Today marked the 40th year that ABC soap opera All My Children has been on the air. With the dire straits the genre is in right now, reaching such a milestone is a really big deal. You would expect ABC to do it up right for their show's birthday, and it's exactly what they led us to believe. They brought back some very popular faces, including Eva La Rue (Maria Santos), Julia Barr (Brooke English), and of course Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos (Hayley and Mateo Santos). They even tracked down Taylor Miller, who last played Nina Cortlandt Warner fifteen years ago. With all of these popular characters back on set, it was expected to be one of the best anniversaries in the show's history.
Clearly, we were all wrong.
The anniversary show that aired today was an utter farce. While the format was pretty good (TV show host Hayley returned to do a Pine Valley documentary, interviewing her fellow townspeople), the actual content was a complete copout, and an insult to the show's rich, four decade history. Speaking of, you would need slow motion on your DVR to find any clips from before 2005, since they came and went so quickly they might as well have not been there. In some cases, clips were replaced with pictures of the characters and couples, making one question if the AMC producers even know where the show's archives are. What we did were lengthy recollections of head writer Charles Pratt's show-killing storylines, like the highly despised tornado of 2008 being passed off as a true Pine Valley rallying effort.
Remember all of the great returns I mentioned in the beginning? Window dressing, for the most part. Former major players like Brooke and Nina were relegated to 15 seconds or so of screentime, while JR was given at least 3 minutes to ramble about the loss of Babe. The most annoying part of it was that the originator of the role, Alexa Havins, wasn't featured at all, making us deal with random clips of the couple with the newer actress instead of the couple's best moments. It was the same deal with other re-casted roles, most notably Liza Colby, formerly played by Marcy Walker, now played by Jamie Luner. Other high profile characters missing from the show included Dimitri Marick, Grandma Kate Martin, Leo du Pres, and Anna Devane, among many others. Dixie Cooney was relegated to one mention by Tad and Palmer, while Maria's marriage to Edmund Grey was virtually ignored save for an indirect mention of her wedding. Don't even get me started about Gillian.
Amongst the dreck was some good moments. I choked up a bit as Mateo and a tearful Maria recalled their unreasonably dead sister Julia. Watching Adam trying to successfully remember his wives in chronological order was hilarious, as was Erica's dig at Brooke: "Brooke who?" The ending, where show creator Agnes Nixon recited that famous poem that the show was built on, was easily the best moment of the entire program.
Thankfully, Charles Pratt has been fired for attempted soapicide, but it is a shame that he was around long enough to leave this disappointment for fans wanting to remember the good times. A trip to YouTube would have been a better retrospective.
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