I watched AM's journey out of order so having seen 1995 first I was predisposed to sympathize with him. I actually think AM's story got taken off course a lot by Blake/Ross not just being a fling. To me, AM was Blake's Frankenstein. There's a scene I loved right before AM/Blake split where he's worried about whatever is happening with Gary and he tries to get her drunk to talk to him, but she is onto him and he sheepishly admits his plan. While he was bad at it, he was starting to learn to manipulate. He wanted nothing to do with her after their divorce but she kept doing things for his career (she took over that Daniel St. John presentation that Roger was trying to thwart without AM's knowledge, and at first you think she's getting revenge but she actually sells it from a PR angle which started them interacting at work). There's a scene just after Roger is exposed where AM is initially pretty content to continue to work his way up but Blake pushes him to fill the vacuum left by Roger's departure. She has a lot of the underhanded ideas initially to go at Vanessa. For instance, when AM flat out refuses to expose Vanessa was the rape victim in the papers Blake is the one who says at least he should try to take advantage of the situation. Blake is pretty much always in his ear. I don't think AM actually instigates anything himself until he blackmails Nadine about talking to the Inquisitors to get Billy's bid. Then when she calls immigration on Eleni, AM under her tutelage is fully ready to go after what he wants and get Eleni to marry him. (One of the things Phillip was most worried about leaving was AM being influenced by Roger/Blake-ironically he asks Ross to look after AM for him.)
Obviously AM then proceeds to treat Blake shabbily which is a big part of why Ross sympathizes with her, but a lot of that was some pretty severe self-sabotage/self-loathing by Blake as she really kept coming back for more and she was still manipulating him the whole time but now he was more hardened and knew what she was doing. I found the Blake/AM dynamic really interesting in that period where he's basically leading her on, as he's basically an ass regardless of what he does at that point. If he drops her from his life/the company she has nothing at all left, but even if he does better at maintaining boundaries there's no way she doesn't push right past them.
With how connected Blake/Frank were when AM/Eleni first got married I actually think they wanted a period of a quadrangle of Blake/AM/Frank/Eleni with Blake/AM eventually getting back together after learning things from "good" people-softened some but still coloring outside the lines (because of course AM gets sucked into Roger's empire plans haha). I do think they were floundering a bit once Blake was taken away as a long-term option for AM.
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GL95 ·
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