Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[dm.]

"Loving," a soap opera created by Agnes Nixon & Douglas Marland in 1983, aired for 12 long years on ABC,
but never was a success on daytime. The show premiered as a TV movie on primetime, and during it's early years,
it centered around the blue-collar Donovans and the blue-blood Aldens. The stories revolved around alcoholism,
post-traumatic stress syndrome, murders, and all storylines known to the world of soap operas.

In 1995, ABC no longer wanted to keep "Loving" on it's schedule. The ratings kept falling. Yet, ABC didn't want to
just make it disappear, so they asked the head writers to write a storyline which could allow some of the character
to return in a spin-off called "The City." Relocated from the fictional town of Corinth, Pennsylvania to the trendy SoHo
neighborhood of New York, the residents all lived and worked together in a single building. This building became the
new setting for the series and housed a bar, a medical clinic, an ad agency, several residential lofts and a penthouse.

Unfortunately, none of these changes were enough to ensure the success of the series. After initial viewer curiosity wore off,
the show began to post lower ratings than its predecessor Loving. Then, in October 1996, the series star Morgan Fairchild
departed the show after her one-year contract expired. In a last ditch effort to keep the show alive, the show transplanted the
popular General Hospital character, Tracy Quartermaine to replace Fairchild as the show's lead villainess. However, ratings
did not improve and the show was canceled after less than a year and a half.

[LoveDays]

I loved Loving and The Cit. But for real, I think that Loving could have gone a few more years if they would have brought back Trucker and Trisha (I hope I have the names right), my mind is on the fritz right now. I also think that Morgan Fairchild's character or Tracy Quartermaine cold have been brought on to Loving at an earlier time. I think there are alot of things that could have been done. Crossovers with Loving and All My Children would have been good where characters who were no longer on AMC could have made stops through Corinth and even stayed there. Just a thought!

[Jonathan]

Yeah, unfortunately Loving had to go up against Y&R in most markets. Although I did read that in major cities like LA and NY, it actually beat Y&R many times but on a national basis it just couldn't compete.

[LeClerc]

During it's last couple of months The City was the best ABC soap at the time IMO. The show had finally found it's identity and become much more structured. They were bringing in more older characters and bringing back some of the kids. And Tracy's arrival really rejuvinated the show.

Loved Tracy/Gino, Tracy/Carla, Tracy/Jacob, Tracy/Alex and especially Tracy and Zoey's relationship.

Question: Is there any story behind why they never paired up Sydney and Nick? That was the plan wasn't it? Instead Roscoe Born got wasted in that Nick/Lorraine pairing that never really had any story.

And what the heck ever happened to the fabulous Amy Van Horne?

[2shane8]

Who was the central heroine of this show: Tricia or Stacy? I know this is a subjective question, but I never watched "Loving" and simply knew of the characters. Seemed to me that they had a lot of interesting female characters. Wasn't there a woman named Shana as well?

And who played Ava longer, Roya Megnot or Lisa Peluso? Was one of them considered by and large to be the definitive Ava?

[EricMontreal22]

An all time fave soap of mine. Re Trucker and Trisha--Noelle Beck wanted to leave the show. It was smart not to recast...

Ava was the central heroine for most of it (an Erica clone) and Lisa played her more and I think is definitive.

I thought it was GREAT the last few months. It was also the only ABC show where the ratings were climbing (slowly but...) Really some of th ebest soap I've been able to watch live, so glad I have the last 2 months on tape.

[althea-davis]

I would give anything to have seen the whole run of Loving. I thought the little I saw of it was pretty great. I have become a Noelle Beck fan since she joined ATWT so I'd love to see her stuff on Loving as Trisha.

[EricMontreal22]

Her and Trucker (who wasnt' a great actor--he seems to have never done anything else but was definetly one of the hottest soap hunks) were just a GREAT couple--I was pretty miffed when she left around 93 or 94 (I think to be in Central Park West).

It sounds like Loving had a lot of problems in the mid 80s but the early stuff I've seen is WONDERFUL, and I loved nearly everything from the 90s--with I guess Agnes Nixon's return for nearly a full year to clean it up in 94 being the best (even the whacky stories she did like Dante and his "pet" in the cage...). I have very little on video sadly.

However I have the last two months of City on video and now I think I've found a way to encode it and may start uploading full eps, a few a week, to youtube where there's such a lack of Loving/City things--if there's interest?

E

[EricMontreal22]

In honour of the show's upcomign 25th birthday, good old Snark poste don Youtube a classic 1984 episode by Doug Marland. I believe this is the same episode that was up last year by WashesWhiter before he was banned from Youtube and it disappeared

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-ZBYPOJcmQ

[JackPeyton]

This show use to rerun here in L.A. on some random local channel like uber late at night. I remember it from the summer between 4th-5th grade (that woulda been... idk 96ish). Then as i got older and foudn tape trading on the internet i bought a bunch of tapes and loved it.

I loved Trisha (and Noelle Beck). But thats anout all i loved on Loving.

However, i really loved The City.

[althea-davis]

OOH I am interested for sure!

[EricMontreal22]

I'll try then--give me time i'm new to all this

[JoelMTL]

I sure was a LOVING/CITY fan. I often felt that a great story would have been to bring Christine Tudor (Gwyneth) on The City as a Gwyn look-alike. All the former Corinthians would have struggled trying to deal with this woman in NYC who looked exactly like the killer they had known in Corinth. Like others have pointed out, the last several months of The City were truly outstanding. Sucks that they weren't given more time to build audience.

[althea-davis]

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!

[dc11786]

I believe in some countries, "Loving" was actually called 'Patricia' or 'Tricia'. Even after Noelle Beck left the show, there were phantom Trisha stories ala GL's Phillip.

One of the soap books recalls only the plotlines involving Stacey and Jack, which seems to suggest that at least some people saw the show as Jack & Stacey's love story.

BTW, there is an episode from February 14, 1986 on youtube:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_6TRwbSqKM

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUsG30Do4jk

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-02ipUbp0Gg

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95SGAr83HF0...feature=related

The episode focuses on the quickie nuptials of Curtis (Linden Ashby) and Ava (Roya Megnot) and the rehearsal dinner for Stacey and Jack. There is a little bit about Trisha and her first love, Ava's mechanic cousin Steve. Steve is in jail, probably because of Cecilia (Alice Haining in this episde), and Trisha is being stalked by Spider.