All My Children Tribute Thread

[Efulton]

I finished reading whatever you want to call that thing McTavish wrote. Even if everything she said was true every word she wrote was dripping in bitterness and nastiness. It proved to me that everything said and speculated about her was true.  But damn I really enjoyed all the tea and shade.

Edited March 16 by Efulton

[Maxim]

One thing I want to say... Even if all of this happened and Megan was telling 10000 percent of the truth... Girl... the way she is telling it

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... with the toxic personal life remarks, backhanded compliments and fixation on people's bodies, plastic surgery and etc... while she is trying to "roast" the entire industry... she is unintendedly revealing too much about herself. There is a way to tell a story like this, without being so trashy and cheap. It reads like the most vile yellow tabloid. Really. I am not saying I didn't enjoy it (like a girl enjoys McDonalds from time to time)... but in the end I was left feeling like I overate with something nasty and fried and I can't turn back time... She wanted to appear snappy and witty, but in the end... you end up feeling even more sympathy for the people she worked with - Agnes, Susan etc. 

But... I wish someone crazy finds this and pitches it for a short-series. This is the type of mess that I want to see re-enacted.   

 

[Vee]

This is bad (particularly poor frumpy Liza being treated like the ugly one), as was virtually everything about the brief Rayfield/Cascio Frons' vision on steroids era that preceded Megan's return - I had never seen the show more unrecognizable and bizarre to me, and never would. But I will raise you and give you this video (timestamped), which features the unbelievably annoying original song I had almost convinced myself I'd imagined for the last 22 years until now. "Fuuuusionnnn! What women want!!"

 

 

[Jonathan]

 

I completely agree with everything said. In her memoir, Megan McTavish presents herself as the smartest person in the room, and also comes across as overly bitter. Her tone suggests a "it wasn't me, it was them" attitude, deflecting responsibility for any shortcomings. Furthermore, she uses her writing as a tool for vindictiveness, particularly targeting James Kiberd and Cady McClain—regardless of what they may or may not have done. This approach undermines McTavish's credibility and makes the memoir feel more like a personal vendetta than an honest reflection.

[Franko]

Seeing those Fusion clips just makes me want to throw several buckets of dirty mop water.

[Contessa Donatella]

When I think about her writing, here & also at GL, I think: problems with boundaries, with knowing what is too much or pushing too far, questionable judgment as to good taste & many times she is just mean-spirited, right? To me all of that also shows up in her memoir. So what she wrote about fictional characters informs what she writes about herself & others from her POV. And vice versa. I mean, it all fits. Whether every word is both true & accurate? Who knows? And, do I really care? Why would I? I do not have a high opinion of her as a writer.  Didn't before & still do not. There's no need for me to be concerned about my opinion of her as a person. 

[alwaysAMC]

 

This bolded part - what storylines were going on during their short era/what years were these?  I watched during that time, but can't recall which ones they did that were so ridiculous.  

[Jonathan]

I just can't. What were the powers that be thinking with Fusion? "We need to be more like Sex and the City! We need to be more like Lipstick Jungle!" Why couldn't they just relax and let the show be itself?

[Vee]

They brought on Alexandra Daddario as J.R.'s insta-girlfriend Laurie, as well as Seyfried as Joni who fared a bit better. (Daddario could not act back then.) But both came out of nowhere and had a series of Saved by the Bell-style teen plots with the terrible off-brand J.R. recast of the time (I think it was poor Andrew Ridings, who was wooden in the role) and whoever played Jamie - I can't remember, there was a rotating series. There were a few weird episodes devoted to these new insta-teens and maybe Brooke, Adam and Liza? sitting around a movie theater, which I found very strange (and again, straight out of an actual SBTB episode IIRC). There was the very hard, sudden Fusion push lumping all the women under 50 together in one office/job, and the massive push beyond Frons' new chosen leading men with each female lead - the remarkably terrible Carlos for Greenlee, the early, vaguely effeminate and very weird Michael Cambias for Kendall who came off too old for her, Boyd(!), etc. Like Fusion, the new men came out of nowhere and were promoted at this time as a singular unit in advertising - 'these are our new leads'.

The truly unfortunate Henry Chin thing others have mentioned was, I think, around this time and he was among the above males, which was too bad bc I liked Henry. (Did no one consider the optics of naming a AAPI family 'the Chins' and having them run a Chinese restaurant?) The endless intrigues of Cambias, Lena, etc. began to take over the show out of nowhere.

There's more craziness but that's what I can remember offhand. The very sudden, very forceful stuff with Fusion, the teens, etc. felt so foreign to the show for me. It did not feel like I was watching All My Children. I remember being surprised any time I'd actually see Erica, Tad, Adam, etc. Like 'what are you doing here?'

Both the videos above are from this period IIRC. It was very late 2002 to maybe summer '03.

Edited March 16 by Vee

[Liberty City]

It'd either be Micah Alberti or Justin Bruening around this time.

[Vee]

It was Alberti, and he was not great. Bruening came later.

[Liberty City]

Alberti & Andrew Ridings came in as quick as they went out, and then Bruening & Jacob Young really stepped right in and fixed the roles up.

[alwaysAMC]

Ohhh - wow, you're right - if all that happened together, then it was horrible.  I remember each of those names and storylines, but didn't remember they all happened at the same time.  That truly was a weird period of AMC.  

Thanks for all the details there!

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[Khan]

ICAM, @Jonathan!

With her memoir, McTavish had an opportunity, not to point fingers, but to take an honest, unflinching look at her career and examine some of her successes (and why they succeeded) as well as some of her failures (and why they failed).  "Regardless of who rewrote what," she might've said, "the buck ultimately stopped with me." 

She could've even retraced the steps that led her to her gig as the head writer for her "favorite soap" - and by the way, I know THAT ain't true, because I still remember when McTavish mentioned being an avid EON fan - and showed how everything that had happened in her life - from her childhood in New England and/or Illinois (which is it, Megan?), to her college days at Northwestern, to her early career as an actress, including her role as Lola Fontaine on GL - prepared her for the work; and how we, too, can achieve the job/career of our dreams.

Instead, McTavish chose to waste 70-plus pages on deflecting criticism of and blame for her shitty story ideas, as well as on spilling tea about a lot of people who, in many cases, didn't deserve their names being tarnished, and who actually come off looking more sympathetic than the heffa talkin' [!@#$%^&*] about them.  (If Susan Lucci was paranoid about her age and job security on AMC, she had every right to be.  And I say that as someone who still remembers when practically the entire soap press was touting Sarah Michelle Gellar as the NEW Susan Lucci.)

All in all, McTavish's memoir is the most disgusting thing I've read from any soap scribe since the time Elizabeth Page wanted people to feel sorry that she couldn't afford $400 haircuts while she and the rest of the Writers' Guild were on strike.

[DRW50]

It was interesting to me how she took great pains to make sure everyone knew she didn't want to kill Dixie, but when she did, she made sure to have fun with it. 

Other than the many shots she gets in at Susan Lucci, she seems to save most of her invective toward writers and producers. I guess because these were the people (Lucci included) she felt hurt her and were against her, whereas the actors were just vessels. Her strongest actor hate seems to be Kiberd, which, if any of the stuff is true, I guess I get, but it shouldn't have been taken out on Trevor, who was always loved by many fans.