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

[Vee]

You have no idea what the !@#$%^&*] I'm talking about, sit down.

[EricMontreal22]

After FX Canada's debacle I bought them all from iTunes so I'm glad I'll have them in some format (I have the first three weeks from FXCanada saved to my DVR...) but I know the feeling.

Well I agree there (though the current AMC's cliffhanger was not all that major--just lots of unresolved stories.) As great as the rumoured original ABC ending apparently was (with a Six Feet Under finale rip-opff showing all the characters in their old age, etc, or whatever) it doesn't really sound fitting for the show.

[Vee]

If this ends with us exchanging unmarked packages in a back alley at 3 AM, I'm okay with that.

[ChitHappens]

LMAO! I love it

[allmc2008]

-1

[ellabelle]

I have been saying this/asking for this for the last two years. I don't care who does it, whether it's ABC or PP or someone else. I don't want a "best of Erica Kane" or "clips from the 80s" DVD. I want full episodes, as good a quality as they have, available for purchase online. I doubt it will ever happen, but I'd happily pay to watch them, especially if they were paired with brief recaps or at least a least of who was in which episode so I'd know if I want to buy that particular episode or not.

[Khan]

Nevermind.

[JONNYSBRO]

How does Jean get in the conversation? I swear it's so funny jean probably laughs her haters as she got the big bucks head writing the number 1 soap. Anyways I believe the fans Amc deserved a finale for all the years they put in. Abc doesn't regret one second cancelling Amc. The chew is 2.5 to 2.7 million a much cheaper budget.

[Khan]

He was joking.

[Vee]

Erica didn't want happiness with Jack, though. That's why Agnes and Broderick wrote what they wrote, IMO. The essential element of Erica's character - however sad - is that she doesn't want Pine Valley, or security, or poor Jack, no matter how much she may love him. He's just never going to be enough. They could've written anything, but they wrote that for a reason.

It broke my heart but I totally understood it when I watched it - it went back to the oldest, oldest truth about Erica, and turned out to be a grace note, a very deep piece of a character that the ABC soaps - soaps in general - haven't been capable of touching upon in many, many years. Claire Labine used to understand those facets very well. And from what I can tell Y&R used to run and run on those deeply, deeply-rooted character neuroses, but in a very different way, more arch and dark. And the Erica/Jack beats were one of my favorite parts of what I felt was a fairly so-so finale for AMC on the network.

That's part of what we lose, IMO, if these shows just go back to the network lock, stock and barrel and they don't invest in new talent. I truly hope someone picks up the properties and does something with them, but even when I heard about this option last fall, pre-PP, I didn't want them recycling the same hacks. I wanted something new. Now I've seen something new - and for the first time in many years I could watch AMC, OLTL and GH together in a day and have them all look and feel different. That kind of nuance and differentiation is something both Disney and the Frons era systemically erased. But to me it felt like the future. As I told Eric - yes, I am quoting myself:

[ellabelle]

Over the years - and even during the kidnapping with Jane - it felt to me like Erica really wanted Jack to rush in and save her and be her white knight and actually play pseudo-paternal role in her life. He was there for her when Mona died, when she had a drug addiction, when she went to jail for Maddie, when Bianca had anorexia, when she dealt with alcoholism and Bianca's rape, etc. Her disfuring car accident was a rare crisis in which he didn't hover over her, offering a ton of support. Anyway, Jack was willing to play that paternal role too, to an extent, and I got the impression that he liked sweeping in and taking care of her when she was hurt or lost or scared or what have you.

The problem is that once she recovered from whatever it was, she didn't seem to want him to be that paternal savior role any longer. She wanted him to be something else entirely, and he wanted her to be something else too. I disliked a lot of MMT's writing in the mid-2000s, but I felt like she nailed certain aspects of Jack and Erica, including their desire for completely different things in life - she had Jack telling Brooke how much he loved having Sean there and all of the activity and chaos that comes with a house full of teenagers... while Erica is living in a hotel and is telling her ex-husband over (non-alcoholic) drinks that she's gotten used to living on her own and focusing on herself and her needs and that she feels like she's in danger of losing who she is. Even early on before Jack wanted a really domestic existence, he still tried to control what she did - telling her to rehire Ceara Connor or they were through, for example - but as time went on, I felt like they grew further apart in terms of what they wanted out of life.

I actually thought the Jack and Erica aspects of the finale were really good and VERY true to both characters - Erica had grown up enough to know that she didn't need to rush off to the altar for the wrong reasons, Jack had this image in his head of how it had to be, and if he couldn't have that, he was done with her and was going to storm off again, and Erica was trying to follow her dreams and find a way to compromise so she could still be with him.

[JONNYSBRO]

I think another reason investors were not interested in all my children was no Susan lucci. She had a hit primetime show.

[John]

This may be an upopular opinion but I think many investors may find SL to be kind of a joke. I mean her daytime emmy losses became a joke outside of the Daytime drama community, We fans know she's not a joke, but I doubt investors wont invest cause Susan wont do it

[Vee]

If Susan is a "joke," she's a joke that's been laughing all the way to the bank for over 40 years while most of the people mocking her have watched their credits dwindle.

I don't think the issues at PP had anything to do with Susan, or for that matter, with investors having any issues with the AMC or OLTL brand.

[cassadine1991]

Susan not being there on the canvas was noticeable but I loved seeing other characters on the forefront like Angie and Jesse and the sex trafficking storyline with Cassandra, granted tger other storylines that needed some polishing but other than that it felt like the AMC my mother always talked about and loved