AMC - Friday - August 26, 2011

[DRW50]

This is just a way to ease us into the most incredible return of all - Dogboy.

[Khan]

True. AMC hasn't been AMC for a very long time. Still, with the arguable exception of GUIDING LIGHT, most canceled soaps manage to pull it together enough in their final weeks to give viewers a pleasant, if not altogether satisfying, goodbye.

[DRW50]

I would say GL did this better than a number of other soaps that ended in recent years.

[Khan]

I can't wait for when Cara rips off her mask to reveal she's really Vanessa Bennett.

[R Sinclair]

[marceline]

I'm not trying to make excuses but I still blame/credit Prospect Park for a lot of what's happened with AMC. The show can't say a proper goodbye when the new bosses don't want to say goodbye at all.

I've seen the complaint that AMC hasn't been AMC or that the show has been unrecognizable for years and honestly I don't know what people mean by that. I'm not saying it's been good but I don't get what people mean by "unrecognizable." Not that it matters anymore.

I'm sorry the show has chosen to go out by doubling down on the viewer-repelling Rylee and Zendall and revisiting the noxious toxin that is Babe but they all helped kill this show so I guess it's only fitting that they get to dance on the grave.

[Khan]

I won't presume to speak for all AMC fans. However, when I say the show isn't recognizable anymore, what I mean is, it no longer possesses that which put it on the map to begin with. When I was a kid, one thing I loved a lot about AMC was just how "small town" it felt. Pine Valley truly was the sort of place where everybody knew each other, where the things that happened in their neighborhoods seemed to be like the things that could happen in our own (no "mad scientists" bringin' everybody and their cousin back from the dead), and where folks actually had warm and intimate conversations and didn't just rattle off plot points. But now...? Now, there aren't any more great comic characters like Langley, Phoebe, and Myrtle; there aren't any more provocative, ripped-from-the-headlines stories about topical issues (or what stories there have been in the last 5-10 years have subpar and not befitting AMC's legacy in that department); and there haven't been any heartbreaking tales of young love, which I consider AMC's real hallmark, for a very long time. And that makes me...very sad.

[Skin]

I think the entire show suffered once the baby switch ended. From that point forward after that umbrella storyline ended it was like the entire show was divided into spheres. Orbits were created which some how wound up with everyone being in a vacuum. This may not sound horrible in theory but the major problem was that it was borderline impossible for characters to break out of them and they could never intersect with other characters regularly to get some air so to speak.

There was the Chandler/Martin orbit, then there was the Kane/Lavery orbit, then there was everything else which usually meant that you were in someway back burnered if you weren't in one of those two worlds. That decay ate away at the show because there was no interweaving of story lines and the entire community broke down. You didn't even live in a town any more you just lived in a lop-sided show, it was like the show was cut in half with random scenes sprinkled in it. This problem persists to this very day. The show doesn't feel like a community where anyone can and does in some way interact and intersect with each other in some form. You can look at the way they are writing Slavery, Minx, The Hubbards and JR's clan they all stick to themselves and rarely if ever break out of their pairings/circles. David is the only one who sees everyone who's on the show. Has Maya even had a scene outside of Angie and Jesse since she left the Chandler mansion?

There are still problems like this today which persist. There are no real ties to everyone within the PV community and characters are stuck with interacting with the same characters over and over again and it has gotten to be incredibly stale. Back in the late 90's there was a sense that everyone could interact with everyone on the canvas. That is one of the reasons why I hated the Slavery pairings because it's like they didn't exist outside each other and their relationship was so parasitic and irrationally co-dependent on their friendships and relationships. It was so stifling and cyclical you could time your watch by it. Often times it would consist of the same conversations over and over again. It was like they chewed each others story only to feed it back to one another.

Of course there were other problems as well. The show's inability to find a story that viewers really, honestly wanted to invest in after Bianca got her baby back tore apart this show like a gaping hole. Eden's departure left this show without a center specifically because Megan wrote up the Kanes so much in 2003 and pretty much road Bianca to the ground until Eden left. The Lavery focus wasn't the way the show should have gone in 2005, neither was the hybrid Babe/Zendell hour in 2006, nor was the problem rectified in 2007 and onward with endless Slavery action that was amplified with Greenlee's return and departures. I think the Hubbards could have turned things around but that didn't really stick either it seemed or at least not for long. The show was just so bad at that point that I don't think anything could have saved it. It was a steep drop from 2008 onward. This show just had nothing to offer after 2005 I feel and that's why viewers left. These last six years really killed the show because no writer could find a resolution. There was no sense of over arching direction or leadership, which obviously didn't help.

[marceline]

Okay I get that and you're right that the show has definitely lost a lot of its personality.I guess when I hear "unrecognizable" I think of GH where somewhere along the line a conscious decision was made to completely change what the show was about. I don't think that's happened to AMC. I've seen comments that AMC deserved to be canceled because it was "too far gone" and I've never agreed with that. It's was badly damaged by whiplash writing regimes and, of course, Fronsian interference but the people who say it was beyond hope tend to be coming from a viewpoint that...let's just say I've always had a problem with.

All that said, the fact that the show is going to end with this sickening sci-fi plot and these rancid, stale pairings borders on creative malpractice.

[JaneAusten]

I think the issue with AMC Is the issue with all of the ABC soaps. They just in many ways became carbon copies of one another. The things that made each show special and unique has disappeared. The shows are vapid and more vanilla than ever. Characters like Myrtle. Langley, and Opal in many ways dont even belong on an ABC soap anymore. I used to get pissed off about AMC as I still do about GH but I think it took the unabortion storyline that was the turning point for me. Now I watch the end of the show and I can joke and snark about it and I don't really care anymore.

I can't blame all this on PP. ALl these people were scheduled to return as it was before PP was announced so broderick came up with some convoluted story to explain it. Project Orpheus is not PP or at least not all PP. And with Zach, Dixie returning, Rylee still around, Brodericks love for villians and all things David its not hard to believe the show would have been as sufficating as it has been PP or not.

[JaneAusten]

I think the baby switch story is a perfect example of what went wrong. It reminds me a lot of the baby switch story on days in recent years where people praised it to no end. The story itself might have been compelling and must see TV for a time but AMC same as Days never used the stories to propel and move stories and the characters in new and interesting directions as someone in another thread pointed out.

[skiman12082004]

I only began watching AMC regularly in November 2007 so the AMC you guys speak of I am not too familiar with. I did catch standout episodes of the show through the years but again I wasn't a fan until 2007. We still have a few weeks left so maybe we will see more of the AMC you guys are looking for. But I am enjoying the Mad Scientist David story. Should it end the shows ABC run that I'm not too sure. But we'll have to wait and see.

[JaneAusten]

Its always interesting reading how newer viewers see the show. I am not even sure any of the soaps are really as bad as you read here. Even with as "bad" as AMC, Y&R, Days, GH, OLTL, B&B are or have been there are still millions of people who continue to watch. ER was a show for example I loved and it clearly lost direction its last few years and started relying on gimics more and more. But I don't know even if it continued on its current path if it would have maintained its audience. The freshnes loses steam and people lose interest. And even with the return to what it had been in its last year it was never able to recapture the audience and the essense of what it was in its early years. Soaps have been losing audience for years and whether folks recognize it or not they were losing audience even during the alleged glory years. Its possible that the AMC some of us crave for might be a show you wouldn't like.

[Khan]

Unfortunately, Skin, that is the consequence of how soaps are taped today. Budget cuts and block-taping of scenes have wreaked havoc on writers' ability to weave disparate stories together.

[Khan]

I don't think so either, marceline. Granted, AMC has lost its' charm. As I've said before on numerous occasions, Pine Valley has become too cosmopolitan; frankly, I doubt the move to PP will restore its quaintness, for lack of a better word. However, in creating AMC, Agnes Nixon set out to tell the story of a town. A town filled with some quirky, larger-than-life character, yes. But also, a town with "ordinary people" facing the same everyday problems you and I face. If the writers cut out all the b.s. and get back to that, regardless of who stays and who doesn't, it will be a step in the right direction.