AMC Tribute Thread

[All My Shadows]

The summer of 2001 is when a little kid in Louisiana (me) first got into the show. The main thing I remember about the Gabriel story was how he freaked out when Bianca offered him pâté because he thought it was dog food and that she was trying to be cruel.

I know JP's stint as HW is not popular, and looking back, I can obviously see why, but I'll always have a soft spot for the simple fact that I honestly would have never become a soap fan had I not stumbled upon the show at that time.

This is exactly the type of stuff that changed daytime for the worse. Once characters stopped existing as people with whole lives outside of whatever storyline was going on at the time, it was much, much harder to feel any kind of emotional connection to them. And it's crazy because you'd think once soaps doubled in airtime, they would have made more room for scenes like this, but that space was just filled with more plot plot plot.

In recent years, people have started referring to this as "filler," and it frustrates me to no end.

[Soaplovers]

I remember Becca was just a trope and not a character.  Although Abigail Spencer did infuse Becca with personality and a bit of a backbone.. she was able to hold her own against Greenlee and she did have chemistry with Leo.  I think the choice to have Becca be uncomfortable with Bianca coming out was the final nail to the character because by the early 00s... you couldn't present naunce when writing social issue storylines unlike back in the earlier years of AMC.

In regards to 'vertical scenes', TPTB were trying to get rid of those types of scenes as far back as the 80s.  I remember Pam Long in an interview in 1984 said that she had so many requirements/mandates to provide plot that she would try to fit in a 'vertical scene' whenever she could in order to just show characters having a conversation.. but P & G was pushing to do away with those.

That could explain why Pratt kept Nixon out of the writers room because she was probably insisting that those types of scene be included in the show.

 

[EricMontreal22]

Yes, and I think there might have been a cameo from Ray Gardner (trying to sneak in from Hell?) 

Unlike One Life to Live's Heaven as some sort of spaceship, AMC had it as some weird all white garden party or something--complete with swings and Commedia dell'arte circus performers.  I mean I know these people had to envision Heaven on a budget, but, OK...  (Though if I had to choose which Heaven to end up in, I guess I would choose it over the austere cult/spaceship of OLTL

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)

Like I said, at the time I think fans WERE happy to see all the past characters.  The problem was the story went on too long and started to effect the fabric of the "realistic" non Heaven stories (Actually didn't the angel from Vicki's OLTL story briefly go down to Llanview too?)

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Edited Thursday at 10:11 PM by EricMontreal22

[Franko]

Did Ray Gardner return in 2001? I just remember him from Tad's 1994 visit to Heaven, when he was knocked unconscious after being hit by the Martins' front door, which blew off in the tornado. The 1994 visit, if I remember right, had Jenny, Jesse, Nola Orsini, and Ray.

A while back, I joked that the 2001 visit should have had Lauren-Marie Taylor as an extra. A little Easter egg for Loving fans, showing that people from Corinth made it to Heaven, too.

Yup, Viki's angel Gilbert (John Fiedler) made some earthly appearances, as late as 1992.

[EricMontreal22]

Sadly, I don;'t think she was willing to commit to a long lead story by this time though there are a few (mostly comic) gems still in store for you.  Her last real main one I remember I wanna say was near the end of McTavish's first run (so 94-95?) involving a scam on a high end retirement community, though they'd still use her when they could--later on when Marian Colby tries to enter PV "society" for example.  (One good thing about AMC, and I suspect this had to do with Agnes Nixon always being present with the show--well except when Pratt was HW and had her physically locked out of the writer meetings--was how they treated their vets.  Ruth Warrick, Eileen Herlie, James Mitchell, etc, all were kept on contract until they passed away, and brought in when they were able to and wanted to work.  Which during that era the other shows were NOT doing with their vets...)

[EricMontreal22]

Well the fact that i made you specifically a fan is all the reason to be thankful for her run, I guess!  Even though you were new to soaps, it wouldn't be long after Summer (September 2001 in fact) when one of the more awkward transitional eras for AMC was happening with Culliton finally coming in.  As a newbie viewer were you aware of that--or were the behind the scenes stuff just completely off your radar?  (I was a weird kid--even at 11 getting into AMC in 1991, very soon on I wanted to know more about how it was made and started watching the end credits--I found it frustrating that they only had them sometimes--to look for changes, etc.)

Completely agree with you, no surprise, about vertical storytelling and how missed it is in soaps.  Of course it also has to be well scripted, but that's a slightly better issue.  It's ironic--Harding Lemay first pushed for AW to expand to an hour (and then disastrously 90 mins) for this very reason--he wanted the opportunity to have longer scenes and to not need every scene to be pushing plot (as he said he wanted to be able to write a short Broadway drawing room drama every day.)  So the expanded length WAS done for this reason, and I think, at least, Nixon (by this time already with Wisner Washam) were well aware of trying to use the expanded hour with AMC in similar ways, when she reluctantly gave in to demands to expand it.

I also love how Passanante says at this time Nixon was no longer even required to give in detailed story outlines etc (and even in the 80s I find this true--I have copies of a few of her 6 month soap outlines and boy are they vague by that era--often saying "well we might go in this direction, or we might go in that direction") 

As soap fans we often find it frustrating when it's clear that a writer is making up a storyline as they go along(especially a problem with mysteries.)  But I think this speaks to how some soap writing can be way TOO goal oriented instead of really living in each character and story moment.

[Maxim]

I'll take what I can get

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I'm up to June 22nd. Melanie's prom.

I liked Erica's talk with Jackson where she told him about her father. She was fragile and raw. Not the usual I'm going to take on the world attitude. I liked seeing that... more complicated part of her.

Adam got Tad beaten up for attempting to spy and record him. Bad for Tad. Karen was smirking non stop while seeing Adam enraged. God I love Ellen Wheeler in this role. It's like they took all the wickedness they didn't give Cindy, bottled it up and gave it to Karen.

The show is very good right now. A lot of the pet peeves I had months ago are gone. It's flowing nicely. I like that they slowed down the pace a bit from the action. My head was spinning somewhere mid April. I like slower pace.

And yes... I don't like Cecily and Niko. They are annoying and their arc - not my type of humor. It's like it's supposed to be veeery funny and cute at times which irritates me. Only the fake audience laugh and claps are missing and it will be a perfect sitcom. I hate sitcoms. And Cecily's voice is like hearing nails on a chalk board. I just don't like it. That a personal preference. Niko... is a charming guy, but nothing in comparison to some of the other guys in the show. Again... Personal preference.

 

[EricMontreal22]

Right, 1994 would have been when I was introduced to the character via that sequence.  I am 99% somehow he made a nightmare/Hell cameo in an episode from 2001.

Actually this 1993 nightmare sequence is probably when I first saw Ray because at the time I was watching (very secretly--we were forbidden at 12--) the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and I remember thinking how ray was like a toned down Freddie Krueger, even having his victim strung up as a marionette like in Nightmare 3 (OK, in a far less gristly fashion for those who know that film...)
 

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[Franko]

That was great! I was too young to see it originally (it would have given me nightmares BITD, that's for sure). On the other hand, I vividly remember Janet's This Is Your Life nightmare the following year. (Someone at AMC was fond of surreal dream sequences.)

[EricMontreal22]

You're spot on about Becca.  I'm a huge Agnes Nixon fan and, I fully realize, sometimes too much of a defender and I think the problem with her return as HW/co-HW at this time was for whatever reason (one, I think being, the health of her husband) while she very much wanted to remain a part of her beloved show, she didn't really want to be a HW again and all the time committed to that.  So, like Becca as I said was a throwback to past characters, but maybe especially 1970 Tara when really, unless you did MORE with that type of character, in 1999 the character was a pretty archaic and out of touch trope.  Even nearing 80, I suspect Nixon would have been able to make her less so, but I don't think she was invested enough to do so.

(AND yes, if Nixon had more time to devote but also was working in the soap world of 20 or really even 10 years earlier, they could have made an interesting and workable storyline with Becca's homophobia--remember in when they had "good" characters like Tom picketing the abortion clinic?  Or even in the Kevin Sheffield storyline we had some good characters express homophobia and more morally questionable characters like Palmer stand up for it--something James Mitchell, an out gay man of course, requested of his character)

Among the many things the execs didn't realize about soaps when they became more involved (and saw just how much of an audience stuff like Luke and Laura could attract) was that if you want sustained long term ratings you have to build audience rapport with the characters.  I know as a teen why I loved AMC (and OLTL and, yes, Loving) was honestly at least as much for the remaining scenes of just character interaction we got (of course I was also huge into theatre already, and that was the closest tv got to theatre.)

And yeah, I think Pratt is the extreme example of a writer who simply doesn't do vertical storytelling.  This was why he did relatively very well in primetime soaps (Melrose Place's success was really due to when he took it over, for example) where, especially in his brand of primetime soaps, you really just plow through story story story.  That doesn't work for the longterm on daytime (I did always find it interesting that there was a very Agnes Nixon element introduced on the show during his run with the character of Brock, played by a real life disfigured army vet, which even included at least one scene at a support group for other real life vets--AMC would do this once again with the... not great but I suppose still somewhat groundbreaking for its time, Zarf/Zoe trans storyline which also had a suppoirt meeting scene something that always makes me think of the infamous youth drug centre sequence on early One Life to Live--which I so wish had been saved somewhere.)

I remember that!  It was still when she was in bandages, I think?  I wonder if that was really McTavish's doing?  Because yeah, AMC at that time was filled with surreal dream sequences and let me tell you, I LOOOOOOOVED them

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[Khan]

I think it was a shame that they chose to kill her off rather than find a place for her on AMC, as I think Lauren-Marie Taylor would've blended very well with AMC's cast.

[All My Shadows]

I couldn’t watch in the fall of ‘01 after going back to school and not having the means to record it just yet. I got back into it the following spring, but I didn’t notice or pay attention to behind the scenes goings-on until Culliton was let go, actually. I spent a lot of time on SOC, and I can still see the picture of him they used for the article on his firing. I was vaguely aware of Gordon Rayfield being the new writer and then Anna Theresa Cascio joining him, but I didn’t really start paying attention until McTavish came back. I originally joined SON that same summer, so at that point, I was watching the show with completely different eyes.

Culliton’s show was enough to draw me back in after months away, and I think that summer of 2002 is when I started to dig into the show more and learn more about its history, other soaps, etc. Kendall’s return played into that bc I knew she had been a major character in the 90s.

Rayfield/Cascio’s show was bland as hell, and I have a hard time thinking about their stint without comparing it to the first year or so of McTavish’s return, which was a massive improvement in so many ways. It’s funny how many future stars passed through the show at that time - Amanda Seyfried, Alex Daddario, Jonathan Bennett, early MBJ, etc. And most of them were dull as dishwater on AMC.

[Franko]

Yup, Janet was recovering from the experimental plastic surgery and dreamt of Trevor, Dixie, Hayley, etc. (and Harold!) recounting her misdeeds.

I feel like Stacey could/should have taken Laurel's role on the canvas.

[Khan]

I think that's the major difference between daytime and primetime soaps.  In daytime, you have the luxury of writing and playing scenes that don't necessarily advance the plot but do go deeper into the characters, revealing their mindsets AS they're dealing with their circumstances; whereas, in primetime, the only real way you can know who or what the characters are is through their outward, plot-dependent actions.

Peter Dunne and Richard Gollance, though, were masters at crafting scenes on KNOTS LANDING that, on the surface, seemed very vertical, yet were also pushing the plot along at the same time.

I, myself, might have tried pairing her with Tad, and Philip Brown's Buck with Dixie.

All I really remember about Rayfield/Cascio after so many years is their Asian-American character, Henry, and how many scenes with him seemed to take place in his family's Chinese restaurant.  (Better a restaurant, I guess, than a donut shop or the dry cleaners, lol).

In general, I'm leery of stories that take place in Heaven (or Hell, for that matter), simply because nobody stays dead on soaps anymore; and if an actor were to return to their show as their presumed-dead character, you have to pretend like you didn't see them before as a ghost intervening in their loved ones' lives (hi, Darnell/Jesse!).

Edited Friday at 12:45 AM by Khan

[Franko]

Interesting. When I pitched my idea, I imagined Stacey moving to Pine Valley in 1993. Does your scenario happen in 1995? Would Liza still come back in this timeline?