LOVING

June 26, 1983 - November 10, 1995 (ABC)

INTRODUCTION

Loving was created by Agnes Nixon. It debuted in primetime with a two-hour Sunday night movie that introduced many of the new castmembers. The year before, Capitol had debuted in primetime and broken the record for the highest ratings in a premiere week. Although Lloyd Bridges and geraldine page starred in the Loving TV movie, they did not show up the following morning as a regular castmembers. The movie's plotline involved a drug and prostitution scandal on the campus of Alden University, in Corinth, which would become a main setting during the show's early years.

Agnes Nixon deceloped this half-hour serial, along with headwriter Douglas Marland, with an eye toward the college audience. The show was set in the eastern seaboard town of Corinth. It originally focused on three families: the wealthy Aldens, the middle-class Vocheks, and the blue-collar Donovans.

During its first year on the air, Loving tackled the issue of incest in a way that few soap operas had up till that point. While most molesters on daytime were stepfathers, Nixon made the decision for a character called Lily Slater ( Jennifer Ashe) to have been sexually abused by her biological father. As a result of that abuse, she had developed a split personality.Nixon also explored on Loving the long term effects of the war of Vietnam on its veterans.

By the mid '80s Doug Marland had stepped down from his headwriting duties to work on As The World Turns. Shortly thereafter the show lost its sense of direction.

In the earliy '90s ABC tried to boost Loving's ratings by making real use of its timeslot preceding All My Children. All My Children's Jeremy Hunter and Ceara Connor ( Jean LeClerc and Genie Francis) paid a sweeps month visit to Corinth. Ultimately Jeremy Hunter was transplanted from Pine Valley to Corinth in the hope that All My Children fans might start tuning in a half hour earlier. Jeremy's wife was killed off, and Jeremy was rattled through a string of unsuccessful romances with the show's leading ladies: Stacey, Ava and Gwyneth. After running out of ideas for what to do with him, the show introduced his evil twin brother Gilbert.

Debbie Morgan , who had left All My Children in 1990, reprised her Emmy-winning role as Dr. Angie Hubbard on Loving. There she was eventually reunited with her former All My Children leading man Darnell Williams, who played Jacob Johnson, a dead ringer for Angie's late husband Jessie.

Although Loving was moving in the right direction with its storytelling, the changes were not improving the ratings. ABC, which did not want to cancel the series, performed radical reconstructive surgery on the show. During the summer of 1995 a serial killer starting picking off members of the core Alden family. The first victim was Stacey Forbes who had been with the show since the very first episode!

After the murderes were resolved, the remaining castmembers moved from the fictional town of Corinth, Pennsylvania, to the very real Soho section of New York City. ABC retitled the show The City. And Loving ended forever...