All My Children Tribute Thread

[Maxim]

Guys do we know who was writing the show while this 1988 Strike was going on. I'm in April and the material is amazing. 

Of course I'm still in the beginning of the Strike period, so there is time for my opinion to change. I am not even sure if these are not the episodes BEFORE the strike begins (I know that shows are written in advance... so I have no idea when the ACTUAL Strike stuff is beginning to air)... since the episodes I'm watching don't have ending credits recorded. 

[DRW50]

IIRC, one of the clear signs of the strike being near is Nixon wrote Brooke/Adam/Cindy/Stuart wrote out for an extended period.

[Maxim]

Then I must be still watching material written pre-Strike. Because Cindy, Brooke...etc... are still all here and front and center. That would explain why I glimpsed Lorraine Broderick's name at the end of an episode somewhere mid-March, as I recall.  Thank you! Then I just hope to God the strike material doesn't ruin this incredible acceleration of drama. If I considered myself very interested with the show watching late January to late February (when everything started working for me), then right now... you can officially consider me a FAN. 

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[Efulton]

Thank you!

[slick jones]

Rosemary Murphy (see hoppers) is credited as Eileen Kennicott in 1970. I assume she was Mary's mother ( as well as Dan, Betsy and Katie's). It's an imdb credit so I fare it's 50-50 unless someone who was watching can confirm it.

@vetsoapfan -- any early AMC recollections?

 

[Maxim]

Oh my!  Miss Snake's mask fell for a moment... when Erica's brother recognized her as this girl that had a crush on him in high school.  Travis found out that she has some kind of connection to the family and Miss Snake panicked. 

Loved the moment when Erica glimpsed her back at the airport and said "Reminded me of someone from my past."

 

[vetsoapfan]

I have no memory whatsoever of Rosemary Murphy playing a Kennicott on AMC in 1970.

Didn't the kids arrive in 1971-2? 

Curiously, my mind is telling me that Murphy played Mark Dalton's mother in the later 1970s.

Hmmm. Let me think about this a bit.

[Maxim]

OK. Silver faked getting raped so that she can capture Jeremy's attention!!!

With this cliffhanger ending of the "April 8th, 1988" episode... I pressed the turn off button of the TV, because I knew I had it in me to lie to my boss that I'm sick and continue watching to oblivion.

This show has managed to shock me, to make me laugh, cry and not able to stop watching. Beating a personal record of binge watching for sure. In just 3 weeks I've devoured 3 months worth of material. Not proud of myself, but not ashamed either.

God bless the VCR and the people who recorded these shows.

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That's how they continue to live on.

 

 

Edited February 7 by Maxim

[Contessa Donatella]

Clearly the devil sitting on your left shoulder whispering to you about what is about to happen in Pine Valley has all the advantages over that poor angel sitting on your right shoulder suggesting silly things like getting some sleep because it would be good for you.

[Maxim]

That Devil is called La Lucci.

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[Contessa Donatella]

But, of course! It could be none other. 

[Contessa Donatella]

I just watched, for the first time, AMC 1-4-1988. Lauren Holley looks so young. (Julie) Myrtle looks fabulous!!! Phoebe, the same, never changes. Stuart is in love & he is so happy! Skye is obsessed with telling Stuart about AIDS transmission. She's decided her dad, Adam should be the one to tell Stuart. But, Cindy beat them to the punch. She just told Stuart that she has AIDS & that she got it from her husband, who was an addict. She also told tiny Scott that his dad got very sick & died. This episode had no closing credits, who wrote this?  Mark & Ellen seem romantic. When Ellen saw Julie she gasped. Now they have talked & promised no more secrets between them, so Ellen told Julie that Mark is her biological father but Julie does not believe her, It was so weird seeing the length at 44:24. I'm not sure how Tom fits in. Someone, a young girl, is moving out to a trailer & Phoebe is furious with her. But, then, she would be.

So, that happened. And I enjoyed it immensely. Going along with Maxim, I give it a 9.3/10.

[Maxim]

I'm so glad you've started to watch darling. I feel partly responsible. Wink-wink. I am looking forward to reading your impressions.  

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[Contessa Donatella]

Well you are partly responsible! Don't even need to wink. LOL!! 

[EricMontreal22]

Yes, I believe in her unfinished soap memoirs, McTavish makes those claims, and mentions that Nixon did have an "executive" credit (well uncredited credit.)  She certainly was at meetings like I said--I think she only stopped regularly going during McTavish's second infamous run (and of course she then briefly replaced her for the Bianca story, etc)  (It was only under Pratt that Nixon was actually officially BANNED from attending those meetings and "interfering" with suggestions.)

McTavish was a flashy writer but the balance was still solid in the early-mid 90s (so says me--of course that was when I firmly became a soap obsessed fan) and ratings held steady until the end of her run when it was Behr who was looking for any opportunity to get her pushed out.  (And there started to be one too many doppelganger stories, the bomb stuff, etc.)

However, I am firmly of the belief Who Killed Will was McTavish (and I did love that mystery at the time.)  It seems like her, for one thing, and...  McTavish repeated so many of the same story beats for her Who Killed Michael Cambias mystery (that Eden Reigel mentioned at that same panel) when she returned for her third stint (which actually started off... kinda good?  Her third stint I mean.)

But Janet herself was Nixon I'm sure--it seems like Nixon at her most soapy OTT, and it led to the whole Natalie in the Well (on the formerly unknown Wildwind estate) and the whole Gothic Wildwind storyline (Angelique in the attic, etc) that we were discussing is classic Gothic Nixon.

In the last (and maybe only) Washam interview (is it still online? I'd love to re-read it) he basically said that he just REALLY did not like that woman.  I think she tended to just railroad over the other writers, is the impression I got.  I assume Broderick felt the same.

In that same interview Washam says he didn't write a single thing for GL.  Broderick, because she's such a great lady, gave him the job because he needed something like 6-12 more months of steady WGA soap writing work to get a full pension, so she just had him on the GL staff long enough so he could get that.

Let me echo everyone else's sentiments, that it's tons of fun to read your recaps/reactions and how much you're loving the show.  I'm not sure how many more consecutive episodes are up--I haven't checked on YT in years (partly because I know I don't have time to revisit it all right now, and the temptation is big) but you have years of good stuff to go.  (I did run across a Margaret DePriest episode recently and it wasn't bad... But you could tell she had the mandate to make the episode much more "action")

For anyone interested, in the Loving/The City thread we got talking about crossovers (specifically the 1992 AMC/Loving crossover that got me hooked on Loving too) and I posted scans of the pages from the 1998 AMC trivia book that covered (most) of the crossovers AMC has had with the other ABC soaps (they don't mention OLTL's Anna Wolek visiting her "good friend" Joe Martin in the early months of AMC--which you can see in one of the 1970 episodes on Youtube.)

Edited February 8 by EricMontreal22