Kane

37 minutes ago, j swift said:

Was Brick randomly switched with the baby next to him or did the Wallaces know that Brick had been switched?  If so, what was their motivation for keeping it a secret from him? 

They didn't know. It's been a while since I watched that period of the show, but I recall that the man Brick thought was his father was tracked down and it was discovered that he wasn't actually Brick's father (I think Brick was in some kind of medical situation and they found out because of the blood types), which was upsetting to Brick's mother because she had been faithful to her husband.

All My Children - I liked Greenlee with Leo, but my preferred Greenlee pairing was with J. Eddie Peck's version of Jake. I thought that Greenlee matured during that relationship and regressed when she was put back with Leo.

Guiding Light - I loved Alan-Michael and Lucy together and I liked Lucy as a character.

34 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

What was more interesting to me was seeing Angie hanging out with Stacey and Shana during Shana and Leo's dinner party. "Loving" really slid Angie into the Trisha position. I know Shana and Angie were acquainted due to Angie's involvement in Shana's pregnancy, but I'm trying to remember if they really even made an effort to create a relationship between Stacey and Angie. I vaguely recall the two talking in the park about dating after their husbands had died, which would have been months earlier, and everyone was present for Thanksgiving at Stacey's house. I wish a bit more was done with this grouping. 

Stacey and Angie pretty much become "instant friends." I'm pretty sure that conversation you describe about dating is the first actual onscreen interaction they have and it's played as if they're already fairly well acquainted.

As good as Alimi Ballard was when the show actually wrote for Frankie, I've always thought it would have been better if they'd brought the character on as a contemporary of JJ's (which I believe would have put Frankie at his actual age if he'd been aged naturally). The two could have gotten up to things and gotten into trouble together, which would have created story for Angie and Stacey and would have given them a natural avenue to becoming friends. Bringing Frankie on as a 16/17 year old didn't really make sense because he never had any peers on the show (even his love interests were women who were a few years older than him) and as a result he never had a lot of story of his own.

2 hours ago, dc11786 said:

I think they kept Robert Tyler around because they hoped Noelle Beck would return one day.

I came across an old Soap Opera Digest recently from around the time Robert Tyler left and it mentioned that his contract was originally up in June '94, which has made me wonder if the Trisha's alive fake out story was originally supposed to be his exit story. It's strange to me that they talked him into signing a six month extension just to recast Dinah Lee and have her and Trucker become supporting characters and then basically repeat the "Trisha's alive" story to write him out.

2 hours ago, dc11786 said:

I believe there may have been a lingering question about what Trisha was in a rush to tell Trucker the day she died. Ultimately, it was that Curtis and Buck knew each other, but I can't remember if everyone knew that at the time.

They never found out. Immediately after Trisha's death the family wonders what the message she left on Curtis' answering machine was about and Jeremy initially investigates, but it gets dropped very quickly. It's always annoyed me that the fall out to the '94 Trisha's alive story has Buck getting high and mighty with Curtis when, as far as Buck knows, he scared Trisha so much that she was speeding to Trucker and lost control of her car and died.

1 hour ago, dc11786 said:

Dinahlee and Dante have a very specific conversation about Dinahlee thinking that Joe Young (Dante) has been sneaking a lover into his room above the bowling alley before Dante starts to referring to Curtis as his kitty. The story is very James E. Reilly. 

At one point Curtis tauntingly calls Dante "Daddy" (I think he says "Daddy's getting angry" or something like that as Dante's plan starts to unravel).

1 hour ago, amybrickwallace said:

Did he really feed Curtis cat food?

Not sure if it was cat food, but he fed Curtis food in a cat's bowl: 

44 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

Nixon wrote from September 1993 until August 1994. There were episodes online from September 1993. In an episode leading up to the tornado (before Michael Lord's Curtis left town), Millee Taggert and Robert Guza are still credited as headwriters. By the time the tornado is over, Agnes Nixon is credited. This is about mid to late September. 

Thank you! That timing makes a lot of sense in terms of how the storylines start to drift.

45 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

Nixon's first months are rough. I don't think things really settle in until January 1994 though there is definitely some good stuff in between. 

I find that Nixon's run has some good individual stories, but overall feels less cohesive. Other than the Dante story, which basically ends up touching every other story and drawing just about all the characters in by the end of '93, in '94 the show becomes hyper focused on one story at a time for about 6-8 weeks while the characters who aren't involved in that particular story disappear for weeks at a time.

52 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

I don't think any of the scam stuff worked. There were a lot of elements of Tess' character that felt very Guza. When watching the 1993 episodes several years back, Tess reminded me very much of Summer (Brittney Powell) from "General Hospital." I think Taggert was resetting Tess in September by scrapping the scam stuff, downplaying the Curtis / Buck stuff, and putting Tess in Shana and Leo's orbit. I think its possible Taggert may have intended to fashion more into an early Dinahlee type, which I think would have worked... In the final days of Michael Lord's run, Curtis switches out Dinahlee's birth control pills and is looking to have a baby with Dinahlee. I felt Curtis was going to return to a pregnant Dinahlee.

I would have settled for Dinah Lee to have been refashioned into an early Dinah Lee type; she was a lot more interesting to me in her first iteration than when she was transformed into a more generic heroine. I figured the birth control thing was going to lead to a who's the daddy story with Clay, given how the months of set up since Curtis and Dinah Lee discover each others' identities basically demands the story go in that direction. Right after Curtis leaves, Clay tells Dinah Lee that he's not coming back and she says something to the effect of "he's gone, but you're still here, is that what you're telling me?" But then the show just... doesn't go there. I've always felt that the fallout from the Dante story would have made more sense if Clay had been the one Dinah Lee had gotten involved with rather than Trucker because Curtis already had so much anxiety about Clay and Dinah Lee before he left.

58 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

The first part of the Dante story was interesting, but the timeline was wonky. I'm pretty sure Alex arrived in town right before or right as Curtis left so that whole angle seemed to be a different direction than what was initially intended.

Nixon completely dropped the tension between Leo and Shana regarding Shana's ownership of Burnell's as well as the angle that Ava had gone to college to be near Jeremy. The baby situation was interesting, but it wasn't the kind of situation you could tell everyday.  

In a way it feels like they were figuring out the Dante story as they were writing it. I just watched the episodes a few days ago, so it's fresh in my mind, but when Charles comes to town he tells Clay that the FBI has been keeping an eye on him for a year, which... why? He then says that whoever "these people" are, they may have been involved in Trisha's accident, but then that angle isn't pursued, nor is it explained why they think the accident might not have been an accident. And even though Curtis' connection to Tess is explained to Alex at the beginning of November, it isn't until the end of December that Jeremy finally puts it together that either Dante or Dante's family might be behind the plot.

Shana's ownership of Burnell's would have been such an easy way to give Leo and Shana more story, given what an insecure chauvinist he is, but the show pretty much loses interest in both of them once the baby is born. The show can't even be bothered to really tie them into the plot against the Aldens; I remember there's a scene where the family is brought together so that the FBI can warn them that they're all in danger and the show doesn't even bother to include Shana and Leo, opting instead for a throwaway line about how they're being informed off screen.

Does anyone know when Agnes Nixon's 1993-94 run started? I had been under the impression that she wrote from September to September, but I recently did a rewatch of September-October '93 and there's a real "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" quality to September and the stories that are being set up during that month are largely abandoned by the end of October:

Tess' scam with Trucker's dad comes to a clumsy end with her basically outing herself to Trucker and him rejecting her. He gets involved with Angie and Frankie, who is characterized at this point with a lot of very sharp edges.

The show gives up on Curtis, having him flee town after setting fire to Pins, and after he's gone the show spends a couple of episodes seemingly chem testing Jessica Collins and Randolph Mantooth for a potential Dinah Lee/Alex/Ava/Jeremy quad, with Ava immediately becoming jealous of the idea of Dinah Lee and Alex spending any time together.

Clay declares that he's no longer in love with Dinah Lee and he, Gwyneth, Buck, and Stacey are established as a quad, with Gwyneth's pregnancy as a spoiler and Tess as a fifth wheel when Clay gets involved with her because he thinks he's missed his chance with Gwyn.

By the end of October/beginning of November Gwyneth, who a few weeks earlier literally begged Buck to never leave her, lets him go and then promptly loses the baby, severing all that ties them together while Buck gets together with Stacey.

Trucker stops hanging out with Angie and Frankie and the show starts moving him and Dinah Lee together. Charles is introduced to eventually become Angie's love interest.

Jeremy breaks up with Ava and he and Tess start hanging out, while Ava unwittingly becomes part of Alex's cover story as the Dante storyline starts to take shape, which also ends up bringing Clay and Gwyneth closer together.

The only storylines that really remain consistent during these couple of months are the Steffi/Casey/Ally/Cooper quad, and Shana and Leo's baby story. So I'm assuming now that Nixon actually started mid-October, given sudden redirections in the storytelling, but I'm wondering if anyone knows for sure.

2 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

I know Agnes came back to the writing staff of AMC several times. She never did that with OLTL or Loving, did she? (Though I know she was always credited as a story consultant in all the soaps she created.)

I don't believe she ever wrote for OLTL again after her initial run as HW, but she did two stints on Loving, taking over for two years after Doug Marland left in 1985, and then returning from the fall of 1993 until the fall of 1994.

I remember reading at the time that Bobby was originally meant to have gotten Ryan's heart (which would have made him having Ryan's memories easier to buy than him having the memories because he got Ryan's corneas) but that they changed their minds when they realized that every time they wanted him to be shirtless, they'd have to show a scar on his chest.

3 hours ago, Joseph said:

Wow where did you find it?

Originally on the Vintage AMC channel on youtube. The channel has since been deleted, but some of the episodes from it are on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/AllMyChildren1987Jan-jul

The scene I'm talking about starts at about the 40 minute mark of the January 16th episode.

5 hours ago, DemetriKane said:

Ross and Natalie chemistry burned the screen, it wasn't wise making him rape her.

They really did. I was watching some early 1987 episodes a few months ago and, even knowing how their story ends, I was completely captivated by Ross and Natalie. Before their affair actually starts he thinks she's been sleeping with Adam and there's a scene where he grabs her and says, "Why are you going to bed with him? Why are you going to bed with Adam?" and then kisses her and it. is. scorching. Wasting that kind of chemistry on a rape storyline makes no sense.

Erica Kane, now and forever

And then, in no particular order:

Jill Foster Abbott

Dorian Lord

Gwyneth Alden

Augusta Lockridge

Liza Colby, before she was neutered circa her marriage to Adam

Ava Rescott

The Shana/Leo story really fizzles after they have the baby; they largely disappear until their exit storyline. It's unfortunately typical on soaps that while they like to milk the drama of the idea of a character having a baby with disabilities, they seem largely uninterested in dramatizing the day to day reality of a character raising a child with disabilities. The only time I can think of when a show actually made an attempt to keep a story like that going beyond the pregnancy was Holly and Fletcher on GL and, in the end, Fletcher and the baby got written out.

I agree that part of the problem with Curtis was that the show could never settle on how he should be characterized. You had scheming Curtises (Marcantel, Albers, Lord) and more heroic Curtises (Ashby, Moses, and Johnson), but there's not really a common through line that connects the original Marcantel Curtis to the returned Marcantel Curtis. I remember on the Men of Loving reunion Marcantel mentioned looking through Curtis' history since he had last played the character and just tossing a lot of it out since it didn't work with the character as he understood him.

The Kuwait story was a mess, but I think that’s partially the result of Guza/Taggart having to strip away parts of the original plotting. When I rewatch the storyline with the benefit of hindsight, it’s quite clear to me that it was originally plotted with the intention that Trisha would still be there and that there would be more to the Clay/Dinah Lee/Curtis triangle than what we ultimately end up with. I think that originally: 

• Curtis would come back, haunted by an experience in Kuwait, which is what happened on screen.
   
• Trisha would be appalled by Clay’s plans to dismantle AE and seek to stop him and her newfound corporate ambitions would cause strain between her and Trucker, which is what started to happen. Trisha wanted to team up with Curtis to stop Clay and started to show glimmers of ruthlessness in what she was willing to do to accomplish this and the show made a point of showing Trucker disapproving, but then the whole Clay selling off AE piece by piece plot was abruptly dropped after Trisha died.
   
• Curtis would have been reluctant to join in Trisha’s plan because he didn’t want to get dragged back into the Alden mess, but then would have learned that he’d fallen in love with his father’s ex-girlfriend and would have joined forces with Trisha after all as a means of asserting himself and showing that he was better than his father.
   
• Buck would have shown up and begun insinuating himself into Trisha and Trucker’s life. I don’t think Buck was originally meant to be part of the Kuwait part of the story or have a past with Curtis, I think he was shoehorned in once it became clear that Noelle Beck wasn’t going to re-sign and they needed a reason to have Trisha speed off into the night so that she could be “killed.”
   
• Trisha and Curtis succeed in taking over AE and because she’s now spending so much time dealing with the company, she and Trucker need to hire a nanny to help out at home and Buck makes sure that Tess, his partner in crime, gets the job. Together Buck and Tess seize on the tensions that have arisen between Trisha and Trucker as a result of her getting in touch with her Alden dark side and him disapproving and work to further undermine their marriage. At some point there’s probably a beat where Tess and Buck make it look like either Trucker slept with Tess or Trisha slept with Buck, making the “cheated on” spouse vulnerable to an overture from their opposite sex con.
   
• Curtis panics when he learns that Tess is working for Trisha and Trucker, but can’t say anything because she’s holding her husband’s murder over his head. He tries to get her out of town without exposing himself in the process. Dinah Lee misinterprets Curtis’ fixation on Tess and her insecurities send her back towards Clay, who can’t resist even though he doesn’t want to hurt Curtis.
   
• Buck starts to have second thoughts about what he and Tess are doing, but before he can come clean, Curtis realizes that Buck is working with Tess and tells Trisha and Trucker everything, resulting in Trucker rejecting Buck just as he finds out Buck is his brother. Curtis then decides to let Dinah Lee in on what’s going on, only to discover that she’s now having an affair with Clay. He ends up turning to Tess and then Dante turns up alive and out for revenge and maybe he tries to kill Clay and frames Curtis for it.

Came across an old issue of Soap Opera Weekly from 1993 and found this article about one of the only times (perhaps the only?) when a soap opera focus group convinced TPTB to keep an actor and give them a story. I'd say it's a shame the show didn't consult them again the following year when they decided to write Susan Keith/Shana out after all, but if she'd stayed Shana probably would've been murdered in '95 anyway.

Based on the timing of the issue (July/93), I'm guessing that the unnamed actor is Patrick Johnson, who played Curtis from February-May, 1993. He was pretty wooden, but I'm not sure what was so objectionable about him that the audience reaction was that bad. I certainly preferred him over the next Curtis, though I didn't think either was ultimately very good in the role.

16 hours ago, Vee said:

Exactly. Every story she had was bad by the time I came around. I didn't buy her with Pierce or various other hunks, but I also barely remember Pierce at all. I was not there for her heyday with Adam, etc. And it took her return in the late 2000s for me to fully get the scope of her skills. She was great when she returned, and she was great as a tentpole of the show in 2013 with that family and with Michael Nader.

16 hours ago, DRW50 said:

The only interesting thing about Pierce was when James Fitzpatrick was in the role and he was haunted and edgy. After he was fired, they made the character as generic as can be (and had started before then). The attempt to make him a romantic charmer with Maxwell Caulfield was a snore.

Pierce was just Jeremy without the accent: an artist who had past with Trevor from their days as mercenaries, who spent several years living in isolation while trying to cope with his tragic past, which included a woman he loved and lost.

I liked him with Janet - although I hated it when he dumped her and she became obsessed with Brooke; I'm very grateful that the powers that be changed their minds about letting go of Robin Mattson and having Janet get plastic surgery to look like Brooke - but the character should have left with Fitzpatrick.

10 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Toward the end of her run I began to care about her again, as I thought Roman did a good job in a very gross story with Jim Thomasen, but by that point she was already leaving.

Ugh, I'd forgotten about the Jim Thomasen storyline. Poor Julia Barr, Brooke went from Jim Thomasen to Elliot Freeman, which was gross in its own way.

47 minutes ago, victoria foxton said:

One of the big clues. I remember was the locket Clay had given Trisha. When a amnesiac Trisha disowned the Alden's. She gave Clay the locket back. In turn Clay gave the locket to a devastated Gwyneth. This took place about a year before the Loving Murders. When Gwyneth was going after her next victim. A clicking, clacking noise would be heard. Which was Gwyneth making that noise with the locket. A brilliant clue. On the writers part. But easily overlooked. I totally overlooked this at the time.

Before Angie and Charles' wedding, Gwyneth and Stacey have a heart to heart and Gwyneth tries to give the locket to Stacey, almost as though she's trying to replace Trisha with Trisha's best friend. Stacey declines to take it and later, during the reception, we see the "killer p.o.v." for the first time. It's like Stacey's rejection caused Gwyneth to relive Trisha's rejection, making Stacey's status as the first victim all the more poignant.

Speaking of Kirk, does anyone know what the story is behind the show recasting with Robert Newman just to play out the last 28 episodes of Kirk's original storyline? I assume that something happened with Joseph Bottoms since it seems strange to recast so close to the end and since Bottoms returns to the role later.

On 7/18/2021 at 1:06 PM, dc11786 said:

Those 1990-1991 episodes that have showed up have shown Clay as a bit cowardly and weak. I feel like Clay just sort of lets Trucker take the blame for the plane crash rather than actively playing a role in the set up, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

Oh no, he definitely actively framed Trucker. He opened a Swiss bank account in his name and then transferred money into it to make it look like the mob? military dictatorship? that was running San Felipe had paid him off to sign off on the faulty airplane parts. Interestingly, this is one of the few (maybe the only) times when Clay did something like this in order to cover for someone other than himself. He had no idea what was going on in San Felipe until after the crash; it was Cabot who knew about it, but he couldn't afford to do anything to rectify the situation because AE had lost so much money earlier in the year because Amourelle put out a toxic face cream.

On 7/21/2021 at 6:12 PM, FrenchBug82 said:

I am surprised to hear ya'll think they would have gone there and it would have been viable. It would have a huge NO for me. Dating your "great love"'s best friend is always a bit touchy but it would have been out-of-character for both of them, chemistry or not. One thing we had established about them was their almost self-righteousness. This would have felt wrong...

I think they would have gotten past any guilt via the knowledge that Trisha would have given the relationship her blessing because she loved them both and because if she had to chose someone to stand in her place as Christopher's mother, she would have chosen Stacey. Dinah Lee taking on that role, on the other hand, would have had her spinning in her grave if she was actually in it.

Personally, I would have gladly taken a Trucker/Stacey relationship if it had gotten her away from Buck. I liked Buck/Stacey well enough in their first go round, but once they broke up he went off and had all these other storylines while she was reduced to just... waiting around for him, month after month for the better part of a year, until he finally got himself together and they reconciled. And even then they broke up and got back together several more times before she died.

Funny that Trucker and Buck each ended up with the exact woman that Trisha and Stacey, respectively, would have been most annoyed to see him with.

3 hours ago, dc11786 said:

Parlato and Heinle shouldn't have worked as well together as they did. Parlato kept Clay from being completely creepy despite the fact that the age of his girlfriends seem to consistently decrease. 

I usually detest older man/younger woman pairings, but I loved Clay and Steffi together. I think it helps that the relationship makes a lot of psychological sense, given that Steffi's father had basically cut ties with her, leaving her desperate for a father figure, and Clay was still struggling to come to grips with having forever lost his opportunity to be a real father to Trisha.