Farewell All My Children
Every day during my freshman year in college, 12 noon marked a magic time. A huge group of us would crowd into a friend’s room in our dorm and watch All My Children. I’d never seen it before I went to college, and haven’t watched it on a regular basis since then. Still, I felt sad when I heard that the show had been cancelled after a 40-year run on TV.
I’ve watched AMC a few times a month since college, and have caught some information about characters and plot lines online, but that’s about it. In a fit of nostalgia I decided to record the last week of AMC, and I have to say I’m glad I did. There were some wonderful montages of various characters and activities spanning the entire 40 years of the show. There was also a plot where people previously thought dead (Stuart, Zach, Dixie) were actually being treated by a doctor and were reintroduced.
Some of my favorite characters had happy moments in the last week. Angie and Jessie were surrounded by family and friends, as were Tad and Dixie. Jenny didn’t come back to life (I suspect she died before the miracle doctor was born) but was featured prominently in several flashbacks with Greg.
There were also some very funny moments, including a brief guest appearance by Sarah Michelle Gellar, who at one time played Kendall Hart (Erica’s daughter). In one of the last episodes she briefly played a patient brought into the hospital. As a patient, she swears she’s Erica Kane’s daughter and that she “sees vampires.” When a doctor nods and tells her that yes, vampires are quite trendy, Sarah Michelle Gellar responds that she saw them “before they were trendy.”
I didn’t even know that Dr. Joe Martin and his wife had moved from Pine Valley, so was happy that at the end they moved back and were there for the big closing party everyone in town attended. I guess it was appropriate that some of the last lines of the show were by Erica Kane (played by Susan Lucci). Her character was on since the beginning, and has definitely been at the center of much of the show. I’ve never been a fan, so wasn’t particularly interested.
I’ve read that some people are very upset with the ending. Instead of a final soapy toast, we had the brooding JR hidden in a closet with a gun. After a gun shot, the screen went blank. So instead of that long-ago famous cliffhanger of “Who shot JR?” we instead have a cliffhanger of “Who did JR shoot?” The problem is, fans aren’t certain when they’ll find out the answer.
Although it’s been picked up by Prospect Park as an online show, things seem a bit shaky in that regard. A number of the stars have refused to sign, and Prospect Park is first going to emphasize One Life to Live, also cancelled by ABC. OLTL has had much higher ratings in recent months, and many of its stars have indicated they’ll go with the show online.
Did you ever watch AMC? If so, who were your favorite characters?
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Nice memories, Missie. The Chew, a food talk show with a couple relatively well-known food personalities is starting in AMC’s place. Soap fans, of course, are boycotting :)
I never watched AMC, though I worked with a woman who always watched it as she ate her lunch. I think I heard that Carol Burnett did the same — she always had her lunch hour when AMC was on.
I’ve never been much of a soap person, but that said, I used to watch “Guiding Light,” which was also cancelled. I began watching it when I was 14 — there was an elderly couple who lived across the hall from my mom and me, and they “adopted” me as their grand-daughter. The gent was in poor health and passed the time watching soaps, and his favorite was “Guiding Light” — he told me he first started watching it because it had a trial going as one of the plot lines, and he enjoyed watching trials. So I would sometimes sit and watch with him, and I watched it off and on ever after in happy memory of him. I especially enjoyed watching it during the fall & winter holidays — Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas (GL would always have Santa appear and do something magical at Christmas), New Year’s, Valentine’s Day…as I enjoyed how they decorated the sets and dressed the characters.
I hadn’t heard about the possibility of AMC — or OLTL — continuing on line. That’s interesting.
I do wonder what show will be put on in its place. Heaven knows we’ve more than enough talk shows and such already. *sigh*