Classic AMC/OLTL

[Angela]

Yeah, it's certainly not a typical occurrence on most network TV shows.

[ellabelle]

I'm not. He's a drunk and a jerk. He's been that way for years. Everyone blames JR's behavior on Adam, but Dixie and Tad seemed to have JR a lot more a lot than Adam did. I'd argue that they screwed him up much worse than Adam ever could have.

[SFK]

The The Revolution ads that I'm getting in this thread are such a slap in the fat face.

I think Vee meant more the fact that a daytime soap would have anyone going tee-tee on another person.

[All My Shadows]

I have no recollection of JR peeing on anybody either...

[ellabelle]

Oh. Well, I guess anything for shock value, right? I mean, JR would threw himself out of a window, rigged a bunch of stuff to fall on his wife but nearly killed a pregnant woman instead, and ran someone down in his car. I'm imagining the meeting in which TIIC all sat and around discussed what else they could have JR do to rile up the viewers. "Oh I know - what if he whizzed on Josh's shoe?"

[Skin]

I was thinking about this today and was considering giving it a thread but thought to just post this here. Why did Erica having a male child never work on AMC?

I mean think about it tons of writers over the years wanted it to happen in some way or another. I think the story concept recieved a ton of stops and starts over the years with a list of men as the candidates. I remember there were rumors about Richard Culliton wanting to make Leo a male Kane heir which was why we never met Leo's father. I think at one point they were also playing with the idea of Trey being a rape twin with Kendell due to the Richard Fields connection. I think even early on in Ryan's background there were some gaps planted that signaled the show had some inclination or intention to reveal him as a son of Kane.

It seems that a lot of writers wanted to have a male Kane heir, why did it end up happening so late with Josh in 2005?

Was a male Kane as a character ever worth while on AMC? Could the Josh character in concept have existed and had a place on AMC if not for McTavish's sci-fi background?

[DRW50]

I think a male Kane heir was very worthwhile - it changed up the dynamics after they'd been mined very exhaustively with Erica and her daughters. It also gave Erica a new twist - how would she react to a son?

Unfortunately between the unabortion story and the botched and pointless Jeff return, the whole thing didn't seem to really work. I think there was also a lot of timidity in the show's handling of the Erica/Josh relationship, probably due to fear of backlash.

I would have had the child as being a son she had with Mike Roy and she forgot about that time in her life, or something.

[Skin]

I felt it was pretty worthwhile too, which was why I think so many writers wanted to write it but ended up unfulfilled. Didn't Erica have a child she lost that she ended up institutionalized for at one point? I think that would have been a good re-write. I am not sure which husband or lover it was she had then but I think that would have been a worthwhile background for the character. I also think Megan was just in general uninterested in the Erica/Josh component. She played a lot more on the Kendell/Josh relationship but even that was surface level and superficial. Then the writers after Megan completely butchered his character and made him Zach's yes man and Kendell's body farm.

[DRW50]

That was Phil Brent's baby.

I think the show/Megan wanted a new alpha male and what better way than to tie him to the Kanes, but it seemed to end up being all about shock value.

[Ryan Chamberlain]

My mom cannot remember Zarf's name. She's called him Zach, Zaff, Zap, Zarr, etc. It's hilarious.

Did JR really give him a golden shower? I have not seen that scene yet.

[ellabelle]

Phil Brent's baby turning up alive and being Erica's son would have made more sense as a rewrite than him being Erica's unaborted fetus, but I think Phil Brent was killed off in the early 1980s, so his absence would have taken away from the dramatic potential of the baby being his.

If they wanted to bring Josh in as a long-lost Kane son, I would have preferred that it come out that Greg had stolen her eggs when she'd been institutionalized post Phil miscarriage. David Hayward would have been the PERFECT sperm donor father for Josh too. David and Josh were both doctors, they didn't like each other, he had an emotional connection to Babe which would have made sense if she'd been his half-sister, and given that Erica and David were at odds over his actions with Bess/Miranda, having him be the father of her long-lost son would have been so wonderfully soapy. Susan and Vincent were total magic together. Plus the actor who played Josh looked like both Erica and David. That would have been a much better storyline for David than skulking around Pine Valley spying on people and trying to make Dixie and Tad believe that Emma was Kate.

Personally, I never understood why the writers never gave Erica a late in life baby. They dropped her age when Kendall came on in the early 1990s, so Erica was still under 50 when the show ended. She most definitely could have had a baby in the 1990s or early to mid 2000s. I wouldn't have wanted her to reproduce with Chris Stamp because he sucked, but I could have gotten behind her having a baby with Dimitri, Jack, or David. I would have loved to see her handle parenting a newborn and a teenager at the same time and worrying that people would think she was too old to be a mom again. Plus if she'd actually given birth to a son and been able to raise him, he would have been the man in her life who loved her unconditionally and would never leave her, and I think that would have provided tremendous growth potential for the character.

[DRW50]

That sounds like a good idea about David, although that would mean David had known about Josh before he ever got involved with Erica (or do you mean he wouldn't have known, similar to Ryan with Emma).

I think there was some story potential in bringing back a less old, less toothy Charlie, and saying Phil wasn't actually dead, but by then the Martins had become so corrupted as a family.

A late in life baby for Erica could have been a great story. There could have been some dramatic potential if she was pregnant when Bianca thought Bess was dead - would Bianca snap, what would this do to their relationship, etc.

[ellabelle]

^ If David had donated sperm at some point, Greg could have used it to fertilize Erica's stolen eggs - a seeking out the best possible combination of genes sort of thing - and David would have been in the dark about it just as Erica was, so they could have found out together. Given that the first IVF baby wasn't born until 1978, it still would have been a huge stretch of a storyline as far as facts so, but it would have been more realistic than what the writers actually did. To insure that people weren't asking where the rest of her stolen eggs went or whether or not there was an army of Erica Kane kids out there somewhere, they could have just said that he attempted to make more embryos and have them implant but Josh was the only one that made it.

Plus Erica and her brother Mark started out as almost lovers, so the same thing happening to her son would have been an interesting repeat of history and it could have even given Mark and Ellen a reason to come back to town. It would have been far more interesting to watch Babe and Josh work out a sibling relationship than it was watching Josh practically stalk her while she kept telling him to leave her alone.

[Pine Charles]

I, too, remember JR peeing on poor Zoe. It was terrible.

[Antoyne]

JR only peed on Josh as far as I recall.