AMC Tribute Thread

[DRW50]

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on these episodes.

I'd love to have seen the original plans they had for Cecily. I did not care for her at the time, I thought she was grating, but when I saw some of her 80's work I liked her more. But here, she's still grating, and seems out of place.

[Khan]

For starters, the fact that it was retrofitted into Erica's history. I know Susan Lucci has explained how the event filled in some blanks for her in terms of Erica's motivations. For me, though, it's enough to say Erica felt abandoned by her father and thus needed always to prove to herself that she could be loved. If Agnes Nixon had felt that the rape needed to be in Erica's background, I think it would've been there from the very beginning, just like you could say there always was an undercurrent of incest in the relationship between OLTL's Victor Lord and his daughters, Meredith and Viki, from the beginning (even if I felt saying it outright decades later damaged his character). Yet, neither the rape, nor Erica's subsequent pregnancy, nor Mona and Erica's attempts at hiding it, were there even in subtext in the original, on-air story, which is really odd when you consider that Erica must've had Kendall either at the beginning of the show, when she was busy dating Chuck (and excuse me, but you're saying she wouldn't have tried to pass off Kendall as well-to-do Chuck Tyler's baby...) and coming between Phil and Tara (...or as Phil's?), or directly before.

Moreover, there's Mona's actions regarding the rape, which I felt were OOC for her. Mona loved Erica, of course, but never to the point of shielding Erica from the truth or sugarcoating it. If anything, their tension was built on the constant friction between Erica's romantic fantasies and Mona's penchant for cold realism. Mona had tried all her life to get Erica to see Eric Kane for who and what he really was, but Erica simply wouldn't believe her. In her mind, her father was a fabulous and successful man who adored his daughter, and who left only because Mona drove him away with her provincialism. So now, all of a sudden, Mona catches a glimpse of Erica coming out of the shower (or however it was explained), deduces she was pregnant and that she had been raped, and decides almost immediately to cover up the whole episode? I don't think so.

I think Mona would have recognized that Erica was covering up something very traumatic and decided then-and-there that her daughter was in need of serious psychological help. Between Nick Davis and Dr. Charles Tyler, too, the Kane women would have had a very good support system. And even if Mona had decided Erica was too fragile to face the rape and her pregnancy, she most certainly would NOT have given up Kendall. I believe Mona would have consulted either Nick or Dr. Tyler as to what to do about the baby. Together, the two (or three) would have come up with a plan to conceal Erica's pregnancy for as long as possible (with Dr. Tyler, Mona's boss, acting privately as Erica's OB/GYN), then send Mona and Erica out of town with the cover story of visiting some relative (a sister, maybe, or a cousin) who was pregnant and bed-ridden. Then, when they returned to Pine Valley -- that is, if they had returned to Pine Valley, because I think Mona would have moved away permanently and made it appear as if the newborn Kendall was also her daughter -- the story would be that the relative had passed away in childbirth and that Mona had agreed to become the child's guardian, with only she, Erica, Nick and Dr. Tyler knowing the truth.

Plus, let us not forget that force of nature known as Phoebe English Tyler. I've no doubt that Mona would have taken Erica to see Dr. Tyler the minute she learned of her pregnancy, something the actual, on-air story did not address. Hardly anything in that town escaped Phoebe's attention, though, so the fact that the daughter of "that Mona Kane woman" who worked for her husband, and who herself (Erica, that is) was sniffing around her stepson, was pregnant did escape her attention...it just boggles my mind. I mean, not even falling-down-drunk-in-a-wheelchair Phoebe would not have suspected something was amiss (and then try to use it as blackmail in order to get Mona out of Pine Valley). I'm just saying.

Finally, there's the added and extremely unnecessary twist of saying Eric Kane himself was partially responsible for the rape. Granted, Eric was a vainglorious, self-involved bastard who thought only of his career in Hollywood. But wasn't it enough just to say he was a selfish man who disregarded the affections that others, and particularly his daughter, showed him in life? Why add the fact that he once went low enough as to pimp out his own "fifteen"-year-old daughter just to get some pedophile to agree to be in his movie? Not that Eric would not have resorted to prostitution to curry Richard Fields' favor -- it's been done in Hollywood countless times -- but I think he'd have been more likely to pick up some stars-in-her-eyes runaway at Schwab's drugstore. To me, having Eric use Erica like that (with Vanessa Bennett standing idly by and watching the whole thing, which brings up other issues I don't wish to go into right now) is about as bad as saying Victor Lord was in reality a gold-hoarding Nazi who lured pretty young things to his secret lair whenever he wasn't busy screwing his own daughter. It takes a fascinating and complex character and turns him into the devil.

Uh, I hope that answers the question?

Edited December 11, 2011 by Khan

[Khan]

Yeah, but even AM was too young, IMO. At best, Kendall should have been as old as Tad. (Same goes for Josh. If you're going to say that Erica's aborted fetus actually survived, then cast an actor who'd be as old as MEK and Chris Lawford. Then, hire Colin Egglesfield to play his son.)

Given SMG's age, I would have had no objections to her being cast as, say, Bonnie McFadden. And AM definitely would have been good as Mark Dalton's daughter from a past relationship.

Edited December 11, 2011 by Khan

[SFK]

Absolutely! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with me, I really enjoyed reading that. I am particularly fond of the paragraph I've quoted, I totally agree. They definitely gilded the lily, turning Eric into an all-out monster and it was not nearly as dramatically satisfying as aspects of the Victor Lord story were (before he became even more of a caricature). Right or wrong, I felt like these added details of Eric's sordid past with his daughter were nabbed from Victor/Viki for all that that story had provided for One Life. I resented that, as a fellow fan from the WoST days resented AMC nabbing for Erica Rachel's dream of living in the house she walked by after school every day coming true. Doesn't Erica have enough? A bigger choice is not necessarily a stronger choice, and in Eric's case, being a jerk was enough. From what I've read, Gerald Davis was an oily con and that worked well for his relationship with Rachel and Pammy on AW/Somerset, probably more akin to Eric's story of betrayal in '89 (though I think Gerald lacked Eric's polish and was more obviously a rat).

[ellabelle]

I'm in my early 30s, so I wasn't around to watch the show at the beginning, so I can't speak all that knowledgeably about what was or wasn't implied. I've seen clips online of the time Adam kidnapped Erica, and he tells her that she can come willingly to his bed, or he'll force her. This was her ex-husband, someone she knew fairly well, and she cringes away from his touch in those scenes. She's clearly afraid of him, and I suppose you could look at it and say "well, she was reminded of being raped as a teenager" because she got her hands on a pocket knife and was determined to fight him. I think though they've always played it as this event was so traumatizing that Erica blocked it out and never wanted to think of it again, which isn't completely unreasonable, IMHO. When Josh came back they tried to claim that she wanted the abortion in part because being pregnant reminded her of being pregnant with Kendall and it was traumatizing, but I never bought that. Her having an hysterical pregnancy after her miscarriage with Phil Brent though... I think that giving up a baby, then aborting another and then finally miscarrying a child you really did want would be devastating, and that could have all combined to drive Erica temporarily crazy.

As for why we didn't see much of the aftermath of her pregnancy, here is how I see the timeline. Erica's birthday is supposedly November 2nd (per the Jane storyline - the security code for the door was 1102 - Erica's birthday), so if Erica was 15 when the show began, and she was raped on her 14th birthday, she would have turned 15 in Nov 1969, and she was raped in early November 1968. If Mona didn't realize Erica was pregnant until she was five months along, that would have been around March of 1969. At that point, she was visibly pregnant while naked, but clearly not while clothed because no one else had noticed. Let's assume school got out in late May. Mona would have only had to hide the pregnancy for about two more months, which could have been done with creative clothing and/or Erica being "sick" for a while. After that, it would have been summer vacation, and Mona could have taken her out of town. In 1993, it was said that Kendall was born in Phoenix, which I guess was where the adoption agency sent Erica. Mona could have told everyone that Eric sprung for Erica to go to a fancy summer camp somewhere or even that Erica was visiting her dad.

Kendall would have been born in August or September of 1969. Perhaps Mona told people that Erica wanted to try going to school in CA for a semester but came home because she got homesick. Not many people would think too much of that. Remember too that this was the 1960s, before abortion was legal, and it was still quite scandalous to be a single pregnant teenager, so Mona wasn't likely to tell a lot of people. Erica made it quite clear to Kendall in 1993 that she was very sexually naive at the time the rape happened, so there would have been no way to pass off the baby as Chuck or Phil's when she clearly wasn't sleeping with either of them.

A shocking percentage of rape victims never report the crime, so Mona not reporting something that happened five months earlier on the other side of the country isn't surprising. At that time as well, there was also a prevailing line of thought that the woman "asked for it", so I can see Mona thinking that she was protecting Erica by not making her talk to police. Mona might have confided in Dr. Tyler as a way of inquiring if he knew of anywhere she could take Erica to terminate the pregnancy, but if she told him that in confidence when Phoebe was not around, I don't see why he would have told Phoebe about it. I think he could have kept that a secret. As for not telling Nick, I could see Mona thinking that this was all her fault: she let Erica go to CA, she trusted Eric to take care of their daughter, and he didn't. If she hadn't let her go, it wouldn't have happened. Who knows - maybe Erica said that to her mother in anger one day during the pregnancy. If Mona felt guilty, I could see her wanting to keep that quiet and not tell Nick about it.

As for the adoption, I disagree with you - I don't think there was any way Mona would have kept that baby. Erica said at one point that when her mother explained to her that she was pregnant as a result of the rape, she screamed for days. She was DEVASTATED by the pregnancy, and I can't see Mona shoving the rape in her face every day by making Erica pretend that her rapist's child was her little sister. Mona told Erica in 1993 that she did see and hold Kendall before she was placed for adoption, which to me is absolutely something Mona would have done. She would have loved the baby because it was Erica's, and it would have broken her heart to leave the baby, but yes, I think she definitely would have done so to protect Erica.

Once the baby was born and they were on their way back to Pine Valley, I could see Mona telling Erica that it was over, that they would put behind them and never speak of it again. And I can see Erica clinging to that denial but being a changed person by the trauma of of the rape, the pregnancy and the birth, and as a result, she then viewed men differently, she viewed herself differently, and maybe it made her more determined to make something of herself, to be completely different from the way she was before. I'm not saying it makes a huge amount of sense or that it was the healthiest way of handling the rape, but I could see her handling it that way.

The twist about Eric was unnecessary IMHO. It was bad enough that he forgot the party, didn't invite any famous guests and wasn't there to prevent her from being raped. But then again, this was the same guy who cheated on his wife and fathered a child with his mistress, who abandoned his family, who neglected his children, who faked his death to avoid trial for embezzlement, who later mooched off of Erica and then sold the Enchantment stock she gifted him to one of her arch rivals before abandoning her again and walking out on his grandchild. Is it really so hard to believe that he would have traded Erica to Richard Fields to get him in a movie? Maybe Richard saw a picture of Erica at Eric's house and wanted her and only her. Or maybe Eric was really just sick enough that he was willing to do anything. I mean, if half of what we've heard about the sex abuse scandal at Penn State is true, there were plenty of people who knew young boys were being raped but did NOTHING about it. If that can happen, then I can see Eric doing what he did - I just don't think it was necessary to drive the story. Erica dealing with her own rape and coping with her daughter's rape and pregnancy would have been enough to drive her to drink already.

[Khan]

Or, you could look at it and say Erica responded the way any woman, rape victim or not, would respond if threatened that way.

It isn't unreasonable. Again, though, it never was even a subtle factor in Erica's relationships with men as they were occurring. With OLTL's Viki, at least, you knew something had happened to her early in life to have caused her to create Niki to help her deal with it. That was apparent every time the tramp re-emerged to wreak havoc, lol. Now, I didn't like Michael Malone's efforts at explaining Viki's turbulent history because it demonized Victor more than ever and contradicted what we had accepted as fact (such as Niki Smith's origins -- although, there has to be at least five different versions of how she was "created" -- as well as the fact that there suddenly were other alters we'd never seen before). However, MM based it on something (namely, Viki's fractured psyche, as well as Victor's domineering relationship with his daughters) that had been part of the show all along, rather than create it from scratch.

I never bought that either.

To me, that's almost like explaining "after the fact" how OLTL's Jessica's alter ego, Tess, was the one really responsible for stalking and trying to kill Dorian after Jessica had miscarried her and Will's baby, actions which fans at the time felt was OOC for her. It might justify certain actions or behaviors that fans don't otherwise understand or accept, but it cannot provide the motivation for that character when it wasn't there to begin with. IOW, Erica had a breakdown because her dream marriage to Phil Brent had fallen apart; and their baby, real or not, was, in her mind, the only way to keep their marriage alive. That's the way Agnes wrote it. Assigning any other issues to it after the fact, like saying Erica had the abortion in part because of Kendall, is retconning history.

I'll have to continue in another post.

[R Sinclair]

Between you and me, so is he. Shhhhhhhh!

Edited December 12, 2011 by R Sinclair

[Khan]

Don't make me pull a DeeeDee and ruffle your hair, R!

[Khan]

You have the timeline worked out well. Unfortunately, AMC suggested toward the end that Erica was born around 1962, so....

[R Sinclair]

I can't accept it. We're the same age. I can't accept that even in the 1980s you were this insightful about this program, no matter how you package it. Nope. Can't do it! Hindsight, sure. But present in the moment? Nope. You need more people.

ETA: However, I agree 100% with your assessment of the Erica/Kendall/Rape Rewrite.

Edited December 12, 2011 by R Sinclair

[Khan]

That's fair -- and out of respect for you, I hereby don't make that claim anymore.

[Angela]

IMO, yes. It was a very, very tacky add on. The story was richer on the level that Eric was a really neglectful and careless father but not a monster. I would have loved for the show to bring Eric back in to interact with these women even to the end and for them to re-write that stupid re-write about the sex-trade sale.

Gellar, Minshew - the character was too young with each but it worked for me. I never lose the thought that Erica was 14, but I like that I feel there was always at least an 18 year age difference between them because of the age of actresses they were using for Kendall. I was more bothered by McTavish suddenly trying to sell me the character was 24 after getting so many complaints about how Kendall should be older than Lawson's Charlie. She shouldn't have folded to pressure especially when Gellar never looked more than 20 for her entire run and therefore never came off anywhere near older than Charlie anyways. Sometimes the story outweighs the logic in a good way. They definitely initially brought Kendall in as a 16-17 year old. They wanted to play the dynamic of challenging Erica to raise Kendall a little bit, they wanted Erica to hold responsibility in forming "the child" a little bit which I thought was a very rich idea especially in the long-term for Kendall. It's so much better than say Ethan and Zach. Ethan was at least 23-24 and looked it. He was also a good-natured and formed adult who they reverted into a 16 year old.

[ellabelle]

Yeah... I find that very obnoxious. But then again, that's typical for soaps.

So aside from issues with Kendall and Erica's age, your main objection to the storyline is that Agnes didn't plan it 23 years in advance?

[Angela]

Just went back in my photobucket account after months. The critical response to the age issue back in 1993...

[Kylie]

Do timelines matter anymore? I mean really, Josh was 25 in 2006, and I don't care how much SORAS'ing and deSOARSING was done, that storyline was from 1973. It made even less sense when you considered Josh's age. But we're not supposed to follow logic. LOL