Confirmed Megan Is Out on AMC

[heatherwebber]

Rayfield & Rayfield/Cascio was dreadful. That awful period ranks right alongside the horrific Black/Stern ATWT mess.

Not that anything since the shameful disgusting McTavish rape mess has been a lot better. This show has been ailing for a long time. Not as long as GH but still way too long.

I'ts ironic because McTavish's GH was a masterpiece compared with the crap GH has been since she was removed. But she sure turned AMC into something dark & nasty and almost as intent on destroying as many characters as GH has done in the past few years.

[R Sinclair]

See, that's what motivates me. I'm hungry for a new vision and literary voice on this show. Megan's misogynistic, sensationalistic, dark and depressing "vision" -- plus her painful attempts at propping her pets -- has surpassed tedious back in 1999. She didn't need to come back. Especially with this joke of an executive producer supervising her. I'm extremely curious to see what another writer -- a FRESH writer (please, no more repeats that have been FIRED before) -- will do with the show. Believe me, it's easier to watch the McSh!tfest knowing that none of this stuff is set in stone now that her ass has been canned. So, in essence, my anticipation is my motivation.

[Pine Charles]

Yeah, things got a lot better when Cascio came along. But remember those rumors that FMB also came in to secretly help out? I wonder how true that is. ABC needs that woman back!

[Steve]

I really liked Culliton's work on AMC. I don't think he would have dropped all those plots without some interference from the network. To me, his main problem was that he didn't have enough stories going at one time, but the stories he did tell were entertaining and utilized characters I liked. For example, in the winter/spring we had Liza & Adam coping with her brain tumor and Brooke & Edmund reuniting, then both couples seemingly disappeared for months until Brooke discovered Maria alive. Also, Palmer & Opal had their last storyline under his stint when Opal dated Tom Wopat's country singer Hank and Palmer secretly arranged for him to go on an around-the-world tour. I agree with what other posters have said about Greenlee, she was an entertaining b i t c h who didn't care what people thought of her. I think Culliton could have been a great headwriter if he had a cowriter to help balance things out.

[Steve]

You liked the concept Aidan & "Maureen" going on the run in the Bahamas because of something from his past?

What about Henry, the stereotypical Asian whose parents ran a Chinese restaurant, dating Maggie?

Rayfield's ideas SUCKED!!!!!

I too loved the show when Cascio came onboard to try to salvage the mess Rayfield made.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

LOL! So true, I remember reading FMB called McTavrish and Jill Farren Phelps' run on OLTL "totally unwatchable". It's so obvious FMB was the mind behind AMC's 90's golden era . . .

[KMan101]

I hated Rayfield's tenure. I liked the IDEA of Henry, but it became so ridiculous and he was written terribly.

[PAsoapfan]

I loved the Rayfield/Cascio tenture what pure drama they wrote together. They should have never been fired at all.

Robert

[R Sinclair]

YES! I liked the ideas. I didn't like the execution of those ideas.

I liked the concept of a special ops agent on the run because of something from his past -- which was right in line with the Aidan character. He came on to the show haunted, which is expected, and it was an obvious place to go by digging in his past.

I liked the concept of an Asian American college kid conflicted with doing what he wanted with his life (music) and what his family expected of them and their cultural traditions (becoming a doctor). I mean, really. How many Asians do we have on the soaps at all, let lone acknowleging the fact that there are conflicts in cultural traditions?

They were just poorly executed.

But still, the "mess" that Rayfield made was no where near the mess McTavish or Passanante have made during their solo stints -- which were a lot longer than a mere thirteen weeks.

[whyamcwhy]

I do think the idea of Maureen/Maria being in love with someone else before regaining her memory was good. It probably shouldn't have been Aiden though. He is just not a strong enough actor to carry his scenes with Eva. I didn't mind Henry/Maggie so much but they were kind of boring.

Culliton, Rayfield, and Cascio all had their weaknesses. But the last three-four months before McTavish took over, the show was really starting to gel and pick up steam. I wonder what would have happened if they would have been allowed to stay on the show longer. I still think McTavish took a lot of their work and built on it.

[All My Shadows]

ITA, except I never really quit watching. I only watched off-and-on throughout early summer 2003.

Rayfield and Cascio or just Rayfield by himself...that was horrid stuff. Absolutely horrid. Let's see, we had a teen scene played ENTIRELY by newbies. Two of the characters, sure, were the kids of long-running characters (JR and Jamie), but their little girlfriends were total newbies that we were suddenly thrust into "caring" about. Oh, aw, Laurie has a drunken father and she wants to go to an Ivy League college. Cry me a river, !@#$%^&*]! Joni was the only interesting character out of that little set. The ball was totally dropped when it comes to Joni and Reggie giving each other their virginity at the Habitat for Humanity house. Once Reggie got with Danielle, that was the perfect chance for Joni to come back and for a triangle to start. By then, we would have been used to all three characters and performers and we would have cared. Unlike the teen scene of early 2003, lead by Andrew Ridings, who sucked, Micah Alberti, who was mediocre at best, Alexandra Daddario, who sucked, and Amanda Seyfried, who was/is awesome and who I loved in "Mean Girls." It was just a mess all the way through.

And then we had the incredibly boring tale of Maggie and Henry. I liked Henry a lot at first, but then he started to spaz over the most idiotic things. He became a major cry baby and Maggie, by that time, I think she should have had more respect for herself to get involved with that mess. However, I [!@#$%^&*] LOVED LOVED LOVED Henry's mother, Alma, who was SUCH A !@#$%^&*]. My GOD, I loved that woman. I would have gladly put up with Henry and his uncle if it meant keeping Alma around.

And then we had Carlos. Enough said.

By then, the Fusion girls had all pretty much lost their charm. When it became "The Greenlee, Kendall, Simone, and Mia Talk About Sexy Men All Episode Long Hour," I started to lose it. I distinctly remember episodes where those four would basically go around the circle and ask about the men each was seeing. Greenlee had Michael, Kendall had Aidan at the time, I believe, Simone had an off-and-on thing with Kenny (which was GREAT), and I forget who Mia was shacking up with at the time. Or perhaps that was when she started to fall into the wallpaper category.

There were some plusses, I will admit. Of course Alma was great, so was the pairing of Simone and Kenny, and I really liked Lysistrata, the therapist that Tad and Greenlee would go to. The stuff with David, Anna, and Leora was magnificant as well, but the minuses so greatly outweigh the plusses, I swear.

When McTavish came into this environment, anything she could have done would have been a step up. And I'm sorry, but I will never believe that Bianca was raped simply because she was "the lesbian." I never bought that and I never will. Her rape was very...justified isn't the word, but it was understandable to me that Michael would go after her. He had already attempted to rape Kendall and Erica, but failed, so he went after the person that they both cared so deeply for. It made sense to me.

And most of McT's 2003 stuff was just great, IMO. The introduction of Babe and Krystal was great. Remember, this was back when these characters were rootable and represented something new. Here, we had these two women who have lived their entire lives from paycheck to paycheck, suddenly being thrust into the world of a wealthy family. It was GREAT STUFF, in my opinion! I'll never forget the greatness that was the dinner party that JR held to introduce Babe to everybody. Babe thought that Liza named Colby after the "The Colbys," which was a spin-off of "Dynasty," her favorite show. That was the Babe I loved and the one I understood. Her obsession with cow decorations, her love of "Dynasty"...it made it so hard to hate the character back then. We had the seeds of Tad and Krystal slowly being planted.

Joe was getting so much airtime, as well. I have an episode on tape where Tad shows up at his house one morning to find out that Jamie had held a wild party there the night before (I believe this was Justin Bruening's first episode). Tad and Jamie had some good scenes, then Jamie had to go somewhere (school, I think), so Tad called Joe over and while they cleaned up the party mess, Tad asked Joe for ideas for raising a teenager. And this wasn't just a thing that last for one or two scenes. This was spread out across the whole hour.

The Cambias murder mystery did indeed go on for a very long time, but the performances and writing just made it all worth while for me. My God, just thinking about the AMAZING episode that featured Michael's hearing for Bianca's rape...it makes me shiver! That was some of Alicia Minshew's best work. Ditto with Susan Lucci and Eden Riegel. I loved how Bianca's rape affected so many characters. I have an episode on tape where Bianca met with Maria at the hospital and Maria told her all about Julia's rape and pregnancy and how all that happened.

I don't care what ANYBODY says. When it comes to AMC in the 2000s, I will tell you that THE best period was August 2003 to about May 2004. The baby switch was so much better and more involving when only Paul knew about it. It was still entertaining throughout, but it became a total mess towards the end, and by then, so many characters had been ruined. The last storyline that I truly enjoyed and looked forward to watching everyday was the domestic abuse storyline between Maggie and Jonathan. But that was all explained away as a "brain tumor."

Somebody asked why they keep hiring McT and I can tell you, it's because she's a quick fix. If a show is at the bottom of the ratings, they could bring her in and she'd make it rise, but nobody should make the mistake of keeping her for over a year. That is when she starts to bomb out big time. She should go into interim-writing only, because that's the only way her reputation could possibly be saved.

[R Sinclair]

And I don't care what ANYBODY says -- McTavish has been horrible from July 2003 to present.

Rayfield and Cascio didn't create that many newbies. Richard Culliton is responsible for SORAS'd JR, Jamie and their girlfriends Joni and Laurie as well as Reggie. All of those actors were under contract so Rayfield and Cascio had no choice but to write for them if Jean Dadario Burke didn't want to buy out all those contracts. I'm thankful that Rayfield at least wrote Andrew Ridings' JR out on a tramp steamer. But, still. The poor actors are Judy Blye Wilson's fault since she believes you can make "beautiful" people into actors.

Half of the crap McTavish wrote that was so-called "enjoyable" or "good" was written on the foundation created by Rayfield and Cascio. Michael's "understandable" reasons for raping Bianca were pilfered from Rayfield/Cascio's backstory for the character. Ryan coming back in 2003 and owning Cambias Industries -- again, wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a foundation set before McTavish returned.

And, again, I liked the idea of trust fund baby, granddaughter of socialites, Greenlee possibly having a romance with a blue collar working class man. That type of thing is what soap romance is made of. Again, it was just poorly executed with a bad actor playing opposite Becky Budig.

I don't know what people expect from All My Children. Maybe what I believed was this show's strengths is different from others. I've always felt that this show is more about romance, friendships and contemporary social issues, such as ethnicity, culture, upper class v. working class, family... Not walking fetuses, rapes, victimizing women, murder, explosions and vigilante justice among other atrocities. I'm not saying those things don't have their place or didn't have their place in the weaving of this show's historical fabric -- but it was never the focal point. You know, as if the writers of those times went in and said "Let's rape somebody!" and then just pick a character and build a story around that. I highly doubt when Ray Gardner raped Ruth Martin, the writers were like, "Hmmmm.... he needs somebody to rape. Let's pick Ruth!" McTavish's reasons from raping Bianca were because she was the lesbian and she wanted the lesbian to have a baby. If Michael was going to rape somebody, it would have been Erica or Kendall because those are the two women he was directly dealing with -- and even had a sexual relationship with Kendall, so it would be a natural progression for Kendall to have been flirtatious with Michael, it got out of control, and before you know it, it happened.

I'm getting frustrated right now, so I'm stepping off...

[All My Shadows]

Well, they weren't forced to write for them. If they didn't want to write for those characters, they didn't have to. And beyond that, they weren't forced to write bullshit storylines for them either.

Well, at the time, and now, I didn't really care what foundation it was built on. Rayfield and Cascio should have stopped wasting time writing crappy stories for the teen set and started building their foundation at the very beginning, then they would have had the time themselves to write the stories the way they wanted them to be written.

If McT came in and wrote off of their foundation, she sure knew a lot of the right things to do, then, and she also knew what was crap. I love that she didn't waste too much time in offing Carlos. Juan Pablo was around a lot longer than I would have liked, but he became more tolerable as time went on. Didn't miss him when he left, though.

[Adam]

That is EXACTLY what I have always seen AMC as. Megan McTavish came in at a time where I thought the show was on an upswing. Cascio and Rayfield together creating compelling drama and Megan just stepped off from that. Once her babyswitch saga was told, it was all pretty much over. Babe became the next great thing, we had Ryan dealing with his demons and practically abused his wife. She turned Greenlee into a baby hungry stepford wife.... and she turned the characters of Erica and Adam into complete PODS of their former selves.

Megan McTavish has completely taken the show off its very foundation.... I am too excited for a new vision! I am so excited watching AMC now that I know she is gone. She is still in the credits but knowing its not for much longer I like you Sinclair can live with all the crap she is doing in her final weeks.

AMC can get back to where it was.... sure alot of the vets are gone but we don't need vets... we just need good solid writing that stays true to the characters and the core of All My Children. With Frons and Carruthers still in control I don't know if we can get it perfect.... but at least hopefully we will have sound and intelligent writing.

[heatherwebber]

The Rayfield period and Rayfield/Cascio was unspeakably boring. Whatever else might be said about how horrible GH is- it's not boring. Silly, obnoxious, off-track, wrong direction, character wrecking, nasty, dark, terrible, but NOT boring.

Nothing during Rayfield was even remotely interesting which is a huge problem for a soap. And yes, the kids were horrendous. Sadly not a unique problem.

But the all-over-the-place dullness of the writing was rather one-of-a-kind.

The "rape" didn't have any merit and didn't make any sense. It was a story that quite simply should NOT have happened. It was far less forgiveable than the awful erasing of the abortion mess.

But then so much during the past few years on ABC just should not have happened. And it just KEEPS ON happening.