Flamingo Road

[All My Shadows]

Yes. She received a "Developed for television by" credit.

Two other soapy names involved were Ann Marcus and Kathleen Shelley (who also wrote for Falcon, Knots, Yellow Rose, North and South, and Emerald Point).

[All My Shadows]

THE PILOT!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmjUJnDsK58

I haven't seen this in about seven years, so I am extremely excited to use the available opportunity I have to sit and watch.

[SFK]

I got about half way through it a few weeks ago but fell asleep, it was so late, but I was loving every minute of it! That wonderful YouTube page is of course where I watched the complete series of Emerald Point N.A.S. I have to work my way through Paper Dolls too. It's funny, but I'd always assumed Stella and Morgan were around the same age, I didn't know that Stella

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[All My Shadows]

I hope this person adds more. The 1st season was so good and soapy. The first half of S2 was good too, with the political themes, but the second half, with the voodoo...I don't know. I was in the hospital when that was airing on GoodLife, so I never got the full story (or ever saw the last 4 or so episodes). Hopefully I can see it now in due time.

Barbara Rush and Kevin McCarthy are so "old money" in the whole series.

[SFK]

That sounds awesome. When YouTube first came around, I showed my mom the opening as she watched all of these shows when I was a kid and when Kevin McCarthy came up she said, "Oh, I couldn't stand him, with that accent..." I just think of his big ol' Jiminy Glick glasses on The Colbys. I'm so terrible, I asked her if Esther Rolle played the maid and she said no, she was involved in the voodoo stuff.

[All My Shadows]

LOL I read a rumor about McCarthy saying that he and Monty Hall were involved in a long-term relationship, but Kevin was never ready to go public with it. Monty was, so apparently, Monty's still heartbroken over the rejection. LMAO.

Esther played a high priestess. The simple fact that the show got to the point of having a voodoo priestess in the cast just tells you how WTF they got towards the end. The Weldons only had a butler, Jasper, and he was white. Lute-Mae had some help at her place, mainly the bartender played by Charles Robinson from Night Court and I can't remember if the other guy was a security type or manager or something like that. I remember a story with him trying to swindle her out of some money.

[SFK]

Wait, whaaaat? "Let's Make a Deal" Monty Hall? Oh Lawd...

Wow, I've got to see this show, I think the poster said that they only have the pilot. Someone must have taped them all when tey were on GoodLife. I realize that it was by early '80s standards, but do you agree that the show was as steamy and envelope pushing as the critics said? Were Morgan's peignoirs really that skimpy?

[All My Shadows]

A Mark Harmon fan started posting some season one episodes!

I don't think the show was any worse than the other nighttime soaps of the era. The whole "It's in the swamp!!" angle made it a little steamy, so whenever people were in various states of undress, they'd be covered in sweat. Whether or not that's sexy is up to you

I remember an interview with Morgan from that time where she talked about the infamous Rev. Donald Wildmon calling her the worst actress in television history because of her slinky nightgowns. He also called the show one of the worst ever simply because. Whatever, Donald.

ETA: I watched a part of MH's episode of Biography just to see what they say about FR, but wow, they completely skipped over it. Apparently, his career was "still struggling" in the early 80s, but he "could have had a break" on some Steven Bochco [!@#$%^&*] show about baseball. Absolutely no mention of what paid his bills for nearly two years. Ugh.

Edited July 17, 2010 by All My Shadows

[Sedrick]

That Bochco series was the infamous "Bay City Blues", one of the most notorious flops of the 1980's...basically Bochco attempted to give the Hill Street Blues/St. Elsewhere treatment to a minor league baseball team with dreadful results...if Harmon thought that was a break, I wonder how in the world he has lasted so long in the business!

[Chris B]

I recently purchased this series along with some others and just watched the pilot movie and first episode. It's a great show so far. Very naughty and the atmosphere is very gothic and interesting so far. Love that a brothel is a major meeting point for this series. That's very daring lol. Also love that the two leads are equally bad so Constance doesn't take most of the heat as often happens with soap bad girls. At least in the beginning she's attempting to make her marriage work, it's the "hero" who is so adamant he has to have an affair with the circus girl.

[DRW50]

I remember reading that Morgan's character seduced every leading man on the show (who wasn't related to her). Did that happen quickly? It seems kind of unusual, but then, the early 80s were probably when the soaps were at their most risque.

[All My Shadows]

I think that's just a piece of titillating exaggeration (I've read it in various places). Mainly, she was married to Field for most of the show's run, then she had an affair with Julio throughout most of the second season. She slept with Sam and Michael, but those were only schemes to try to make Field jealous and want her back (didn't happen). No matter what, during the whole show, her eye was on Field and trying to get him back.

[JamesF]

I've just finished a re-watch of this and was planning to comment. I'd seen the series through several years ago and had memories of it being very dry so I was in two minds about whether to give it another shot. I'm not quite sure how I got that opinion in the first place.

The first season trundles along and probably is fairly run of the mill. Unlike Dallas and Knots Landing, the nature of Flamingo Road really doesn't lend itself to episodic storytelling. It's a Southern potboiler that needs to feel like a novel with some decent backstory.

Season 2 is where the show really hits its stride and the last 6 or 7 episodes are wild. It finally has an identity completely distinct from the other primetime soaps of the time and through the Michael Tyrone character, the history of Flamingo Road is developed. I think the inclusion of other regular characters helps to give the mainstays more people to play with (discounting Skipper and Alicia who are a complete bore). Claude and Eudora in particularly come alive and Barbara Rush is absolutely fantastic. Her character goes on the most interesting journey out of any from the pilot until the last episode.

I can't imagine where the show would have headed if it got another full season.

As for Constance, she probably did sleep with every male character she wasn't related to bar Elmo. In her defense, the cast was too small for this to be avoided...

Edited March 5, 2011 by JamesF

[All My Shadows]

I think the main reason why they never had her go after Elmo (besides time constraints - given a few more seasons, she might have gone there) was because of the Eudora/Elmo connection, and the ambiguity of whether or not Elmo was Skipper's father. That might have been just too much.

Come to think of it, almost everybody's parentage on the show was quite ambiguous. We know Constance was Claude and Lute-Mae's, but then there's the Skipper/Elmo thing and they also implied that Titus was Annabelle's father when her mother came to town to learn more about the mill fire.

I loved the first season more than the second (but it's been seven years since I've seen most of the show, so take it with a grain), just the combination of Field's election drama and the triangle. I wish they'd kept Christie and Alice around instead of tying Skipper to boring Alicia. Julio was cool, and I always figured that they would have had him clean up and team with Sam to serve as the town's force of good against shadier guys like Michael, Titus, and Field.

So many things could have happened with FR had it been given a decent chance. I wish it had been developed for ABC and paired with Dynasty on the schedule, kinda like how Dallas carried FC through the 80s.

[LoyaltoAMC]

NBC was a wasteland until Cosby arrived in '84. Their highest rated shows like Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes barely made the top 25. If FR has been on ABC or CBS it probably would've been a hit. I enjoyed the hell out of FR its first season. The second season with David Selby and that voo-doo stuff wasn't very interesting to me. Love, love, love the theme song...perfect mix of smarm and cheese, with some very campy shots of the actors.