All My Children Tribute Thread

[ghfan89]

The thing I had trouble wrapping my head around during the original Kendall storyline was as to why Dimitri would go along with helping Kendall track down her rapist father, knowing how much it would upset Erica.

[Khan]

I don't recall what motivation they gave Dimitri for aiding Kendall in her quest, but knowing Megan McTavish's work, I'm sure it was flimsy as hell.

[cassadine1991]

Wasn't Agnes still overseeing AMC around this time?

[Khan]

IIRC, Agnes was "Executive Head Writer," a position that I dare anyone to explain.

[You're Soaking in it]

 

It's like being the Queen of England, but on a soap opera. McTavish was like Margaret Thatcher, except not nearly as deep and way more reckless.

[SFK]

 

I loved this promo campaign, OLTL had some great ones too.  The music always reminded me of this classic commercial:

 

 

Erica's, "I could kill you!" was of course foreshadowing the little incident with the letter opener.

 

Same.

 

When she was on Swan's, I referred to her as "the Erica" of that show.  Such a pleasant surprise to read in my mother's SOD that she'd been cast on AMC.  Had no idea what was in store.

 

In hindsight, I can hardly believe how clueless I was about Kendall being Erica's daughter.  I remember watching with my grandfather the scene where Mona helps Kendall fix her necklace and Kendall pulls up her hair to reveal a birthmark on the back of her neck.  Mona made a concerned look and I asked my grandfather what that was about and he offered that the birthmark might be cancerous (!!!).

[Vee]

Agnes ultimately lost control of McTavish, IIRC. She, Francesca James, etc. tried to steer MMT more in her first run.

[j swift]

Did Erica's brother Mark Dalton ever meet Silver Kane; in either of her iterations?  Also, did Ellen wind up with Ross or Mark?

[All My Shadows]

Ellen and Mark married and left Pine Valley in 1989.

[Khan]

 

I've read and heard the same.  In some ways, I guess, you could see Agnes and Felicia Minei Behr's influence on Megan McTavish's work the first time around.  AMC, as a whole, was not the heartless, unrecognizable mess that it would become during Megan's second and third runs, and beyond.  IMO, though, Megan McTavish's first HW'ing stint was also the first time AMC began to favor gimmick over character (not just the Janet/Natalie thing, or the Kendall history retcon thing, but stuff like bringing back James Patrick Stuart as a Will lookalike), making it no more the warm, funny, thoughtful show I looked forward to watching everyday as a youngster.

 

To this day, I'm curious as to why Wisner Washam, whom Agnes had brought back to the show to push it out of the ratings doldrums, not only quit but also asked to be let out of his contract immediately, per a SOW or SOD report at the time.  In his interview w/ We Love Soaps, he makes it plain that Megan McTavish was a big reason for his leaving again.  But what EXACTLY did she do or say (or did ABC do or say) that was the "red line" for him?

 

Moreover, I wonder why the plot twist that was supposed to be Janet, as Jane Cox, bombing Trevor and Laurel's wedding ended up being the thing that got MMT fired (or got her to leave, or whatever).  Yeah, the timing of that story against the OKC bombing WAS unfortunate, forcing the show to rewrite and to air a disclaimer (with Robin Mattson, I think?) before the episodes in question.  But it wasn't as if MMT was the ONLY HW in soap history to have had the misfortune of plotting a storyline that would end up mirroring a real-life tragedy.  By his own account, Henry Slesar, when he was HW at EDGE OF NIGHT, had to scrap his original plan(s) for the character of Eliot Dorn once the Jonestown massacre had occurred, but P&G didn't fire him.  So what ELSE was going on at that moment that made FMB and/or ABC say they had had enough?

Edited March 20, 2018 by Khan

[Faulkner]

In hindsight, I gotta agree there was a lot of garbage during McTavish’s heralded first run even though there was a lot that was compulsively watchable. I never really go back to that era when I’m viewing clips on YouTube. I really thought the show caught fire during late ‘95, early ‘96 before going off the rails like almost every other show around that time.

[Khan]

 

I've said this before, but one negative trait that characterizes MMT's first run for me is scenes where characters are yelling at and being uncivil toward each other.  That was VERY off-putting to me, because I'd never known AMC to be the kind of soap where people were often confrontational.

[Faulkner]

That’s an interesting point that never stood out to me, maybe because I only started watching around 1991 (I started really with the Emily Ann story). My experience of AMC before then has only been through clips and retrospectives, but I think I would have had a closer bond to the show if I’d been watching in the ‘80s. The family and community feeling just felt much stronger to me, which was what drew me to the P&G shows.

[Soaplovers]

I liked Lorraine Broderick's mid 90s stint as head-writer.. it kind of cleaned up the rough edges of MMT's first stint.. and had set up some good stories for when MMT's second stint started (which MMT totally jettisoned).  

 

In fact, I liked her final stint wrapping up the final months of the show's run on ABC until the last second rewrite.

[ghfan89]

SOW at the time said that Nixon and Mctavish did not agree on the direction of the show (whatever that means) but didn't get into any other specifics.

 

As for Washam (and Broderick), they both left AMC  around the time when McTavish was promoted to headwriter.

Edited March 20, 2018 by ghfan89