Writers and hate vs. indifference towards a character

[EricMontreal22]

I did love the Broderick story with the "Three Witches" teaming up--Skye, Janet and Erica to get rid of Dr Kinder and wish they had kept up that friendship. I'm with you though, I didn't see Janet change THAT much though she did get softer. That said I think McT actually liked writing for the Dhillons and was trying to make them the new Martins or something--a sane, stable middle class family- It's fair to point out that while some hated them, they did have a large fanbase (wasn't it rumoured to be mandated from higher up to get rid of the Dhillons after her for some reason?) I'm blanking though--what was the Axel Green thing?

(Personally I do think they made her a bit too soft--and then when she started going crazy again for Carl's all time fave Candy Cane story it really felt like it came out of nowhere--but I was good with Janet for the most part in that era and AMC has lacked a stable, middle class family ever since really--the Hubbards excluded)

Phoebe That musta been '98 or '99 when McTavish was back what with the Camille (I think?) and Braeden shots in the opening...

[JackPeyton]

lol, i think this was the maryann storyline, perhaps GL's most hated. However, it was the only GL story i was ever into.

[Pine Charles]

Eric,

Janet hired an actor to pose as Axel Green (her first husband). She and the fake Axel planned to marry, to legally disqualify her from marrying Trevor. Later, AngelNat appeared and gave her blessing, freeing Janet from her promise.

Yeah, it says 1999 in the title.

BTW, the black lady Opal brings with her to the shower is Janet Hubert-Whitten, who played Vivian Banks (#1) on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

[DRW50]

I think Dixie's wedding was not long after McTavish had been fired. There was a lot of hype about how this was a return to the "real AMC", which was nice, but I noticed quickly that someone's idea of "the real AMC" was firing or backburnering black characters, telling lovely stories like the Martin men hounding Dixie into a miscarriage, backburnering and trashing the Dillons, repeatedly reinforcing the idea that Adam was a monster of a father, one who used Tad's child abuse for his own gains...all I enjoyed at that time was Vanessa.

I thought Janet changed quite a bit over Broderick's last year, in that she became someone things happened to, instead of someone who schemed against other people. Her past actions hurt her with Amanda (Amanda watching the Cutting Edge tape of her and falling into a well), Tim wanting her to pay for what she'd done to his mother and how she was replacing his mother in the family. I thought this worked, and I also thought the Janet/Trevor stuff Broderick began (he took her to her high school reunion, etc.) worked, although some fans hated it.

The Dillons were supposedly forced out for budget reasons. I'm sure their age didn't help. I thought it was a mistake to get rid of them, and the show became more vacuous without them, and also lost potential fascinating future characters like Amanda and Tim. I know Amanda is back now but I don't really consider her to be a character - she's basically just a plot device and always has been.

I hated everything about the candy cane story, the biggest being, as you mentioned, how rushed it was, and also that the story to work had to make Janet stupid and force her to do stuff like refuse to take Erica's money. Any story where someone has to be stupid to fit the plot does not work.

"Axel" was an actor Janet hired to pretend to be her ex-husband, to try to keep Trevor away, because she had made a promise to Natalie not to marry Trevor or something. He was a fun character. I think they hinted he was going to have a mostly offcamera relationship with Winifred.

Something easy to forget is those first 6 months or so of 1998 had a fair amount of humor and happiness along with the usual ugly melodrama of McTavish. Unfortunately everything after that got really unpleasant and ugly.

[EricMontreal22]

Ugh It's too painful for me to even try to bring back memories of Higley's OLTL. While, from the soaps I watch, I still think Passanante's stint solo at AMC may have been the worst stint I sat through (well largely sat through--I'm sure even I skipped some days), Higley's comes close, and wasn't just crap, I was constantly offended (which takes a lot from me considering how I don't seem to take offence to some of McTavish's mess).

I believe focus groups really became a phenomenon in the 90s? But I know as early as the early 80s soap scribes were starting to complain about increased media interference (P&G had always interfered notoriously--but this was at other soaps) and also of having too many writers on staff with too many different voices.

[EricMontreal22]

Carl, I think I actually agree with all you said there about Janet--and I now remember the Axel story.

Yeah as we've discussed, the period at AMC after that McTavish run was a real mixed bag. It seemed like network interference was really starting in full force, Agnes Nixon returning was great but you only really sensed her voice for certain stories (and near the end when Passanante eventually took over full time it seemed Agnes had basically just been writing the Bianca story anyway--I will gladly admit that Agnes Nixon has had her share of dud stories, but nobody could convince me that she wrote the Libidizone story...) Of course it got worse when Elizabeth Page (and briefly Millee Taggert) left as Agnes' co HW and Passanante came in... But for every good move (I think the humour once again returned, I loved the Marian stuff and the sense of class in Pine Valley again) there was stuff like inexplicable back burnering of different races, etc (which isn't exactly Agnes' style).

[DRW50]

Yeah, we've gone over that before, and I always feel bad because I sound like I'm blaming Nixon. I realize that even if she's not a perfect writer, a lot of that wasn't on her. Some stories I disliked at the time I can now appreciate more (at the time I wasn't into the country club Marian story). I also see that she had to resolve some heinous McTavish stories, like the sperm switch. Probably the only story I think was hers that I was offended by was what she did with Adam in regards to JR. I thought it was too dark, and unintentionally, along with the Dixie pregnancy story going on around the same time, destroyed Tad as a character.