All My Children Tribute Thread

[Jonathan]

 

Please register in order to view this content

 

I forgot that Liza was horny for Cliff.  It would have been great to see Marcy Walker play this storyline.

[soapfave06]

Does anyone know of the character Betsy that Frank Grant dated? Is this Betsy Kennicot? 

[Jonathan]

 

There was a Betsy Kennicott but in looking at some online recaps, Betsy was mostly involved in the Wally-Devon storyline.  I don't see any mention of Betsy and Frank, although they probably crossed paths. The only time I remember watching Betsy was when she was trying to convince Sybil to leave town and leave Nina and Cliff alone.

[All My Shadows]

I can't imagine Betsy and Frank together. Perhaps there was a minor character named Betsy that he dated before Betsy Kennicott came along?

[Jonathan]

I wish in its later years, All My Children rebuilt some of its legacy families like the Tylers and Kennicotts.  I know these families ran its course by the late 80s, but it would have been nice to re-introduce these families. 

 

My last memory of a Kennicott was of that very bland Katie who had a brief fling with Joey (Jake) Martin.  She was all sorts of awful.

 

The show made an attempt to revitalize the Cortlandts with the addition of Caleb, but Michael Nouri lacked charisma and his character failed to become a romantic partner for Erica.

 

I said this previously, but it would have been nice if Mona had siblings, so that Erica would have some family outside of her bratty children and children's children.

 

[All My Shadows]

Yes, I totally agree, especially since Phoebe was so proud of her family's history in PV. They introduced Brooke at just the right time to slowly integrate her into the cast and make her Phoebe's tie to the core of the show throughout the 80s and 90s. They might have also had Anne and Paul's daughter Beth Martin live - would she have been the only true link between the two original core families? Even if they'd had her raised by Paul off-screen, they could have avoided SORAS and had her be a major player in the late 90s and into the 2000s.

I do wonder if we ever saw more of the Kennicotts as a family unit. It seems like they were never on all at once - you had Mary, then Dan, then Betsy, then Katie. I think there was overlap with Dan and Betsy.

Not further exploring Mona's family is easily one of the show's biggest missteps. I think we've mentioned it before, but did we ever even hear Mona's maiden name? I'm sure it might've been mentioned during the first five years, but her family was a complete blank slate. Any writer at any point could have taken advantage of that, but no one ever did, and it's not like this was some obscure branch of the show's history. It's Erica's family!

[Jonathan]

 

Yeah, Phoebe was so proud that the English family was a founding family of Pine Valley.  It would have been great to bring more English characters to the canvas.

 

OMG, I have vented here so many times about not knowing Mona's maiden name.  And it drove me crazy that Mona herself referred to Erica and her daughters as "Kane" women (that mirror scene right before Erica's wedding to Dimitri).  Yeah, I understand that we're talking about THE ERICA KANE, so any other name attached to her would be a little jarring, but Mona hated Eric so much, that it didn't make sense that she would be so proud to be a "Kane."

 

Also, I think the show missed an opportunity to bring Mark back into the fold once Mona passed away.  Mark and Erica had a very special brother-sister bond and I felt she needed a relationship like that to help as a sounding board.

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Jonathan

[rlj]

Frank dated and I do believe married scheming nurse Caroline!

[All My Shadows]

Yep, they were married by September 1978 and were guests at Erica and Tom’s wedding, where Frank tried to throw some weak ass shade at Erica over being late to her own wedding. They’re at around 1:20.

Please register in order to view this content

 

[Jonathan]

 

 

 

What made nurse Caroline a schemer? 

[soapfave06]

Thanks, guys! I'll have to find it but there are some recaps from a Nancy/Russ/Frank/Betsy quadrangle. I'm sure it was mostly backburner but Frank turns to Betsy at some point throughout being jealous over Nancy and Russ. 

 

Caroline was scheming over the secret of Nancy's paternity of Carl, with Frank being the father and not Carl Blair who had died. Not sure if she just kept mum or was an actual schemer from just reading recaps though. 

 

I hate that Carl and Frankie could not co-exist. Of course I wasn't watching then but I love, love, love the Hubbards and they erased everything with Nancy/Carl/Frank so on. 

[SFK]

@All My Shadows @Jonathan

 

I'm not sure that we ever learned Mona's maiden name, but remember the (major downgrade) 25th anniversary white linen opening? An engraved locket would appear by Erica's picture frame that appeared to have the initials MSK (the K being in the middle as it's a woman's monogram). I liked to think that the S may have stood for Mona's maiden name if not just her middle name. I dunno, it's a mystery. Also, in that article where we see that Erica's middle name is Louise, Susan makes mention of her stepmother and baby sister with different names than Goldie and Silver. I had no idea that the show mentioned these relations in the early days.

 

We've talked about this over the years, and I'm another one who thinks Erica should have had a lot more family, from either side. It almost baffles me that she didn't. I think a cousin or even a young aunt who was about the same age would have been fun, I am a total sucker for the Alexis/Sable relationship and that could have been fun with an actress like Sharon Gabet.

[All My Shadows]

We need to nominate, vote, and officially bestow a maiden name upon Mrs. Mona S_______ Kane Tyler, then. Something classic but not boring, unassuming but not without a little bite. I have some ideas that I shall keep to myself for now.

It would have been interesting to give her a long-term foe who was older than her. All of her major rivals were near her age or younger. Queen Margo Flax and Sara Kingsley are the only two that I can think of who were older. She and Ellen weren't the best of friends, but I don't recall them having many reasons to sling at each other. I don't count Phoebe because any words they shared were really extensions of Phoebe vs. Mona and Brooke vs. Erica.

 

You could really go in any direction with Mona's family. Were they embarrassingly poor and low-class, explaining why Mona and Erica had no regular contact with them? Were they even richer than the Tylers, looking down on Mona for not being woman enough to keep Eric and ending up as a single mom? I've wondered these things from the moment we saw Erica's "birth" in the ABC finale. Who else was there? What was Mona's mother like? Did Erica ever know them as a little girl? Can you imagine a Margaret Hamilton type as Erica's grandmother who proves that "it skips a generation" and is brutally critical of all of Erica's crap?

Any of these options would have given Fra Heflin some good stuff to play besides flopping her hair around and giving us "Oh Erica!"

[Jonathan]

 

Interesting.  I never paid attention to the locket.  Watching it on YouTube, it's hard to decipher the initials since the video quality is downgraded.

 

Susan references Diana Blaine?  Was that supposed to be Goldie?  I thought Susan was actually referring to an actress who played Goldie, which I guess doesn't make sense.

[Jonathan]

 

Please register in order to view this content

  I have some ideas too.  I wish Agnes Nixon was still alive.  It would be great to get her own point of view on Mona's family.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Jonathan