AMC: MMT has some nerve

[Khan]

She absolutely ruined Quint & Nola for all time. AFAIC, that makes her dead to me.

[Khan]

I'll admit, if not for B&E, I never would've returned to watching GL like I did, during the fall and winter of '97. It wasn't classic GL, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was "doable," and it eased some of the pain of watching my all-time favorite couple, Quint & Nola, die a most senseless and unnecessary death. Even if I had to continue grieving, while B&E did everything they could to prop Matt & Vanessa for what seemed like an eternity.

Then, for whatever reason, B&E got drunk on Annie Dutton, and things just careened downhill from there.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

^True, GL hasn't been GL since Nancy Curlee left in 93. She's the last person who understood that show. I've always though AMC would be a good show for Curlee, if she were to ever return to soap writing and her husband (Stephen Demorest) is on the AMC writing team already, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for her.

But alas, Curlee's never coming back to soap writing, so all I'll do is dream...

About the Annie stuff, if it wasn't for amazing acting by Cynthia Watros, GL would've never clicked in 1997. Had some lesser actress played Annie, the show would've been a cartoon. Watros saved what was otherwise very campy writing.

[dragonflies]

LMAO too true, they only had two really good weeks. They're not called "show killers" for nothing

AMC is a goner as long as they continue as HW's......

[Skin]

So the complete and devestating ratings erosion that has taken place during their tenure isn't disasterous or harmful?

I doubt that AMC will be able to forget the fact that since B&E's tenure they have reached devestating lows that are comparable to Days loses. Veiwers tuned out in DROVES. B&E successfully managed to lose over 400,000 households in what 6 months? Thus why ABC is scrambling in bringing back Angie and Jesse and Rebecca Budig.

B&E may be boring but to say that they haven't done damage beyond repair at AMC isn't accurate. Hell even with Megan ratings were never as bad as a 1.9, Megan was atleast able to ensnare veiwers and was at one point able to get AMC to the no.2 spot something that hadn't happended since the 90's. Megan atleast knew how to work the show and get people to tune in. B&E are lacking desperately in that skill. We only have to see the ratings to show that B&E managed to bring AMC to it's knees ratings wise.

[Khan]

RE: GL and Nancy Curlee -- Agreed, WorldTurner. It says, too, alot for a show when most, if not all, of one's favorite characters are either phased out or killed off by '85, but you still "hang on" 'til 1999 (which is the last time I considered myself a regular viewer), just b/c, you love the show that much.

[Khan]

RE: B&E vs. MMT -- Here's the deal...

In no way do I consider myself a fan of Megan, Jim or Barbara. As a matter of fact, I think all three are lousy writers. B&E never use their heads in their writing, and MMT never uses her heart.

Now, going on ratings alone, the argument could be made that B&E are slightly worse than MMT, since AMC fell to record lows with those two in charge. However, I don't think, or suspect, the quality (or lack thereof) of their writing is solely to blame. IMO, because we live in an era of instant gratification, and b/c B&E didn't deliver the kind of changes the viewers wanted when they wanted them, fans likely assumed B&E were just "more of the same" and responded accordingly.

Does that make any sense, lol?

[Kubla Khan]

I'm inclined to call Megan's ratings success at AMC in 2004 a fluke. She so happened to tell a story with high emotional stakes, but the baby switch had to end. The ratings returned to normal, and they fell drastically during Megan's last two years. Before that, her track record wasn't very good: She drove GH's ratings to the ground, and her second stint at AMC was a ratings disaster. In 1998, Megan was re-hired at AMC to take the show from # 4 back to # 2 and instead, she took it to # 7.

Yeah, that's right.

While the ratings have fallen since B&E took over, you can't tell me that they would have stayed steady had Megan not left. The ratings were falling at an alarming rate her last year on the show -- for all we know, she could have stayed and the ratings would be exactly the same as they are now.

Moving on...

I liked AMC from 92-95, but maybe that's just me. Oh, the show went through changes, no doubt about it, but I thought it was enjoyable enough. I liked the outrageous and downright campy stuff - Harold ruining Janet and Trevor's wedding, Opal and Palmer running the Chicken Shack, Janet's return, etc. I was just re-watching Janet's "Twilight Zone" dream she had post-surgery and I thought to myself, this is the kind of stuff that's missing from soaps these days. During that era, the character balance was great & there was plenty of romance, to boot.

I liked this storyline quite a bit. Erica was injured & subsequently had to take painkillers; I didn't find it hard believing that she would develop a physical dependancy -- it doesn't require a certain personality to develop that kind of physical attachment to a drug. Additionally, I thought it was a turning point in Erica's life -- it really shook her up knowing that she, the ultimate control freak, could be controlled by such a thing as a little pill, and I think her scenes at Betty Ford were excellent. It was really an exciting period of growth for the character (of course McTavish would throw that growth & maturity out the window for 98's 'The Return of Mike Roy' garbage).

Agnes was headwriter for Loving for a lot less than 14 months. I think maybe 4? Actually, I don't know specifically when Agnes left Loving, but she became the HW in November '93, and I think she exited later that Spring. Alls I know is that Laura McCarthy & Addie Walsh had taken over as HWs by late Spring of '94.

But that's neither here nor there, because more to the point: Agnes did not have to sacrifice time spent with AMC when she was writing Loving -- Bill Bell wrote two soaps for how many years? JER wrote two *hour long* soaps a few years back, as well all know.

[Khan]

Oh, God. Another fantasy of mine - Mike Roy's alive, he & Erica reunite, and Jackson Montgomery disappears from the face of the earth - flushed down the old drain. After what happened to Quint & Nola, I should have known better.

[Khan]

And, I might add, not a moment too soon. To this day, it irks me how so many people became so wrapped up in such an awful and illogical story.

So, great Khans do think alike. Good to know.

[EricMontreal22]

Wow. Well for most of the soap press and many fans AMC had sorta been sinking--despite some great moments around 88-91, and it was Behr (and in a way McT) who brought it back to life in 91. I have to say watching eps from that era as opposed to 91-94 (when I became a regular viewer) or 88-91 the quality IS way bette,r every story seems interesting, characters have purpose,and I disagree, I think characters had a real sense of community and interaction. Also I was drawn to AMC partly because it had so much Humour--and this was during the era--compared to any other soap--and sophisticated, theatrical humour. Opal was everywhere, a lot of scenes were just nice, lightly funny scenes to bring out character, yeah there were some lame attempts like Palmer working at the Cluck Cluck but... I also was attracted to all the scenes of friends talking, listening, the clever dialogue (I was a young tv snob and was amazed at all the lit references etc). Oh well

I guess it's differeing opinions and I know it's presumptious of me to say, as someone who watched longer than me, you're wrong but to my eyes, relatively speaking I think AMC had all the things you say it lacked, in spades at this era. It was a different era for soaps, the early 90s comapred to the 80s, and maybe it's if you compare it to the other soaps of the time?

OK but then here's the question--so if AMC stopped feeling like itself in 1991 yet others say Agnes was still mostly responsible for the stories--who's to blame?

[EricMontreal22]

FMB hired Broderick (who in many late 80s AMC eps is listed as headwriter--with Mctavish lower down on her team). While I think FMB was partly responsible for bumping McT up to HW (or fine HW under Agnes ) during the start of her tenure, by 95 she found, as always happens with Mct the stories were getting loopier and ratings were falling (though only sligthly compared to now--partly because DAYS ratings were suddenly spiking). So she replace dher with Broderick--there's no question she prefered Broderick (and largely i did too as much as I still stand by McT's first stint). Ironically very soon after ABC fired FMB. becuase ratings were still falling--but yeah later on FMB hired Broderick for ATWT (where I geuss they weren't able to recreate their AMC magic though it wasn't a disaster, was it?) I always thought FMB was pretyt powerless when she was Vice-P of ABCDaytime but who knows--it was odd to hired someone like Broderick to co HW with someone like Whitesall on Tomlin's campy take on Llanview but I think she gave us some of the good material.

"If there's any doubt that FMB and Nixon were **solely** responsible for McTavish's first AMC stint being a success"

Soap writing is way more complex than that---I'm willing to admit that they both were HUGE key player sin the success and McTavish need sa storng guiding hand to do quality work. But to not give McTR ANY of the credit for those four years? That's just unfair.

[EricMontreal22]

I actually thought... it wasn't as bad as other eras in OLTL history fromt he laste 10 years... lol It was really dark, and lotsa stuff didn't make much sense (though I put a lot of the blame on JFP since it was obvious she was dictating stories and McT was following orders like she does) but as was true with mcT's recent AMC eras, there were often many GREAT individual *scenes* that would kinda come out of nowhere...

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah as I mentioned a bunch of 1988 eps I recently watched (Erica giving birth to Bianca) had Broderick listed as HW (though Agnes was still there in some capacity). I still think broderick deserves some credit for ht emichael story, and she did continue the gay theems on admirably with the Kevin storylien the next year--the scenes with his mom tricking him into going to deprogramming, etc were really memorable to me as was the story in general even if it was less sensationalistic.

I do largely agree with your take on broderick's tenure--as for the wackier stories, there's no denying they were largely created to try to make the soap compete with DAYS--I have no doubt that they were partially dictated to her (as in "what kinda out there story ideas do you have?). And all were far better than Ghost Gillian, poison tatoos, and other out of character AMC stories to come later

[EricMontreal22]

I largely agree. However it's ironic, without B&E I doubt AMC ever would be bringing Angie and Jessie (seeing as the actors and characters were such huge faves of the writers)