All My Children Tribute Thread

[AMCHistory]

See I could not see Nick and Erica romantically linked after his pretty consistent appearances in 1993-95. He no longer played the role of lover for Erica, but moreso that of her Father. Mona called on Nick to help her with parental based crisis with Erica. Gone with the romantic sparks that got him so much trouble back in 1978 (plug for my old banner):

Then again, perhaps it could be argued that that is all Erica was looking for in a man: someone to fill the void left by her father.

[AMCHistory]

.. and thanks to the latest SOD, I have a picture of them from that time (though the quality was sub-par):

I remember it was Brooke who had spotted Dimitri in London in 1999. Everyone thought he was at Vadzel, but Brooke insisted she spotted him jumping into a a cab. Of course, Brooke's placing Dimitri in London helped to corroborate Alex Marick's claim to be the latest Countess Andrassy.

[AMCHistory]

Like mother like daughter; I always referred to Kendall as the town bicycle. Heck, Jonathan Lavery was in town all but two minutes before he hopped on for a ride.

Edited April 8, 2012 by AMCHistory

[Khan]

That's part of it. However, the other part is ... well ... it's like this: once upon a time, all you had to do to win Erica's heart was "show her a good time," to use the expression. You whisk her away to Paris, let's say, or you surprise her with a mink coat or a diamond ring, and she's yours. And it worked, really, because Erica was young(er), and more self-centered, and she equated materialistic displays of affection with sincere emotional attachment. Unfortunately, the problem with men like Jack and David (and please, I don't mean this disparagingly at all) in later years is that they would keep doing it, again and again, forgetting the fact that Erica could pretty much acquire that sort of stuff on her own.

But Nick...? See, Nick left Erica in '78, because he would indulge her and her childish games no longer. He was too old for that and had too much experience under his belt to put up with someone who was not ready to be a woman. However, by the time he did come around to proposing to Erica -- in '95, I think, or was it sooner? -- Erica had matured, however reluctantly, to a point in her life where she could appreciate the sort of marriage that Nick had wanted in the first place. Not that Nick wouldn't have been the ultra-romantic kind (really, think of it in terms of Lucci's own relationship with Helmut) but where the "old" Erica probably would have panicked at the first sign of things slowing down a bit, this Erica would have appreciated a quieter marriage that was built less on showy passion and more on mutual respect and stability.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Khan

[ellabelle]

^ I definitely think Erica matured over time, but I saw Nick as taking on more of a paternal role in Erica's life, to the point where them being physically intimate again would have felt very weird to watch.

It seemed, from the way things were written in 1999 and 2000 that TPTB were setting up an Erica/David/Dimitri/Alex mess of epic proportions. Erica was supposedly over Dimitri, but him getting closer to Brooke and then "dying" had Erica remembering only the good things about him and not all of the crap he did to her, which cast a huge shadow over her relationship with David, and then of course you had David saving Dimitri but keeping it from Erica and Alex, and you had Dimitri and Erica bonding over Bianca coming out while Alex was AWOL. It could have been a really interesting story to watch, had Michael Nader not been a raging drug addict. Maybe if he'd been able to get his act together and keep it together, we could have watched a great quadrangle story instead of the awfulness that was David/Dixie/Tad/Leslie Coulson.

[AMCHistory]

An Alex/Dimitri/Erica/David story would have been epic, especially with the proven chemistry with the actors in all four pairings (of course Vincent/Finola's was not discovered until her run as Anna). I as a viewer, did not pick-up on hints of this as David/Erica were broken up and she was spending a lot of time with Jackson again. I do remember Erica spending a lot of time at Wildwind again with Dimitri. Dimitri had grown to think of Bianca as his own daughter.

Oh Nader, always screwing up people's plans. Watching his Larry King interview made him come off as so unsympathetic. After his DUI, with his own daughter in the car, ABC paid for his rehab. ABC wanted to help him get better. The second time around, of course they are not going to provide the same level of support. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you. He was lucky Mark Consuelos had the kindness in his heart to pay for his rehab. I cannot believe a man of with a career as long and successful as Nader was broke and could not pay for his own recovery.

I wonder what if any relationship Mark has with Michael today. That would be one friendship I would not loose sleep over loosing.

My sentiments exactly. He became Mona's co-parent in the 90's.

[ellabelle]

A good portion of the Erica/David scenes are available on youtube if you're interested. When Erica got the news that Dimitri had supposedly died, David came over and comforted her as she talked about her memories of DImitri (complete with flashbacks), David took off work and spent the rest of the day with Erica after Dimitri's memorial service - they had a picnic and then ended up in a quaint bed and breakfast type place where they slept together for the first time... as their relationship went on, she constantly compared him to Dimitri, even getting angry with him for mentioning Gillian's prior slutty behavior because how dare he speak that way about someone in Dimitri's family.

Erica and David were officially broken up when Erica walked into his office and found Dimitri standing there, very much alive. She was beyond pissed that he was staying with Alex, so she trashed Alex's half of the office, and then David came in, they had a huge fight, and then they had hot sex on top of Alex's desk. Jack was spending more time around Erica because Bianca was there, but it was clearly David and Dimitri who held the bulk of her interest in fall 2000.

I always found Dimitri's interest in Bianca to be rather peculiar. It was sweet that he cared about her, even long after he and Erica had divorced for the last time, but it was odd considering how he treated his own children. He didn't have much of a relationship with Anton, and when Anton left Pine Valley, I don't think he was ever even really referenced again, despite being the firstborn son of a count. When he thought Maria was carrying his baby, he was fine with the child being raised as Edmund's and living the same destructive lie that his own father had made Edmund live. Despite planning to remarry Erica, he wasn't overly thrilled when Erica found out she was pregnant, and then when she miscarried and was beyond devastated over the loss, he had the gall to suggest that they just adopt instead barely a week or two after their baby died. I mean, I suppose there are some titled royalty who don't give a damn about having an heir, but the way Dimitri freaked out over having a brother and wanted to "protect" Wildwind and the Marick name from Edmund didn't really match how he seemed to react to the idea of fatherhood. So again, I thought it was odd how close he was to Bianca. Frankly, I also found it odd the way he pushed Erica to be a mother to Kendall and make her part of their family too. There was something vaguely creepy about the Dimitri/Kendall interactions with SMG's Kendall, well before she falsely accused him of rape.

[DRW50]

Didn't they initially not to bring Dimitri back and only backlash made them change their mind?

I was definitely surprised they never went back to Erica/Dimitri - I got the feeling they had been trying to write Dimitri out more than once, and things kept getting them in the way (for instance, I got the feeling they were going to kill him off in early 1998, until McTavish came back).

[AMCHistory]

Ellabelle, great observations about the Dimtiri/Bianca relationship. I think in both the case of Bianca and Kendall, he just wanted to be a good step-father. In this case, he really was a first-time father. Though he had cared for Anton as a ward, he did not get to grow close to him and spoil him as only a father does.

Just like a first time father, he did not know where to set limits in sucumbing to a child's demands. I think that is why he helped Kendall to the extent he did. He did not know at what point he needed to say, "no" until it is too late. With a child, not saying "no" probably results in a temper tantrum and tummy ache from eating too much candy. But with a 25+ year old, especially one as petulant as Kendall Hart, the concequences are much dire.

I think also the age that Dimitri was in Bianca's life played a big part in their closeness. Dimitri was there for 7+years of her childhood/adolosecents as 5th parent (I am counting Barbara, Travis, Erica, and Jackson in that number). It is a very formidable time for a child. This is not a man your mother married when you were 16 and you could just get in a car and drive away. She lived in his home for many summers and holidays in a row. When Bianca came back to Pine Valley in 2000 she remarked how much at home she felt at Wildwind, even moreso than at Linden because so much of her childhood was spent in the dark castle.

I have such a soft-spot for the non-traditional parental relationships on soaps because I think it an accurate portrayal of real-life. So often, you have the family you were given and the family you found. So was the case in Bianca and Dimitri, Benny and Phoebe, and Myrtle and Kelly/Lincoln.

[AMCHistory]

Yes, Nader was out the door. AMC used to jump the gun whenever they got bad press online about a character's impending departure. Robin Mattson was saved by a similar uproar. I am happy they grew out of that phase. Not I think ABC should ignore the voice of the customer, but fan bases became so rabid in the early 2000's, if you provided a high credence to their opinions, you would be even more hand-cuffed as a writer than they already are.

[DRW50]

I think AMC/ABC should have listened to fans more. Not always, but I would imagine that if they'd listened to fan reaction, stories like, "Let's kill off Stuart for no reason," and, "Why hello, the son I aborted during the Nixon administration," would not have happened.

[ellabelle]

You know, it's a fine line in terms of listening to fans. On the one hand, you don't want to alienate a huge fan base by writing off a beloved character, but on the other, if you listen to the fans too much, you get stuck in an endless loop of the same pairings because the show is listening to a small cadre of active fans who email, snail, mail, call, vote in polls and otherwise threaten to watch if their favorites aren't together... and when AMC listened to that, it stifled the show. How many years did we have Greenlee/Ryan over and over again? How many years did we watch Erica and Jack run in the same circle? How long did we watch Zach and Kendall go back and forth with each other? If one of those couples had been on an endless loop of get together, fall apart, it could have been bearable, but to have three doing it at the same time made the show feel stagnant, like the writers had no new ideas and no new pairings or plans in mind.

[Kylie]

But what fans should they have listened too? The rabids only wanted one couple and didn't give an ish about anyone else. We already had the Zendall hour, they did nothing for the show. We had the J&E time, they did nothing for ratings. And Tad and Dixie broke up, made up and she kept coming back from the dead more times than I can count. And still nothing. That IMo was listening to the fans. Or make that one who yelled the loudest, had time to write, organize campigns and present themselves as part of the masses. <----I truly believe that fanbases helped get the show cancelled, and they hold a large burden of AMC's failure on their shoulders, or better yet, at their fingertips.

You had the fans, actors from other shows, magazine columnists yelling from the top of our lungs how horrible Josh as the unabortion was and NO ONE cared. No one listened. You had Rylee, and while they never bothered me, the fans YELLED and screamed about them, but no one listened.

So I guess I don't really understand what they were supposed to listen to us about. We were only ever rabid, hating on them, going against what they were trying to write, or just plain being pains in the asses.

What then were we supposed to say and do that would make them listen? Or I guess, what were supposed say that was what they wanted to hear?

Edited April 8, 2012 by Kylie

[DRW50]

I'm not sure if Greenlee/Ryan had anything to do with active fan campaigns. I think that was all Frons.

True, but that only happened once. They were not put back together in 2006. They were close to being enemies, until a thawing out around the time she was about to die again. Their last reunion, the show had been canceled.

Organized fan campaigns may not have been the answer, but I think the show often just did whatever it wanted, even if fans would hate it, in the show's last years. For instance, they never did manage to properly address the whole Babe situation.

[AMCHistory]

I think what set apart the good HWs from the bad HWs is that they knew how to listen to fans; it is not something that has a clear set of rules or criteria. People may love a certain character, or couple, but if there is no organic story left, it may be time to move on. The integrity of the character has to come first. As you water that integrity down, or stretch the character out, he becomes unrecognizable and isolates the very viewers you once attempted to cater to.

I think back to the 1984 departure of Chuck Tyler. Donna and Chuck were a super couple. They had gone through it all, jealousy, psychosis, the loss of a child. They finally had a brief happily ever after, but it could not last. What would that have permitted either Donna or Chuck to do at that very point? Without the 5 year break that we got with RVV's departure, Chuck and Donna probably would have gone down as an overexposed super-couple, instead of a beloved case of kismet.