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It's a shame that this show floundered in the middle part of 1990. I think the start of the year is pretty compelling. I know that Jorn Winter did some really good things for the show, but I also feel like he recasted parts that weren't necessary. 

 

Randy Brooks was brought in as a love interest for Debbie Morgan after Morgan replaced Sharon Brown in March 1990. Brown's Chantal was never really featured in a starring capacity. When the show opened, she was involved with a dentist, but that relationship fell apart because the dentist wanted to domesticate her. They briefly toyed with the idea of playing a relationship between Chantal and Martin Jackson, but that was scuttled really quickly. I think that would have been a very interesting angle to play given the complicated nature of Martin's interactions with the Marshall family. The flirtation never went anywhere though.

 

I wonder if they considered pairing Chantal with the Myles Thoroughgood's Wally Beaumont. Wally was the scoop boy at the Marshall's Southside store. He had been a gang member but turned himself around. Henry saw him as a surrogate son and was a mentor to the young man. I believe they briefly played a rivalry between working class Wally and rich boy Adam Marshall. Thoroughgood was a recurring player at first, but was bumped to contract. I believe he was one of the first characters added to a contract outside the original cast. They never did anything with Wally, but I would have liked a love triangle with him, Brown's Chantal, and Martin Jackson. Alas, none of that played out. 

 

Anyway, I find the trial stuff with Eric drawn out. Eric was new, the victim was a homeless woman, and there wasn't much to play other than Chantal's end. The show had been really good at integrating the stories together. I know Gail Ramsey's Laura McCallum served on the jury, but it all plays out in such a bubble. When Kyle was introduced as Sam's love interest, he was investigating the death of Jason Craig so the story had more implication and drew in more characters. The show had no clue what to do with Jason and Monique. Maybe Eric should have run over one of the two of them with his car. At least the story would have had more of an umbrella effect. It also would have spared the audience from that lame duck art scam storyline. 

 

I don't understand how the show went from Jessica and Rob to Jessica and Reginald. I know Rob was a hard character because he had so few connections, but I liked his friendship with Daniel Reubens. Jessica and Rob as the outsiders worked for me. The stuff with Reginald just seems so vanilla. 

 

I like the initial Sam / Kyle / Jordan stuff. I think Jordan was a compelling character, but I don't think this art storyline worked. Eventually, it is revealed that he is tied to the mob (his biological father Nicholas Taylor was the mob boss who ran Peter Whitmore out of town), but I preferred George Shannon to Robert Gentry. Gentry seems bored a lot of the time. Also, Stacey Nelkins' Christy Russell was such a departure from Pat Talman's Christy that I wish they just made her a new character. For a fun couple, Sam and Kyle quickly became trite and predictable. 

 

The show should have just played Maya / Doreen all summer or at least continued the Maya / Martin pairing which they also teased. 

 

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I believe they are mid-November 1989. Jason Craig’s murder was a sweeps story. I have episodes later in the month where they are doing the sickle cell test. The car accident probably was a Friday episode. 

This is a BET rerun. I believe newspapers.com had some summaries for the BET reruns. If someone has those it would be easier to establish a timeline.

By early December, Rob Donnelly has been accused of murder and sells the Whitmore estate to Ruth Marshall to afford the legal costs. 

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Not gonna lie, but when I saw this headline/lede, one of the first things that came to mind was that, if only the Marshall family had this sort of backdrop for their ice cream business, maybe that aspect would have been more interesting. I doubt that their writing staff would have had the skills to pull it off though.

 

 

 

That could have made an ace tagline for a promo though.

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