ellabelle

If I was watching these Erica scenes at the time, I might have thought she was being melodramatic, but with the later rewrites about Kendall, the scenes felt like a punch in the gut. Erica talking about what her father told her she would lose. Erica saying she was being "punished." Nick looking devastated as "punishment" echoes through his mind. Do you think that Agnes already had some of the Kendall story in mind at this point?

I am still working my through these clips, but IF Agnes had this story in mind years in advance, Nick absolutely would not have known in 1988 that Erica had been raped because Mona told him about it in 1993, and he was STUNNED. That scene with Mona telling him about the rape and pregnancy was the first Nick had heard of it, and it was the first the audience heard as well as to how Erica could have this other child.

Susan did say in 1993 that way back at the very beginning of AMC, Erica and Mona made reference to a visit Erica had had with her father, so there was that. Also, right before she found her father in 1988 or 1989, she told Jack that she dreamed about a circus and going to the circus, and it was her birthday, and it was a big party ALL for her, and her father was going to be there... and that was what inspired her to want to take baby Bianca to see the circus (and hence the whole lame Barney the Clown thing)... but there was a dream sequence around that same time in black and white in which a teenaged Erica is running through an empty movie studio looking for her father and calling out for him, and she's getting increasingly worried because he's not there and she's all alone. So for me, I don't know that Agnes necessarily planned it, but I think as far as retcons go, she (and Megan McTavish) did a pretty good job of working it into the existing story, down to the minute details... an elaborate birthday for Erica, and Erica being abandoned by her father again.

I thought it was Aunt Grace who kidnapped the baby?

Yes, Grace kidnapped Mimi and Derek's baby, Danielle.

Yeah, actually, GHfan, I think you're right - it was the 8th or 9th of February. I just went back and checked through some old recaps I have, and according to those, Erica and Travis married about a week or so after Bianca was born in February 1988.

I never knew Jack interacted with Natalie or worked for Palmer. It's too bad they later made him so upstanding - he works as a bit of a wheeler-dealer.

So was Erica heavily pregnant when she married Travis? She has her baby in the spring and they're making it sound like she and Travis just got married. 

Jack was very much the bad boy of the family when he first came on. He didn't become good and upstanding and moral until around the time he decided he couldn't and wouldn't lie for Erica on the stand during the custody trial, and that change in personality on intensified when he got involved with Brooke.

I think Erica and Travis got married after Erica was kidnapped by Joanna and then got shot or something. But yes, I believe they were married before Bianca's birth. I think Bianca was born in late February. Erica was NEVER 'heavily pregnant' - even when she was in bed suffering from toxemia right before the birth, her 'baby bump' was ridiculously small compared to the bellies of normal pregnant women.

ABC Daytime's commercial celebrating Susan Lucci's Emmy win! This aired in late May 1999:

Happy 'should have been 44th anniversary' AMC.

The user has posted the rest of that episode online too. I'm pretty sure that is November 1993 because it's immediately after Kendall deliberately spilled the beans to Erica about Dimitri helping her find Richard Fields.

Loved Gillian...

so sad when they killed her (by having some psycho bitch shoot her in the head).

Laura was a waste of Gillian's heart. I still can't believe they killed her off like that. Although... she was hanging out in the afterlife with Jesse, and Jesse was clearly alive, so I guess from that we can surmise that David has a stash of organs somewhere and Gillian lives on in some witness protection program?

13 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFjqNh8fbcs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vun4CHypow0

And 13 years later, she has a 16 year old daughter!

I loved Bianca coming out, but I was so worried that Agnes would leave and Bianca would be written off because no one wanted to actually write a lesbian love story. I am so glad that Bianca remained a pretty major character on the show, even though she left and returned several times.

I still wish that Bianca had retained some of her mini-Erica brattiness from the early 90s though. I really enjoyed Erica trying to deal with a little version of herself.

I'm Erica Kane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPP3-gFqeB0

The video has been removed by the user. I really hate it when people take down their YT stuff.

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of the Gloria/Dimitri pairing either. I was so intrigued by the Erica/Dimitri/Brooke triangle they hinted at in late 1998/early 1999. Don't get me wrong - I loved the Erica and David romance that blossomed that year, but I think I could have really enjoyed a triangle in which Erica tried to keep Dimitri and Brooke apart because she didn't like Brooke and gradually fell back in love with her ex, leaving Dimitri genuinely torn between both women.

ETA: Plus if they'd gone that route in 1999, they could have explored Edmund realizing that his ex might move on with his brother, and if Michael Nader hadn't been fired for a drug addiction, maybe we could have finally righted the wrong of the early 90s and had Erica and Brooke as sisters-in-law, living in the same house. I'm still bitter that never happened. I would have paid good money to watch Brooke and Erica live at Wildwind together.

I forgot to say happy birthday to Teresa Blake. I loved her as Gloria. I miss characters like that on soaps, who help form a community and aren't all good or all bad. I wish she was still in the business.

My issue with Gloria is the same one I had with a lot of other female characters on AMC: they brought her on as a bad girl who was screwing around with Craig and scamming Dixie, and then all of the sudden she's 'redeemed' by rape and a traumatic past, and she's suddenly a 'good' girl. I actually liked her better before all of that, when she was still a liar and schemer.

I'd love to see them as well. I'll beg anyone who has AMC clips to please, please, please upload them to youtube and make them public!

Love Erica in this. It's kind of disturbing to look back now with the benefit of hindsight and realize that she and Jack had variations of this same conversation over and over and over again, every couple of years.

The 'wow' is horrible. It's amusing to look back and remember that Jack was supposed to be the bad boy, the wild Montgomery brother, etc.

Look how miserable Eva and John look together! Haha - I'm assuming this was during their major divorce/hating each other/etc?

I think AMC really erred in putting couples together based on their off-screen romances. Haley and Mateo should have split LONG ago. Edmund and Maria weren't nearly as interesting to me as Edmund and Brooke. Jamie and Babe were a snoozefest compared to JR and Babe. I was so thrilled that Edmund and Brooke FINALLY got back together, only to have it completely trashed for Maria's return, as if they were some epic lovefest just because the actors were together. Then of course, if the couple breaks up, you have the inevitable mess with them NOT wanting to work together, and you get crap like Maria's return and the trashing of Edmund's character only to have him unceremoniously written off. What a waste.

^ I liked Britney Allen from a physical standpoint because I felt like TPTB had cast someone who resembled Vincent Irizarry, Bobbie Eakes and Marj Dusay, and that she looked far more like them than Alexa Havins had. I was sorely disappointed though in Marissa. I really, really wanted her to hate Krystal for selling her. I wanted her to bond with David over the lies they'd both been told, and I wanted David to take her on as a protege of sorts. David needed that, and I think it could have been entertaining to watch. Instead we get another repeat of hooking up with a Chandler or hooking up with a Kane. Poor David. Does he have a female relative out there anywhere who has NOT slept with JR or Bianca???

Were ConFusion and SOS on at the same time?

No. Not that I know of. Rihanna sang at the opening of ConFusion which was in 2006.

I do think there was a change in the Erica and David story, though, I agree. It sort of reminds me of what happened with Ryan/Kendall/Greenlee. You really felt McTavish was going for Kendall & Ryan and then it was suddenly all about Ryan & Greenlee (not that I'm comparing Jack and Erica the abysmal Rylee) and it was odd. I don't think it was the Cambias-story aspects that were changed, obviously, as much I think it was how far they were originally planning on taking David and Erica as a pairing. I wonder if the change was all McTavish or network dictated.

There are so many points along the way during AMC's history when I wish I could sit down with the head writer or the EP and say, "What was the plan here? Why did you guys change the story? Did you ever think about doing X? What made you decide to do Y?"

The list of things I'd like to know is long, very long.

Oh I agree that it was always a Kane woman story, but I felt like David was originally planned to spend a lot more time in the forefront than he did. Then they had to go and make him Babe's father which was possibly the most character-wrecking twist ever.

One of the reasons I think Kendall would have made a more interesting victim is because rape is so often a matter of he said/she said. With Bianca as the victim, Michael got away with it because there was no evidence. Had she gone straight to the hospital, her being a virginal lesbian would have made the rape and the issue of guilt from a legal perspective a lot more straight-forward, at least IMHO (not a lawyer). On one hand, it was kind of cool to see the whole town come together to support this young lesbian woman, but on the other, I think it could have been interesting (and rather true to life) to see people wondering if Kendall made up the rape because Michael took ownership of Fusion and she was trying to get him back, or having people not believe her because she was romantically involved with him before, etc. Plus you had the history of SMG's Kendall being convinced that Erica made up the rape because that's what Richard Fields told her, and it could have been good drama for Kendall to 'remember' that and struggle with the idea of people not believing her when she contributed to the idea that Erica was lying about her own rape.

But you are right that writers often use rape to "neuter" a strong female character, and AMC in particular was really bad about de-fanging the bitchy female characters. It would have taken an awful lot of good writing to have Kendall as the rape victim and still have her come out of it with her Kane-ness intact.

Still, I keep going back to the idea of Kendall getting pregnant and realizing how hard it must have been for Erica. Can you imagine the drama involved with Kendall feeling torn between ending the pregnancy and feeling like doing so would earn Erica's respect for making the choice Erica wanted but wasn't allowed to make and wanting the baby because ending the pregnancy would feel like she was rejecting a part of herself for the same reasons Erica had rejected her? Holy run-on sentence. Sorry. Ah... there were so many good what-ifs with that story. It's a shame it all ended with that awful baby switch and the takeover of the show by the Carey women.

I enjoyed the Cambias storyline, but I felt like it was really missing a connection with Kendall and Erica. They were headed that direction with Michael going after Kendall and Kendall beginning to have an idea of what Erica must have felt, and then with Kendall trying to reach Erica during her flashback and with them bonding when Erica came out of it. Once the rape came to light and Bianca found out she was pregnant, I felt like the bonding opportunity between Kendall and Erica was set aside in favor of Kendall/Bianca bonding, and that Erica's affection for Kendall came out of what Kendall was willing to do for Bianca (aka the Golden Child).

If Kendall had been the victim, it could have resulted in some really powerful scenes with Erica encouraging her to end the pregnancy, and Kendall feeling like she was being asked to get rid of herself. At the same time, she would have understood exactly where Erica was coming from and why being pregnant from rape was such a difficult thing for Erica to endure, especially at 14. Plus, we could have had an actual lesbian love story with Bianca and Lena because Binx wasn't busy dealing with rape and pregnancy.

My main complaint though with the story as it played out is that it feels obvious that the plan was shifted and re-done midway through the murder aftermath. In the scenes from September and October 2003, David and Erica have already told the police 1. that they chemically castrated Michael Cambias and 2. that they couldn't possibly have killed him because they were making love all night afterward. If ALL they did was slip him a castration drug, then why pretend to be lovers? They'd already admitted the drug to the police! In those two months, David offers to fall on his sword and protect Erica no matter what, even to go to jail for her. They hint repeatedly that either they killed Michael or that Erica killed him and David helped her dispose of the body. Erica goes on to David about how much she needs him and how Bianca needs him as a father figure, in front of Bianca, and it seems clear that the writers are positioning him as a key part of Erica and Bianca's lives as this investigation unfolds. Then suddenly it switches gears, and by Thanksgiving he's telling her that he knows she's not over Jack, and he's being pushed to the background in favor of another round of Jack and Erica, and Bianca is now the killer.

I think a much more compelling story could have been told with Erica as the shooter, Kendall going on trial and there being doubt over whether Erica actually killed him in self-defense as she claims or whether she shot him because he raped her daughter (a la John Grisham's A Time to Kill), with David as the one who got there just as Erica shot Michael and then hung him in a meat locker. Let's face it, hanging Cambias in a meat locker like that had David Hayward written all over it. That's not something you'd expect Reggie and Kendall to think of on their own. You could have still had Kendall's fake pregnancy and Erica being unable to remember all of the facts about that night, and you could have still had Adam and Palmer witnessing Erica either going in there with a gun or David getting Erica out of there. (Although I have to admit, the whole scene on the corporate jet where Opal and Tad confront Adam and Palmer about what they did that night, and Palmer claiming he shot Adam because Adam accused him of dyeing his eyebrows was hilarious).

I don't now a lot about Megan's 1998 run. Can someone tell me what went on??

It was revealed that Mike Roy didn't really die, and that he was working for the FBI or some other secret government agency, and he and his partner Adrian were investigating Palmer Cortlandt over a bunch of masterpiece paintings that disappeared during WW2. He revealed himself to Erica, told her that he never stopped loving her, and that he wanted her back. She was engaged to Jack at the time, but she was torn enough over the love of her life returning from the dead that Jack gave her some space to try to figure out what she really wanted (which he should have known was basically giving her permission to screw around, but whatever). There were some very funny scenes where Mike pretended he and Erica had been kidnapped and were in danger and where she locked him up in a warehouse later to get revenge for faking a kidnapping. He insisted that Jack was boring and that Erica would never be happy long-term with a staid domestic life with Jack, and that Erica would be better off with him.

Eventually Erica chose Jack but slept with Mike first as a way to close the door on that part of her life, but Jack caught them and walked out on her.

This was also the period where Opal found out that Adrian was really her son, where Brooke was accused of killing Jim Thomason and where the beginnings of a possible Brooke/Dimitri romance were laid out, and where Jack's presumed dead sister Kit came to town only to be raped on Halloween by Ryan's brother Braden. IMHO, it was not the best year for AMC, but I loved Erica/Mike and would love to see those scenes again if anyone has them and is willing to share.

Just throwing this out there: if anyone has any old video tapes with scenes from the Travis/Erica/Jack mess before she remarried Travis and was dating both men at the same time, or during the 1998 triangle with Jack/Erica/Mike Roy, please post them on youtube! I'd love to see them again!

It's weird how, when I watch these again, my opinions are about the same as they were at the time - I still think Noah is a self-righteous bore who had one crap story after another. Still think Maria is a crybaby bore. Still like Trevor (when he's not shouting). Still can't quite shake the feeling - completely unimplied by the writing, but there you go - that Michael and Trevor had some sort of unspoken...thing at this time. Still like Kelsey no matter what. Still pissed off about the arm-grabbing and threats against women that permeated this era, with the constant implication that the women deserved it.

Tad is like everyone's least favorite bitchy gay uncle. Bleh.

Agreed. This was sort of an odd period for AMC. I actually lost interest for a while around 1995/1996 and stopped watching as religiously. Erica was always the draw for me on AMC, and when her drug addiction story just would not end, I got bored.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOlBQIQ24OQ

David's first "I love you" to Erica.