Obscure AMC storylines

[danfling]

Another obscure storyline is when there was a new real estate development in Pine Valley called White Plains (or White something).

It was being run by some racists.

Tom and Olivia considered moving there. However, Phoebe and Mona (or Phoebe and Myrtil) found out, and Phoebe advised Tom to stop his plans.

Taylor infiltrated the developers or something.

Jeff and Hillary never actually started dating. It just seemed that the writers were planning a triangle.

Robert Tripp was dropped before anything else happened.

Several months later, it was mentioned that Jeff had returned to California.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I sort of remember something like that. I think at that point, or maybe later on, there was talk of bringing on a secret daughter that Leora had with Joe. It was probably an effort to keep the next generation of Martins going since at that point MEK had left for LA and neither de-SORAS-ed Jeff Martin actor (Jeffrey Byron or Robert Tripp) was working out. Maybe they opted to SORAS Joey Martin instead. Even as late at the late 1990s, there were rumors that Allie Doyle was going to turn out to be Joe's daughter.

[LoyaltoAMC]

During the 88 writers strike, they put the Cindy/Stuart/AIDS story on hold. That was very precious to them at the time and total Emmy bait LOL, and they wanted to protect it. So they married off Stuart and Cindy right at the beginning of the strike (May) and sent them, Adam and Brooke on long vacation/honeymoon to Paris. Those characters were off screen the entire summer. They had a bunch of filler stories, incuding Cecily developing a crush on Cliff, Donna dealing with Benny moving to Boston, Langley's flirtation with their new pool girl Max, Phoebe trying to foist unseen Juanita Ramsey's grandson Jonathan on Hillary, etc. I'm sure there were more, but I don't recall them.

[danfling]

I don't recall that Cecily had a crush on Cliff, but I do remember that her mother, Bitsy, was flirting with him as much as she could.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I remember Bitsy flirting with Mitch Beck for a bit in the summer of 88 just before he left town with Hillary. The Cliff/Cecily thing was very shortlived. She became his assistant or was a candy striper, and crushed on Cliff. I remember Phoebe finding out about it and going to Cliff's office at the hospital to confront him. I think the story lasted all of 3 weeks. Come to think of it, that might've been early 89, when the show was doing a lot of obvious filler material in preparation for the huge transition period from Schenkel/Broderick to Behr/DePriest that would soon come.

[Jonathan]

I don't remember Angie & Jeff either. I remember Angie and Cliff.

[soapfave06]

Angie and Jeff were very short-lived, I remember reading about it in a 1987 article on interracial romances in SOD and how they always back out.

[danfling]

Both Angie/Cliff and Angie/Jeff were ended rather abuptly.

That is why I am suprised that Debbi Morgan would have been so suprised and disturbed.

[allmc2008]

I have a question. Agnes, I thought, left when Winser took over. I saw a tv special saying that she wrote the Greg/Jenny storyline and that she was crying on her typewriter. Why/how would she be writing stories if she Winser was already in charge??

[DRW50]

I imagine Debbi would have felt like her stories were being cut short solely because of the interracial element. It must have felt like a slap in the face.

In the Albers clips there is some obvious filler story where Josh is pretending to be a mafioso because he and Langley and Phoebe are upset Cecily is working at a dive. Or something. Hillary is involved too. It's fun.

[allmc2008]

I am soo thankful that never happened!! I always liked Joe and Ruth's strong marriage so having a long lost daughter would be very catastrophic.

[allmc2008]

Can you post a link to it??

[EnglishTea]

The 1988 strike did stall the AIDS storyline, but the timing was actually that Adam and Stuart were off the canvas for a few weeks in May, supposedly in Paris where Stuart was planning the wedding ceremony, and Adam was on business.

Cindy and Stuart were married at the end of May.

Brooke and Adam went on a cruise, hoping it would increase their chances at conceiving a baby. Laura, Scott, Cindy and Stuart came along to make it a family vacation. They were off the canvas starting in mid July and well into August - a minimum of a month, and possibly up to six weeks.

[saynotoursoap]

Carl, in my opinion, AMC was the soap no doubt least effected by the 1981 strike because it was already somewhat of a hot mess at that time. A number of core/legacy characters had been written out: Linc, Kelly, Tara, Ann, Phil. The writers had just dumped the aforementioned Kurt and Leora. Julia Barr had announced her intent to leave the role of Brooke shortly before the strike began. In fact, Brooke was to have been written out in May 1981, but Julia agreed to stay longer in order to wrap up the drug cartel story. There were also rumors in the press that Ellen, Paul, and Mark were being given their walking papers, though only Paul was to depart the following year.

There seemed to be few stories. The three major ones immediately preceding the strike were: Brooke and Tom working undercover to bust up the drug smuggling operation, the triangle of Erica, Brandon, and Sara Kingsley, and Palmer's attempt to keep his sterility secret from new wife Donna. The latter two stories moved at a snail's pace. It seemed as if every week Palmer threatened to sic the dogs on Daisy, who every week threatened to tell Donna that Palmer could not father a child --her threats withheld if Palmer bought The Serving Spoon for her. Over in the Brandon/Erica plot, she demanded he divorce Sara, he agreed, but then he did every thing to stall the divorce. It was all terribly boring. Once the strike happened, the only action occurred in the Tom and Brooke plot, which was unbelievably preposterous. Brooke's mother Peg turned out to be Cobra, the cold-blooded head of an international drug cartel. She murdered Manning and Tom was accused of the crime. Peg then decided to rig Tom's and Brooke's deaths in a car crash. When that went awry, she pulled a gun on them, intending to murder them herself, but there was a shootout with more deaths and injuries.

AMC had been such a good soap until that point. The double agent stuff seemed too General Hospitalish. The mix of humor, social issue, and love story that characterized the soap had evaporated, and fans were unhappy. Amazingly, it rebounded quickly in the fall of 1981 with the introduction of Jenny, Greg, Liza, and Enid. Jesse had appeared on the scene during summer while the strike was on. By 1982, AMC suddenly became the best soap on the air, earning a special and well deserved honor at the end of the year from columnist/soap journalist Jon-Michael Reed.

The only story that seemed to be affected by the strike was one involving Tad. In the spring of 1981, he was shown smoking pot in his room on a number of occasions. One night, he stole Joe's car and went out joyriding. At the time, I thought his drug habit might connect back to Peg/Cobra, but once the strike began, that story seemed to be toned down significantly. John Dunn played Tad at that point, and the following year MEK took over. Instead of drugs, sex was Tad's new interest. I do not know if the strike affected the storyline or if it the writers intended to drop it regardless.

[DRW50]

Thanks so much. I know little of this period, other than random stuff like photos of a story where Nina and Sean were held hostage in a bank and Nina almost died.

So scab writers were the ones who came up with the climax about Peg being Cobra? Or was that already in motion?