All My Shadows

Watch All American! Not exactly the same as those old school gentle WB/CW dramas, but a great, deep family soap.

God damn, Maura!

I agree with her first comment. In fact, I've been fighting the urge to be shady and messy on social media by commenting on how it seems like everyone who was SO gung ho about healing race relations two months has moved on to their next topic of interest. So much of the noise (and I necessarily don't mean "noise" negatively) came from people who wanted to flex how woke they are by posting a black screen on Instagram or copying and pasting hotline numbers or watching a documentary that Netflix/Hulu/Amazon moved to the top of their welcome screens. They feel like they did their part, so now it's on to the next thing. For the gay white men I know, it's the new Taylor Swift album. I'm not feeling the comparison of the new Wonder Years remake to Everybody Hates Chris at all. Assuming TWY keeps the tone of the original series, it will lean more towards seriousness whereas EHC leaned more towards gentle comedy. Plus, they're set in two different time periods, and the new WY family is going to face issues that the Arnolds never had to. Oh, and helllll no, this won't apply to soaps. These networks do not care about these soap operas. I feel the general mindset on soaps is "You guys handle it, but if you guys can't handle it, we're just gonna cancel."

The canvas felt so thoroughly utilized throughout the first 18 or so months of the Carruthers/McTavish run (well, putting the starting point at when McTavish returned). Even before the baby switch, which pulled in almost everyone, there seemed to be so many different characters on each day, and so many relationships were showcased. Brooke, of course, was the biggest absence, and I will never understand why she was cast aside so dismissively. To me, the show looked better in the Burke/Culliton era, but it was a better show during the first year or so of Carruthers/McTavish. Re: JFP. Lol. Like DaytimeFan said, one thing AMC had going for it was EPs who were perfectly content with producing All My Children with no strong desire to turn it into something else. Behr, James, and Burke were clearly passionate about soap opera and all of its conventions. JHC was passionate about not stepping on toes and keeping the show running. Phelps seems to be passionate about courting attention and glory at any cost.

Idk why I didn’t realize the obvious change was from JDB to JHC. The show was still so lush and colorful in all of these 2002 clips, and in hindsight, it really balances out the not-so-great storytelling that was going on at the time (they are NOT my faves, but these Edmund/Maria videos are hiding all of the utter shite that was this era). JHC’s show was either brown af or bright af. There was just no color, and I forget how lifeless the sets were until I see these from just a year earlier. Was it JHC who gave us the ugly brown Chandler “mansion” to replace the set with the dual staircase?

I just went down a small rabbit hole watching some from that channel, and I missed so much of that music. It's funny to look back and see a marked difference between in how 2002 era AMC looked and how (just randomly picking a year) 2009 era AMC looked. I always correspond the drop in the show's look to when they very rapidly phased out sets like The Valley Inn, BJ's, and Myrtle's and Brooke's houses. Not 100% sure of when all of that occurred. One of the videos has Dylan Fergus as Tim Dillon, and I was curious as to what he looks like now. Just Google it, y'all.

Ah okay, thanks. I remember seeing that clip posted here back then. I guess I forgot how tired she was by that point. It's crazy how just three years earlier, she was still somewhat active in working on the show.

When is that from? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that worn out. Rest on, our sweet legend.

Idk what you’re talking about, a cockroach scurried across the wall and obviously caught Phoebe’s eye. Duh, SFK!

Honestly, that's all I remember from when I watched it. It really seemed like they had no idea what to do with Tom for a very long time after the initial triangle he had with Brooke and Erica in the 70s. I think they ultimately did good by putting him with Skye later, but even that didn't last long.

I really want those people to STFU and get out of the way. What exactly would they have preferred to air instead, given the situation? These people also would not have been pleased with just picking a time period and running episodes in order (and I don't think we would have either - I doubt they would have went far back for that). Y&R has never been "my" soap, but it's the first soap I ever remember watching, and it's ingrained into so much of my greatest family memories, and it's been amazing to watch so many classic episodes. I feel like I know more about the show than I ever did before. I'll always be thankful for these reruns getting us through quarantine. The sad thing is that GH has never been "my" soap either, and I have literally no personal connection to it whatsoever, and I would have loved an opportunity to get closer to it, but...well...lol

They are seen throughout episodes from 1982-1983 as Jesse’s guardians, and Nancy is seen for about a year after Frank’s death by heart attack. I haven’t seen anything with them from their 70s stories.

I adore Skins so very much! I might have to give those first two series another watch again soon just to see how it hits me this time around. I originally watched as a teen, and I was in love with Tony, and I believed in the fantasy of Tony/Maxxie, but my god, one prolonged experience with a sociopath in real life made me detest the character beyond words. Just the thought of him makes my stomach turn a little. Sid, however, is an angel. Nick Hoult is wonderful, though. He was the breakout star of The Great.

Wow - I didn't realize DG was that much older. She'd be 100 this year! I also didn't know Robert Colbert was so much younger and is very much still alive. I could have sworn I'd read about his death several years ago. Someone needs to sit him and Julianna McCarthy down and interview the heck out of them. The golden anniversary is coming up...it would be very special to get the original cast together to talk about the early days.

Wow, thanks for that info. This really was a pioneering moment. About a decade earlier, AMC wrote in a facelift for Margo Flax. I’m still not 100% sure on whether or not actress Eileen Letchworth also had the surgery in real life. It doesn’t surprise me at all that this was a “fan pick” bc this has been one of the most consistently reminisced stories in all the years that I’ve followed soaps. I’m only surprised that it wasn’t on during Katherine week (bc even those eps weren’t completely focused on her).

I’ve never seen the facelift before but yikes, it’s clear why this is such a legendary moment. It goes without saying - it just doesn’t get any realer or more raw than this. JC was a trooper to agree to it, or was it actually her idea? Either way, amazing. How was the story written around this? Was the actual procedure also televised or just the unwrapping of the bandages? Did they really and truly follow every stage of her preparing for the procedure and then going in? It’s so fascinating to me. Funny seeing Jack proudly fawn over Cricket when we know how TL would eventually feel about the character.

Thanks, that makes sense. I really just have a perverse obsession with seeing soap characters living in squalor. I swear, Terry Lester’s Jack gets my motor running any time I see him in these repeats. That smug attitude is terrible but I love it. Seeing so much Liz Foster in ten days is frustrating bc she should still be alive and making periodic visits to HER daughter.

We need to nominate, vote, and officially bestow a maiden name upon Mrs. Mona S_______ Kane Tyler, then. Something classic but not boring, unassuming but not without a little bite. I have some ideas that I shall keep to myself for now. It would have been interesting to give her a long-term foe who was older than her. All of her major rivals were near her age or younger. Queen Margo Flax and Sara Kingsley are the only two that I can think of who were older. She and Ellen weren't the best of friends, but I don't recall them having many reasons to sling at each other. I don't count Phoebe because any words they shared were really extensions of Phoebe vs. Mona and Brooke vs. Erica. You could really go in any direction with Mona's family. Were they embarrassingly poor and low-class, explaining why Mona and Erica had no regular contact with them? Were they even richer than the Tylers, looking down on Mona for not being woman enough to keep Eric and ending up as a single mom? I've wondered these things from the moment we saw Erica's "birth" in the ABC finale. Who else was there? What was Mona's mother like? Did Erica ever know them as a little girl? Can you imagine a Margaret Hamilton type as Erica's grandmother who proves that "it skips a generation" and is brutally critical of all of Erica's crap? Any of these options would have given Fra Heflin some good stuff to play besides flopping her hair around and giving us "Oh Erica!"

Yep, they were married by September 1978 and were guests at Erica and Tom’s wedding, where Frank tried to throw some weak ass shade at Erica over being late to her own wedding. They’re at around 1:20.

Yes, I totally agree, especially since Phoebe was so proud of her family's history in PV. They introduced Brooke at just the right time to slowly integrate her into the cast and make her Phoebe's tie to the core of the show throughout the 80s and 90s. They might have also had Anne and Paul's daughter Beth Martin live - would she have been the only true link between the two original core families? Even if they'd had her raised by Paul off-screen, they could have avoided SORAS and had her be a major player in the late 90s and into the 2000s. I do wonder if we ever saw more of the Kennicotts as a family unit. It seems like they were never on all at once - you had Mary, then Dan, then Betsy, then Katie. I think there was overlap with Dan and Betsy. Not further exploring Mona's family is easily one of the show's biggest missteps. I think we've mentioned it before, but did we ever even hear Mona's maiden name? I'm sure it might've been mentioned during the first five years, but her family was a complete blank slate. Any writer at any point could have taken advantage of that, but no one ever did, and it's not like this was some obscure branch of the show's history. It's Erica's family!

I can't imagine Betsy and Frank together. Perhaps there was a minor character named Betsy that he dated before Betsy Kennicott came along?

I think a part of the difference is that soap music back then was really written for the beginnings and ends of scenes. You needed something nice, calm, and pleasant to ease you into the Brooks family home, so you got something like their theme or the Genoa City Theme. If it was a tense conversation between two characters, the music came in near the end and get a crescendo right before your fade to black. Plus - you could actually have nice, calm, pleasant background music because you had nice, calm, pleasant scenes. At some point, soaps decided every scene needed to have a backing track through the entire scene. I remember back when I was a regular DAYS viewer in 2003-2004, it was RARE to have a scene play out with little to no background music. Even in today's repeats, they felt the need to add music where there presumably was none.

Were the Fosters supposed to be always “poor” or did they only become “poor” after Bill abandoned them? Because that house is big as hell for a “poor” family. The Brooks family scenes were fantastic and everything I needed them to be. Classic soap opera is regular people living ordinary lives. A family getting home and having dinner is so mundane, but there’s beauty in that, and it grows and grows and grows over time.

The sound is kinda muffled, but this episode looks absolutely gorgeous. I used to have a pipe dream that Antenna TV, which AFAIK has access to the Sony library, would rerun the 70s episodes in the mornings and post-primetime. Seeing this look so beautiful on my screen, I absolutely believe it could work. Sliding in an 80s music cue to underscore Chris and Leslie was so unnecessary 🙄

I mean, If Sony had any imagination, they would’ve asked Brenda to record the intro for tomorrow’s presentation. “Just go on for as long as you want to, darling, we’ll edit together the highlights.”