AMC: MMT has some nerve

[dragonflies]

Adam I guess I'm missing anything that's good on this show right now? I'm sure not seeing it. Characters acting out of character for months, all to prop a baby maimer, Adam being torn down for Tad & Krusty, Sean & Hannah doing the ick, Spike's deafness being rewritten, cause heaven forbid RB have to play THAT character.......

And so on and so forth........

I know many people that say while AMC was bad under McTavish there was at least some watchability under it.

[Adam]

I guess we can chalk it all up to, different people beat to different drums and move on

[dragonflies]

IMO the Spike rewrite is up there with the unabortion, cause it's that bad, and that insulting to our intelligence. It even rewrote current history

[AddictedToSoaps]

The rewrite was and is very bad. Here B&E come onto a whole new show and create a new story which was focused on nearly all of the time. It is the story that defined the first six months of their era and what do they do?...rewrite it! That I just could not wrap my head around. With Greenlee being one of my favorite characters, I was glad that she was being "redeemed". What Greenlee did was very out of character for her and I don't think the true Greenlee would ever do that, which is why I was somewhat happy for the rewrite. However, I incredibly dislike the way it was done. I would much rather it be done over a period of time with a much different story. Even though what she did was unforgivable, I would have preferred something more realistic and tasteful - again, if that's even possible. B&E love to change characters and use them to prop others and wrap them up in silly stories.

When you look at what's worse - the unabortion or the Spike rewrite, I think that the unabortion was worse. The stories are both stupid and don't make sense, but the unabortion rewrote a story that made daytime history that was nearly as old as the show itself! Both stories are insulting to fans, and they are both awful moments in the show's history.

ok, rant over.

[dragonflies]

Yeah the UA was worse, but the Spike rewrite was pretty bad, and I'm guessing if they hadn't fired Sabine they probably wouldn't have rewrote it......

[Adam]

It was a lazy way of doing things, and an indirect way of B&E saying, ok we admit we royally screwed up and now we want to try to forget it ever happened. Lame approach..... I definitely agree. I have no idea in their mind how they thought having Greenlee almost kill a child and in the end be able to redeem her. They originally said a whole year of story telling would lead up to the redemption. I believe whole heartedly the deafness rewrite came in because Rebecca decided to return. Who knows if she demanded it or if Frons just told B&E find some lazy ass way to redeem Greenlee for Budig. I am thinking the later is how it went. As much as we want to berate McTavish and B&E, the common denominator is Brian Scott Frons. He is the main reason we are in the position we are in, he is the ultimate one insulting our intelligence. Kay Alden would have been the perfect writer for AMC, she knew that.... we knew it.....

Frons though is "I like your style, but we need to throw a bomb and a car wreck in here somewhere" and she told him to royally screw off.

[dragonflies]

Probably a bit of both, no wonder RB was so happy that Greenlee didn't cause Spike's deafness

[EricMontreal22]

" As much as we want to berate McTavish and B&E, the common denominator is Brian Scott Frons. He is the main reason we are in the position we are in, he is the ultimate one insulting our intelligence. "

He still is the main prob. McT has always shown int he past that she liked to write for Brooke--I don't think she played any part of Brooke's demise--in fact she often told journals she had a story set up for Brooke or would throw a Brooke scene (that gun on Adam) when she could only to have it turn into nothing. Even some newer characters--i loved what she was doing with Mary and Adam etc but I don't think frons did...

[R Sinclair]

[Khan]

Actually, if you ask me, even her first stint was pretty awful. For the most part, characters on AMC stopped relating to one another, and started behaving like sniveling, empty-headed brats. Even the quality of acting - which, in years past, had been one of the show's strongest selling points - began to suffer, as individual scenes devolved into little more than shouting matches. (No listening, no subtext, just people yelling at each other.) Furthermore, the emphasis on humor and satire was gone; and in its place was the kind of "plot points only" nonsense that has marked DAYS and GH for the past 15 years.

In my mind, the AMC that I knew and loved (to watch) as a kid died around 1991, right around the time Janet threw Natalie down that damn well.

[Khan]

Oops.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I wonder what the whole story behind Felicia Minei Behr and McTavish is. Anyone remember when FMB called McTavish and JFP's OLTL "absolutely unwatchable?" Then she watched as those two went over to GH to poison things there and eventually McTavish made her way back to AMC, all while FMB was Vice President of ABC Daytime. I've always thought that both FMB and Agnes Nixon preferred Lorraine Broderick to McTavish. Hence FMB hired Broderick at ATWT and was probably very involved in getting her to come to OLTL to be Whitesell's Co-Head writer.

Also Khan, I take it you didn't enjoy Broderick's stint at AMC very much either?

If there's any doubt that FMB and Nixon were solely responsible for McTavish's first AMC stint being a success, all one has to do is look at McTavish's stint at GL, where she ended up a few months after being canned at AMC. Now that was tragic in itself, and McTavish started off at GL, first as an actress then on Pamela Long's first writing team in the 80's (though she wasn't there for very long).

[Adam]

Say what you will about McTavish's AMC, but her tenure at GL was the worst of her career by far.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I think her OLTL stint with JFP was the worst stint of her career, she only lasted a little over a year on GL. She was at OLTL for what? 2 years and a few months?

The irony is B&E replaced her on GL, and B&E's first year on GL was really good, the show was on fire in 1997. However, towards mid-98, they fizzled and the show tanked. The difference is they tanked at AMC after two weeks.

[Khan]

Let me put it this way: in retrospect, Lorraine Broderick's take on AMC was certainly more "AMC-like" than MMT's. (That is, if you don't count Myrtle-as-Mrs. Claus, or all that malarkey that went down in Jamaica w/ Noah, Julia and voodoo priestess Corinne.) I hated Erica's drug addiction storyline, b/c, 1) it was clearly another Emmy grab for La Lucci, and 2) despite the show's best efforts, I never bought for a minute that Miss "I am Erica Kane!" would be strung out on painkillers. (And the less I say about her kidnapping Maddie, the better.)

OTOH, the Michael Delaney/homophobia storyline was some of the best stuff I'd seen on the show since Laura Cudahy's death back in '88. But, overall, was Broderick's AMC compelling? Was it true to the essence of the show? No. The truth is, only two people ever truly "got" AMC: Agnes Nixon, and Wisner Washam.

Two other points:

1) Although Michael's coming-out happened during Broderick's stint, I've read, on several occasions, that the story was actually the work of four people: Jeff Beldner, Hal Corley, Frederick Johnson and Michelle Patrick.

2) In the late '80's, when AMC's ratings began to slip, it was Broderick who, along w/ Victor Miller, was HW'ing the show. And things would get a lot worse (Margaret DePriest) before they got any better (FMB arrives; Nixon and Washam return).