crew. A good number of those writers are out over the next month or two. I don't have any tangible proof, but I think early Walsh is running off of the projections that Munisteri left. The Michael heart storyline is very stripped down Labine because of the way Walsh approaches it, but I imagine it would have been more meanignful had Munisteri stayed. The band romance between Ally and Matt's bandmate was recycled from "Tribes" as was Ally's breif claim that Giff had gotten her pregnant. 

Granger doesn't start until May. I am pretty sure Sears is there through the launch of the college reset in late March, early April. 

***

The Devil stuff isn't for me. Recently saw the Russ goes to Hell sequence from "Another Life" and it gives the same hokey vibe. I get what Nixon was going for, but it doesn't work for me. I'm sure others will feel differently. It was nice to see the 1984 murder storyline. I still think Stephanie Payne was originally intended to be a Merrill recast.  

The turnover is crazy everyone on "Loving" in the 1980s. In March, 1987, I'm pretty sure Ralph Ellis takes over the writing team. He quickly brings the Nick Dinatos murder to end revealing Cabot killed him. I doubt that was the original plan, but who knows. Anyway, Kelly is Kelly Conway, Zach's daughter and Lorna's stepdaughter. Kelly was left with her new stepgrandparents while her parents went off on a honeymoon never to return. They build that brief teen scene around her with Teri Polo's rich bitch Kirsten (I think was her name), the punk Rob Carpenter with the mohawk and the alcoholic mom, Lotty's kid brother Ned Bates, and maybe Dave Hindmann (Art's son who can't read and plays basketball). Kelly is replaced by April Hathway, teen prostitute. They are all pretty much forgotten. 

Ava's beaus post Curtis are both unmemorable, Tony #2 and Judd Beacham. 

[DRW50]

Thanks. So I guess the previous team may have had plans for Kelly but Ellis didn't.

I'm still not sure why the show gave up so easily on Lorna. There was some talk about this on the Loving blog post for Colby Cantrell, but the huge turnover in the young female cast led to so much being on Trisha's shoulders (and Stacey's). 

I may have seen Kirsten, I'm not sure. I don't know if I ever saw Rob.

Dave was the longest lasting of them, vanishing somewhere in 1990 or 1991.

[Forever8]

Mitch S just uploaded Roya Megnot's last scene and Lisa Peluso's first scene as Ava Rescott. 

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[DRW50]

Thanks. Never thought I'd see either of those segments. 

I can't remember if I've ever seen that maid before. Soaps used to love to have lifelong servants who would vanish without a trace. It's odd to see her treating Ava like she's brand new as Ava had lived there with Curtis and had been living there with Clay for many months.

Lisa seems greener and younger than she soon would as Ava, but not bad at all for her first day. 

I'm not sure if Roya and Randolph were friends, but there's some real emotion in her last scene, emotion which wouldn't have been on the same page. Roya was just special. Lisa was the first Ava I ever saw, and I loved her almost immediately, but Roya is one of a kind.

I wonder if Roya was always leaving at the time she left or if she agreed to stay until the end of the strike. I notice her final date was in October 1988.

Was the plan always for Randolph's Clay to be an impostor and to bring Egypt and Minnie in? I can't remember.

[Franko]

Another exciting upload from Mitch, Leslie Denniston Hastings' time as a temporary Gwyneth. The first 7:30 of the upload comes from Thursday, Oct. 13, 1988.

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[DRW50]

Thanks @Franko.

Until reading one of the comments I did not realize Leslie played Gwyn for as long as she did (6 weeks). 

I find Leslie to be very dreary in her soap roles (the "best" being Maeve on GL) so I was definitely glad to get to see her finally getting a much more complex part. She doesn't bring the layers Christine Tudor brought, but she does OK. She was also thrown in at the deep end in being given maybe the ugliest Gwyn/"Clay" scene I can recall. 

Viewers knowing that this is not actually Clay makes these scenes more interesting, as Gwyn can't understand why "Clay" is so cold toward her since his return. And cruel as the real Clay could be to Gwyn, I don't know if he ever was this nasty. Admittedly, Gwyn started the ball rolling by saying she wished he'd died in the prison camp (!). How I wish Tudor had been there to play that scene. 

The scenes with Jeff aren't as interesting, but still worth watching. Jeff is still not in full crazy mode and genuinely cares about Gwyn, even as you know, like "Clay" told him, he will regret caring about her. And Leslie seems more at home in the bar scene, even playing her drunk moment in an understated, appropriate manner. 

What a wild month for the show - not only the Clay/Alex secret about to blow, but recasts of Ava, Jeff and Gwyneth (even if the latter was temporary).

Edited March 21 by DRW50

[Franko]

Holy cow, something I've always wanted to see, courtesy of Callan White (and @GymnastGuy, of course): Mike & Ann in Washington, D.C.

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[DRW50]

Thanks @Franko for posting and thank you @GymnastGuy for uploading. I have wanted to see this since SPW wrote about it in 1997. I know not all is there but I'm glad for what we can see. A strong performance from James Kiberd and classy support from Callan White, who feels more checked in here. On paper, I wouldn't be a fan of the army buddy who is his conscience, but it mostly works. 

The only slight complaint I have is I wish they had had some of the scenes at the Memorial without music.

[Franko]

Yeah, the song choices are rather on the nose. Still, I've now pretty much seen everything I've ever wanted from Loving.

[DRW50]

I am hoping the moment where he goes to the Wall might show up, and there are lots of glimpses of other moments I'd enjoy (like his big tirade at the picnic, or Noreen talking about AIDS research, or James Horan's arrival as the real Clay), but I am so glad to see these moments I never thought I would.

[Vee]

WEHT Ann Alden, anyway? The first one was so spooky to me in the pilot.

[DRW50]

Anti-hero/Willie Loomis who [!@#$%^&*]/whatever you want to call him, Harry Sowolsky, her on-and-off boyfriend of several years, had returned to break up her relationship with the rotter Dan Hollister. Dan was murdered, and Harry vanished (someone with more knowledge may be able to tell us if something weird happened behind the scenes). Ann then left to try to find Harry. She would briefly return in 1990 for the Trisha/Trucker wedding. 

It seems like the show gave up on the character at the same time as they were trying to prune the Alden tree by writing out Shana. 

I do wonder why they didn't at least bring her back when Jack died. By that point they seemed to avoid returns. I don't even know if she was mentioned in the last years. I hope she was at least told her father had died, then came back from the dead, then died again.

Most of what I've seen of Callan White is so downtrodden and that gets worse as the decade goes along. She does what she can, like the Dane/Gwyn cheating story when she's becoming an alcoholic. Still, when I see her, I tend to think of a trashy Canadian softcore film she did with the guy who hosted The Hitchhiker.

Edited March 22 by DRW50

[Soaplovers]

Seeing the Ava switch was something I never thought I'd see.  Roya's last scene seemed more subdued and less flighty while Lisa's first scene reminded me more of Lila on AW then Ava (or at least she ended up playing Ava long term).

Seeing Leslie as Gwyn was interesting since it occurred a short time after she quit GL as Maeve.  So I could see some of her Maeve in her take as Gwyn, yet also seeing her sort of take on a bit of Tudor's portrayal of Gwyn.   When Tudor had left the role in the late 80s, I could have accepted Leslie as a recast of the part.  

Seeing the Mike scenes at the Vietnam memorial.. it kind of read as more gothic.. and i don't think it worked in this case.

[Kane]

So nice to see so many clips turning up lately. I was glad to see some of Mike's PTSD story, although I agree with @DRW50 about the music choices, which are more distracting than they are enhancing. I've always lowkey thought that Ann and Mike were the real loves of each other's lives and that continuing Ann's story post-Harry should have involved bringing Mike back (as a recast, obviously, since Kiberd was in the thick of things at AMC). If they'd brought Ann and Mike back in 1992, they could have done a Shana/Mike/Ann triangle instead of having Shana... do nothing for the many months in between the short, go-nowhere Larry Lamont story and the Stacey gaslighting story.

I gather from the second part of the Leslie Denniston video that she was playing Gwyneth when she slept with Jeff and videotaped it, which means Denniston's Gwyneth did it, Tudor's Gwyneth spent months being blackmailed over it, and Savage's Gwyneth is the one got punished for it.