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AMC: Monday May 27, 2013 Episode Discussion


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Yesterday's episode was literally cutting back and forth between one female character being degraded and violated in just about every way possible, another female character being told she's a hard bitch who needs to stop trying to be as tough as a man and just learn how to have an orgasm, and yet another female character being publicly humiliated for exercising her legal rights over her own body. I found the combination really unpleasant, and the tone to be really off, considering one of those stories clearly aspires to be a sensitivel, pro-woman portrayal of a realistic social issue.

Is AMC adamantly pro-choice? After embarking on a sci-fi story in which a woman's legal abortion turned out not to have happened and, unbeknownst to her, her fetus was harvested and came back as an adult to turn her life upside down, I don't know that it has any credibility in that department. It might be best for this show in particular to avoid the topic altogether, honestly.

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THIS!

I wouldn't have made Damon be Tad's son.. in fact, I would have had Tad take in Damon and adopt him.. bringing it full circle since he was adopted by the Martin's as a pre-teen.. and he would turn around and do the same for a runaway.

He still could have been Hilary's son.. and perhaps bought her back to the show.. maybe even tease a potential reunion between the two.

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And I think finding the combination of the stories to be unpleasant is a fair reaction. But I also think that's a subjective experience, and I don't think it has anything to do with AMC being misogynistic, or anti-choice, or against Cara (or Cassandra, or Lea). I think Cassandra's story, while ugly, is not demeaning or titillating or exploitative - it's just real. I think Lea is being painted as Zach's equal who will and does call him on his chauvinistic BS. And I think Cara is a heroine with a soapy secret, like so many. She is involved with a troubled, dangerous man with a history of criminality who is the town pariah and sometimes says ugly things. He said one ugly thing in one moment for maximum drama - it's not about the show's POV on women or abortion.

That was many years and many different writing regimes ago. I think calling it the same thing is unfair. I also think I can point to about 10 or more examples of momentarily enraged men like David doing the same thing on other shows in isolated incidents and not being painted as right or the show's POV.

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It's not even necessarily David's view on abortion, as his even-handedness with Bianca would attest. However, this was HIS child, after all his other children died, after he believed Cara wanted a family with him, something he really wanted with her. And as much as I still want to see them together enjoying their son, Cara needed to hear those harsh words, to understand how deeply she's hurting David. If it weren't for Joe the enabler, it might have pushed her closer to telling him the truth!

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I agree. DelilaIrisFan, I am definitely pro-choice, and I hate how abortion has been something soaps have been even afraid to say (they always say terminated) in the past decade or so as they've shied away from controversial topics (well aside from rape, cuz that's a barrel of entertainment.) But in this case, I really think the context was very clear, and nobody watching in their right mind would see it as the show making a statement that abortion is murder or anything at all. If anything fans have complained that David is treated too much as a scape goat on the show in the past that anything he says the audience is meant to not take seriously (I don't agree with this belief in this past case, either, personally, I'm just stating that usually the argument is we are meant to disagree completely with what David says, which would imply the opposite view than you seem to have gotten.)

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Pratt did write that ridiculous story with Liza wanting the baby, bla bla (I don't even remember it well--how did she know Bailey?)

Anyway--at the time Broderick actually did say she was happy with her job as, I believe a prof at some college and didn't have time to HW. She was interim HW as a favour to Nixon, apparently, and then stayed on as a breakdown or associate writer (not sure which) under Swajeski and Kreizman--similar to her role currently at Days. Of course then she was announced as official HW again in 2011, everyone thought that meant rumours of AMC being canceled were fake, and a week or two later it was announced as canceled. LOL. Sigh.

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it always made sense that Jake could be Amanda's baby's father. What made no sense is that she didn't consider him. She gave birth in June, yet she and Jake broke up the previous October. Somehow it took her months after that for her to actually put her math together

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I loved the back and forth between Lea and Zach. They have phenomenal chemistry and I'm actually excited to see what happens with them next.

AJ blowing up on JR was absolutely fantastic. I'm really loving what they're doing with the character: He is very, very angry and desperate to prove he's different than the people closest to him. It's a great emotional state for a soap character lol Nelsen was very good in the scenes, although I have to say JR was somewhat not completely on his game.

I found Cara running to Joe's arms touching.

The Cassandra story has been so well plotted--I really love watching all the pieces come together. Like it was said earlier, it does its job without being misogynistic or exploitative.

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This may eventually seem silly in retrospect, but I'm not 100% sure they are doing a steroids story (although it would make sense if AJ turned to them due to his anger and resentment). I would honestly be fine if they just used the steroids as a lead-in to JR and AJ's argument.

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Yeah, it does silly in retrospect, lol. What can I say? You get burned enough, and after awhile, you're just quick to jump the old gun.

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