EricMontreal22

Well 18 year old me LOVED all that (yes, kinda antiquated) class structure stuff. It's not my reality, but I thought it fit the show in a way the later yacht club etc didn't. I also loved early Greenlee (I know we disagree on this DR that's ok, we can disagree sometimes.) But Greenlee was not being presented as a character whose views we were meant to relate to or agree with, there's a big difference between her being homophobic and Becca being. I'm always amused on Broadway message boards when younger members are AGHAST to find out that their heroes were smoking (or sometimes still smoking) well into the 90s. We get the show repeated later as well so I'll see if I can check it out. I think I've told the story on here (probably several times) of literally bumping into Jill Larson when I was at LaGuardia Airport about 8 years ago and how gracious and lovely she was, especially when I recognized her (and went into "stammer" mode.) I know you were a long time AMC fan and came from a completely different perspective than I did, but I still think compared to virtually every show, it kept its identity the best throughout the 90s.

I was just going to say, among the major prime time soaps anyway (and shows that were specifically primetime soaps, so not serialized dramas like the Herskovitz/Zwick shows which were all character) Knots Landing--at its best--was the one that had the most in common with that daytime soap opera tradition although that was increasingly lost in later years (notice to that in later show the show started to bump up the glam quotient.) Henry and the Chinese restaurant--which we learned had LONG been one of Joe Martin's fave lunch joints. Who knew! I mean honestly that had potential, and I actually thought (I know I'm in the minority) some of the Adam and Liza therapy sessions with Lysistrata were genuinely funny. But the show really was *odd* under Rayfield (when Cascio joined it slightly improved) not that they had much time to prove themselves, but it somehow often felt more like a... dramatic sitcom? I remember when McTavish came back (with a fourth of July episode I believe) to her credit the show *suddenly* felt much more like Pine Valley. That did not last very long, but... (And to give Brian Frons some unearned credit, when he returned to ABC Daytime he did make some decisions that looked good on paper. According to Lorraine Broderick herself, she was asked to return to AMC but at the time was burned out--I guess her last stint had been the odd co-HW era at OLTL which leaned into camp--and so Frons looked at who else had written successfully for AMC in the past couple of decades and chose McTavish. For OLTL he hired Griffith who finally convinced Malone to join him. All decisions that made a LOT of sense--but without the infrostructure that those regimes had when they were at their best in the early 90s it of course wasn't the same--not the least because of Frons' own interference. Still, I thought McTavish's first year had a lot of good stuff, despite things like her immediately trying to replicate her Who Killed Will mystery with the similarly plotted Michael Cambias one...) Are you watching on YT>? I couldn't find the episode--but would like to revisit more of the Margaret DePriest brief era, which it's been fun following in your summaries. Culliton actually seemed quite interested in revisiting (in a way) history--I remember he had a hunky recast of Timmy show up (at the hospital?) with some mystery and then (typical of the stories of this time) that was just all dropped. I wish he WOULD talk more about his year on the show, but whenever it comes up in Zoom interviews I've seen he genuinely seems to just blank lol I agree with you abotu McTavish's first year. And yes what's amazing about the Rayfield era with all those newbie actors is... none of them seemed to show ANY potential at all, (wasn't MBJ actually McTavish though? Or am I wrong? at any rate I think he DID show instant potential.) Seyfried whose character (Joanie?) was dating Jamie also showed potential so it seemed a mistake to sideline her storyline as merely supporting to the teen story of JR and Alex Daddario's character (Laurie??) Laurie's storyline seemed another attempt to play short term social relevant stories (sorta like Gottlieb and Malone tried when they first started at OLTL with a wife abuse story) with Laurie having an abusive drunk of a father.

I can't say for sure, but given it was episode 41 I'm gonna guess it's the first one, Kate Harrington. However the second Kate, Christine Thomas was also at some time in 1970 and then Kay Campbell was late 1970. As Agnes Nixon was known to do at that time there was a fair amount of recasting early on.

Oh wow!! Well I had missed that and will take what I can get!

Wow!! And thanks for making us aware of that

You're spot on about Becca. I'm a huge Agnes Nixon fan and, I fully realize, sometimes too much of a defender and I think the problem with her return as HW/co-HW at this time was for whatever reason (one, I think being, the health of her husband) while she very much wanted to remain a part of her beloved show, she didn't really want to be a HW again and all the time committed to that. So, like Becca as I said was a throwback to past characters, but maybe especially 1970 Tara when really, unless you did MORE with that type of character, in 1999 the character was a pretty archaic and out of touch trope. Even nearing 80, I suspect Nixon would have been able to make her less so, but I don't think she was invested enough to do so. (AND yes, if Nixon had more time to devote but also was working in the soap world of 20 or really even 10 years earlier, they could have made an interesting and workable storyline with Becca's homophobia--remember in when they had "good" characters like Tom picketing the abortion clinic? Or even in the Kevin Sheffield storyline we had some good characters express homophobia and more morally questionable characters like Palmer stand up for it--something James Mitchell, an out gay man of course, requested of his character) Among the many things the execs didn't realize about soaps when they became more involved (and saw just how much of an audience stuff like Luke and Laura could attract) was that if you want sustained long term ratings you have to build audience rapport with the characters. I know as a teen why I loved AMC (and OLTL and, yes, Loving) was honestly at least as much for the remaining scenes of just character interaction we got (of course I was also huge into theatre already, and that was the closest tv got to theatre.) And yeah, I think Pratt is the extreme example of a writer who simply doesn't do vertical storytelling. This was why he did relatively very well in primetime soaps (Melrose Place's success was really due to when he took it over, for example) where, especially in his brand of primetime soaps, you really just plow through story story story. That doesn't work for the longterm on daytime (I did always find it interesting that there was a very Agnes Nixon element introduced on the show during his run with the character of Brock, played by a real life disfigured army vet, which even included at least one scene at a support group for other real life vets--AMC would do this once again with the... not great but I suppose still somewhat groundbreaking for its time, Zarf/Zoe trans storyline which also had a suppoirt meeting scene something that always makes me think of the infamous youth drug centre sequence on early One Life to Live--which I so wish had been saved somewhere.) I remember that! It was still when she was in bandages, I think? I wonder if that was really McTavish's doing? Because yeah, AMC at that time was filled with surreal dream sequences and let me tell you, I LOOOOOOOVED them

Right, 1994 would have been when I was introduced to the character via that sequence. I am 99% somehow he made a nightmare/Hell cameo in an episode from 2001. Actually this 1993 nightmare sequence is probably when I first saw Ray because at the time I was watching (very secretly--we were forbidden at 12--) the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and I remember thinking how ray was like a toned down Freddie Krueger, even having his victim strung up as a marionette like in Nightmare 3 (OK, in a far less gristly fashion for those who know that film...)

Well the fact that i made you specifically a fan is all the reason to be thankful for her run, I guess! Even though you were new to soaps, it wouldn't be long after Summer (September 2001 in fact) when one of the more awkward transitional eras for AMC was happening with Culliton finally coming in. As a newbie viewer were you aware of that--or were the behind the scenes stuff just completely off your radar? (I was a weird kid--even at 11 getting into AMC in 1991, very soon on I wanted to know more about how it was made and started watching the end credits--I found it frustrating that they only had them sometimes--to look for changes, etc.) Completely agree with you, no surprise, about vertical storytelling and how missed it is in soaps. Of course it also has to be well scripted, but that's a slightly better issue. It's ironic--Harding Lemay first pushed for AW to expand to an hour (and then disastrously 90 mins) for this very reason--he wanted the opportunity to have longer scenes and to not need every scene to be pushing plot (as he said he wanted to be able to write a short Broadway drawing room drama every day.) So the expanded length WAS done for this reason, and I think, at least, Nixon (by this time already with Wisner Washam) were well aware of trying to use the expanded hour with AMC in similar ways, when she reluctantly gave in to demands to expand it. I also love how Passanante says at this time Nixon was no longer even required to give in detailed story outlines etc (and even in the 80s I find this true--I have copies of a few of her 6 month soap outlines and boy are they vague by that era--often saying "well we might go in this direction, or we might go in that direction") As soap fans we often find it frustrating when it's clear that a writer is making up a storyline as they go along(especially a problem with mysteries.) But I think this speaks to how some soap writing can be way TOO goal oriented instead of really living in each character and story moment.

Sadly, I don;'t think she was willing to commit to a long lead story by this time though there are a few (mostly comic) gems still in store for you. Her last real main one I remember I wanna say was near the end of McTavish's first run (so 94-95?) involving a scam on a high end retirement community, though they'd still use her when they could--later on when Marian Colby tries to enter PV "society" for example. (One good thing about AMC, and I suspect this had to do with Agnes Nixon always being present with the show--well except when Pratt was HW and had her physically locked out of the writer meetings--was how they treated their vets. Ruth Warrick, Eileen Herlie, James Mitchell, etc, all were kept on contract until they passed away, and brought in when they were able to and wanted to work. Which during that era the other shows were NOT doing with their vets...)

Yes, and I think there might have been a cameo from Ray Gardner (trying to sneak in from Hell?) Unlike One Life to Live's Heaven as some sort of spaceship, AMC had it as some weird all white garden party or something--complete with swings and Commedia dell'arte circus performers. I mean I know these people had to envision Heaven on a budget, but, OK... (Though if I had to choose which Heaven to end up in, I guess I would choose it over the austere cult/spaceship of OLTL ) Like I said, at the time I think fans WERE happy to see all the past characters. The problem was the story went on too long and started to effect the fabric of the "realistic" non Heaven stories (Actually didn't the angel from Vicki's OLTL story briefly go down to Llanview too?)

I really did think they'd take a bigger break (maybe they thought with just four episodes a week, it wasn't needed?) It DOES seem like suddenly streamers, but especially Amazon Prime, are all in with their main non binge-format programming being reality and game shows (I know Pop Culture Jeopardy has been a huge hit.) I can't help but see the irony of reality pushing out scripted shows...

It was actually Eileen Sigel, Patricia Roe. Not Anna, Doris Belack which is what I might have accidentally said elsewhere... It was on one of the 1970 episodes (episode 41) that I rescued from Agnes Nixon's short lived website 15+ years back (the explanation was her son found two early 1970 AMC kinescopes in her storage when she was moving from her house to a condo.) I uploaded it to Youtube 8 years ago and since then OTHERS have uploaded it as if they did all my hard work. Here's the segment (notice the first, totally uncharismatic compared to Kay Campbell, Grandma Kate Martin.)

But wasn't Freevee only an American thing? How much of Amazon Prime's viewers used it? (In Canada it's a part of Prime Video and always was.)

Wait am I mis-reading you?> Did footage of Gillian Spencer surface? 😮

I don't fully remember. It was a teen boy who had been kept in a cage much of his life as he was abused and I think was somehow connected to Alex and Anna Devane and their evil megacriminal mother (??) At any rate there was a new teen scene in 2001 (I believe) including a mean jock, Marcus, and one of the younger Santos daughters (Rosa?) And they were trying to acclimatize him back into society, and Rosa (or Anita?) had a connection to him, but Marcus was jealous, and the mean kids would call him dog boy. Oh also all this teen scene (including I think Laura--second Laura) also were involved in a typically unrealistic story where the kids were all doing a lot of Ecstacy. I swear I'm not making any of this up... Passanante also was responsible for Gillian's death (which again I think was connected to the Devanes' mother) which led to a Heaven sequence where we got to see past characters (kinda a mini version of OLTL's Vicki in Heaven) which fans liked--well they liked seeing past characters--but it got extended much further, Gillian possesed Opal so she could kiss Ryan at one point, and Ghost Jesse actually SAVED Tad from almost walking into a nboose (which made no sense if he was a ghost, but...) etc That as well as Libidizone were both just too out there IMHO for AMC.

Randomly, through several different rabbit holes, I came across an interview with Jean Passanante when she retired from soaps in 2017. As most here know, after the disastrous McTavish second run at AMC, Agnes Nixon came out of her semi-retirement (she had still, and would continue to still, attend most of the story meetings even when she was "retired" but apparently would try to keep her input to a minimum) to help refocus the show (her previous last credited stints as a HW had been AMC in 89-92 as we've discussed, and Loving in 93-94.) Though Wiki lists Elizabeth Page as her co-HW, she wasn't in the initial credits (I remember being thrilled when I saw Nixon's name.) This was a bit before the Bianca coming out story, but what Nixon did best was to return a sense of Pine Valley as a community again (even bringing back characters to add colour like Enid Nelson) She also, as she does, did some retreads with mixed results (introducing Leo/Greenlee/Becca which played into past character tropes for "the young lovers" Nixon would always have during her runs at AMC--I think Greenlee was meant to be a new take on Erica Kane back then, with some similar issues but... rich. Becca, was a throwback to Tara but for a variety reasons that kind of character did not play very well in 1999) This was June 1999 or so. But by the Fall, Jean Passanante had started being credited just under her as co-HW (and I only really knew Jean as a HW from her brief year at OLTL which was not good, but to her credit she says she was always told she was just an interim writer until the Labines came in and so was not meant to do long term story.) I still think AMC remained good for a year (certainly better than under McTavish) but after that the show did start to seem pretty schizophrenic with some great and some not good at all material (Libidizone! Dog boy!) and choppy storytelling, which of course I blamed on Passanante and not Nixon. And that's probably unfair, though I still blame it primarily on Passanante and once Nixon's name left the credits the show became close to unwatchable (I'd say it was at its worst, but the worst was yet to come...) It does sound like they worked pretty separately which was clear on the show. According to Wiki, Passanante started getting solo credit in January 2001 and was out by the Summer, with a month or two with no credited HW (I remember the gossip at the time was she broke her contract to go to ATWT.) Then we got the year of Richard Culliton which was odd, filled with potentially good stories that were dropped or poorly resolved, and Culliton seems to have blacked out the entire experience (he was left to wrap up the extremely convoluted PROTEUS storyline Passanante started.) ANYWAY that's me rambling on about AMC history. But I found Passanate's interview answer about her time there, kinda interesting (and LOVED what she said about Nixon's "vertical storytelling": After AW’s cancellation, you went to ALL MY CHILDREN and worked alongside Agnes Nixon from 1999-2001. What was that like? Passanante: Working with Agnes was a revelation. The network execs and producers I’d worked with up until then had generally demanded we write fairly detailed long-term documents before we launched into a story. But Agnes, being Agnes, didn’t really have to do that. She wasn’t wedded to a document or preconceived notion of where the story was going, at least in terms of its details; she approached each day one scene at a time, and all the plot points came straight out of character. She also believed in “vertical scenes” — scenes that advance character, not plot, say, a chat between Myrtle and Erica just to illuminate the audience as to Erica’s frame of mind. Sometimes the powers-that-be on certain shows don’t love that kind of scene if it isn’t precisely moving story forward, which is kind of a shame. I really saw her as a mentor, though we had different styles of working. She couldn’t believe I actually thought in terms of building story toward some kind of climax or cliffhanger at the end of the week on Friday. She asked me once if I was good at jigsaw puzzles — I’m not — because of the way I like to piece plot points together. She really didn’t think like that. I’m not sure that was a compliment! She had a great, raucous cackle. And she loved a juicy piece of gossip. When my [AMC] contract was up after two years, I had a chance to go to WORLD TURNS and I grabbed it. Over my time with her on the show, Agnes had gotten increasingly less involved at AMC and frankly, at that point, I thought my days were numbered.

I was soooo excited for the 25th anniversary week (even if I had no idea who half the character cameos were) and the primetime special. As someone who had only been a viewer for 4 years but was obsessed with the history--and with no way to see old episodes, it was a godsend (and of course around the same time they released the coffee table book, I think the first for a soap opera.) It was a few pages back now that we discussed Gothic Agnes Nixon storylines, but in general I loved when AMC would dip into the Gothic too (Hell for the intro to Wildwind they were riffing on no less than Rebecca, Jane Eyre AND sensation serial classic Lady Audley's Secret all mashed up together.) I wasn't a regular viewer back then but I do like Nico with Julie best (I couldn't believe how appealing I found Nico actually, since I've NEVER been a Sonny fan...)

DISASTER. I got home and for some reason my DVR didn't record today's episode

That's a really good point, and often really important particularly when a writer comes on without previous soap experience. When Gottlieb brought on Michael Malone to OLTL, his work only really started to work for the soap when Josh Griffith (a writer I don't particularly think much of on his own) came on as co-HW.

Nice to see you Let's see if I can manage to keep up with the pace of a daily soap discussion for long on here... it's been a while.

You're right but I think that justification is true of younger women too (that they would all share the same style and basic look in reality) But, in hindsight I think you might have a point about the men's outfits. I'll pay better attention when watching today's episode

Thanks, I think I knew that in the back of my head as I remember him mentioning Sheffer and I know he was at ATWT briefly when Jean Passanante was there. I do know from a live interview I saw with Michael Park (which was Broadway related) from a few years ago now, he actually gave Felicia Minei Behr for introducing him to TV acting, after she had contacted him from some of his stage work (I believe she introduced herself after seeing him as a replacement Billy in the big mid 90s Carousel revival and asked if he'd ever consider soaps...)

100% agreed. Even with the stories that I don't feel are working, the show has established a good rhythm and mix. But it often seems like by the time these things iron out their kinks the decision's always been made (though I'm not sure if Amazon ever was in this for the long haul of a soap anyway...)

I'm not giving up my own halfbeard/halfstubble look anytime soon, and I know they're on trend, but that's another good point. I just feel like SO much thought has been put into the looks and differences that those looks convey with the women (and understandably so) that... barely any at all has been put into the men who are all just slightly varying degrees of traditionally handsome and basic good dressers.

Shame he doesn't have that chemistry with his husband. (not that they've really had a good scene together yet, IMHO)