ellabelle

My mom once said how looks wise Susan Lucci has everything going for her, except she has thin hair...

It's gotten thinner with age, but alas I think that happens to all of us.

I got a kick out of reading the unauthorized bio of her that was written in the 1980s. One of the wardrobe people from back then was quoted as saying that Susan's main problem was that she REALLY wanted to be 5'10" and blonde, and it was really hard to convince her that they just couldn't make her look like that, no matter what they did.

^ Erica's 80s hair cracked me up. It was almost like Susan Lucci decided that her hair could make her look taller. There was one episode around 1985 or so where both Adam and Mike Roy embraced Erica and got a mouthful of hair.

Erica is wearing the oft-mentioned drum majorette outfit!

Hush your mouth! I love that Ralph Lauren jacket!

I never really understood all the love for Haley/Mateo, but then again, I could have done without the entire Santos family.

Yeah, at one point they whacked off Angelique's hair and made her a brunette. I don't remember what the reasoning was behind that. As a blonde she looked somewhat like Melanie Griffith did at the time, and it wasn't an unattractive look for her. The cut and dye job did her no favors. Jack didn't get that many love interests. Poor guy. But for the record, he was with Brooke, and Brooke got to stay a strawberry blonde.

Will Cortlandt was killed in early 1992.

As far as Brooke/Tad/Dixie goes, I disliked the whole "two Tads" storyline, and I remember watching and being SUPREMELY pissed off that Dixie was the one who blabbed to Tad about Jamie being his son. I was just a teenager at the time, but I actually fired off a really pissed off letter to TPTB at AMC over that because I felt very strongly that Brooke deserved to be the one to share the news with Tad, and I thought Dixie was a jealous b*tch. I have never liked Dixie, so I didn't mind her moping about while Brooke married Tad.

Why did Larkin Malloy not return at this time?

IIRC, he was in Rome shooting something and couldn't be there, so they used another actor. I think Larkin did come back as Travis during Bianca's anorexia storyline.

http://youtu.be/UMJWskbhNWg

This is the first of five clips in which Kendall gets pissed off at Erica and spits the truth out in her face. Erica responds by not believing her and thinking that she's a crazy stalker. By the time Erica is able to admit the truth, Kendall has moved out of Myrtle's and disappeared. Charlie and Haley are brought in to find Kendall, and throws a hissy fit at Mona over Kendall, which Jack and Laurel overhear.

This is the first of two clips in which Erica goes to see Kendall at the Pine Cone motel after Charlie and Haley track her down. Kendall talks about how thrilled she was to find out her mother was Erica Kane, but now she hates Erica. Kendall assumes Erica must have been a slutty teenager and wants to know how she got pregnant, why she didn't have an abortion, and who her father is. Erica tries to avoid the subject but finally gives Kendall a very short version of the truth and tries make her understand she was immature, naive, incapable of being a mother, and that it wasn't a personal rejection of Kendall as a human being.

IMHO, Kendall comes across as very much a teenager in these scenes, and not a 20-something who has some life experience (and the basic math skills to know that her birthmother was 14).

It's interesting, watching the late May 1993 episode. For some reason I thought that Kendall was on the outs with Erica from the time Erica learned Kendall was her daughter. I never knew there was a point where she was sort of trying to accept Kendall. I also never knew she was estranged from Mona at this time. I like the scene where Erica tells Dimitri that she rarely sees Bianca and every time she sees her again, they're strangers.

Erica definitely tried with Kendall. Right after she found out Kendall was her daughter, she went into protective mother mode. She did her best to avoid telling Kendall that she was the product of rape, she told Kendall she wanted to get to know her, that she would like to try to be a mother to her. Erica was the one who insisted on telling Bill and Alice Hart who she really was, and Erica had Kendall listed as her daughter in her and Dimitri's wedding announcement.

She wasn't really estranged from Mona, but she was seriously pissed off that 1) Mona held Kendall as a baby and never mentioned that to her, 2) Mona suspected Kendall was really Erica's daughter but never told her, 3) Mona told Nick Davis about the rape and asked Nick to look into Kendall's background. Nick in turn then hired Charlie and Haley who were told the truth, and Nick then got busted snooping around Kendall's room. Erica felt that Mona should have come right to her in the beginning when she suspected who Kendall was, and that Mona had no right to share such personal information with Nick, Charlie and Haley. Plus by that point Erica knew that she'd inadvertently said a lot of things that were hurtful to Kendall, without realizing who Kendall was, and that if Mona had just come to her in the first place, she could have avoided hurting her daughter.

I just remember the one area I guess. I have few memories of the house - the portrait, and sometimes the living room.

If Chris Stamp had any scenes in there, I blocked out any scene he had

Ugh. He was awful, wasn't he? He and Erica seemed so forced together. It's a shame they killed him off though because I could have seen him being interesting with someone like Krystal.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/n66vSsgUFMw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Brooke and Adam's 2002 affair starting. I think there were so many great things about these scenes.

I especially love Brooke telling Adam exactly what his problem is and his reaction.

Adam: You're mean when you drink.

Brooke: You're mean when you're sober.

I don't think AMC circa 2000-2004 was necessarily better than AMC of the 1990s, but God, the show really went downhill after 2004 or so.

Oh that's right. Was that the house with the pink or peach interior? For some reason I don't remember seeing that house very often - I think this was when I could barely watch the show.

Um... it was an absurdly ornate set. The living room was kind of yellow, I think, and for a while there was a life-sized portrait of Erica in a white evening gown above the fireplace. Erica's bedroom was a kind of pinkish/purplish color.

I have to admit I didn't have a big emotional reaction at the time to Linden House burning down because, well, for one thing, the name always kind of annoyed me, and for another, I never got to see Mona (aside from one or two clips).

It wasn't Linden House that burned down. In 1998/1999 or so, Erica sold Linden and bought an ornate Victorian mansion in the center of town. It was supposedly a house she'd passed walking home from school as a child, and she thought it was lovely and that it was the sort of house she wanted to have someday when she was rich and famous, so when it came up for sale, she bought it. This was after Mike Roy came back, and she had to choose between them - she chose Jack but slept with Mike one last time, and when Jack realized that, he dumped her. Then Jack's sister returned from the dead and claimed that she'd been raped by Ryan Lavery, and Erica and Jack were butting heads because she wanted him back but was insistent that Kit was lying about Ryan raping her because Ryan wouldn't do that. Ryan's brother, Braden, was the guilty one.

Erica moved into the Victorian, and she lived there during her relationship with David Hayward, the start of her relationship with Chris Stamp, and during Bianca's coming out. Leo also lived there with her. It was that house that Trey burned down.

Wasn't this when she had the phantom mask and contemplated suicide? Or was that something else? I always imagine the people who owned the house wandering in and seeing THE Erica Kane in their bath.

I *think* so, but I'm not sure. I haven't seen that particular scene online.

I remember this episode. I thought Susan Lucci was great in it, very haunting performance. I remember there was a scene where she took a bubble bath in Mona's bathroom. Can you provide a link to the youtube video?

These are the scenes with her and Jack cleaning out Mona's bedroom: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mt-eAZ_yuQ4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2WXJjIMuMeI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This is Brooke and Adam starting their affair, and a funny scene with Tad the next morning. I loved Brooke and Adam!

^ Jack helped her sort it into stuff that had true sentimental value to her, and stuff that could go to other, less fortunate people. Realistically, most people aren't going to keep every item that belonged to their deceased parent. My parents were massively in love, and I dare say that the term "soul mates" applied to them, and even my mother didn't see the need to keep every pair of jeans in my dad's closet after he died not long ago, nor would I have expected her to do so. Why keep stuff like that when it can benefit someone in need, and the items in question have no real sentimental value?

To me what was much worse was Trey burning down Erica's house and destroying all of the things that DID have sentimental value to Erica. Before Bianca came out, Erica dragged a box out of the attic or basement and had a bunch of her own stuff from high school in it. She showed it all to Opal while they talked about Bianca. Stuff like that had value to Erica, along with countless photos and memorabilia, and she lost all of that to the demon spawn of Vanessa Bennett and Richard Fields. I seem to recall a scene in which Erica is holding a photo of Mona, and she says it's the only one she has left. To me, that was heartbreaking, and I hated Trey with a seething passion for doing that to Erica.

http://youtu.be/lBmo76PEWsE

The first two minutes of this clip crack me up. Haley and Brooke's expressions are priceless.

Love the interaction with Brooke and Tad toward the end of this clip too. Brooke is such a bad liar!

Where was Erica staying in the August 1994 episode? Was that Mona's house? Or some rental place while she wasn't at Wildwind?

That was Linden House. It was remodeled a few times in the 1990s, kind of like how Wildwind was suddenly drastically remodeled when David moved in there in 2010 or so. Mona's house was full of crocheted doilies and old lady things. There is an episode on YT where Jack helps Erica clean out Mona's house. It's really quite sad. Erica wants to hold onto every single thing, even though it's painfully obvious that she'll never use 99% of it (I think she tells him that she can make throw pillows out of her mother's silly flannel Christmas-themed nightgowns).

*openly weeping* I just want to watch a few episodes from that era. Just a few...

I know it's not the same thing, but there are book versions of the first few seasons of AMC out there. Rosemarie Santini wrote some, and there's another author who wrote a few as well. You can sometimes find them on amazon or ebay. I really enjoyed reading them, as this part of the show was way before my time.

At the time this first aired, I thought Susan Lucci's portrayal of Erica as tightly wound and numb following Mona's death was kind of odd, but now that I've lost a parent, I totally get it, and I think she was spot on the way she played it.

I was going to ask if there is any truth to the claims that Erica and Kendall rarely appeared in scenes together for a lot of SMG's later months on the show. Is that true? Or did they rarely appear in scenes together anyway? I haven't seen a lot of SMG's later stuff, although that episode where she spent the entire time hiding in a tunnel eavesdropping was a little odd.

They were in a lot of scenes together in 1993. Then Erica found out Dimitri helped Kendall track down Richard Fields, and she moved out, leaving Kendall at Wildwind, so they didn't interact much if I recall. Then of course there was the drama with Erica stabbing Dimitri, which Kendall set in motion, so they had some scenes together then, and they had some scenes together during the trial and when Erica left Kendall in jail for perjury. After that, I seem to recall nearly all of their scenes being fights or arguments. Erica pretty much steered clear of Kendall after the trial. I never bought the idea that it was because of some feud that SL and SMG had. There wasn't a lot of reason for Erica to interact with Kendall after the stunt she pulled with the trial.

Personally, I thought TPTB were really at a loss as to what to do with Kendall after the trial because she seemed to flit about doing strange half-developed things like plotting with Corvina or writing a bad book with Del. I still have issues with how Kendall was written when she first came to town, and perhaps if that had been done better, storylines for her would have flowed better.

Didn't Adam reveal that they were still married from their first marriage? So would that make all of Adam and Erica's marriages within that time frame null?

Yes. And if you go back and look at some of the episodes that are online from the mid 1980s, Stuart really DID impersonate Adam at the divorce. So yes, her two marriages to Travis were null, she was bigamist, and Bianca was illegitimate, and he threatened to go public with that news, which she was afraid would hurt her attempt to regain custody of Bianca. And yes you are correct: Adam's marriages to Brooke, Dixie and Natalie were not legal either. As far as the rest of Pine Valley knew, Adam and Erica had remarried, but Opal was the witness to the ceremony and knew otherwise.

Tom volunteered to be Jamie's "father" when Dixie and Adam I think) were browbeating her to admit that Tad might be the father of her baby, you know everyone had to protect the precious Dixie RME. I liked Jack and Brooke way better than Jack and Erica, I think they were together forthe rest of the year. I remeber having an SOD with them on the cover in the fall of that year.

They were over before the end of 1991 because Adam forced Erica to marry him that fall while she was pursuing Jack. Jack and Erica escaped and hid out at a country inn right after Christmas, but Adam tracked them down and busted in on them yelling at Jack "get your damn hands off my wife!" Jack was livid that Erica had lied to him (again), so he ditched her and then outed them as married at Jeremy and Ceara's New Year's Eve wedding reception. Jack tried to get Brooke to take him back in early 1992, but she was pissed off and refused. She ended up with Edmund shortly after that, which I personally think was one of her better relationships. I'm still bitter that Edmund and Brooke didn't get married in the early 1990s.

I had no idea Tom and Brooke almost got remarried or that he posed as Jamie's father. I wonder how much longer after this that lasted. I like the chemistry between Brooke and Jack.

Charlie and Erica screams "We don't know what to do with Erica," but this Charlie was very handsome (he looks like Jim Hougton, and a young Tom Cudahy) and I'm even more confused that they would eventually replace him with middle-aged Chris Lawford. The faceoff with Brooke was great as always. I also liked that for once women on soaps weren't wearing sleeveless shirts in June.

Yeah, Tom claimed he was the father of Brooke's baby because Brooke didn't want to hurt Dixie by admitting that Tad was the father. They all thought Tad was dead at this point. Tom claiming he was the father created lots of drama because Tom had just been married to Barbara who'd cheated on him with Travis - twice - and ended up pregnant with Molly and then Sean. I seem to remember Tom and Brooke telling people they were considering remarrying, but then Brooke got involved with Jack. Jack wanted her to fess up to Tad being the father, and Brooke was concerned about Erica still having her hooks in Jack, which she did, especially after she dumped Charlie later that summer.

The whole Charlie relationship was just absurd, but I loved the scenes where Nick came back to town. There's a wonderfully awkward scene where Charlie and Erica and Brooke and Jack are having champagne together to toast what is supposed to be Erica and Charlie's courthouse nuptials the following day. Jack and Erica are making lovesick eyes at each other across the table, and Charlie says something about how maybe in another year or so, they'll give Bianca a little brother or sister. The look on Erica's face is just priceless. It's like it finally hits her that maybe they want different things, and maybe this isn't a good idea. She dumped him the next day.

As much as I enjoyed Jack with Brooke, I will admit that I loved the Jack/Erica/Adam mess later in 1991 where she was trying to woo Jack back, and he was insisting that she be honest with him, but she was secretly forced to remarry Adam.

The postcard line threw me, mostly because I'm surprised she came up with all that (then again Erica had to get some scheme genes from her mother's side...). I couldn't help imagining Phoebe knocking back a few, caterwauling to Charles about, "That Kane woman, wasting your far too generous salary on frivolities, and rubbing our nose in it!!"

I loved the line about how Erica "faded like the Japanese lanterns at her birthday party," and especially when Mona said all she was left with was "a distant and rather dull ache."

It's startling how seamlessly AMC seemed to be integrated at this time, and how this was dismantled only a year later.

So true - I can actually picture Phoebe responding just like that!

The show was so awesome back then. Every time I watch an episode from the early 1990s, I'm reminded again of why I fell in love with that show.

Oh, and Kendall's reaction to Erica going on and on about how fabulous Bianca is - so awesome!

THANK YOU for posting this! I hadn't seen this in years. And since we were all discussing how Mona handled the rape, this scene proves that she DID confide in Dr. Charles Tyler - Mona said she told him and him only, and that he was the one who knew people in Phoenix and helped her arrange for Erica to go there.

Erica was in shock and was totally numb at first over Mona's death. Kendall even ripped into her for not crying at the funeral home. Her falling apart and flinging herself on the coffin as the reality of the situation finally set in for her was heartbreaking. Mona was such a central figure in Erica's life, and losing her had a huge effect on Erica. I didn't think it was over the top, and I thought Susan Lucci did an amazing job with those scenes.

As a slight aside, Susan also wrote in her book that she had been very close to Fra Heflin. They'd shared a dressing room for 16 years or so, and she'd been like a surrogate mother to Susan, and Susan was devastated by her death, so when I see those scenes again of Erica breaking down, it puts Erica's breakdown in perspective for me, and it's not OTT. She wrote that her own mother was visiting during those scenes, and she went home after filming and threw herself into her mom's arms and sobbed.