2 hours ago, alwaysAMC said:

Wow, this is an amazing read - thank you for posting! I had no idea that storyline mirrored a real life story. I also didn't realize those episodes were what won AMC the Best Writing Emmy that year, which was well-deserved.

I distinctly remember this storyline as a kid and it's a good reminder that I knew I was gay well before middle school at just age 11 (sometimes it amazes me at how young we really were with those thoughts/feelings). I had a big crush on Chris Bruno! 😅

Eric - have you published anything you wrote after interviewing the writers/cast members? Would love to read anything out there. Who did you get the chance to interview? That's such a great experience.

It was a complicated and weird project that my MA (in English lit no less) developed into--well half of it--a thesis and presentation about the gay storylines on Agnes Nixon soaps, with a focus on the Michael Delaney/Kevin Sheffield gay umbrella storyline on AMC. That was just one part of my overall topic which was about how much maligned "pulp" fiction forms, especially serials, going back to the 1860s "sensation serials" of Victorian England (Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, etc--two authors Agnes Nixon "borrowed" from directly BTW) always were at the forefront of telling stories with progressive social attitudes. But my grad advisor especially liked what I was writing about soap operas, and said that at the time it was expected in Academia to focus on an interdisciplinary model (in this case TV soaps would count) so told me to especially focus on that, and I did.

I made the Delaney/Sheffield storyline the main focus because I felt like other 1990s gay soap storylines on Nixon soaps (Billy Douglas on OLTL and Bianca on AMC) had been covered in academic writing before, but everyone kind of seemed to forgot about the earlier AMC storyline which had meant a lot to me as a teen--and I thought it was significant because it had been created as a true umbrella storyline, covering really almost all of Broderick's 90s run on AMC with--and this was confirmed to me--a concentrated effort to keep the characters and their stories on the air, despite ABC not really being so keen (speaking of McTavish causing characters to be written out, that's pretty much happened when she came back to AMC in the 90s with Kevin.)

I did get to do interviews (one by phone, the rest by email) with a number of the writers of that time (not Broderick though she was meant to get back to me, but not in time--but one of her associates who I'm not meant to name lol) as well as some of the actors (including Ben Monk who was very excited to talk about the story--very sad how he committed suicide just a few years after I talked to him.) I know I've sent a few people on here my thesis but if you're interested I can share it with you--there are things I'd like to change now, but I was very proud of it and it did extremely well for me academically (I even later was asked to present it at two different conferences in the US.) But as an AMC fan you probably know most of what I cover--I do have the saved interviews I conducted as well which often covered a lot of non relevant AMC related stuff, but I haven't sorted those out or shared them yet.

4 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Was it Henry? Wasn't there spec he was going to be Palmer's son?

Thanks. Never seen this. I'm glad he had a happier life than Michael Delaney did.

I can't help wondering how much more virulent the response to this story would be today. One of many reasons it won't happen.

RIGHT there was some Palmer connection apparently, though we didn't get as far as seeing any of that even hinted on screen I don't think.

And yes, since the storyline actually directly addressed what kids can be taught, specifically around gay issues, in school (and other things--remember how Trevor was shown as being so worried that Michael would take his nephew Timmy camping?) all things that I think a network soap would simply be told not to get into now..

12 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

It certainly was nice to introduce an Asian family (even if a rather stereotypical one)

"Look on the bright side," I once said. "At least they're not running a dry cleaner's."

45 minutes ago, Khan said:

"Look on the bright side," I once said. "At least they're not running a dry cleaner's."

😄