AMC: October 17, 2008

[alwaysAMC]

Think about how truly amazing all of this would be in a internet and magazine-less world. If we had no idea who was coming/going and what was happening... We'd all be shocked and on the edge of our seats just like we were with 1994. I remember watching that back in the day with my mom and both of us having NO idea what was about to happen. Any return, any death, and disaster was all a total shock.

This is still really good to just watch - but the shock is gone. And its sad bc spoilers are such a necessary evil now - they can kill soaps or they are required to intice peope to watch to bring up ratings.

Anyway - just a thought!

[a2sassy]

Yeah Angie said that the pressure from the beam was keeping Babe from bleeding out because an artery was broken or something. And they would have to lift the beam to save Little Adam because Babe threw herself on top of him when the tornado hit.

And I don't find it strange that Spike and Ian weren't hurt because Kendall (and apparently Bianca) had but the around a bunch of pillows and anything she could to protect them.

[Sylph]

WORD.

[Cheap21]

thats exactly why I found it so heartbreaking. She's sacrificing herself knowing she might die to save her son.. That was the saddest scene of the episode for me.

So true. I hate them for this reason. I try to avoid them as much as possible but Im an internet user and cant really avoid it

[dragonflies]

OMG when Zach was in the car and looked back and saw the funnel cloud, that scene gives me chills everytime I watch it

[Pine Charles]

I know!

And it seems they always write the characters really good the last few days they're on, but all the stuff before is crap.

[nell17]

It's a shame that SOAPNet isn't showing the marathon right now. I'm sure a lot of people would have watched.

[dragonflies]

Yep it sure is, makes me even more pissed off

[cct]

Hm.

I have been spoiler-free as much as possible since Labor Day. (You can't stay exactly spoiler-free when you visit SON and see the grocery store mags winking at you from the checkout line). So I know about Babe and I also knew Binks was coming, when I saw a commercial and thought, who the heck is that brunette?

However, I think I enjoyed the past couple days since I was spoiler-free for the most part. Zack in the car was the coolest part, although him looking behind him was a little fakey.

Certainly, AB stepped up her game. Why now?

How does Zack make it from County Line Road to the beach house so quickly like that? And with the side of your head oozing blood like that? Amazing.

And why on God's Green Earth did Pratt give screenwriting responsibilities to Taylor and Thomson on the two most important days of the rest of AMC's life? I'm hoping he did it because the aftermath will be beautifully scripted by Hall and Cohen, and soap is supposed to be Aftermath and Repercussion not Event.

[Jonathan]

I just got done watching Thursday and Friday. The effects were great. The scripts were rather weak. I want Kate Hall writing scripts every day until December.

[Kubla Khan]

Maybe I'll go down as the lone Thomson advocate - but I think she's doing a fine job. Thought her first script was OK, loved her second, and Friday's script did its job, and it was an EVENT script. It's not as if you have characters interacting in a natural, organic manner -- they're reacting to a freakin' tornado!

[Cat]

I don't know anything about AMC's scriptwriters except for the notorious Amanda L. Beall (thanks, RSinclair), but I thought Thompson did a pretty efficient job with the cross-cutting of scenes and use of characters. I mean, OK, Ryan, Grainlay and Eye-dan, I could have done without. But that's a mandate coming from on high, no?

When that funnel headed straight for the Comeback, all I could think was "divine justice" and "die, suckazzz!" When KWAK told Kathy they had an angel working overtime or some such nonsense, I was really ready for the tornado to pick up the Carey twits and take them back to Hypocrisyville. But Amanda Baker -- for the first time EVER -- was so affecting as the panic-stricken and injured mother. And when I saw JR hold up Little A's chubby little hand... gah. That made me cry.

Excellent. excellent episode. And I don't know what's going to happen next, so I am PSYCHED for today's.

[R Sinclair]

I'm thinking the same thing, too. We're about to have some emotional stuff happening during the aftermath of the tornado. Cohen, IMO, is an absolutely wonderful speech writer. She's written fantastic speeches for Ryan, Zach, Tad, Krystal and even JR's speech to Adam when he left. I'm sure that there will be some more in store after Babe's sacrifice. I think Kate Hall is fabulous, too. She's everything Beall should've been. Funny, smart, touching but natural. I never get this sense of she's trying too hard. She writes conversation between/among characters. Not set ups, punchlines and one liners. Speaking of smart and funny, I'm actually finding myself anticipating another Jeff Beldner script. His last one was amazing considering how low my expectations were when I saw he wrote that day.

I know you're being facetious, but damn... wishing the woman to write 2400 pages of dialog? She'd probably be screaming "Curse you Jonathan for loving me so much!" (insert winking smiley here just to reinforce the fact that I'm kidding).

I'm still on the fence. While I was looking forward to her coming to AMC, I do have to say she hasn't lived up to the high hopes I had for her. Her first script was horrible, IMO. Her second one was up to snuff, but I'm borderline with this episode. I with you, Kubla, on the fact that this episode was more event and action rather than emotion and interaction, so yeah. And I will say that it wasn't as bad as Hope Harmel Smith's event script during Jesse and Angie's wedding last spring. All of the script no-no's... the melodramatic "He's got a gun! Look out!" and Angie psychoanalyzing Robert's jealousy of not having a love like hers and Jesse's while the man has a gun to her head... But back to Thomson, I have to say that the Petey and Colby scenes irritated me. "Gee, I hope my mom's alright. So, anyway, there's a difference between a tornado and funnel clouds..." Huh? I'm paraphrasing, but still. His mother had a heart attack right in front of his eyes, and all he says throughout the entire next episode is a throw away line about hoping if she's alright and then goes back to flirting with Colby? That irritated the hell out of me.

But overall, every cast member did an awesome job and the effects were great. Casey Childs was in his element.

[Sylph]

And in this new light one has to wonder... How much of an influence does Elizabeth Korte have on GH dialogue and who is really responsible for it? Certainly... If Thomson sucked, I bet Korte would have pushed for her to get fired after, I don't know, 5 scripts?

[R Sinclair]

Well, you know how I feel about Korte. I think, even though I question her agenda (I've read from various sources that she's in love with Jason, hates the fact that Liz is so popular with him and also rewrote several lines in a script where there was a fight with Courtney and Liz so Courtney came out on top), she's fabulous with being the story editor at GH. I questioned her abilities at first, because up until that point, Michele Val Jean was story editor at GH for years, but then she's shown that she's got some skills, because GH's dialog is absolutely on point. Among the three ABC soaps, GH's dialog is the best. But what I recognized about Korte (MVJ has said Korte's in charge of assigning episodes to script writers... which is why sometimes we get two Mary Sue Price scripts or two Karen Harris scripts in a row or in a week) is that she sees what character is in an episode and assigns a writer to that episode where that character is either featured or driving story. Tracey Thomson wrote a LOT of Sam McCall episodes. I think the tone and development of Sam McCall over the past couple years has been because Thomson wrote a lot of her scripts. Same with SCRUBS. Karen Harris writes almost all of their episodes where they are heavily featured. Michael J. Cinquemani wrote a majority of Georgie and Dillon episodes. So, I think that's where Korte's talent lives... in recognizing the voice of certain characters and matching them with certain script writers.

I don't know what happens at AMC. I just recognize patterns. Like when Beall wrote dialog for Babe or Krystal, it would be very tame... almost downplaying the fact that these two characters aren't as saintly as Beall or McTavish et al want us to believe them to be. And it leaked into her breakdowns. When the episode would be one she structured, she tended to write a lot of pro-Carey, pro-Jonathan stuff and if a less than able dialogue writer (Bugler) came in, it became glaringly obvious. But I think that what others have said might be right. Cohen and Hall were reserved for the aftermath. The stunts and events of the tornado could've been dealt with via writers like Taylor and Thomson, but the heart and the emotion must be in the hands of writers like Hall and Cohen.

I'm out. I'm late for work as it is.