Jump to content

All My Children questionaire (please help my thesis)


EricMontreal22

Recommended Posts

  • Members

Wasn't dog boy Passanante?  Have I unfairly always blamed her for that?  Rayfield's AMC was odd--it really didn't feel like AMC and was our first taste of Frons wanting it to appeal to Sex and the City fans.  In fact when McTavish returned soon after I was welcome--for a while it felt more like the old AMC again, I remember she came in with a 4th of July picnic episode and finally it felt like Pine Valley.  We also got, briefly longer scenes again--I remember one of the last ones with Anna where she and david decide they can never get over the loss of their child that actually took up the full 8 mins between commercials--and watching with my mom who never comments on the writing or acting, usually, she actually said right after what an amazing scene she thought it was.  And yes, so many one off random characters like Laurie with no connection to the town (Lysistrata the inept marriage counsellor was kinda amusing and Rayfield didn't shy away from Lena/Bianca anyway).  But I still think the Passanante period after Nixon left as co-HW (surely Passanante wasn't her choice?) was the low point for me.  In fact, amidst rumours of being fired, Passanante left to work at ATWT and for a few months the show had no HW until Culliton came on (lots of potential, but his era for whatever reason was insanely filled with dropped plots and characters)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 70
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

Gabriel and Anna/Alex was Passanante.

 

I consider her run and Rayfield/Cascio's the absolute nadir. Passanante's was terrible and the latter did not even feel like AMC. It was the height of Frons' influence early on and it felt absolutely alien and unrecognizable - weird episodes devoted to teens with veterans randomly at the movie theater, etc. Unwatchable.

 

 

We already told you they are on YouTube. That's where they landed now that Hulu and iTunes removed them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

To be fair AMC had the guidance of Nixon (directly and later indirectly) a lot more than most soaps have under one person.  Of course her focus on the show directly came and went through the years but it doesn't seem to be until the late 90s that ABC (I think this was around when Disney bought them) started, apparently, doing things and hiring people she didn't approve of--but she still attended story meetings, etc.

In an anecdotal essay by her son-in-law who wrote dialogue for the show in 99-2001 the last time she was (co) HW, he mentions how she knew she'd be essentially retiring after that stint (Bainaca's coming out and having a gay character be connected to Erica was her big exit storyline she wanted to do) and she became less directly involved in 2001, though maintained an "Exec Story consultant" position.  She still would go to story meetings at least once a month from all reports, but of course nobody *had* to listen to her story ideas, or anything.  As mentioned it was only when Pratt came on that she was actually barred from story meetings and input (and for the final months on ABC she returned as consultant to Broderick).  Only Bill Bell really had as long a hold of his own show (though he stayed more consistently involved as HW throughout his tenure at Y&R).   

OLTL of course is another matter.  In her memoir she said she sold it to ABC in 1973 (just as she sold AMC to them kfor financial reasons five years into ITS run) though she stayed as co-HW with the great Gordon Russell who she trained from 73-75 and was overall consultant for all the ABC soaps from the late 70s to mid 80s.  But OLTL was really out of her hands by the Rauch era.  During the great Malone/Griffith early 90s to mid 90s era there's been much mention of her being consulted on stories again, and helping the novice Malone with how to write soaps, but overall it was a very different situation (which is one reason why, unfairly I think, some OLTL fans blame her and AMC for their show being "abandoned").  Of course her company did own Loving/The City throughout its run so in theory she kept the most power there, and as much as I have a soft spot for the show, that didn't really help things (although Agnes Nixon's final solo HW stint--at Loving from 93-94 was IMHO a creatively great last ditch effort to save the show and solidify it and she was official consultant on The City which, after a rough start, I thought showed a lot of promise).

I know that Prospect Park said she was a consultant on both AMC and OLTL but from all reports (interviews with the writers, etc) it sounds like again her main focus was on AMC--including writing scenes (like a funny one between Joe and Billy Clyde when Joe's actor mentioned to her that he never got any comedy scenes). 

But I really appreciated reading your experience with the show.  I suspect Nixon's soaps and AMC in particular simply appeals more to certain soap fans--as I've said elsewhere, particularly in the 1970s, much of the "old school" soap press seemed baffled by the show (especially the social storylines and even more so its humour which many of them didn't seem to understand).--though some of that seemed tobe jealousy because of the attention it was getting from the press and audiences who had not paid attention to soaps before.

I had purchased them all and they're taking up a lot of needed space on my hard drive but I can't bring myself to delete them

Please register in order to view this content

  (Yeah, yeah, I should just store them on some flashdrives or something.

Thanks for clearing up that the Gabriel and Anna/Alex mess was Passanante.  I actually completely agree with you on both counts--and yes, that [!@#$%^&*] movie theatre set!!  Under Rayfield/Cascio it really felt like some light teen soap or something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

I always suspected Evelyn was related to Kitty/Kelly but they never said so. Celia, her ward, was originally intended to be Billy Clyde's or something, but they cut all his filmed scenes talking to Evelyn about it so they were clearly in the process of rewrites. Evelyn had scenes here and there with others.

 

If you put the eps on dropbox or something please let me know. I'll download them all in an instant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

This is the kind of negative stuff I don't care for on this site. I see KMan edited his earlier post after I had read it. So I did not see that comment about them being on YouTube. Typically I do not go back and re-read posts for edited information. At any rate, all you had to do was tell me they were on YouTube without having to telling me I'd already been told this, when I hadn't been, since I hadn't read the edited post. In the future, please don't reply directly to me if you can't be nicer. Have a little more patience, be a bit kinder, or else don't bother. Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I actually kinda liked the actress playing Corinne and was interested when they kept her in Pine Valley and away from the voodoo nonsense--but they never did anything with her.  But yeah it was a mess, and from a certain writer's report, the writers were not happy with it either.  ABC even seems to have allowed them to continue with the Kevin/gay storyline (this was around his conversion therapy) only if they also increased the more outlandish storylines (though Broderick wasn't immune to those even without interference--I'm pretty sure she did the Myrtle/Santa Claus story, although to be fair that was meant to just be a cut Christmas diversion).  AMC has always been a show where a single episode has a lot of tones--comic stories, adventure stories, social issue stories all back to back, which is one thing that some critics disliked.  But that was especially apparent during this era when you'd go from the Kevin stuff to "On the run from Taylor in voodoo Jamaica-land"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Eric's been a friend for many years so I'm letting it lie for him. Next time don't spend the bulk of your past posts talking down to people or trying to police the tone of a forum you have no background with. Have a fantastic night.

 

As for the topic:

 

 

It was jarring even when I was a kid. Jamaica was so goofy and the second(?) Taylor was a cartoon. Compared to what was running on GH and even the final days of Malone's OLTL I just couldn't take it seriously.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Apparently, a good chunk of material was never used. I remember seeing a story about a location shoot involving Miranda and AJ that never aired. I believe there were scenes with Jane that were cut too. A friend who used to work in the soap industry told me in March 2013 that Miranda was slated to be a cutter but that never materialized.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Jane was supposedly in Witness Protection, IIRC.

 

Jared Kaplan from Prospect Park used to lurk here. I've thought about trying to reach out to him or others from the 2.0 shows to get access to materials for the shows - I think OLTL may have actually filmed more as well. I would kill to see bibles if they even exist; I'm not sure they do.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • One of the things that I found refreshing about Ryan's Hope when I discovered it on SoapNet was that for the most part, Delia was the only female character whose life seemed to revolve around getting and keeping a man, and it was clearly viewed as a character flaw. Because by the 2000s, I feel like fully half the female characters were obsessed with trying to snare some vacuous lunkhead. Up that to like 85% of them if we're talking Days Of Our Lives or Passions.
    • Yes, a few months before Wanda De Jesus, actually. Shortly after the Dobsons took over again, Rosa just magically reappeared as if she'd just been offscreen in the Capwell kitchen for the past four years. I just started watching this from the beginning again last year and I will agree with past posts that there really does seem to have been a reboot of sorts in January 1985. To me, it seemed like the four performers who really seemed to set the tone for the new wittier, more sophisticated direction were Nicolas Coster, Louise Sorel, Lane Davies and Judith McConnell.
    • You're right about the potential many of those stories could have had. The execution was more of an issue. Something never clicked for me in Angelique's present-day adventures - some of them I actually found very irritating due to the slanted writing and her voice being overshadowed. It took the Leviathan story for me to enjoy her in that timeline. I wish they had just left Peter/Vicki to the past and used that to inform who Vicki became when she returned, instead of bringing him back.
    • Thanks @slick jones I appreciate the interviews you share.
    • Download isn't working for me either.  With that said, thank you for all the work you have done!
    • @P.J. Well, it wasn't her first award. I am sure she has written books, and spoken at colleges, and gotten some notoriety from it. Most importantly, she is fulfilled. Something Dani is not.  @Paul Raven Exactly, it does not ring true to me. Dani has that big personality because she is masking pain. And she probably clung to Bill because he made her feel smart and important (at one point). There are ways to add more layers to her.
    • Absolutely. And IIRC Rose Alaio has mentioned production having it out for her.
    • That goes back to Chance/Abby-there was way more to explore with their marriage but the first problem that pops up that's pretty much it-moving on. And Kyle/Lola, years worth of story dropped so he can fall back in love with Summer. Sharon/Rey married off with no plans for their future so they kill him off. And so on...
    • All of that would be interesting. Why would JG ever do that?
    • GH 1976 Pt 2 Medical student Bobby Chandler’s bone-marrow test results are in, and Steve Hardy has the difficult task of telling him he has Malenkov’s Disease, a rare and fatal blood disease. Bobby, newly married Samantha, hears his one-year-maximum prognosis and insists that Steve not tell anyone, as he has to have time to work out his own feelings. To cover up the treatments he’ll be starting immediately, Bobby, with Steve, decides to tell his family he has mononucleosis. His wife and his mother, Caroline, accept this story, but attorney Lee Baldwin senses it’s much more and presses Bobby for the truth, then promising to keep Bobby’s secret. Even though Bobby moves into a state of remission, Lee realizes the gravity of the problem and moves his wedding to Caroline forward, assuring Bobby that he will always be there for both Caroline and Sammi. But Bobby’s remission is short-lived, and his symptoms are now more severe, requiring frequent whole-blood transfusions. And a new experimental drug he is taking holds the threat of serious side effects. Sammi learns that Bobby’s attempt to buy life insurance was turned down and, herself a nurse, realizes that his symptoms are more severe than mono. She tries to press Leslie for the truth, but Leslie can’t violate a patient’s confidence. She does, however, pressure Bobby to let Sammi share is with him. Bobby insists that he can’t; he won’t send her into mourning while he’s still there to watch. But Sammi, angry at being treated like a child, presses the issue and manages to find out the truth. She then asks Lee to convince Bobby that his mother must be told so they can all show him the love they have for him before it’s too late and they have only  regrets for what went unsaid. Lee agrees, and after the wedding he protectively tells Caroline the truth. Sammi then tells Bobby that she is pregnant, news that he receives with very mixed emotions. Steve hits an optimistic note when he tells Bobby that a new breakthrough in leukemia chemotherapy may help him in his fight for life. This new treatment calls for more extensive testing, and Steve is overjoyed to find that there has been a variation in Bobby’s condition which indicates that he -doesn’t have Malenkov’s Disease after all. His condition, while serious, can be successfully treated  extensive drug therapy in New York, and Lee quickly arranges for all of them to move there so they can support Bobby during the extensive treatment and long recovery.  Dr. Jim Hobart and his wife, Audrey, are continuing their therapy sessions, trying to decide if they have a future together. Audrey admits she has stayed with Jim only because he needed her while he was drinking, and he in turn admits that he knows Audrey married him not out of love but out of gratitude for saving her son Tommy’s life in surgery. When Jim finally tells Audrey that he created his own alcoholic abyss and blamed her only because she was conveniently close, she wonders what will happen to: her when he recovers. If he doesn’t need her, can she go on? Does she need so much to be needed? When Jim, improving, starts teaching at the local college, he finds his self-image improving. But Audrey, worn out from therapy, suggests that she take a short vacation alone. Jim sees this as a way of undermining his recent strides and is angry. He relates this situation to his recent impotence, caused by his emotional problems. Jim reacts to his own feelings of inadequacy by withdrawing from Audrey, treating her impersonally and coldly. She takes this as an indication of her own failure. But when Jim reacts enthusiastically to one of his students, lovely young Sally Grimes, Audrey questions her own responsibility for the situation and accepts a dinner invitation with Steve Hardy, her first husband. Steve’s reassurance that she’s been a paragon of tolerance is negated when Jim walks in late and showing signs of drinking. When she asks how he could do it, he bitterly replies, “It’s a way to help me escape from you,” and turns and leaves. He goes to Sally’s, where they make love. When Sally later expresses regret at interfering in his marriage, Jim assures her there was nothing left to spoil—his wife is frigid but has blamed their sexual failure on him; thanks to Sally, he now knows he’s not inadequate. Since Sally won’t have an affair with a married man, Jim decides to make the break with Audrey. He bit- _ terly tells her Sally proved to him that he never had a problem—all he needed was a real woman, not one who was all burned out. He scathingly says that she takes men and castrates them; cases in point, her three husbands: Steve Hardy, Tom Baldwin, and himself. Shocked and horribly hurt by his accusations, Audrey swallows sleeping pills but immediately realizes the folly of her actions and tries to get help. Steve, meanwhile, senses something wrong and on a hunch goes to her apartment, where he finds her unconscious. He rushes her to the hospital for treatment, and after sixteen hours she begins to come around. She tearfully repeats Jim’s accusations while still groggy, and Steve reassures her that nothing Jim said was in any way true. As she dozes in the security of his presence, he whispers to her, “There’s a lot of woman in you, there was and there is, my sweet, lovely Audrey.”  Nurse Beth Maynard, despite her frequent pronouncements that she’s immune to emotional involvement, has fallen in love with resident Kyle Bradley. Beth’s sister, Nurse Diana Taylor, feels that Kyle treats Beth as if she were a casual conquest, however, rather than a woman he loves. Kyle’s life is now complicated by the arrival of Nurse Kate Marshall in town. She is staying with her godmother, Jessie Brewer, R.N., while. she recovers from a painful divorce. She and Kyle had an affair a few years ago, and she knows he’s married but keeps his wife “under wraps.” Kyle, in turn, knows that the discovery of Kate’s affair with Dr. John McAllister drove his wife to suicide. Kyle and Kate resume their affair. Despite the fact that Kyle is now living with Beth, Diana has seen enough to convince her that Kyle is deceiving her sister. But Beth won’t believe this, until she sees them embracing herself. When she confronts Kate, Kate bitterly tells Beth everything past and present about herself and Kyle, including the interesting fact that he’s married. Beth, shocked and hurt, throws Kyle out, and Jessie, who overheard Kate’s vindictive diatribe to Beth, arranges her transfer to another hospital.     
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy