Jump to content

All My Children Tribute Thread


Toups

Recommended Posts

  • Members

HT ( I dont think she was going by Hunter back the) played Robin McCall , a new love interest for Greg and the character had a past with Tad., and then became involved with Matt Connelly (MT) Nina's Ex!

That AA actress in that clip is Vanessa Bell Galloway, who played Yvonne Caldwell a singer Jesse Hubbard was managing, and the character was an interloper in the Jesse/Angie marriage!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 10.3k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

  • Members

IIRC, Robin McCall (a name I love, by the way) was a con artist. Not only did they "test" her with Greg (then portrayed by Jack Armstrong) and Tad (in fact, wasn't she at least partly responsible for Tad and Hillary's breakup?), but yes, they did so with Michael Tylo's character, Matt Connolly, as well.

As Carl said, though, this was a rather shaky time for AMC, as many characters who'd been front-burner for so long were either being phased out (by death or simply leaving town) or shifted to the back-burner. AMC really wouldn't get back on its feet until 1989-90.

Vanessa Bell Calloway should be on Y&R right now, either as Yarmony's AA sponsor, or as Sofia's sister.

Edited by Khan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

^ SMG really rocked the bitter, angry Kendall. I remember watching her back in the day and waiting for her to whip out a weapon and start offing people. ohmy.png

I also often wondered if Kendall had some sort of deep dark secret or had experienced some sort of trauma that made her so bitter and angry because it really was out of proportion for what had happened in her life. Yes, she was adopted, and yeah, I get it that she felt abandoned by a mother who later became rich and famous, but if Kendall was such a fan of Erica's, she had to have been able to do basic math and see from Erica's bio + her adoption papers that Erica was 14 when she was born. I mean, at 14, it's not like parenting was a reasonable option, and it's not like Erica would have been given much of a say in the matter, not the way adoption was generally handled back then. I mean, at worst Kendall could have assumed that her birth mother was a teenage slut. Yet she was SO angry when she came to town, and she went out of her way to try to make Erica miserable. I also get her being curious about her birth father too, but once Erica told her she'd been raped, I still don't understand why she would have been remotely curious about Richard Fields. I remember him insisting that he'd never raped anyone, and that it was consensual. Hello - Kendall, your mother was 14, and he was a grown man!

I always felt like Kendall's anger was never really explained, and it would have made more sense if we'd found out that her adoptive parents were abusive or that she'd suffered some sort of severe trauma because of the adoption.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

You're right. I think it's some type of easily accepted cliche that any adopted child must be bitter and damaged.

In some ways I'm still surprised they got this story through. It's one of the most jolting and ugly stories ever for a leading heroine on a soap, especially since it wasn't something that went away after a few months. I wonder if that's one of the reasons why AMC seemed to forget Kendall for years after SMG left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I liked how the show touched upon Kendall's guilt feelings when Bill passed away. It was a brief and subtle way of driving home the point that Kendall's obsession with her birth parents made her lose sight of the love and support of her adoptive parents, which is all she ever knew. Too late now, but perhaps AMC could have found an interesting character and B-plot in one of Kendall's adoptive cousins who she grew up close to who decided to move to PV to be with her BFF cousin who was now entrenched in her life as THE Erica Kane's daughter... I'm reminded of Anna Nicole's toothless cousin who'd show up at Anna's door unannounced and Anna would turn her way because she was s beyond *that*, and the cousin just wanted to know the Vicki she grew up with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

SFK, on another board some of us were discussing ideas for plots for AMC 2.0 (before PP threw in the towel), and my idea was to have a teenage relative of Kendall's adoptive mother come live with her. I was envisioning that Alice Hart had taken in her niece after her own sister died, and was raising the child, but then Alice died and left guardianship of the girl to Kendall. Kendall and Zach would then get saddled with a teenage girl who on the surface was a total brat and hated Kendall for turning her back on Alice and the family who raised her, but who deep down was also suffering from the loss of not one but two mothers. I was picturing her totally hating Erica and Bianca and not wanting to live in PV at all, and yet Erica really relating to her because of the loss of her own mother. Kendall would have to deal with her guilt over abandoning her adoptive family, she and Zach could have great discussions over trying to figure out who you are, and it would give them both some insight into what they're likely going to face when Gabby grows up and realizes that her uncle is really her dad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

That video is why I had always liked Kendall even with SMG. Erica was just over the top cruel in the way she talked to her. She compared her to her evil father around five times in ONE episode.

I don't think that this is what AMC was doing here. Between Tad and Sam and Kendall, they've shown the many sides of adoption. A lot of kids are happy, a lot of kids carry an intense feeling of rejection no matter how great they were treated.

On a philosopical note, I think how your biological mother is during the pregnancy affects the unborn childs psyche. I can just look at my sisters kids and see there's truth to that. She was in emotional turmoil and violent during her first pregnancy and completely laid back during the other two. For completely understandable reasons, Erica was completely disconnected and unhappy during her pregnancy with Kendall. Rejection since the womb. On the more crafting notes, Kendall learned she was adopted when she was a teenager and Bill and Alice wouldn't admit it for anything. For Kendall that came off like it was something they really wanted to hide because something was wrong with her and her being adopted. It built on the feeling of not fitting in. Of course, it was probably that the parents thought of her as their own and just didn't want anything to come between that. Then Kendall met Erica and she was looking to finally fill that void she'd probably been born with but it really, really didn't work out.

I thought the entire Erica and Kendall story was very well crafted from beginning to end but if you just looked at it in the surface you missed a lot and just saw two royal bitches being selfish. I absolutely loved how long they allowed the often misguided anger to go on between them because you don't see that on soaps. It may have been misguided but it was coming from scars. It was coming from an understandable place.

That would have been interesting story to do. I had always felt it was long past due to bring back something from her past, be it her other mother or something like this - a cousin.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I love your idea ellabelle. Yeah, I've always been fond of the idea of tapping into less traditional family ties on a soap, e.g., cousins, aunts/uncles, opposed to long-lost twins or insta-siblings (which OLTL just *loves* to do... on the other hand, in the past the show gave us Viki's aunt Gwendolyn, cousins Richard and Powell). I think there's the potential for more shaded, psychological, character driven writing that way. I always find it interesting when I look at my own family, contrasting the way my mother and her siblings are to the way their different sets of first cousins are.

I really loved the original Kendall s/l the same way I loved OLTL's DID s/l. IMO, that type of dark family drama never gets old. It can certainly get ruined with a bunch of rewrites, but when done well, there's nothing like it. I would have kept more of Kendall's issues with Erica still bubbling just below the surface, even if in spite of herself. There came a point where it felt like Kendall had grown up with Erica forever, and sure, that *feels* nice, but maybe it would have been stronger dramatically if there were more unresolved issues there.

Edited by SFK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Yes, I agree, that would have been better. After a while, the dynamic became as if Erica had raised them both AND that Bianca and Kendall had grown up together. I know Bill and Alice showed Erica some photos they had of Kendall growing up, but it would have been nice to have Erica and Kendall looking at childhood photos of her together or talking more about her upbringing, or Kendall asking Erica if she'd ever picked out a name for her - and being upset when Erica hadn't because I really don't think she would have named the baby.

So much they could have done there but didn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • Mary Carney was the best of the Mary recasts. I think everyone I've seen talk about the show has said this, or almost everyone. The show just gave up too quickly. I agree the story was over. I don't think the show ever developed Mary's career enough to make viewers care about that aspect. I remember reading an interview with Ilene Kristen where she talked about how much support she got from viewers with Jill and Frank (I think it was from around then). I don't know if Roger/Delia was always the plan (wasn't he interested in Mary early on?) but I sometimes think they threw that together to try to make viewers feel Delia had no moral high ground. Frank was an interesting construct as a man who looked like the ideal politician yet behaved...like a typical politician. I think that's why he mostly took off once they cast Daniel Hugh Kelly, who fit the duality. 
    • Yes and no. If they had wanted to recast Phillip, then no, he didn't need to return. There were already too many recast Spauldings at this point. Regardless of how you feel about Dusay, Raines or Poser, I think the viewers had trouble connecting to them. I think the viewers loved Rick Hearst, and yes, if he had stayed, then you could've built around him. But with a lackluster Michael Dietz soon to appear, Grant Aleksander anchored the family. Reva--pfft. Yes, she could've stayed gone. I'm unsure what the early reception to Josh/Annie was, but I thought RN and CW had good chemistry. Reva had been gone a while at this point, the audience would've accepted anyone who was good to Josh's children. 
    • Phillip and Rick became BEST friends when they first SORASed the characters.  They had been at the same boarding school and came back together to finish high school. That's when they met Mindy and Beth. The four of them were together a lot and called themselved The Four Musketeers. Initially, Phillip/Mindy and Rick/Beth were paired up until Phillip fell in love with Beth. 
    • LaGuardia, R. (1974b). The wonderful world of TV soap operas. ISBN-13 ISBN-13 978-0345272836 It took Harding “Pete” Lemay, however, a skilled playwright who thoroughly believed in the heretofore unexplained psychological potential of the daytime serial, to transform Mrs. Nixon’s love-triangle subplot into a balanced story contrasting realistic human behavior and that “other world of fantasy and striving. He found story devices no longer necessary.” For example, Lemay said, “I didn’t feel it was necessary to keep Rachel a black-and-white character. I didn’t see her as a villainess… I saw her instead as a human being who had always had bad breaks and who defeats herself because she is so used to failure. When she lost Steve this last time, I wanted the audience to feel her pain as I felt it. I wanted them to feel her tears. Mr. Lemay, along with his producer, Paul Rauch, should be given an Award for the Greatest Contribution to Daytime Serials, for completely eliminating melodramatic cliche’s in a daytime drama, and for their invaluable demonstration that, what viewers really want is drama based on psychology rather than on escapist melodrama. Under Lemay and Rauch “Another World”, which had previously used many tried-and-true soap opera devices (although fewer than most other shows), got rid of them, employed inward writing, and became one of the top two or three daytime television shows. About the only happy event in “Another World” was the birth of Ada’s daughter, Nancy, named after Ada’s dear friend on her deathbed Nancy Wickwire.   Edit to add: Emphasis on "dear friend". Should be changed to "special friend".  
    • ITA. While I'm all for vets being featured, the show has boxed itself in by not adequately developing a younger set. It's like Kyle's realistic options are Claire and Audra with Summer gone. Chance is barely used. Noah and Faith are off-canvas now.  Abby's story has been run to the ground in all the wrong ways. There's a Newman/Abbott war going on and Abby is on the sidelines? Give me a break. Abby shouldn't be a hostess, but at either Jabot or NE and right in the middle of all this stuff. Abby and Adam should've formed an alliance as the not Nick/Victoria kids.
    • Absolutely. On any other show, Frank Ryan would have been a shining romantic hero. I think they made Delia so impossible so you would feel as though he had a right to cheat on her. But he was a deadbeat dad, neglectful of the women in his life, even neglectful of his family, ridiculously ambitious. Once in a while he'd show some integrity, and then he'd go back to being a self-centered jerk. But he was definitely an interesting character.  When Pat was married to Delia, it was two incredibly neurotic people caught together in a very toxic relationship. Again, fascinating to watch. Yeah, when those first contracts ran out, the people leaving caused a big issue. Almost like they did too good a job with the initial casting.  I actually liked the first recast for Mary. (I think her name was Mary Carney?) Part of the problem was after being so front-burner for 3 years, Mary and Jack's story was basically resolved and they had to fall back on the tired "marriage vs career" trope. Then they brought in the second and third recasts that were total misses. Plus, they were ramping up Siobhan's character. It seemed they were more interested in focusing on her once Mulgrew left. 
    • Thank you, all - so helpful! I didn’t realize Ross was Phillip’s bio uncle - how cool!  What happened to his real parents, and I’m assuming Ross didn’t like Alan for swapping the babies? It does sound like the writers might be making some things up then with A-M and Phillip feuding, but we’ll see how it plays out. Phillip currently is in a home with a woman’s voice in the distance (not sure who this is yet), and he keeps looking at a newspaper with the Spaulding family picture. They finally revealed his face in a Friday cliffhanger, but it was so obvious his voice was Grant A’s haha. He has such a distinct voice to me. Very interesting, so are Fletcher and Rick at odds then since he was the brother? Honestly in the year since Rick has been back in SF, they’ve rarely, if ever, been in a scene together that I recall. The storyline with Blake right now getting pregnant off a one-night stand with Rick from a bar night after Blake was upset with Ross, and not knowing who the father is…. sounds similar to that Meredith storyline in a way haha.  I remember someone posted an episode from the 80s of Rick smelling this scarf and Phillip lifting weights (so funny/strange), which made me think they were close friends in the beginning.  I’m guessing this storyline put them at odds - did they ever recover before they both left SF or will this be a fractured friendship when Phillip returns? Sounds like I need to know more about this Beth character, as she’s pretty important to Phillip’s backstory. So I wonder if the lady he’s talking to in these current scenes is Beth, if they’re still together?   That must be when Rick went to Chicago then and met Annie during the years he left SF. Thanks, again - this was all helpful background/context as I get to meet Phillip for the first time. I just have to get it out of my head he isn’t the bad Alec McIntyre (AMC) haha.

      Please register in order to view this content

       
    • Hmmm... I don't know if I agree the show has been doing this with Sonny since the mid-90's.  He was more anti-hero than hero back then and had a whole lot of baggage.  He also had some very decent qualities. This was long before his bipolar diagnosis.   I have said this so many times on this board, but the true ending for the Sonny character was leaving Brenda at the altar.  Not because I wanted that or anything.  I was upset for days and might still be 25 years later.  It was just Sonny finally doing something very unselfish and leaving Brenda for her own good and well-being.  The family and life he craved he realized he couldn't achieve because of the business.  That to me was the end of Sonny's arc. It's unfortunate MB didn't make it primetime and came back a year later lol.
    • I shouldn't write like an authority, which I do too often. It's how I feel but I respect that others did appreciate the writing last year with Sonny.
    • What are the additional surprises that Leslie has up her sleeve?
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy