AMC: Grade McTavish's third stint as head writer

[KMan101]

D

Loved a lot of it:

* Jack/Erica's wedding

* Bringing back Livia, Tom, Mimi, Bobby, Julia (even if the latter three were written horribly)

* Bringing back Mark for Erica's intervention

* Fallout from Bianca's rape, the trial and the babyswitch (I HATED the rape but it produced amazing material)

* Addition of Di and Amanda (hell, even Del's not bad)

* The return of Janet and the explosion

* Phoebe's funeral (very well handled, IMO, could of been better but was still very good)

* Addition of Annie

* Addition of Colby and Sean (though not at first)

* Return of Barbara (woman is hilarious -- they need to use her more)

* Addition of Hannah Nichols and Stacy Haiduk (was McT responsible for this?)

Hated:

* Erica as a showgirl

* The endless character propping (Babe and Ryan can DO NO WRONG!!)

* Explanation of Dixie's first death and then the pancake death (HORRIBLE)

* The Dragon story and total misuse of Danni, Livia, Lamman Rucker and Mimi

* The destruction of Edmund and Maria

* Edmund's death

* Brooke's exit

* Reggie's exit

* Maria's exit

* David's exit

* Greenlee turning into Ryan's stepford wife

* Tad killing Madden

The bad outweighs the good, so ... lol. And I'm sure there's a ton more I'm forgetting.

[dragonflies]

I give her an F-

There was very little good in her reign of terror this time around

The bad: Bianca forgiving Babe is the worst

The constant Babe & Ryan propping, these two characters basically being written as everyone must forgive their sins and their sins are swept under the rug never to be mentioned again

The unabortion, tearing down the foundation of AMC just to get her jollies

Madden in a box, could have been a good storyline but you could tell she was making it up as she went along.

Having Dixie lurk most of her return to PV, and interacting with Zach-a character whom she had no past history with, instead of interacting with her loved ones was hackiness at it's worst

Pairing up Jon & Lily was just ickworthy, especially after Jon once tried to kill Lily & her sisters. Tumor or not, he still did it.

Plus so much more..........

She's done very little good:

Zach & Kendall, I can give her props for pairing them up, BUT since they were originally only supposed to be a pit stop on the way back to Kendall & Ethan, she loses points from me for that.

Zach & Myrtle as friends, gotta say that was actually a plus I'll give her in her favor.

As I said, very little good..........

[R Sinclair]

But that's exactly why she got an F from me right out the gate. The rape. Not because it was Bianca who was raped, or because it was the lesbian who was raped... but only because McTavish has raped so many women on AMC, that starting off her tenure with yet another rape was old, tired, uninspired and predictable.

[Kubla Khan]

Let's take it year by year.

2003

McTavish certainly came back with plenty of cliched story ideas (rape, murder mysteries, pregnancies, etc.) I'd agree that the woman has a sick obsession with rape and it was tired by that point. But, I thought all the stories were executed beautifully. I liked how the rape drama played out, the fact that it unified the whole town against Michael Cambias, and we could go on. She inherited the Greenlee/Jack story from Anna Cascio and Gordon Rayfield, but I think she handled it well, with the bust-up wedding and everything. Putting Mary and Adam together was genius, and I'm sad that Mary eventually faded into the background (They could bring her back right around now and make nuGreenlee more tolerable). I thought the murder mystery was surprisingly well-done and it pretty much kept me on the edge of my seat. She got the veterans moving again. The focus was on FAMILY and the character interaction was great and refreshing. A-

2004

The baby switch era. A good, but not great, period. My qualm about this year was the blah Greenlee/Ryan romance, which seemingly reached disgusting new heights by the week (and I was no Rendall fan either). Everyone and their gramma keeping the truth from Bianca was maddening, and an incredible weakness to the whole storyline, but I'll give Megan props for keeping the momentum going, building strong drama throughout, and giving us all a nice payoff. Zach was also introduced this year, and I liked his storyline with Maria. I thought it was disappointing when Eva LaRue eventually left. B

2005

Things start to crack. I loved Di's introduction and the drama surrounding that. After the baby switch, Megan started to flounder. Things weren't offensive or awful or anything like that, just BORING. Things started to pick up towards the end of the year with Janet's return. C+

2006

The Mardi Gras Explosion was a nice visual representation of what happened to this show. At that point, she had begun to tear down and destroy the show. It started with the fetus reveal. And then the stupid Greg Madden murder. And Tad-the-Torturer. Then vets like Vincent Irizarry and Julia Barr are dismissed. Just an awful, awful year. It gets my vote for worst year in AMC history. Good lord. F

2007

Things started off horribly enough with Dixie's death by pancakes. Things started to pick up by mid-March, I thought, but that could be attributed to Kay Alden's influence, who knows. Things are OK, but not great, right now. Hopefully some things can be salvaged and B&E can build on, and not kill, any momentum we have going on. Thus far...C

[DevotedToAMC]

I think with each rape story that McTavish has penned for AMC, she shows the woman coming out stronger in the end (Gloria, Erica/Kendall, Julia, Bianca). She is a writer who knows how to do rape stories justice. GaP on GH, on the other hand, did a horrible job with Emily Quartermaine's rape

[R Sinclair]

The GBS storyline was horrible in my opinion because there were too many mistakes -- the biggest one was trying to make Babe the hero while doing all of this heinous lying and deception, and trying to make JR the villain to prop up the Babe character. A character the audience had barely known for a year by the time the whole story climaxed that fall. It was poorly executed the minute McTavish had Babe find out Bess being Miranda. And then compounded by the fact that we're still supposed to root for Babe even though she deliberately holds on to Miranda until she can steal her baby back from the Buchanans -- and then skip town leaving cowardly little notes on people's doorsteps. McTavish wrote the storyline purely driven by plot -- not character. If it was character driven, she would've seen that having the Babe character do all of these things to advance the plot and "raise the emotional stakes" would pretty much damn the character.

The route that could've been taken, would be to keep both Babe and Bianca in the dark -- and let Krystal be the only one who found out. Have Krystal confide in Tad and have Tad struggle with the truth. But finally, have him tell Bianca and Babe when things got to its dramatic heights with JR and Babe fighting over "Bess." Then Babe's heartbroken, helps Bianca get Miranda away from JR, and then have HER go through a painful separation... until one night she drives and winds up in Llanview and sees her son. And then HER story of getting her baby back could've gone on from there. Her journey, trying to fight the powerful Buchanans for the baby. That would've made the Babe character more likeable and would've helped move toward absolving her from being a big ass whore when she first came to town. But having her tell all these lies, kidnap and swap babies, skip off with her husband's brother and then be such a coward about it and not realize she truly did anything wrong until three years later -- not so much.

[Adam]

R Sinclair, as always your posts fascinate and intrigue me. Your analysis of the Babe character and how it could have been written is very interesting and it so could have worked. That's where she lost Babe, the minute she had Babe find out the truth and still keep it a secret.....

They lost her there, and never were going to be able to get her back.

For the good and well being of this show, Alexa must go this fall. The show should see that and just let her fly away.

If I was controlling things I would kill Babe off.... and just end one of AMC's poorly executed characters ever. Its too bad really. Alexa is a gem of a young actress but thanks to Aunt Meg's.... the opportunity for Babe was squandered quite early on as you pointed out.

[R Sinclair]

Totally. I never had a problem with Alexa, I just have a huge acid reflux of a problem when it comes to Babe... and Megan's tireless FORCED propping of the character.

She needs to ride off into the sunset with Mama Skank... by choice or by death, I really don't care.

[Steve]

I'm all for Babe's imminent death so that skank whore never comes back!

[Adam]

They had their chance with the Satin Slayer to do just that... but McTavish was still HW so there was no way in hell of that happening. I really don't think Babe's character can be salvaged. What they are doing right now is perfect. She is no longer driving story. Some days, she's barely supporting a story and is just there in the background. Gone are the days where every fade out into the opening credits was BABE. Every fade out into the commericals was BABE. Every show ending was BABE!!!!!

That ain't happening now. And that started shortly after Megan's dismissal was announced. As soon as Krystal dropped the baby bomb, it was buh bye "Babe is Love" and hello again to All My Children.

[Dr. Jay S.W.]

Grade Mctavish? Why? She sucks and she's gone. We should be rejoicing. Grading her means we would have to reflect on her crap, and we don't want to do that!

[R Sinclair]

I totally agree. There hasn't been a single character during McTavish's most recent run (well, aside from Ryan, but he's got history) that soooooo many forced allowances have been made to keep the character front and center. Characters who have absolutely EVERY reason in the world to loathe her whorish guts and absolutely NO reason to even tolerate her seemed to be drinking from the tainted water of the Babe is Love fountain. It just made no sense at all.