AMC: Pratt's bible

[R Sinclair]

Ugh, here we go...

No, I never said Babe was going to be raped. Actually, I said that the only reason Babe "Take a Number for Penetration" Carey wasn't redeemed by rape (a McTavish staple I had just pointed out, if you'd read what I wrote) was due to the fact that she already raped another character. And, I don't know what Dixie character you were watching, but a woman coming on to a show, having anonymous sex her first night in town with a guy who happens to be her husband's brother and then questioning which one of THREE MEN is the father of her baby does not convince me that they "always tried to model her character by the Dixie formula" nor was she a "clone of that model."

They modeled the character after the Hot Young Blonde Slut Who Comes Into Town Screwing Every Last Man Within the City Limits formula.

Dixie was a naive country bumpkin who got in way over her head and was used as a brood mare. Babe was a scheming whore who knew exactly what she was doing every single time she made whatever idiotic choice she made and then somehow wound up a victim of the very situation she set in motion with her moronic choices.

As for JR being a hero... unless someone's been smoking copious quantities of crack while watching AMC over the last five years, I don't know how anyone could ever think that! JR's NEVER been painted as a hero. He's ALWAYS been the evil, vicious, dastardly villain who had the sheer gall to be angry at the fact that Babe was a bigamist who slept with his brother and then lied to him about his baby and then ran off with his brother as they kidnapped his baby and told him he was dead. Babe was always the "sweet heroine" who we should've been rooting for as she escaped the EVUL CLUTCHES OF THE DESPICABLE, DRUNKEN, VENGEFUL JR!

[EricMontreal22]

Remember when Babe was introduced and she'd callher mom who was always busy with random males, in bed? I LOVED that angle. I wish they had kept it--Krystal or not.

[DeeeDee]

Also known as The Grace Turner Formula

[JackPeyton]

I almost always root for the 'bad guy' over the 'good guy' because i fidn the badies on soaps far more intersting and complex than the poor innocent heroine or the good all the time too close to perfect good guy i cant root for.

When i watch classic soaps i dont ahte the good guys, because theyw ere layerd and not always perfect. But i still like the badies as well.

[EricMontreal22]

Really? Characters like Alice from AW and Tara from AMC seemed complex and layered?? I think this is one respect where soaps HAVE grown up. Agnes Nixon attempted a Tara redux with Becka when she came back to write AMC in 99 and it backfired hardcore.

[R Sinclair]

But that's the thing. Good and Bad has become all mixed up and jumbled on this show that it's hard to know who truly is the bad guy. I mean, Ryan Lavery, for all the crap he's pulled over the last five years he's been back in town should NOT be viewed as this good guy. JR Chandler, for all the trials he's gone through -- struggling with his addiction, losing his mother three times, being told his baby died in helicopter crash, having an unfaithful wife... Whenever he gets mad, he's viewed as evil.

People on this show should just be HUMANS and that's it. You shouldn't have to be forced by the writing to view/accept this character as Good or Bad. It should just be, which character's point of view do you align yourself with? Then just be entertained and see how it works itself out. But all of these pious, self righteous, morally superior asswipes (Tad, Babe, Ryan, Zach, Krystal) need to sit down and shut up.

[R Sinclair]

Yeah, that and Agnes also pissed me off having Tad compare Adam to Ray Gardner. It's like, come the hell on. Give us a little bit of credit. Yeah, Adam can be overbearing, but wanting to send your child to a prestigious boarding school is not the same as beating your son, his mother and leaving said son in the park with a broken arm.

That, to me, was part of the simplistic Good Character/Bad Character broad brush. Tad's a Martin so he's good. Adam's a Chandler so he's bad -- which means he's in the exact same category as Ray Gardner. As if Adam's shown no compassion at all whatsoever to any of the women he's been involved with and the children that have come into his life.

I didn't like that at all.

[DeeeDee]

Moral Relativism has killed Daytime.

The only time characters have moral standards is to prop "kewl", "edgy" characters.

[AMCGio83]

Interesting idea. Brooke was also raped by Eddie Durrance during her bad girl days. Agnes used the rapes to redeem but Megan seemed to have some odd fixation with suffering female rape victims.

[AMCGio83]

I agree. The problem with AMC is that they don't characterize/write humans they manipulate. Babe has been awful from the get-go but from the beginning the writers have REALLY wanted us to root for her. Around the time she was "killed" the Babe love was almost intolerable with Zarf, Amanda, JR, EVERYONE telling us how wonderful Babe was. If they had just written her as she should have been: a manipulative, golddigging strumpet I think they might have been more successful with the character. It seems that AMC takes the simplistic route with ALL of it's characters. Again during the Crash storyline; they wanted us to HATE Greenlee when frankly, the way AMC is written, the kidnapper is the hero. What I wouldn't give for the days where the characters did what they did, reprocussions were felt and viewers were left to make up their own minds.

[SteveFrame]

See I don't see this as black and white as you guys do. That is what I am talking about in that many of you who root for the bad guys see the people like Tad and others as morally superior. They are not written in the same way as they used to be which does make a difference to some degree but you would call people like Alice Matthews a morally superior asswipe or even Amy Ames or Joanne Gardner. Even Alice Horton and Nancy Hughes and Bert Bauer and Kate Martin would be morally superior asswipes - when they weren't.

The person who said that good and bad have gotten mixed up on soaps said it right. And no it is not Moral Relativism that has killed daytime - it is the lack of definition to characters that has killed daytime.

Back when characters were good or were bad or were gray - the characters had a purpose and were well defined. In families there were good and bad. Even within the Hughes family or the Martin family or the Horton family there was good and bad.

Julie Olson, the Horton granddaughter, was one little bitch in the beginning years of Days. Bill Horton raped his brother's wife. Bob Hughes slept with his sister-in-law. And so on. But in the end they all had to pay for the bad things they did.

Even the great Nancy Hughes wished that it was her daughter Penny who had drowned and not her daughter Susan.

But it never stopped any of them from giving advice to others and to be presented as an example.

Back then all of the characters were defined by roles and by archetypes that fit within the story. You knew how they would react and you knew what to expect from them.

Today I never know half the time what some of the characters are really going to do and what to expect from them. It's like this week the writer wants them to be a villian and then next week they are a hero. Put the character on a path and keep them there. It gets old this year that Todd Manning is a villian and an [!@#$%^&*] and then next year they want to redeem him and have you feel sorry for him.

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And as far as Adam and Ray. I don't think Adam is as bad as Ray is but I wouldn't want either of them as a father. I never feel for Adam and never will. I have seen all the stuff he has done through the years. I like him as a character but I don't feel for him and I always am happy when someone gets the best of him - as he has gotten the best of so many people through the years. I feel teh same way toward him as I do Todd Manning. Neither of them have ever paid enough at this point to make up for some of the bad things they did.

If I feel a character has paid for their crime and they make a change - then I can forgive them and move on. But when they just go back to doing the same things over and over I can't.

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And yes to the layered thing. I found characters like Tara, Joanne, Alice, and Amy to be very layered. They were good girl characters but they also were not one dimensional characters either.

[SteveFrame]

I agree totally.

Babe keeps doing all these bad things from the beginning and not once have they made her really pay for what she did. They tried to make JR the big bad evil guy to make us feel sorry for her, but it never worked for me.

When they did it with Dixie, I did, but not with Babe.

They can't make me root for Babe, Kendall, Greenlee, Ryan or any of them yet because they still have not paid for the bad things they did yet. They haven't shown me yet they are truly sorry for what they did.

It is another problem of the characterizations and the writing.

[DeeeDee]

It's a combo of both cause any time a character with any amount of fanbase committ crimes their fans vociferously justify their actions by comparing them to any amount of other characters misdeeds.

If Richie kidnaps JR & takes his bone marrow it's ok because hey, Tad BURIED A GUY ALIVE!

If Sonny shoots a pregnant Carly in the head it's ok cause Luke RAPED Laura!

[SteveFrame]

Oh I agree. As I have said in numerous places across the Internet - when the genre is dead and gone - THE IDIOTS IN CONTROL will be a big part of the blame - but FANS will also be to blame.

just for stuff like you said right there. The Internet has been good for soaps in some ways but it has also been bad for soaps in big ways. particularly it has allowed fans more of a chance to ban together and form big groups to demand things. Sadly TIIC listen to some of these small groups in decisions just like you said.

But see even years ago the Tad thing you mentioned would have instilled big story for Tad in that he would have had to pay for his crime in one way or the other. Bob Hughes saw his child killed just for committing adultery with Kim. As I said before Jennifer Brooks got breast cancer and Bill Bell said he felt he needed to do that after it was revealed she strayed in her marriage to Stuart and that affair resulted in Lauralee's birth. She lied to him for years about - so he needed something to elicit sympathy for her again. He got it by the time Jennifer was on her death bed all had been forgiven.

[DeeeDee]

Definitely.

Part of the problem is what constitues "justice".

Daytime loves to make characters do increasingly outrageous things & then refuses to let the punishment fit the crime.

And as you said Daytime refuses to write for characters anymore.

Characters can't react to anything cause they've been reduced to plot points who are vehicles for TIIC's agendas & egregious disregard for the audience.