All My Children Tribute Thread

[Jonathan]

 

All Her Children is such a great book.  I remember reaching out to Dan Wakefield about 15 years ago (around the time Megan McTavish returned for her last run) asking him if he still watched All My Children.  He said he hadn't watched it in years but "might" tune in again to see what was going on.

[Jonathan]

I'm not sure who put this Agnes Nixon video together and for what occasion, but there are some nice tributes, especially by Susan Lucci.  It looks like Susan taped her part on the set of Devious Maids; I remember that dress from the show.

 

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Edited August 6, 2020 by Jonathan

[namkcuR]

Does anyone else agree that Dixie's 2005-07 return was pretty much botched from beginning to end?  I don't just mean it how it ended(everybody hated the pancakes), but the whole thing.

 

First, the whole Di story preceded it for the better part of a year.  Someone in here a while back said they weren't sure if Di was always supposed to be lying about being Dixie or if the writers just changed their minds because no one was buying it, and I think that's a fair question.

 

Then Cady first appears again around Christmas 2005 in a bizarre scene with Di in Paris where Di updates her on life in Pine Valley and asks if she's going to come home.  This is the problem with the initial return story.  Dixie would not allow Tad and JR and the rest of her family to think she was dead.  It was completely out of character.

 

And then she does return to Pine Valley, where the skulks in the shadows for two months(I know this is a soap right of passage for people coming back from the dead, but it's still dumb) and reveals that she signed her and Tad's baby away just like that upon birth for the half-baked reason that she briefly thought she was going to die and had let the doctor, Greg Madden, manipulate her into thinking that Tad would blame the baby for her death.  Tad and JR are understandably pissed. 

 

And then so much of Dixie's airtime was dedicated to the Greg Madden nonsense, culminating in Tad burying the guy alive.  

 

And then pancakes.  Because, I think, McClain had been too publicly vocal in disparaging TPTB for treating older actors, specifically older actresses, like Julia Barr, badly in favor of youth.

 

It was just poorly written.

Edited August 6, 2020 by namkcuR

[All My Shadows]

This is my problem with back from the dead stories, in general. You have to suspend any understanding of basic human emotion to buy into it, and that's a no-go for me.

Your assessment of the story is right on the money. The false starts were stretched out for way too long that by the time Cady's Dixie returned and reunited with everyone, you just didn't care anymore. The backstory was so convoluted, and that made it even harder to accept her return without reservation. It just never felt like she was really "back" for good, so when she was killed off again, it wasn't very surprising nor was it really that sad. The show was just in a really ugly place by then.

Di was never fully developed as an actual character because I guess they didn't think they'd have to? So she became yet another aimless character in that age range, sharing the role of "female Aidan" with Erin Lavery. Mustn't forget the de-SORAS'ed frat boy Del.

Edited August 6, 2020 by All My Shadows

[Jonathan]

 

There's only a handful of ways to write back from the dead stories.  Either 1) the person has amnesia 2) has been held captive 3) has to stay away from family in order to "protect" them.

 

The third one is probably the lamest of them all because from a critical reason standpoint, the argument tends to fall apart when you evaluate the claims made by said dead person.

 

 

[BetterForgotten]

Both Tad and Dixie were so damn insufferable and unlikable by that point, and the story was so poorly plotted. McTavish clearly had no idea where she wanted to go with it, and it was proof that her ass needed to go. It didn't seem like she cared about any character that wasn't Babe/Krystal by this point.

 

And frankly, Cady seemed bored/confused by the material. She had just come off arguably the best performance of her career during her first stint on ATWT, and then returned to this crap return story.

Edited August 6, 2020 by BetterForgotten

[All My Shadows]

I agree with three being the worst for those reasons. That's why I can understand JHB saying that Jesse's return wasn't that great. The fact that he was back - great. The path they had to take to get him back - stupid dumb sh!t.

 

If characters died and stayed dead, I think we would have seen less reliance on serial killers and natural disasters. But then again, the UK soaps generally keeps dead characters dead, and they will still decimate a cast in the name of celebrating Christmas, the show's anniversary, or...anything, really.
 

I think Cady was excited in the beginning. I remember listening to a podcast interview with her and MEK, and they were both very happy to be working together again, but we all know how it turned out. MEK was already checking out, but I think the Dixie fiasco might have been the last straw for him and he was mostly just collecting a check until 2011. It's depressing, honestly.

McT might have cared about Babe and Krystal, but it's not like her caring translated to writing decent stories by this point. How do you manage to squander the talents of Cady, MEK, Bobbie Eakes, and David Canary? AMC had a goldmine, but it was wasted.

[Vee]

My understanding is Cady had wanted the character to become darker and more complex, a la Rosanna, which I agree gave her the best work of her career in her first stint at ATWT. So a major part of the more cosmopolitan, noir femme fatale Dixie I think was her. And tbh I liked a lot of the superficial aspects of it; her clothes, her hair, etc. I thought she had some chemistry with Thorsten Kaye though she was walking into a buzzsaw with the audience there, too. So some of the fault lies with Cady, perhaps. But I can't blame her for wanting to innovate the character to a point, as she did when she'd pushed for the pairing with David in the late '90s/early 2000s. And she wasn't responsible for the actual bad story - they didn't need to run her down as badly as they did, and that's because McTavish made it personal. You could've done new things with Dixie without totally botching that.

 

 

The story did not make much sense, but I didn't care. I think Agnes had a light hand in it, or so I believe we were told. I think the choice of making David Rasche's villain a Gardner relative screamed her. The fact that they remembered the Remy character also impressed me. Beyond that, no, it was very silly. But compared to some of the [!@#$%^&*] since it's practically 90s level.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Vee

[Jonathan]

 

I was also impressed that they remembered the John Remington character.  I thought it was weird though that we only got one flashback of him and it was the back of his head.  I'm wondering if the show couldn't get the proper clearance to show his likeness (probably because it was an old ABC contract that didn't have those waivers in place at the time).

[ghfan89]

Yes, I liked they had Remy's mom come by for the Jesse return. Did they ever bring up Creed Kelly though? Wasn't he the one originally thought to be behind Jesse's death?

[Vee]

Not to my recollection, no. I still don't remember why they faked Jesse's death either.

[Jonathan]

 

 

Reason #3 as stated above.  Don't ask for details because those are convoluted.

 

[DemetriKane]

This! This! This! Which is why she’s in my avatar to this very day. Cady was so damn flawless I adored her 2005-06 return. The story went left after the Mardi gras ball but I was intrigued by it for awhile. I really wished Hillary was married to tad around this time.

 

i do not think they ever finished telling Jesse back from the dead story. It felt anti climatic to me, more was sure to come.

[titan1978]

The third one only works well if we already know the threats against them, and already treat them as credible.  If the menace is there, some of the details can be forgiven.

 

Laura’s return from the Cassadines was kind of a mix of part 2 and 3, plays well rewatching it because Genie plays the scenes full of fear.  She’s scared for herself, she’s scared for Luke, etc, Stavros does seem capable of anything in a soap supervillain kind of way.

[Vee]

I haven't watched it all in a long time, but I remember them playing all the beats with Stavros and Laura's long build to reuniting with Luke. They played it all out for what, a month, two months, nonstop.

 

The Jesse story, which I paid close attention to, was far less granular on detail. I still don't remember what MacGuffin Gardner had on Jesse. Maybe Jesse had been investigating "Papel" or something. That doesn't explain why he stayed away or believed in Papel's reach to get to his wife and son.