All My Children Tribute Thread

[Angela]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mla2KdRz2tY

[ellabelle]

I enjoyed the Cambias storyline, but I felt like it was really missing a connection with Kendall and Erica. They were headed that direction with Michael going after Kendall and Kendall beginning to have an idea of what Erica must have felt, and then with Kendall trying to reach Erica during her flashback and with them bonding when Erica came out of it. Once the rape came to light and Bianca found out she was pregnant, I felt like the bonding opportunity between Kendall and Erica was set aside in favor of Kendall/Bianca bonding, and that Erica's affection for Kendall came out of what Kendall was willing to do for Bianca (aka the Golden Child).

If Kendall had been the victim, it could have resulted in some really powerful scenes with Erica encouraging her to end the pregnancy, and Kendall feeling like she was being asked to get rid of herself. At the same time, she would have understood exactly where Erica was coming from and why being pregnant from rape was such a difficult thing for Erica to endure, especially at 14. Plus, we could have had an actual lesbian love story with Bianca and Lena because Binx wasn't busy dealing with rape and pregnancy.

My main complaint though with the story as it played out is that it feels obvious that the plan was shifted and re-done midway through the murder aftermath. In the scenes from September and October 2003, David and Erica have already told the police 1. that they chemically castrated Michael Cambias and 2. that they couldn't possibly have killed him because they were making love all night afterward. If ALL they did was slip him a castration drug, then why pretend to be lovers? They'd already admitted the drug to the police! In those two months, David offers to fall on his sword and protect Erica no matter what, even to go to jail for her. They hint repeatedly that either they killed Michael or that Erica killed him and David helped her dispose of the body. Erica goes on to David about how much she needs him and how Bianca needs him as a father figure, in front of Bianca, and it seems clear that the writers are positioning him as a key part of Erica and Bianca's lives as this investigation unfolds. Then suddenly it switches gears, and by Thanksgiving he's telling her that he knows she's not over Jack, and he's being pushed to the background in favor of another round of Jack and Erica, and Bianca is now the killer.

I think a much more compelling story could have been told with Erica as the shooter, Kendall going on trial and there being doubt over whether Erica actually killed him in self-defense as she claims or whether she shot him because he raped her daughter (a la John Grisham's A Time to Kill), with David as the one who got there just as Erica shot Michael and then hung him in a meat locker. Let's face it, hanging Cambias in a meat locker like that had David Hayward written all over it. That's not something you'd expect Reggie and Kendall to think of on their own. You could have still had Kendall's fake pregnancy and Erica being unable to remember all of the facts about that night, and you could have still had Adam and Palmer witnessing Erica either going in there with a gun or David getting Erica out of there. (Although I have to admit, the whole scene on the corporate jet where Opal and Tad confront Adam and Palmer about what they did that night, and Palmer claiming he shot Adam because Adam accused him of dyeing his eyebrows was hilarious).

[Angela]

I have always been a little conflicted about the switch from Kendall and Erica to Kendall and Bianca. I really was pleasantly surprised by just how much I liked the Kendall and Bianca dynamic (the clinic scene is one of my all-time favorite scenes ever on a soap), but it was Erica and Kendall bonding that I - and so many others - had waited for all those years. McTavish did give "a side" of Kendall and Erica. In addition, she also did manage to extend the Erica and Kendall issues (the love-hate pull and push) and I'm always pleased when you can extend that sort of entertaining conflict for as long as AMC managed to. I don't know that it can be said that Erica solely decided she loved Kendall on protecting Bianca. They had been bonding off and on and uneasy during the other writers reign. And it wasn't suddenly just rainbows and crazy love once Erica said "I love you." I actually had wanted more in terms of seeing the words being translated into actions but McTavish had moved on.

I'm a little less conflicted about the switch from Kendall to Bianca for the rape. I think I'm glad they switched the rape from Kendall to Bianca. It gave Kendall an extra few years of being feisty and bitchy. Had she been the rape victim, I don't know if that would have remained the case. On soaps or really on any genre, the rape victim is often castrated. It's often used as a tool to teach a "bad girl who likes sex" a lesson in some ways. The thing with Bianca is they literally turned her rape into a storyline about love or a love-story (the entire town coming together for a mutual cause) - something they wouldn't have been able to write with Kendall as the victim. Bianca could have easily gone from the end of the rape story to a romance with Lena as their was no stigma due to Bianca not changing much and the story moving so far from rape in a lot of ways. The writers instead went to the baby-switch with Frons prodding. A baby-death and Bianca was now crushing on the straight Babe and her baby, "Bess."

I never really felt they were staging David as a significant part of this story. It was always clearly a Kane women story with the possible love interests for all of them being of a rather distant secondary importance. They just wanted everybody to be a suspect but with the clear indication that it was either Erica or Bianca who did the murder (and forgot it) due to Kendall doing this huge cover up with Boyd's help from the start.

[ellabelle]

Oh I agree that it was always a Kane woman story, but I felt like David was originally planned to spend a lot more time in the forefront than he did. Then they had to go and make him Babe's father which was possibly the most character-wrecking twist ever.

One of the reasons I think Kendall would have made a more interesting victim is because rape is so often a matter of he said/she said. With Bianca as the victim, Michael got away with it because there was no evidence. Had she gone straight to the hospital, her being a virginal lesbian would have made the rape and the issue of guilt from a legal perspective a lot more straight-forward, at least IMHO (not a lawyer). On one hand, it was kind of cool to see the whole town come together to support this young lesbian woman, but on the other, I think it could have been interesting (and rather true to life) to see people wondering if Kendall made up the rape because Michael took ownership of Fusion and she was trying to get him back, or having people not believe her because she was romantically involved with him before, etc. Plus you had the history of SMG's Kendall being convinced that Erica made up the rape because that's what Richard Fields told her, and it could have been good drama for Kendall to 'remember' that and struggle with the idea of people not believing her when she contributed to the idea that Erica was lying about her own rape.

But you are right that writers often use rape to "neuter" a strong female character, and AMC in particular was really bad about de-fanging the bitchy female characters. It would have taken an awful lot of good writing to have Kendall as the rape victim and still have her come out of it with her Kane-ness intact.

Still, I keep going back to the idea of Kendall getting pregnant and realizing how hard it must have been for Erica. Can you imagine the drama involved with Kendall feeling torn between ending the pregnancy and feeling like doing so would earn Erica's respect for making the choice Erica wanted but wasn't allowed to make and wanting the baby because ending the pregnancy would feel like she was rejecting a part of herself for the same reasons Erica had rejected her? Holy run-on sentence. Sorry. Ah... there were so many good what-ifs with that story. It's a shame it all ended with that awful baby switch and the takeover of the show by the Carey women.

[Angela]

I do agree. It could have been really interesting (complicated) if they went with the original plan as well: Kendall. There would have been lot more internal and external conflict for many of the characters in terms of the story pillars of rape stories and with the character histories.

I thought Bianca was the less predictable choice though. I like that they turned a rape story into a love story. The rapist remained the vile, evil villain despite the terminology "love story." I liked that it wasn't your normal rape story and it was more about coming together and made stronger rather than being torn apart and made weaker (well until the long-lasting babyswitch) even though there was a certain simplification to it all. As I've said, I just know, for me, ultimately it wouldn't have been worth Kendall's early neutering. The chances that it would have been a considerable neutering - even with a great writer at the helm - were too high. That all adds up to why I really can't muster up considerable conflict over the choice. There are definitely times I go "what if...?"

ETA:

I do think there was a change in the Erica and David story, though, I agree. It sort of reminds me of what happened with Ryan/Kendall/Greenlee. You really felt McTavish was going for Kendall & Ryan and then it was suddenly all about Ryan & Greenlee (not that I'm comparing Jack and Erica the abysmal Rylee) and it was odd. I don't think it was the Cambias-story aspects that were changed, obviously, as much I think it was how far they were originally planning on taking David and Erica as a pairing. I wonder if the change was all McTavish or network dictated.

[ghfan89]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd_bXxHiEkM

[ellabelle]

There are so many points along the way during AMC's history when I wish I could sit down with the head writer or the EP and say, "What was the plan here? Why did you guys change the story? Did you ever think about doing X? What made you decide to do Y?"

The list of things I'd like to know is long, very long.

[allmc2008]

Keep the Janet Clips Rolling People!!!!

[DRW50]

Erica's line to Adam about her three-inch heels, ready to grind into him if he doesn't stop touching her hand, makes me laugh.

I notice that I find Trevor far more annoying in his earlier years than I did later on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QDU9WzevTw

[EricMontreal22]

WHat's the story on Lois Sloane? I found a listing saying she was part of the original cast--and I know she was played by a black actress... Was she just someone in the hospital or something? The Grants weren't till 71 or 72 I believe.

[EnglishTea]

I actually think interviews with HWs on stories that they wanted to happen, but didn't or had to be changed because of X,Y and Z would be very interesting for one of the magazines to tackle - it would actually make me purchase the magazine.

[EricMontreal22]

I think McTavish was fairly heavily involved throughout 92, myself. Some even have suggested Natalie in the well (late '91) was her idea--but the Will Cortland murder mystery (which I loved) is very McTavish (when she's at her best)--of courseshe tried to replicate a lot of it for the less successful Michael Cambias mystery.

You mostly only tend to get stories like that when a writer decides they never want to work in soaps again--otherwise they *usually* are pretty guarded.

[EricMontreal22]

I forgot Wisner was still on the writing team in '91. So many of the characters featured here were out just a few months later--like Charlie, Joey, Emily Ann (is she still in an insane asylum?)

[Cheap21]

Haha, did you guys get this right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDcGKAKih5U

[EnglishTea]

I think that is one of the main problems with McTavish - she may tell a great story once, but her replications usually don't work. The original Wildwind saga (great), which started with Angelique, I think had a lot of MM in it... but then shortly afterward, she had no real story for Edmund/Maria, and the addition of Kelsey into the baby saga felt like a poor man's version of Brooke/Adam/Dixie, and Covina felt like a complete crap version of Edmund's struggle to prove he was a Marick.