The last episodes of All My Children have aired on ABC. This past weekend I caught up with the I Love Lucci marathon that was on Saturday the 17th.
The episode that aired other than the 1979 episode I already summarized were the following: January 19, 1996 when Erica was addicted to pills, December 22, 2000 when Erica is in denial over Bianca being a lesbian, December 27, 2004 when Bianca is in a coma and Erica brings her baby Miranda, and May 24, 2005 when Jack and Erica get married by a banyan tree in Florida.
In the 1996 episode, Susan Lucci’s Erica Kane was high on prescription pills. She goes off on everyone assembled as she won an award for her media job for “The Cutting Edge”, which makes me think of an ice skating flick. It was cool seeing people like Phoebe and Myrtle among the assembled guests. Erica went off on people like Dimitri (whom she was estranged from), Brooke, Maria and Liza, and told Dixie that Tad was sleeping with Liza. Michael Sabatino played Dr. Jonathan Kinder, who had given her the pills. At that point, he wasn’t evil, but eventually he was murdered. In some ways, that character was a pre-cursor to David Hayward. The other story going on was Brooke going to see Janet with Pierce, while Laura was watching little Amanda. Janet wasn’t allowed near her daughter, but Laura was giving her information, and she was in the hospital with pneumonia. Erica’s scenes reminded me of the kind of material that would happen all the time. A character gets so upset and confronts everyone in town over their ill behavior.
The 2000 episode, Erica and Bianca (Eden Riegel) fought over Bianca’s admitting her sexuality. These scenes were as much about Erica as they were Bianca and took place on Christmas Eve. At 16, Bianca could no longer lie about who she was and after Erica saw her with her first love Sarah, Erica could no longer be in denial. Jack was the one person who knew and didn’t care about his niece’s sexuality as he loved her regardless. Meanwhile, Tad was dealing with guilt over sleeping with Leslie Coulson. There was a hilarious line about how he isn’t going to leave Dixie over ten minutes of sex. That amused me for being a Christmas episode they would have something so bold. The captioning didn’t recognize Joe Martin and referred to him as man, which was kind of randomly ridiculous. In this episode, JR is much younger than Bianca. Hayley and Mateo (Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos) weren’t having a happy Christmas as she was told about how she killed her mother Arlene. Her husband Mateo, Adam, Liza and Marian all lied after the fact to protect her. Gillian and Ryan do a version of the famous Christmas story “Gift of the Magi”. She sells a cameo to give him money to follow his dream, while he sells his company and buys her a present that ends up being her cameo. That was very romantic. The end of the episode has Erica falling apart as she deals with Bianca’s sexuality after a press conference.
The 2004 episode focused on Bianca and Erica’s relationship, though Bianca spent most of the episode in a coma. Miranda had been living as Bess Chandler, and JR tried to kidnap her. Father Clarence detained him long enough for Aidan, Jack and Tad to stop him. Erica brought the baby to the hospital and gave her to Bianca, who woke up and held her child. JR went off on Adam and Stuart over his situation. Brooke confronted Krystal over Babe and Jamie leaving town together. The whole town was at the hospital hoping for a miracle for Bianca and they got it.
The 2005 episode was all about Erica and Jack getting married. The show filmed on location in Florida. The characters at the wedding outside of the officiant were Jack, Erica, Reggie, Greenlee, Lily, Bianca, Kendall and baby Miranda. It was a very small ceremony. The girls were all in yellow. Each of them gave a speech about their family. Reggie talked about Erica being fierce, and how he finally had people of his own. Greenlee talked about how she only got Jack later in life, but made up for it. Bianca told Jack that he was more than her uncle, but her father too. Kendall said she finally had a relationship with her mother. Lily being austistic spoke about how Jack made her feel more normal and got her to start speaking, while Erica allowed her to look at her blue wrap, while at a stop light making her see purple as she was sensitive to the color red. Even Miranda wanted to contribute, but since she couldn’t talk she had nothing she could add beyond being cute. At the end, Jack and Erica left on their brand new yacht.
It was interesting that they used two Christmas episodes as part of this marathon. I appreciated that SoapNet gave us these episodes to enjoy.
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