"I was looking at the Ryan's Hope wiki page to see when Joe Hardy left that show, and those dates were also removed by the same poster."
I noticed that too! My 1980s Ryan's Hope knowledge isn't very good, so I was going to see which Loving writers had been at RH and what years... Yeah, not sure why someone felt it was worth editing all that down (even if, as we've said, the dates were far from exact.)
Right--I have that article which is where I put a lot of my assumptions. I still think it makes sense that this was one of the story changes Walsh might have objected to and Granger (who had an interesting background) wanted? I mean, as you say, in the brief time when Walsh and McCarthy took over from Nixon they suddenly addressed that Cooper WAS sexually abused, that would definitely seem to me like something Walsh would want to "fix" when she was back. I think the old Loving listings said Nixon's run ended in October 1994, but you say it was earlier? (I have an August 1994 episode with Nixon still in the credits, but the problem with the main bulk of 1994 episodes on YT I've been watching is nearly all of them edit out the end credits--I always think that's funny because even when I was a young teen at the time making VHS copies of a lot of stuff, I felt the end credits were important :P )
In regards to Nixon's stint at Loving in the 1990s, I still can't believe I've yet to find anything in the soap press at the time mentioning her return to the show. Surely they would have wanted to publicize it?
I agree with all of this (although I did think some of Shana/Leo's stuff with Patti had compelling scenes. (And I do agree that Steffi and Tess are two of the characters who are much stronger under Nixon.) Of course, as I've said, she also seems to go for these bigger Gothic story points--maybe no surprise considering in the mid 80s the Jonathan Devil story was hers, and she seemed VERY excited by it at least in her proposal, and then her 1990-92 run on AMC had been dominated by what I'd also call Gothic storytelling--Natalie in the Well, the whole introduction of Wildwind, all these things that took story ideas directly from Victorian Gothic and Sensation fiction (the well itself, the story of Edmund being the abused illegitimate son, a wife who literally was being kept in an attic, Helga as a character trope in general.) So maybe Nixon still was interested in that style--so you have arguably her first period at Loving dominated by Dante (which gets a weird semi resolution when maybe he's been killed but maybe just put in a death like state of his own planning?) and then the end of her time with Gilbert (although the conclusion of that story was under Walsh and McCarthy.)
Her period at Loving is far from an unequivocal success, but personally I do think it was one of the stronger Loving runs and, as would be expected, she gave Corinth a good sense of place, she seemed to want to try to tie various characters and stories who usually would be more isolated, together more, etc.
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EricMontreal22 ·
