Who's going to watch it tomorrow? I'm definitely DVR'ing

Lucci is AMAZING during this speech.

She really is. I stopped watching AMC from 1996 to 2001 so that was new to me except for the reviews I had read in the magazines back during that time.

The 1996 episode and the 2004 were definitely my favorites in that collection.

@WeLoveSoapsTV We Love Soaps TV

One of the first AMC focus groups (12 women total) said Tom Cudahy was boring. AMC writers fought ABC for years to keep him.

So this was the Tom Cudahy comment. That type of thing is the death of daytime. Any man who does not rape and abuse women is "dull" in today's soap world. And just look where that got AMC.

This is what Wisner Washam said re: Tom Cudahy:

We Love Soaps: During your time on ALL MY CHILDREN, how was ABC's relationship with the writers and did it change over time.

Wisner Washam: Oh, it absolutely changed. When I first started, we never saw them. Agnes had a meeting once in a week with a guy named Michael Brockman, who was a very hands off head of daytime. But then Michael went to the West Coast or some place. As the soaps became more popular the networks realized they were really sitting on a goldmine and they couldn't keep their hands out of the pot.

The trouble really started with a Vice President of Daytime named Jacqueline Smith, who brought in all these new procedures and focus sessions. We never had focus sessions before. They required us to go and waste a morning watching 12 ladies from the Bronx discuss who they liked and didn't like. Jackie took the opinions of those 12 women as almost words from the Mount. We were asked to write according to their opinions.

And then they brought in something called Q scores, where each person is rated in a national survey. If someone's Q scores went down, one of the vice presidents, Jozie Emmerich, said we had to write them off, even if they were a very popular and useful character. They might have been going through a slightly down period because they had been used up doing other things. You can't have every character in the middle of a crisis constantly.

We Love Soaps: Were there every any characters that were written off because of that?

Wisner Washam: Oh, yes. I can't remember who. I do remember Josie wanted to write one of the favorites out, Tom Cudahy. Tom was a very useful and likeable character played by a good actor (Richard Shoberg). His Qs began to drop and she wanted to get rid of him. We fought her and kept him for a while, but he's dust now. It just got worse and worse with every passing year. Frankly, I don't know how the writers can do it now. They not only are told what to write but when to write it. And they're doing such terrible things as product placements. You have to write a real life product into the script. I know the networks need money but I'm glad I'm not part of that process.

For the Woman of the Year episode, was Dr. Kinder sincere about getting help for Erica and feeling bad that she was in a bad way? He was evil at some point, but I can't recall if he was ever a not-evil guy.

The Bianca-wakes-up-from-her-coma-for-Miranda episode was fantastic (and Lucci was especially good as Erica practically wills Bianca out of her coma). The baby switch storyline had its ups and downs, but the beginning and ending pieces of that storyline in particular were just fantastic.

I thought the actor playing Tom was actually pretty painful to watch.

The 12-22-00 episode was so rich all around.

They should had shown the episode that helped Susan win the emmy

Was Lucci preggers IRL during this time?

Yes, she was pregnant with son Andreas during that episode...notice her fuller face and the strategic camera angles to hide Lucci's bulging belly. It was ironic as how the scenes and storyline revolved around Erica's deception in NOT GETTING PREGNANT as Lucci was swelling up and then in the climatic scenes shown in this episode her condition is buried under that huge blue getup that makes her look like Violet from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory!

I thought the actor playing Tom was actually pretty painful to watch.

Yeah this was not his finest hour. I liked Tom and was sorry to see him go, but no one will accuse him of being Marlon Brando. He did get better as time went by though.

Tom was a tentpole, classic Pine Valley characters...steady, honorable, and just a regular yet charismatic man who had his own flaws but was basically just like a guy you could know in real life. He was able to stick around for quite a long time even after his type of character was no long so popular with TPTB. But to the faithful audience he was a solid rock and part of the fabric of Pine Valley...he and his pub, The Goal Post (Tom had been a pro football player).