The Couple: Casey Bowman and Ally Rescott
Duration: 1992 – 1995
How They Got Together: After spending several months getting on each other’s nerves and crushing on other people (Ava, for him; Cooper, for her), the two became closer as she helped him deal with the fact that his father kidnapped Trisha
The Obstacles They Faced: His anxieties about the similarities between him and his father, her tryst with Cooper and subsequent pregnancy, her marrying Cooper in order to get medical coverage, Cooper’s plots to keep her in their marriage, his tryst with Steffi, him making a deal with Cooper to allow Ally to have custody of their son in exchange for him keeping his distance from her, her relationship with Cooper, his relationship with Steffi, money problems, his fear of being diagnosed as bipolar like his father was, his drug addiction, him pretending to be involved in drugs again in order to bring Danny to justice
Number of Times They Wed: Once, legally. They also had a spiritual ceremony in which they married themselves before she married Cooper
How They Ended Up: Casey took a bullet for Ally and died in her arms. A few months later she moved to New York
Their Story
Ally and Casey meet after he follows his father to town and it’s anything but love at first sight. Ally can’t stand Corinth’s new arrival and whenever she gives him attitude, Casey throws it right back in her face, and each is interested in someone else. Casey is nursing a crush on Ally’s aunt, Ava, with whom he works at Burnell’s, and Ally is desperate to land Cooper despite his love for Hannah. Seeing more than a little of herself in Ally, Ava worries that her schemes to get Cooper are going to lead to trouble and begins pushing her towards Casey. Although the two resist their growing attraction to each other, once she begins helping him deal with his father’s descent into madness, the two begin to let their guard down with each other. When his father dies, she offers him support, but he suspects that she’s still interested in Cooper and tries not to get too close to her. However, when he sees her at Trisha and Trucker’s wedding, he realizes that he’s in love with her and the two begin dating.
Although in love with Casey, Ally makes plans to go to New York with Cooper, who wants to surprise Hannah. Casey and Ally have a fight and after she and Cooper get to New York and he mistakenly believes that Hannah is cheating on him, he and Ally have sex. Ally is immediately regretful and returns to Corinth to make up with Casey, but then learns that she’s pregnant. Worried that she’ll lose Casey, she decides to sleep with him so that he’ll think the baby is his, but ultimately thinks better of doing so and chooses to have an abortion instead. Although Cooper takes her to a clinic, she changes her mind and decides to spend one perfect day with Casey before telling him about the pregnancy, assuming that he’ll walk out on her once he knows that she slept with Cooper. Furious when he learns of her infidelity, Casey does break up with her, but quickly decides that their relationship means more than her mistake.
Reconciled with Casey, Ally feels pressure from both Casey and Cooper, both of whom propose to her. She turns down Cooper because she knows that he’s only proposed to try to do the “right” thing, but she turns down Casey’s proposal, too, worried that if they get married so young then they’ll end up like her parents, who ultimately divorced. Frustrated by Ally and jealous of the connection she now has with Cooper because of the baby, Casey breaks up with her again, but once again they reconcile. However, when Ally learns that her insurance has lapsed, Cooper comes up with a plan for the two of them to marry so that he can convince Isabelle to give him access to his trust fund in order to cover all of her pregnancy and birth related expenses. Agreeing that it’s the best solution, Casey encourages Ally go to along with the plan and she reluctantly agrees. Ally and Casey pretend to break up and Ally and Cooper become engaged, but before the two elope, Ally and Casey marry themselves in a spiritual ceremony.
While Ally and Cooper are away on their honeymoon, he offers to go and stay somewhere else so that she can invite Casey to come and join her. Cooper leaves and Ally calls Casey and leaves a message for him, but then goes into labor while alone at the remote cabin that Cooper has rented for them. When Casey finally gets the message, he rushes to Ally and finds her in time to get her to the hospital, where he’s by her side as she gives birth to her son, Tyler. Having missed the birth of his child, Cooper is jealous and, having begun to fall in love with Ally, he starts trying to find ways to delay the divorce, while Casey starts pressuring Ally to leave the marriage now that the baby is born. Torn between wanting to be with Casey and not wanting to get Cooper in trouble by exposing their marriage as a fraud, Ally tries to please both men, which ends up pleasing neither, and Casey turns to Steffi and sleeps with her. Ally is hurt when she finds out, but decides to forgive Casey and follow through on her plans to divorce Cooper.
When Tyler falls ill and has to be rushed to the hospital, Cooper is furious when he learns that Ally couldn’t be reached because she was at a motel with Casey, and Ally herself feels incredibly guilty, which prompts her to push Casey away. Not wanting to lose his son to Ally and Casey, Cooper decides to pursue full custody and wins a temporary order in court. When he refuses to let Ally see the baby, she’s beside herself and Casey talks Gwyneth into arranging for Ally to have a visit with her son. Ally uses it as an opportunity to take Tyler and run, but is arrested when she goes to the airport.
Feeling guilty after seeing Ally get arrested, Cooper offers Casey a deal that he’ll give Ally custody of their son in exchange for Casey breaking up with Ally. Casey makes Ally think that he’s slept with Steffi again and refuses Ally’s attempts to convince him to give their relationship another chance. While Casey dates Steffi, Ally finds herself open to Cooper, despite their divorce, and the two begin dating and quickly become engaged. Despite their new relationships, Ally and Casey still love each other and finally admit as much to each other. However, when Steffi finds them together and then runs off, Casey goes after her, afraid of what she might do because she’s so emotionally fragile. Believing that Casey has chosen Steffi, Ally decides to go through with marrying Cooper, but when she learns about Cooper’s deal with Casey, she breaks things off with him and reconciles with Casey.
Happily reunited, Casey and Ally become engaged and, knowing that the pair intend to marry at City Hall because they can’t afford a big wedding, their family and friends band together to throw them a surprise wedding in the park. They buy a house, which they begin fixing up, but the financial pressures of supporting a household quickly start to get to Casey, who works all hours of the day and night and begins to show signs of suffering from bipolar disorder, from which his father also suffered. Anxious about being compared to his father, Casey is reluctant to get help for his issues and instead begins self-medicating with pills and then cocaine. When Ally finds out about his drug use, he tells her that he was just experimenting, but after Cooper discovers Tyler playing with a vial full of cocaine, Casey is forced to admit that he has a problem.
Ally stands by Casey, believing that he’s working on maintaining his sobriety, but Casey’s addiction takes over and worsens, which eventually forces her to take Tyler and move back into Kate’s house. Casey spirals, losing his job, going around town begging people for money and pawning his possessions in order to buy drugs, and finally hits rock bottom when he’s arrested. Casey starts to pull himself together and he and Ally begin making tentative steps towards reconciling, but after a young girl dies of a drug overdose, Casey decides that he’s going to take down the local drug ring by getting involved as a dealer.
When Alex finds out what Casey is doing, he insists that Casey break up with Ally for her own protection and he pretends to have relapsed in order to push Ally away. However, when Ally finds out what’s really going on, she tries to extricate Casey from the situation, which gets her onto the radar of Danny, who tries to rape her. Casey decides that Ally needs to get out of town in order to stop Danny from going after her again, but Danny kidnaps her from the airport and takes her to an abandoned carnival site. When Casey follows, he gets Ally away from Danny and they run and hide, waiting for the police to arrive, unaware that Lt. Graham is Danny’s mysterious boss. Graham fires a shot and Casey throws himself in front of Ally to protect her, getting hit and dying in her arms. In the months after Casey’s death, Ally tries to avenge him by framing Danny for rape, but is eventually forced to come clean about her plot. Before leaving Corinth to move to New York, Ally visits Casey’s grave to say goodbye.
Loving (1983-1995) 