Marland Monday: Here’s a pin to bust the Loving bubble
Let’s see, today starts with an M and ends with a day, so I believe it’s…
Marland Monday!
Every Monday I take time out to celebrate the career of Douglas Marland, one of my favorite writers and one of the GOATS of daytime soaps. The past couple of weeks I’ve been looking back at a show he helped create and was a head writer for two years, Loving.
Last week we looked at the first two episodes. Once the cheesy parts were out of the way, I truly enjoyed it and wanted more. Unfortunately, full episodes of Loving are hard to come by online. But we know this: the show, even though it had a fantastic cast, a pilot with two fantastic guest actors, and a solid beginning, the show never took flight.
So what happened?
(TW: Spoilers of Loving mentioned below. Also mentions of sexual abuse)
Network interference: One of the big storylines Marland wanted to tell was incest. Garth Slater tended to be a little too protective of his daughter Lily when she was chatting with Jack Forbes. Six months later, Jack would be on trial for Garth’s murder. Why? Garth was sexually abusing Lily. This was supposed to be big. Huge. Unfortunately, ABC had a TV movie about incest coming up in January 1984 called Something About Amelia. They couldn’t have some daytime soap opera tell an incest story first. Hence, Marland was told to wrap up the storyline right away. He did, but I know he wasn’t happy about it. On Guiding Light, a similar story was told but it was allowed to have a beginning, middle, and end. I’ve written about how much I admired Beth Raines (played by Judi Evans for three years) and it started when, after being raped by her stepfather Bradley (James Rehborn) several months later she decided to press charges against him. It was brave storytelling. Fortunately, CBS didn’t interfere with its telling. (Ironically, Marland did a similar sexual abuse storyline on ATWT. Who played the abuser? James Rehborn. You can’t make this stuff up) Below is a scene from Jack’s murder trial. Note: Ann Williams (June) is in the clip and this was one of her last acting roles. She died two years later of cancer. Her daughter Liz Welch wrote about her mother’s soap opera career in 2009 when ATWT was canceled.
A Mean Producer: Joseph Stuart was the producer of Loving at the beginning. We know Bryan Cranston didn’t like him. Cranston wrote in his memoir that “Agnes Nixon was a nice person. Douglas Marland was a nice person. Stuart wasn’t a nice person.” According to many actresses, he wasn’t well, how do we say it? He pretty much gave them the keys to the #metoo club. He told actress Noelle Beck (Trisha Alden) they would have to break her nose so it wouldn’t look pointed. He pretty much bullied many of the actresses, making them feel awful. Two left before the show turned one: Shannon Eubanks (Ann Forbes) and Patricia Kalember (Merrill Vochek) Other exits followed. A producer/writer relationship is like a writer/editor relationship. When it works, it’s beautiful. When it doesn’t, everything goes kablooey.
Some people aren’t meant to collaborate. Douglas Marland and Agnes Nixon were both great writers. This isn’t up for debate. However, they had their own visions of character development. Case in point: Ava Rescott. Ava was a character who made her debut in 1984. Having a quarter-life crisis, Jack went to the bad side of town and rented a room from Kate Rescott (Nada Rowland) Her daughter Ava fell for Jack. Yes, it’s similar to Kelly/Nola. I am guessing Marland wanted to have another bad girl turned good story. Agnes Nixon however, probably wanted Ava to be more like Erica Kane, her famous character from All My Children. Erica was devious, self-centered, bratty, a diva. When Marland left in 1985, Ava became more devious and Ericaish, Nixon’s version for her. Marland and Nixon were both alpha personalities. They wanted it their way. Collaboration is supposed to be a dance. When one wants to do the foxtrot and the other wants to do the Charleston, and neither of them is going to bend, it’s not going to work. There are no good guys or bad guys here. It wasn’t a good match.
Time switch: In September 1984 Loving was switched to a “better” time slot. However, it knocked Ryan’s Hope out of its time slot, then it went down in the ratings. The show was canceled four years later. This caused resentment among RH fans. Whenever Rosie O’Donnell had an RH performer on her talk show, she complained about Loving and how it took over the prime spot. When you tick off a loyal viewer of one show, they’re not going to be in a hurry to watch the show that bumped your show into oblivion.
We just don’t know: I’ve always wondered why Loving simply didn’t take flight. It had good storylines: Apparently, Mike Donovan’s PTSD story was excellent and Connie Passalaqua compared James Kiberd to a young Brando. Noreen Donovan worked with people with AIDS. But once his contract was up in June 1985, Marland left and didn’t look back. A month later, it was announced he was the head writer for As The World Turns. In Agnes Nixon’s memoir, she never mentioned Marland or even the show Loving. Sometimes we just don’t know why something doesn’t work. It could be all the reasons I mentioned above. Or it could be a simple fact we will don’t know why it didn’t work. I hate this. I’m an English major and I always want to figure out how a piece of art works or doesn’t work. However, this time I am left with more questions than answers.I’m betting I won’t get the answers anytime soon.
However, any show that helped make these people stars cannot be considered a failure: Linden Ashby, Noelle Beck, Julie Bowen, Bryan Cranston, Michael Cullen, Rebecca Gayheart, Hallee Hirsh, Judith Hoag, Patricia Kalember, John O’Hurley, Burke Moses, Elise Neal, Luke Perry, Teri Polo, Sebastian Roche, and Rebecca Staab.
What can I say? I tend to look on the bright side.
Turn in next week…
