R Sinclair

What's crazy is that I recognized those Emergency Room doors from the old hospital set before I recognized Adam and Brooke!

It's Sunday afternoon, nothing much to do until dinner... so I'm watching my Oprah 20th Anniversary DVD collection and during a behind-the-scenes segment, they show an audience coordinator at her desk with a television set. She's watching All My Children!

I've had this DVD collection for six years. I don't know why I didn't recognize this until today, but it did my heart good! It's almost like "Yes! There's someone else who 'gets it!'"

While I agree that Heather Webber's return was a total flop (the story as well as Mattson seemed to be misplaced on that cast during that horrid year), I definitely would've preferred Mattson's Janet. I believe the comedy would've had a more droll, darker bent to it than Collins' gimmicky shtick!

The one thing I will say about this clip is that everyone looks so fresh! Robin Mattson looks good, but it is a little out-of-character for Janet. (I will always be upset for AMC turning Janet crazy again just so Collins can do shtick and McTavish can have a convenient villian. Mattson did SO much to redeem the character.)

Collins was second choice. AMC intended on bringing Mattson back as Janet, but ABCD was less than impressed with her return as Heather Webber on GH in 2004 and nixed the idea.

I'll disagree about this point. I don't think AMC ever lost it's family values in story telling. There was always a sense of familial unity on the show in some form, even in the later years. I will say the one thing that did suffer on AMC was it's overall sense of community/environment and it's friendships. Even with AMC's more campy storylines there was always some heart to them it was very rare to find a character who was truly bad on AMC because there was always some form of redemption given to the characters and that was almost always done on the basis of love and family. What you are talking about to me sounds more like OLTL then AMC. OLTL was always the show that was the colder, grittier, risk taker where evil had a face and had several names and in some cases flourished. That was the show where damaged characters truly thrived. AMC was never played that way to me. AMC was for the most part always bright and happy even at it's darkest it was still significantly brighter then OLTL at it's darkest.

I agree.

It's funny. Jack is to Erica what Ryan is to Jack's daughter, Greenlee. A man in love with the woman she isn't, and doing everything he can to make her so.

That storyline - Jake/Joe/Tad hounding Dixie into a miscarriage and not caring - is one of the main reasons I quit watching for a while in 99-00. It's also one of the reasons why I was probably one of the very few AMC viewers who didn't think the show improved all that much after McTavish left.

The story with Tad constantly going on about Ray Gardner and Adam = Ray was nasty stuff. I always felt like that time period was what destroyed Tad as a character. The show as a whole was just a mess - I think the only story which got a positive response at the time was David/Erica.

This was also at the time of WTF stuff like Mateo pouring Hayley a drink, and the candy cane, and Greenlee/Becca/Scott.

There was very little of this period that I enjoyed. Phantom Erica was also during this time.

I still remember when David Canary had to play Ray Gardner in JR's nightmares.

Yup! Because good, loving Tad kept telling Junior how Adam was as horrible a father to him as Ray Gardner was to Tad. I remember after one of the many times Junior ran away and he was found at the boat house, Adam went to go hug him, relieved he was safe, and Junior flinched as if he was going to hit him. Liza took Adam away while Tad hugged Junior with this smug look of "See? He loves me more than you -- so what if I brainwashed the boy?" And then I remember after all of this, Tad says to Dixie "Hmmm... maybe I've been talking too much about Ray Gardner around Junior and Jamie!"

Ya think?

My problem with SORAS'ing is when they start mining stories from the character's SORAS'd childhood. In real time, we knew that JR spent 85% of his time with Dixie (and Tad by proxy), yet we're hearing all of these tales of how horrible it was for JR -- now an adult in his mid-20s by the time Jacob Young took over -- to grow up as Adam Chandler's son. It's like, WHEN THE HELL DID ANY OF THIS HAPPEN?! I was THERE for JR's childhood. "Junior" was with Dixie all the time. JR only spent the last 18 months of high school with Adam after Dixie's first death. Yet, somehow, after JR's SORAS'd from 17 to 25 in just five months, we're being told Adam's been grooming and conditioning JR for years and all of his malfunctions are due to Adam being a horrible father and yadda, yadda, yadda... It's like, why didn't you people WRITE that to begin with? Don't write Dixie and Adam as being able to respectfully co-parent Junior for his entire childhood... and then, basically say, "Guess what?! Adam was secretly horsewhipping Junior all those years."

However, I think the Bianca SORAS-ing was done properly. None of 16 year old+ Bianca's storylines were based on rewritten aspects of her onscreen childhood. Pretty much everything tracked.

I use both JR and Bianca as examples because they were born around the same time (late 80s) and yet their SORAS-ing was handled completely different.

Don't make me pull a [CENSORED] and ruffle your hair, R!

I can't accept it. We're the same age. I can't accept that even in the 1980s you were this insightful about this program, no matter how you package it. Nope. Can't do it! Hindsight, sure. But present in the moment? Nope. You need more people.

ETA: However, I agree 100% with your assessment of the Erica/Kendall/Rape Rewrite.

I'm in my early 30s, so I wasn't around to watch the show at the beginning, so I can't speak all that knowledgeably about what was or wasn't implied.

Between you and me, so is he. Shhhhhhhh!

For some reason I thought he was in Vietnam but I might be confusing Trevor with Kiberd's Loving character.

It was Central American Guerrilla Warfare.

John Callahan was a favorite of Judy Blye Wilson. According to her own words in the 1993 All My Children Behind the Scenes video (which I still have), Judy Blye tracked Felicia Behr down in an airport and sold her on JC. FMB agreed to having JC test for the role and subsequently, he got the role of Edmund.

The teen scene at this time had a very particular vibe... they seemed decidedly... uncool. Like, the kind of kids... let me phrase this carefully... the kind of kids who lived in certain parts of the county that the kids I went to school with would have said snobby things about because they seemed kinda rural and lame and out of touch (regardless of Cortlandt and Chandler wealth).

I know exactly what you mean. I had just turned 17, ironically, prior to this particular episode -- and even then it seemed as if they were a little out of touch. Yes, I'm from Connecticut -- whatever that's supposed to mean -- but I even remember Laura Kirk saying "What is this? Pine Valley, the land time forgot?" and my mother and I both fell out laughing because we'd been thinking the exact same thing about these teens. I remember Anita saying something like "Papa doesn't usually let us watch the rock video stations."

He looks great but you guys are being very generous. He does not look the way he did 20 years ago.

Well, praise the lord on high I was speaking my own opinion and not yours, huh?

I don't say this about many people at all, because I don't think it's true... HOWEVER! That's almost 21 years ago and David Canary, honest to GOD, looks exactly the same.

I'm definitely thinking painting... attic...?

But seriously, though... I LOVE him! David Canary, Vincent Irizarry and Debbi Morgan were the three actors on this show that I could watch every single day and not give a damn about them hogging the show. Fortunately for me, my VI wish came true!

Yeah, I remember the toddler Timmy.

Late 80s AMC might as well be an entirely different show for me. I don't think I've ever spent any time watching clips or even reading about storylines from that era at all.

I get what you're saying. I feel a similar way.

It was 2009 via Randi's webcam at the Yacht Club: "Goonies never say die!"

On second thought... never mind.

I never knew there was a 4th Tara. Wow.

I never knew there was a second Tara. Double Wow! So imagine my face when I saw there were FOUR!

Michael Jackson... He burned that disco out.

Here's the final Kane and extended family photo

Snatchalie part Deux™ does not belong in this photo.

I can't stand the way the Carey Whores have infiltrated the Chandlers and now the Kane's? I would be indignant about them infiltrating the Martins, too, but... who am I kidding? That clan of criminal hypocrites is a perfect match for them.

Snatchalie part Deux™ is a trademark insult created by Clear Drama

^ ^ ^

YAY!! I get to start crying first thing in the morning!!! Woo hoo!!!

Anyone else hoping David somehow saved Vanessa? Maybe the B on the bracelet stands for Bennett.

I doubt it. David views Vanessa as the reason the two people he loved are dead. Vanessa goaded Charles into committing suicide and then, in her psychosis, brought Leo over the falls with her. I doubt he'd save Vanessa over Leo considering he loved Leo and despised Vanessa.