All My Children AMC: The Prospect Park Era (old production thread)

[alexisfan07]

Denyse Tontz ‏@SincerelyDenyse

About to take off for Connecticut! Wish me luck. It's gonna be a loooong flight. #AMC

I wonder what time of day the episodes will debut

[jfung79]

Wow, high praise, Errol. Way to set the bar high! If AMC is even half as good at Degrassi, it will be a huge success for me! Degrassi is an institution unto itself and a legend, remaining fresh and relevant despite its longevity, with the way it handles characterization and social issues, while maintaining an overall optimistic tone.

Hoping for more Degrassi and less Disney Channel, for sure!

As for AMC being a 30-minute soap meaning the cast is pretty much set, I agree that's probably the case. But Degrassi had 27 people in its opening credits this season, which doesn't count some parent characters who get good episodes here and there, and it doesn't even have half the number of episodes AMC will have in a year. Degrassi only runs 4 days a week in the summer. The rest of the time it is on hiatus or does one 30-minute episode a week.

Degrassi has also been multigenerational at times, particularly when Degrassi:TNG was first starting. Joey Jeremiah, Spike, and Snake had substantial story in the first few seasons of Degrassi: TNG.

[alexisfan07]

I forgot Ryan Bittle was in the first four episodes of 7th Heaven, I knew I recognized him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0G4ZR2T_QFM#t=347s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CRtUg4ZxgGY#t=34s

[DRW50]

I mostly think it's hilarious, because I remember one of their main "Cartini" apologists going on in great detail about how perfect ATWT's final weeks were, and acting as if people who were offended by the gay = death trope with Reid, or by the total lack of returns, were just plebians.

Now that Goutman is working for a company DC likely hates, since it's a threat to their hunky dreamboats, no comment is to be found defending Goutman, apparently.

[Vee]

I hated the end of ATWT.

[DRW50]

No argument there. I just wish there was some consistency with the DC agendas.

[jfung79]

Well I don't think Daytime Confidential is monolithic ... Some of their contributors may have liked ATWT's end while others didn't. Was Jamey Giddens himself cheerleading at ATWT's end? I just remember Bernard something doing so.

[DRW50]

To be honest I see it as very monolithic, which is one of the reasons I barely read the site now, but yes, it was Bernard.

[Vee]

I think Bernard was just desperate to look for a silver lining in the smoldering wreck that that show had been for years.

Looking at the episode again recently, there was some nice enough stuff. It was just very mediocre overall. My complaint was far more about the stories they'd been telling up to that point over the last year until the final day of cancellation, and then years before.

[jfung79]

Yeah, I'm still not up to the last episode of ATWT yet, but glad there are some good bits in it. I lost interest in July of 2010 because I was watching AMC (I followed David Kreizman there), so now I'm having a hard slog through these episodes to get to the end of ATWT. The return of Will and Gwen is the focus right now in what I'm watching, with Barbara missing. But it wasn't Will and Gwen, or Barbara, the show was really focused on -- it was Gwen's mom Iris. I can't believe it was a little over a month before the finale and the show was devoted to such a campy caricature and minor entity in the show's history. "Gwennie ... I've turned over a new leaf ...," she lies, ever so unconvincngly. And Barbara, kidnapped, is just talking to a clown, with a cameo appearance by a vision of James Stenbeck.

Good to see Will and Gwen back but surely they could have had another story than that.

The later Jean Passanante years were all about "villain of the month", especially when she was writing solo. Show also had a fair amount of tedious acting by performers who weren't feeling the material (Grayson McCouch the worst offender), and individual episodes and scenes were poorly structured. Episodes were virtually impossible to sit through except when written by stellar scriptwriters like Josh Griffith, or featuring energetic young actors like Mick Hazen and Billy Magnussen, or Bob and Kim who could rise about it all.

That's Chris Goutman, and that's why he can't ever run a show again. No amount of budget cut problems can excuse the disaster. The problems weren't just budgetary.

[Vee]

They were also clearly working to turn it into GL in the last few years with an increasing amount of very, very shitty location work that was just barely above the Peapack gold standard. You don't believe me, go back and look, folks.

I expected PP to force that kind of quality onto AMC and OLTL due to budget constraints, but those sets look okay so far. Who knows.

[Chris B]

Since it looks like Kristen Alderson will be doing Dancing with the Stars, I wonder what this means for Starr. Having a platform like this is even more reason to keep her in the role. I wonder if a deal has been worked out similar to Roger Howarth, but they haven't announced it yet. If she does well on DwtS, then we should get to see her filming OLTL at some point. Should be interesting.

[dragonflies]

I hope you mean classic Degrassi, not the current version

Loved classic Degrassi lol

[Cheap21]

where did that come from? I was so sure none of the OLTL stars would be doing it bc of the drama with PP. I mean it doesn't seem like things are completely settled as to where she is working. Throwing another job into the mix would only complicate things, especially one on ABC.

[frequentsoapfan]

Yep most posters on their have the same opinions