ellabelle

In watching these clips and looking back over AMC's history, it's amazing how many people lied to Erica about babies over the years: Travis and Barbara lied to Jack about how the baby would be conceived, and then they all lied to Erica about Barbara conceiving until the truth finally came out - and Molly was IN REMISSION at the time. Her life wasn't hanging in the balance but they went ahead and had another baby anyway!

Mona, Nick, Charlie and Haley all lied to Erica about their suspicions about who Kendall really was.

Dimitri and Maria lied to Erica about their one night stand and the baby they thought was Dimitri's.

Practically everyone BUT Erica (and Greenlee) knew that Bianca was pregnant by Michael Cambias, not Kendall, and no one had any intention of telling her until Greenlee ripped Kendall's dress off in court.

Greg lied to Erica about who Josh really was.

Kendall and Greenlee kept the surrogacy from Erica until they couldn't keep it a secret any longer, and then Kendall lied about whose egg was really used.

Bianca and Reese hid the pregnancy with Gabby until the tornado, and then Erica showed up at the hospital and was told "oh, by the way you have another grandchild." She had no idea her daughter was pregnant or that her other daughter's husband was the father.

I wonder if that was an intentional theme that was worked on over time or if it was just a big coincidence.

Not sure that my opinion counts for much, but I hate to abandon this thread. There's so much awesomeness in this thread.

Oooh - that's a different Coral from Erica's romance with David. Either that, or she miraculously didn't age in 10 years.

~Bursts into hysterical sobs~

We've been moved to the Canceled Soaps board.

^ He didn't fake his death to become a circus clown. He embezzled $ from a film project and faked his death to avoid creditors/business partners and possible criminal charges. At least, I think that's what happened. It's been a while... him being a circus clown was something that he probably did because he needed the money.

That's actually chilling. I assume it was unintentional...

Did they ever make a big deal of Erica's birthdays before the Fields/Kendall story?

Why assume it was unintentional? It could have been a case of the writers paying really good attention to detail, going back and looking at what the dream was right before she found her father. Wasn't Agnes involved in the creation of the rape storyline? She knew her characters and their history. I started watching regularly around 1990, and I don't recall her celebrating a birthday, but then again, Erica is not the sort of character who would have ever wanted to be reminded (after age 25 or so) that she was getting older.

It may have been one of those things where they never planned to bring him on at all. I know Agnes can be a fanciful writer but I'm not sure I can see her saying, "Hey, he's a circus clown!"

It still baffles me that he came in right after they fired Mark.

If - as I've theorized in another post - Eric was brought back so Erica would be forced to deal with her Daddy issues and grow up, then having Mark around might have been viewed as interfering with that. I think they could have done both, and it would have been interesting to see how Erica and Mark interacted as siblings with Eric around, but TPTB had a tendency to do stuff like that - like cutting the romance with David so it would be a "distraction" to Erica while Bianca came out.

He died off screen in the early 70s, and his role in Erica's life was such a big part of the character that they not have brought him on before for fear of having to make Erica deal with those issues he caused... and then would Erica really be the same Erica everyone knew and loved or loved to hate?

The timing with her being in love with Jack is interesting, and it makes me wonder if the original plan involved Erica addressing those abandonment issues and getting over them as a way to clear the path to her having a mature long-term relationship with Jack as "the one". If you look at it that way, then him being a clown might have been a metaphor for the absurdity of Erica putting so much importance on him and his abandonment when she had this awesome man right there with her.

It's interesting that the dream she had about being at the circus involved her birthday, considering the story TPTB went with a few years later about Erica being abandoned by her father on her birthday and Richard Fields raping her on the floor in front of the cake.

I go back and forth on Eric returning as Barney the Clown. I liked the *idea* of him coming back because it represented a chance for Erica to confront the demons of her past and get over her abandonment issues, but it ended up making them worse with the way he walked out on her again, and walked out on Bianca as well. Plus it's hard to watch the interaction with them NOW, knowing that we'd later find out he'd basically traded her to a pedophile rapist and sat there smoking cigars with the bastard while Erica was upstairs sobbing and traumatized at barely 14.

I thought the actor cast looked fine next to Erica as her father, but I thought he looked too young when standing next to Mona. I loved that Jack didn't take any crap from Eric.

That user posted another long clip of Jack and Erica as well. It's interesting to see how much Jack changed, how he went from a confirmed bachelor who swore he'd never marry, who wanted fun and excitement in his life, to being this more staid family man who walked out on Erica at the end because SHE didn't want to get married. Jack, IMHO, was one of the more wasted characters on AMC in the final 15 years of the show.

Okay, I did remember getting the magazine in the mail and being delighted that there was a feature on my favorite actress, but I kind of tuned out everything that didn't apply to AMC or Santa Barbara, so I probably didn't even notice them doing that for other actors.

^ Was the "Everyone loves Lucci" article before or after the rumors of a feud with SMG started? I remember reading that article in SOD at the time and wondering what precipitated several pages of "Oh she so's wonderful."

Robin was definitely a more subtle Janet, but I can't fully hate KC as Janet either. It was one of those rare recasts where I actually really liked both the original actress and the recast.

What always got me was that when she was first in the wreck, her face did not look mangled at ALL. there was like minimal blood streaked down her face. I know they said they'd never show her scar because it could never live up to the audience's expectations of horror. Do you remember when her masque fell off, "Oh! My mask!", . Adam said she was butchered, her great beauty ruined, lost forever...

Adam was never very good with subtlety was he?

IIRC, there wasn't a huge amount of bleeding on her face when the accident first happened, but by the time they got her to the hospital, it looked a lot worse - the blood was soaking through the bandages. Then after surgery, the parts of her face that weren't bandaged were all bruised, and she looked pretty bad.

Thanks for that tidbit, ellabelle. I had NO idea that Erica and David were split up so she could be single for Bianca's coming-out. To me, that decision makes no sense. If anything, such an event would be a terrific catalyst either for bringing them back together or solidifying their relationship.

Supposedly TPTB knew how huge the Bianca coming out story would be, and they wanted it to be something that Erica struggled with on her own, and they didn't want her to be in the midst of a romance at the same time. It was felt that would distract from the gay story or something. I can see their point, and if you look at what happened in late 2000/early 2001, it does look like they were laying the groundwork for David and Erica to get back together. Their break up wasn't really final - it was more "I love you, but I don't know if I can trust you, so we need to end this," and yet they kept spending time together, whether it was having breakfast at the Valley Inn, or him driving her home from some event and sitting up all night talking to her, or her going to him for advice about Bianca, or them having sex on Alex's desk...

Erica was one of the few people still on David's side after the libidizone debacle on the yacht, and she arranged to get him out of jail, and that was spring 2001. That relationship was still salvagable at that point, but they wasted a wonderful opportunity to pair them up again to stick David with Dixie and have Erica flirt with Roger Smythe and then end up with Chris Stamp of all people. Such a waste... AMC could have had absolute magic if they'd put them back together. Even as enemies later on, the chemistry between SL and VI was just amazing. There were a few times after that where it seemed like David and Erica might end up back together, but for whatever reason, TPTB always pulled back. I'll never understand that.

^ When did that happen? Because I don't remember it either. I know Susan was injured in a very similar way, also in a car accident, but that was before AMC.

^ I thought Erica in a phantom of the opera mask was over the top, but I absolutely LOVED Erica and David. They were split up so Erica could be single when she dealt with Bianca coming out, and VI/SL had been told they'd be put back together afterward, but it didn't happen. I think that was a huge mistake by AMC - Erica and David had such amazing chemistry, and it still bothers me that it was trashed so David could obsess over Dixie Martin. What a waste.

^ I think they both look better than MEK does.

MEK said recently in an article that Frons wanted him gone from the show and had for years. Well, he didn't take care of his appearance enough to pull off the older sexy romantic lead, he didn't want to slip into a Joe Martin-type role, and he didn't want to be the bad guy, which could have been explored more in depth post-Greg Madden. Well, what's left? TPTB didn't know what to do with him. The Damon storyline could have been much better if Hillary had been involved or if they'd done something - anything - with it after Liza slept with him, but they just shoved him off the canvas.

Compare MEK's aging with, say, Walt Willey. Walt is 7 years older than MEK, but WW looked a heck of a lot better around that same time period. Heck, he was doing a love scene with SL in 2003 in which they were both scantily clad in front of a fireplace, and the man looked HOT even though he was in his 50s. Or look at Vincent Irizarry - he's the same age as MEK, but to me there's no comparison between the two.

Tad having fun at Erica's expense:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Sd_hOd2Vnok" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I did the math and Susan Lucci was 60, going on 61 in this scene and Michael E. Knight was 48. She looks a hell of a lot better than he does. So much for men aging gracefully.

Imagine if Erica walked in ...

Jack got an awful lot of role-playing sex, didn't he? Between Brooke as a lingere-clad would-be criminal and Erica as a French maid...

I can't speak for Khan, but for me, Natalie in the well was the beginning of the end for Natalie. Trevor had no idea that Janet wasn't Natalie, to the point that he fathered a child with Janet. Natalie then got into a blah relationship with Dimitri, Janet murdered Will, and then Natalie had to deliver Janet's baby. And we were all supposed to just go along with the idea that sure, Natalie would get back together with Trevor and live happily ever after raising the child conceived as a result of all of this.

I liked the b*tchy, scheming, selfish Natalie who fought with Erica over Jeremy. I felt like her character was so watered down to be with Trevor in the first place, so the whole Janet storyline just really ruined Natalie for me as a character by making her seem so weak, and it made me hate Trevor even more. I never really liked him, but that just sealed the deal for me.

^ That's such a great picture! Did Annie stab anyone other than Erica? Because I think Erica may hold the title of Queen Stabs-a-Lot: Dimitri, Zach, David, and when Adam kidnapped her in the 80s, she got her hands on a pocket knife and was planning to use that on him. She has a long history of being stabby.

I don't really believe JDB considered temporarily recasting Erica. If she did, she's f*ckin crazy and deserved to be fired.

I don't believe for a second that anyone ever seriously considered temporarily recasting Erica Kane in 1999/2000. Agnes has said that she would kill off Erica before she'd ever want her recast because Susan was so identifiable as Erica. Agnes considered her irreplaceable.

Susan wrote at length about that time in her book as well. She was supposed to open in Annie Get Your Gun right after AMC went on hiatus for Christmas, so she wasn't going to be juggling both the play and the show at the same time until after the holidays. She was diagnosed with pneumonia right before AMC went on hiatus but was apparently still working. If you look at scenes from the 2000 Crystal Ball, you can hear it in her voice - she sounds really sick but they managed to slap enough make up on her to make her look good. The producers of the AGYG delayed her opening until she was well enough to sing. She wrote that it was a huge relief when AMC went on hiatus because she could just focus on getting better and getting on stage.

Here is the rest of that scene:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1WNdy5kD-js" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I have to admit that while I thought AMC mostly sucked after 2004 or so, there were a few bright spots for me, and the whole Jack/Erica "new divorce" fiasco was one of them. It was at times funny, at times romantic and passionate, at times snarky, and it made me actually want to root for Jack and Erica to get back together again. I just hate that it was all ruined by Greenlee kidnapping Spike and crashing her car, J&E fighting over their kids AGAIN, and Jack leaving Erica AGAIN.