So here are my typically disorganized thoughts about watching All My Children on Pluto Canada. The first half will be talking about the mechanics and frustration of watching on Pluto for so those who know this, or are just bored by it (I know I am,) can skip to my thoughts on revisiting 1995 AMC (mostly for the first time in 30 years) in the second half.
As I’ve mentioned, this weekend due to health issues (that are on the mend) I have been mostly stuck at home. And so this was the ideal time for Pluto Canada to launch the All My Children channel for me. Yesterday, I watched all 12 episodes available basically straight through—these were episodes 6611-6622 judging from the listings, Season 25 (so 1995…) I bet someone else could find the proper original air dates but I think this is early August of that year, but it’s definitely Summer (which they mention many times—which makes it odd that we intermittently get high school scenes with new teacher Michael Delaney, but maybe they were set up as being a special Summer class as he just announced he’s been hired full time.)
First, the Pluto viewing experience is far from ideal. These are not being offered for on demand viewing like some of their programming, but rather streaming, so you have to catch them when they show them on their, not your, time. You also can not pause for anything (I did find I had to go to the store, but realized I can get Pluto on my iPhone so I just loaded it up, and listened to the parts of the episode I was missing, while shopping which worked fine.) However, keeping up with new episodes I think will be more of a challenge come Summer term when, you know, I’ll actually be teaching several courses, etc (as well as, ideally, having some sort of social life.)
The 12 episodes cycle back and repeat— Because the commercial interruptions are brief (2 minutes at most, sometimes shorter,) all twelve episodes cycle through in under 10 hours, but I can see how I’ll have to look at the schedule in advance to work out when I can try to catch the right new episode and still maintain a life… So I think since Friday they’ve cycled through 6 times, and I just turned Plkuto TV on and checked and they JUST started a new cycle back at 6611. HOWEVER, I looked at the upcoming schedule and I see that now after episode 6622 airs they are moving forward to episode 6623 (at midnight.) But, because Pluto TV is the least easy to navigate system ever, they don’t show if that means they’re going into a new 12 episode cycle, or maybe a shorter one after launch (I believe the streaming system on Plex in Europe adds 6 new episodes after 4 cycles from what I can tell from their press release.) You can only see the schedule for episodes for the next 12 or so hours.
Does that make sense? Probably not. Lord knows how this will help with any older, or just brand new to Pluto TV, AMC fans. Because really this streaming system is great for those who want to watch their fave sitcom or even un-serialized drama and just are happy to catch a random episode here or there, or maybe have it on in the background as comfort food (no judgement from me.) It is NOT a good way to re-air a soap opera. And none of the press info is telling us at all what Pluto TV is planning to do (or even a warning of just how many “cycles” we do have to catch each episode.) I’m sure there’s some much more knowledgeable fan than I am who has found a way to stream these episodes and just capture them to video to maybe eventually upload, but that’s all beyond me.
Are any members here using BeondTV (Jonathan?) Can you still buy episodes and then watch on demand or have they all gone the streaming model as well?
From the start I thought it was odd for BeondTV to choose to start airing AMC at the 1995 season when we know that in theory they have full libraries of episodes going back to just before the start of the 1980s. But I get some of the thinking behind it. For viewers who watched more of the later years, the show would be more recognizable, and they point out that the 25th anniversary season seemed a fitting start. The idiocy there though was then why not start with the first week of January, 1995, when there were all those flashback episodes with past and present characters reuniting in Ruth and Joes’ new home, which helped show or remind fans of stories from the past (as a then 14 year old viewer who started in late 1991 but was obsessed with the history—and at that time there were few chances to see any older episodes—I was in Heaven.) No matter, they decided to start in March 1995, right near the end of when headwriter Megan McTavish was seen to be becoming more and more over the top and repetitive and it was no secret that exec producer Felicia Minei Behr was going to replace her. #6513 (March 1995) was the start for BeondTV pay per view members back in September I think (with 20 episodes a month.) So I’m not sure why we started with #6611 but maybe this is what is streaming currently on Plex in Europe.
But, it’s not a bad place to start for me, since as I mentioned this is in the interim period where Hal Corley head the writing team before Lorraine Broderick would join as HW in September. Even in the dialogue, you can tell that they quite quickly wrapped up some of McTavish’s nuttier storylines (there was a hysterically random bit of dialogue from Daisy to Palmer about why he even cared about Seabone Hunkle coming back to town, and thanking God that that was all over—talk about meta writing.)
I definitely remember this Summer well when I was a teen, even though it’s funny because I remember most of the large story beats, but had, of course, forgotten so many of the details (and some of the minor storylines—man I wish the Charlie and Cecily “cyber” storyline was better than I remembered, but it’s not…) Watching 12 episodes back to back, a few things really stand out to me that I’m less aware of when I just dip into watching one or two episodes on Youtube. This isn’t always a good thing (and I get that these shows were not meant to be binged,) but more on that at the end.
I remember that by this time I was starting to read the soap opera Usenet groups—and as we know, people love to complain about what they aren’t liking more than what they do like. So poor naïve me, was always shocked to read that people were getting frustrated with his favourite soap opera even though I was a bit relieved to see others point out what I had noticed about AMC’s writing under McTavish becoming more unhinged. By now, though, I was also firmly hooked on One Life to Live which had been almost the ideal soap under Malone/Griffith/Gottlieb but by this time, mid 1995, the bloom was off the rose from what I recall… Susan Bedsow Horgan was perfectly fine as an EP but not particularly strong, it seemed, and of course Griffith was on his way out (I think to help set up Sunset Beach?) and Malone was never as good without his support, and maybe was wearing himself out anyway. The other soap I watched, was Loving which I was especially into during the 93-94 Agnes Nixon-Gothic era, and that summer was deep into the “must watch” Loving Murders. But still AMC was MY show and what I looked forward to watching the most each day.
Watching the episodes now, you really see how by the mid 2000s the scope and storytelling of soaps was vastly diminished. I guess a big part of this was that budgets started to be cut, and the number of cast members you could have each episode was similarly cut (not to mention things like actually having a suitable number of extras in classrooms and restaurants.) By 1995 I think soaps were still operating at their peak budgets.
Where this really shows in AMC is just how many storylines they have going. Jonathan Kinder, the quack doctor who exploits Erica’s accident and burgeoning pill addiction, is introduced here, but while that’s a front burner storyline, it’s only focused on in maybe 3 or 4 of the 12 episodes, just because there are so many other stories going on at the time. One that started is Janet (after McTavish had her “killed” by being struck by lightning—HA!) is found by runaway Laura and they start living with Pierce in his cabin (I liked how one person described where he lived as “you know, just past the quicksand area by Willow Lake”—oh yes, I remember the quicksand…) Pierce fits so squarely into the romance novel mode—mysterious, tormented, moody stranger who is a complete hunk, loves poetry, solitude, and nature and maybe is a bit dangerous. I think even at 14 I realized what a trope this was, and yet this storyline always really appealed to me, and still works for me (and I remember that the people on the Internet at the time HATED it.) I do have memories of the mess that the Pierce stuff would become, partly due to letting go of the actor due to some inappropriate behaviour and the character never working in recasts (even when my first movie crush, Maxwell Caulfield took over.) Other things I hadn’t thought about in a long time are that I never liked the Taylor stuff—trying to keep Noah and Julia apart—but part of my bias is I just hated the Taylor recast. So I didn’t mind it as much now, not remembering the original Taylor so clearly.
Since, as I’ve mentioned (over and over) I focused part of my MA academic work on the gay storyline of AMC at this time (which was a true umbrella storyline that, in various permutations lasted over two years) it’s interesting to see Michael Delaney introduced here. At the time, his character never registered with me until he came out (which I think we are still a few months away from,) but you see in hindsight that they were really trying to establish him as a masculine, man’s man type who Jack, Trevor, etc, all instantly see as wanting around. (And talking to Hal Corley about this, of course it was all very intentional.) And man, no wonder at that age I was so fascinated by Arlene who in the Alec/Hayley/Matteo/Arlene storyline playing out here, and particularly as played by Olivia Birkelund, comes off as a sort of coked up Tennessee Williams protagonist. I love it—her genuine love for her daughter, her psychosexual obsession with Alec, breaking into his apartment to destroy it and then spending more time rubbing his cologne and bathrobe all over her body… It shouldn’t work but it sure does.
Anyway, I could go on about each storyline, but like I said, there are a lot of stories going on. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t feel too chopped up the way sometimes soap operas will when there are too many stories without much interconnection (maybe because there still IS a lot of interconnection—no storyline feels “islanded.”) You also still have a sense that Pine Valley is not a place where only wealthy people live—even with the prominence of the Chandlers, Wildwind and the Cortlands, which we learn from how these soaps would become is not as easy to do as it should be. (OK I do wonder why Noah’s apartment looks just so dirty--c’mon and wash those walls!—but I also realize that this is how AMC’s sets for the poor characters were going at least to the early 30s—the walls look the same as the apartment in New York where Jesse and Jenny had run away to, for example…)
I’m sure as I watch more this week, I’ll have more to say. I will say, while I think Felicia Minei Behr is an amazing Exec Producer and should have never been let go from AMC, from my modern perspective there are things to her vision of the show that I don’t like as much. One thing is the show is VERY dark during this time, something that didn’t register to me as a fan who started watched in 1991 but feels at odds with AMC in the 70s and 80s and even by the late 90s when Francesca James stepped in as EP (and should have been given more of a chance…) Like I mean physically dark. So many of the scenes take place at night, or even when they aren’t night time I have to check if it’s meant to be daytime or not. This is something I associate with, for example, Conboy’s Y&R and Days of Our Lives but not so much with AMC. But I wonder if this also just speaks to the soap aesthetic in the early and mid 90s because certainly Gottlieb’s OLTL was pretty dark too (a big change from Rauch’s) and Days, whose ratings were suddenly starting to become a prob for AMC, really had this style. It just feels a bit at odds with the tone I associate with AMC, even at its most Gothic (and in the early 90s and still this era it had a lot of that.)
Again, in hindsight, while major story points are being created and made, there is some feeling of the fact that the writing team knew they were just waiting until Broderick’s contract could be finalized and she would come in as HW, but there certainly isn’t the feel of “running in place” that sometimes happens during interim soap writing regimes.
The other thing is the music. Man, I wish I could change at least half of the music (and again, I think this would have to be something to blame Behr for.) It’s WAY too constant (although there have been a few dramatic scenes without underscore which stand out dramatically for that reason—whether on purpose or not.) It’s ALL played by a synth, of course, and there were parts where it sounded like the music I was used to from playing computer adventure games at the time with their tinkly synth constant underscore—there’s a scene where Tad takes JR and Jamie camping (cue another reason to be hanging around Willow Lake!) and the synth underscore is obnoxious kiddie marching music. Argh. At the time, I don’t think I noticed this before, but it is interesting to go back and see how music was used differently in different AMC eras. In the peak early 80s, for example, it was primarily only used for transition and scene ending “stings” with so much of the show with no underscore. But here it reminds me of something I hate about Days of Our Lives but also has become over the decades a DAYS trademark, that constant doodling synth underscore throughout (I always thought with DAYS this was unavoidable because Ken Corday, going back to before he was EP in 1979, has been the show’s music head and seems to see himself as a great composer :P ) Like with the dark lights, this constant music I think was also a thing of its era (the synth sax for sexy scenes of course is emblematic of Melrose Place of the time.) So yeah, it’s interesting to go back and see that FMB definitely made style choices with her vision for AMC that I wouldn’t have.
So I look forward to sticking with it on Pluto, I just hope I find a way to not miss an episode while not having to re-arrange my schedule too much to try to catch them…
OH one note I made while watching because it was SOO strange. In the main Wildwind living room set that anyone who watched in the 90s knows by heart, there’s the oddest bit of set decoration in the corner of the room. A propped up Japanese samurai suit of armour on display. I really want to know the thinking behind this piece of set decoration (I mean it’s interesting, it just seems so weirdly specific.)
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EricMontreal22 ·
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