Previously On All My Children...

[I've decided to do POAMC on weekdays only. - mb]

Darlene Dahl
(Anita Santos Warner)
















Born: Hoboken, New Jersey, USA; 1 October 1975 (age 33)
Airdates: 1995-1999
Latest projects: a lot of telly - she was on NYPD Blue in 2003 in her [skimpy] knickers...and she is in the new Star Trek film.

I thought she was so pretty...and I liked her with Brian Gaskill's Bobby. Originally Darlene Tejeiro, she changed her name to "Darlene Dahl" in 1996, citing her given name's mispronoucability, and now her IMDb page gives her name as "Darlena Tejeiro". I found what must be her most current reel on YouTube.

Tabitha Redux

Who does Chuck think he is, James E. Reilly? Opal was always kooky and one could stomach her occasional "visions", but this tea leaves-reading nonsense and impending doom for Greenlee is lame! This is what Tabitha did on Passions. Nobody batted an eyelash because it was Passions. Nothing had to make sense in Harmony.

Speaking of Greenlee, someone please take all dialogue-writing privleges away from Chuck. His dialogue is paint-dry dull! Today, Greenlee told Ryan, "I want our wedding to be perfect." Duh! Greenlee would not say she wanted her wedding to be something as vanilla as "perfect". She would say she wanted her wedding to be "fantabulous", or "the spectacularest wedding in the galaxy", or, simply, "marvy".

Dr. No

Am I the only one who hates, hates, hates McKenzie Westmore as Dr. Sinclair? I could tolerate her on Passions...she's elegant and pretty and pleasant in interviews, but now that she is on AMC, she is showing how limited a range she has as an actress. Passions dialogue and scenes were fraught with so much unbelievablity and surreality that not much of the cast could pull off "good" acting...Juliet Mills, Taylor Anne Mountz, and Ben Masters (Tabitha, Kay #1, & Julian) are the only ones I can think of who truly could. As much as I liked McKenzie as Sheridan, she wasn't a terribly skilled actor, and she is still using the "Passions delivery" on AMC...still gasping and agonising her lines as if tackling such material as witchcraft, past friendships with Princess Diana, and houses being sucked into hell. I don't particularly care for Tamara Braun or her character, Reese, but she has seamlessly slid into the cast. McKenzie, conversely, sticks out as badly as when the show plucks people ripe off Broadway as day-players...the ones who still perform "50-rows deep" despite being on-camera. Both soap operas, of course, but Passions and AMC were polar opposites style-wise. A Passions actor on AMC is like Lucille Ball going on Ugly Betty...a comedienne going on a comedy, but comedy that is worlds apart. It'd be jarring and weird.

And to all a goodnight!!

Who else was ready to jump off a bridge after the "special holiday episode" of AMC, 23 December? It was dreadful! Gone are the days of warm, fuzzy, special scenes like the magic gift box of the early 00s, or Myrtle's tryst with 'Santa Claus'...sort of lame, but better than fires and fights and falling off the wagon! I loved when the show would air its Christmas episodes (and Thanksgiving, and New Year's Eve) on the actual days, instead of the "encores" they show now. This year? On Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, we got the uplifting tornado shows again! I miss the dopey mini-stories (like Santa + Myrtle), dusting off the Martin house set so everyone could gather Joe & Ruth's, the end credits set to a holiday song. Nope - this year, on the Christmas Eve Eve episode: Amanda manipulated JR into taking a drink after around 400 days of sobriety; Greenlee left Ryan, telling him they can't be together; Annie and Aidan are locked up in Oak Havenl; Kendall is in a coma and Rebecca knows this will be her last Christmas; Tad is lost in the Congo; Krystal's grief over Babe's death overcame her and she tore through her living room, destroying decorations and presents and knocking over the tree. She then stumbled off, fell and hit her head, lying unconscious as the tree caught fire on a felled candle. Thanks, Chuck! Merry Christmas!

Previously On All My Children...

Chip Zien
(Donald Steele)























Born: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA; 20 March 1947 (age 68)
Airdates: 2000, 2001
Latest projects: A lot of telly - Lipstick Jungle, CSI, Law & Order; the film United 93.

And he was on a few AMC episodes as a sleazy reporter terrorising Erica. But none of that matters!!! He was HOWARD THE DUCK! (the voice, anyway)

Bugger off, Charles Pratt Jr!

I really don't like this new head writer, Charles Pratt Jr. He seems so plucky and annoying in interviews in Soap Opera Weekly, and his writing is average at best. I miss the snappy quips of Megan McTavish...she could be outrageous, but she knew the characters and wrote them well. Everyone had his or her own voice. Now, everyone has Charles Pratt Jr's voice.

Soap operas have a reputation for being boring and trite...in the last few years (late 90s to mid 00s), there have been fresh storylines, great dialogue, truly moving monologues...even if the stories were way overdone (baby-switching...), they were written well, so nobody cared. Lately, I've rolled my eyes so many times at the boring crap we're supposed to "identify with". I don't feel anything for Randi, who has the personality of a soggy tampon. Icky analogy, but she's a hooker...she's supposed to be icky, but with all the humanising and personal journeying the writers want, we should be able to see her as a good person. It's not working. There's nothing original, interesting, or inspiring about her.

Brot shared a memory of a traditional Thanksgiving, with turkey and stuffing and cranberries and pumpkin pie! Yawn. Giving such a bad actor such a trite story was horribly painful to watch. Why go with the same old boringass crap that everyone's heard (and experienced) a million times already? They're writers! Make up something interesting, some unusual experience from Brot's past.

Annie falling into the psychosis of believing she's Emma is the biggest eye-roller of every episode. Melissa Claire Egan always gives neat, polished performances and convincingly delivers inane lines, never going to over-the-top, but this whole story is so drippy!!

Today, we met Reese's ex-fiance. He told us all about their meeting at work and falling in love. The monologue was so choppy and the actor playing Simon was so wooden that they might as well have just had the whole boring speech up like a title card in old silent movies. Who else kept yawning? On a show like 24, where the plots are so complicated and convoluted that viewers' heads would explode trying to process even more information, boring, simple character stories are good. But on a SOAP OPERA, a genre that is not truly about plots and stories, but about relationships and characters, we need to see originality, special things about characters' pasts, NEW and novel ideas that people aren't used to. If Chuck can't find his characters' voices, hearts, and true personalities (and give us interesting ones for new characters), then perhaps he should seek a new day job. And not in daytime!!!

Aggie

The 12 November episode of the show revolved around a memorial/honouring service for the victims & survivors of the Halloween tornadoes. A lady called Aggie was lurking around, clutching a book entitled All My Children. Opal discovered that Aggie was one of the founders of Pine Valley, so she must be....a ghost.

Dumbdumb "ghost" story aside, it was truly touching to see Agnes Nixon in her world that she created, interacting with her brainchildren. The last scene was so emotional for longtime fans of the show...usually, when the "creed" is recited, to make sense, it ends with "...we are all God's children". With Agnes/Aggie there, watching through the window, holding her book to her heart, she turned to us and finished it the true way: "You are all my children." It was lovely!

Don't Let Go

I was instantly mesmerised by this song from the end of the 19 November episode. Message boards were lit up with people dying to know the singer and name of the song, and finally somebody had a name: Kellie Coffey, song unreleased. She wrote on her myspace blog that the song was written for the show and she was asked to sing it. It should be available for downloading on iTunes "soon" (written around Thanksgiving). You can listen to the full version on her myspace page.

I usually don't like treacly music, but I loved this song...it was so emotional for me when I heard it. I listened to it over and over for two days (it aired on a Wednesday). Then, Friday night, I was lying on my bed listening to it, thinking about my ex-boyfriend and being weepy, when I got a text message from him after eight months of silence...he was standing outside my bedroom window, missing me and needing to see me. We had one of those "reunions" that look so melodramatic and romantic when you see them on telly. But...

...sometimes things happen like they do in soap operas.

(song begins at the 2:10 mark)

Meh

I was underwhelmed by the October 2008 tornado. The 1994 tornado was dramatic, exciting, and novel! Last year's was fancier, with the F/X and things, but I'd prefer a jet engine fan blowing around cardboard walls if the story is good. And the stories of 1994 were infinitely better.

Awhile ago, I found the 1994 tornado scenes dubbed in French on YouTube. For some reason, they dubbed over the screams as well. Make sure to watch around the 1:00 mark, when the door blows in on Tad. In the American version, he didn't make any noise. The French version adds an amusing "OOF!"

Previously On All My Children...

Every day I'll pick somebody from the past to feature on Previously On All My Children. I'll go through my favourites, then I'll have to start cracking open my All My Children coffeetable book and putting my finger on a random picture.

Esta TerBlanche
(Gillian Andrassy Lavery)
























Born: Rustenburg, NW Province, South Africa; 7 January 1973 (age 36)
Airdates: August 1997 - October 2001
Last known project: ?

I looooved her. Black shiny hair, exquisite features, so sophisticated in her speech and the way she carried herself. I don't remember Gillian's first days in Pine Valley...I was in high school and only watching sporadically...but I loved her tortured relationship with Ryan, her twisted-but-sexy dalliance with David Hayward, her sparring with Greenlee (below). She was a Hungarian princess. She was shot in the head and her heart was given to Laura English....so tragic and sad, but the show kept Gillian as a ghost for a few months. Ryan is with Greenlee now and he keeps calling her the love of his life, but really, the love of his life was his Princess.

"Oops"

So, Ryan and 20 other men were given "botched" vasectomies by a PV doctor. He and Annie storm into the clinic and demand an explanation for Annie's pregnancy. The nurse says legal notices of the doctor's error were mailed to the victims and the Laverys must not have received theirs. Sorry. And congratulations. CONGRATULATIONS? He wanted a vasectomy! You didn't want children, our doctor was an idiot and now you're saddled with that lunatic Annie's spawn. Congratulations! Parenthood is not everyone's highest goal. My "congratulations" comes once a month, though after watching the last episode of Supernanny, I'm pretty sure my tubes tied themselves.

Death In The Valley

In July, dumbdumb Annie got the honour of killing Richie. She whacked him with a flat-tyre-fixing-thing and he inexplicably flew over the hood of the car and rolled down to his death in 3 seconds.

AMC used to do dramatic, haunting exits for a leaving actor. Maria going over a cliff in the aeroplane crash, Leo flying over Miller's Falls, Chris Stamp getting shot (which I've put below), Ryan finding Michael Cambias's blue, icy body hanging in chains on a hook in a meat locker.

Recently, they've killed off major characters in majorly insulting ways - Edmund bludgeoned pointlessly with a shovel in his stable, Julia dying of a gunshot wound...remembering Noah, with whom she (and the show) made so much entertainment history with their relationship? No, she was muttering about what Kathy's favourite colour is and that Kathy- whom Julia had adopted for, like, a second and a half- only likes smooth peanut butter. The shows KNOW how invested people get in characters, especially ones who've been playing a role forever, and we don't want to see someone who brought joy to many of our days fall in a heap and flatline after eating poisoned pancakes.

I found Chris's death scene, from early 2003; I don't remember why he was shot or who that is shooting him, but his death was built up for weeks and the scene was executed very well, under the Moby song, crosscut with Edmund & Mia's panic after Maddie disappears.

Dancing With Susan

In autumn 2008, Susan Lucci competed on Dancing With The Stars, finishing sixth, but thoroughly impressive with her grace, skill and consistently good performances. She looked beautiful in all her costumes, moved well for her age (61!), and was profoundly gracious to her fans, partner, judges and rivals. Her talent is precise...too precise, perhaps. One of the judges critiqued her as being too "precious", and as lovely as she was, her fluidity was a bit too careful. Her best dances were the tango and the rumba, described as actor's dances, and if she had truly emoted her dances in addition to the near-flawless execution, she would have been even more amazing.

All of Susan's dances are on YouTube:
Cha Cha Cha - "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"
Quickstep - "To Me You're Beautiful"
Rumba - "Waiting On The World To Change"
Jive - "Why Do Fools Fall In Love"
Tango - "La Bohemia"
Hustle - "Upside Down"
Mambo - "Si Senor"
Paso Doble - "The Ride"

2008

I've been thinking about starting an All My Children blog for awhile...I'd see something on the show or read an article in Soap Opera Weekly and think of a good response or critique that should be shared with other fans. I had a "Pine Valley Bitch" section in my personal blog that I intended to update every day, but nobody ever said anything about it, so I figured why bother?

I've started 12pm today, 1 January 2009, four days before the show's 39th anniversary. I'll do a couple brief "year in review" posts of the last 12 months of the show, because anything more than that would be a huge undertaking, given that soap operas are on EVERY DAY, EVERY WEEK, EVERY MONTH. Five days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year. There are no hiatuses or "seasons" for soap operas...just year-round writing, acting, producing, editing, and airing. A lot of people (those who don't think highly of soaps, usually) don't realise how hard soap opera writers, actors, and crews truly work.

Opening

The great and the least
The weak and the strong
The rich and the poor
In sickness and health
In joy and sorrow
In tragedy and triumph
You are All My Children.

--Agnes Nixon