AMC is back, Baby, and almost everyone I love is coming with it.
Not only is my boyfriend, Dr. Dave, Master of Time, Space, and Dimension, coming over but almost every other person of quality. I'll use character names because, come on, you know who they are! It's Angie, Jesse, Brooke, and....omg....wait for it.
ADAM!!! Yeah, I said it- Adam Fucking Chandler. I saw a picture of him in the studio this week and screamed out loud. Right out loud, like a silly fangurl which I have to admit, I am. There he was- King of the Fucking Soap Opera Universe- David Canary. And Brooke? OMG, yeah, that'll make a girl cry.
You see AMC speaks to so much more to me than a TV show and I've gone over that so much I'm bored with it. It's the show I watched in the high chair. It's the show I watched when I went to preschool and junior high and college and grad school. It's the show I lost track of and now that I lost it, I can't believe I didn't hold on for dear life. I miss it like a great friend who was pulled away from you, but then moves back. And I couldn't be happier.
Well, I could. I could be happier if I had Tad and Jake. That would make me decidedly happier. But, I'm not THAT selfish. I loved Tad since he walked in the door and started nailing Liza and her mother. I loved Tad when he was Ted Orsini- well, maybe not, but I love him.
My favorite Tad memory has nothing to do with Tad. At University of Illinios-Urbana, 1985, Bromley Hall, there was a guy who looked a lot like Tad. Soaps were huge at the time and my friend, Stacy, would harass this poor guy mercilessly. She called him "Tad" to his face- as we didn't know his name and, well, didn't care. She'd sit in the cafeteria and wait for him to walk by and then discuss "his" behavior recently. She'd say "Tad, how could you have done that to Hilary?" and so forth. She'd outstretch her coffee cup and say "Here's to you, Tad!" I cracked up. The guy thought she was a lunatic and a bit of a stalker, which I guess she was, but I found it hysterical. She left school shortly thereafter. Don't know what happened to her but, I suppose, I don't care. She amused me at that moment and I appreciate that. We wish her well in further endeavors.
But I'll miss Tad. Although I love him enough to give MEK his time and wish him the best, I'll wait patiently. He's earned it. Besides, I know he'll be back! Tad always comes home. Dr. Joe needs him. You see, all parents need their children and all children, even as adults, still need their parents. Siblings may move on from one another and betray each other, but in the perfect world, parents are a constant. I can't wait to see Dr. Joe. I think I'll melt down right then and there. I'll applaud like a schoolgirl when I see Todd and Viki but Dr. Joe will make me a chocolatey mess.
At any rate, I hear Lucci is going on The View on Monday and I have to make sure I'm at the Nursing Home in time to see it. It will be odd. I visit my mother and my aunt in the Memory Unit before class on Monday and hearing about AMC returning with them will be bittersweet. AMC is all about them to me and losing them slowly is too heartbreaking to express.
But I'll lay on my mother's bed with her and watch Lucci announce the resurrection of the show my mother watched with me when she held me as a baby. I'll clutch onto her and she'll stroke my hair as she still does, as if I'm the baby again and in her mind, I might be. It's the moment when I can still feel my mother in there somewhere in the mess that has become her brain. Maybe it will make some headway with them to see Lucci and hear her talk about this show coming back from the dead. They sometimes remember old times and the look of recognition in their eyes makes me comforted for a moment. But it's just a moment and they're lost again. I only wish those two women who mean more to me than almost anything could come back full force like AMC will. But they can't.
I guess we can't have everything, huh? I guess we need to happy with what we can get. David and Dr. Joe and Brooke and Adam and Jesse and Angie is a good start. And a good look of disdain and hurt from Viki to a mournful, desperate Todd will be a bonus. But that's another blog for another time.
Is OLTL on yet?
I just wrote a really long response to your beautiful narrative but it wouldn't post and now it's gone! I will try again, but suffice to say this was another beautifully written piece. Thank you for demonstrating that smart and educated people think soaps matter too.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind words. I truly appreciate it.
DeleteOkay, trying again. Honestly, I think more people would comment on your blogs if it were easier to do so. We might as well be instructed to perform a few pirouettes before we are allowed to post a comment here. Okay and not to sound trite, your blog here made me laugh and cry. The college Tad look alike really had me laughing out loud (I refuse to ever write 'LOL'). We must be about the same age because when I was an undergraduate in 1985, AMC played in the lounge of our student union at twelve o'clock. Tadd the Cadd of the black pleather pants was huge! Okay, that sounded wrong--I mean that figuratively and in a collective sense. All the young men aspired to be him. Alas, unlike you, we had no befuddled looking Tadd double (or you sure that wasn't Ted Orsini?).
ReplyDeleteYou made me cry when you spoke of the link you had with AMC and your mother and aunt. Revisiting Pine Valley is akin to revisiting your mother of yesteryear when she stroked your hair when you were a child. There is a palpable connection and lost time is suddenly, albeit briefly, retrievable. This is what non soap watchers do not understand--why the sudden obliteration of Pine Valley and Llandview had an impact on our lives. It was like no longer being able to visit our old hometown. Like you, I lost touch with AMC for the last few years because it had gotten so bad that I could not watch. But I always took solace in knowing it, Pine Valley, was there. AMC was the first soap opera I ever watched, and I watched it from a highchair at my grandmother's house. My mother shunned soaps as much as she shunned I Love Lucy. It was not the young folks who interested me but the senior citizens of Pine Valley. Phoebe Tyler Wallingford fascinated me starting at about age 7 I think she reminded me of my grandmother who also boasted of fine lineage, claiming her ancestors were straight off the Mayflower while treating her daughter-in-law's like romantic rivals rather than like daughters. It was Phoebe (the name of a moon goddess) who spoke to me. With her, there was a Proustian nose gay of the senses. One could hear the clinking of the ice cubes which sang against her highball glass which comingled with the sound of Little Charlie performing cannon balls in the Tyler pool, which finally merged with the sound of Phoebe plotting yet another scheme against that "Kane woman!" or "that Donna Beck person!" Then she'd toss that head up toward the sky and cackle. She was often wearing a cheerful flowered hat.
But anyway, although I had given up on AMC, I always thought I could go back when it was ready or when I was ready. I think Burt Lancaster could swim from the Tyler pool to the Chandler pool and find home at the end of the Merrick estate, running on the blue lawns which connected the pools. Pine Valley rose up and became a real place to many of us and yet we could not tell anyone in our real lives for fear that they would laugh at us.
In any case, you are a gifted writer and have more fans than you might now.
KNOW! Not now. Damn, I need an editor.
DeleteI always make an awkward exit.
I can't call you by name as it's too long and awkward, so I'll call you 29! As we all are really 29 anyway, aren't we?
DeleteWe do sound about the same age and have a similar feel for this show. I really appreciate your kind words and you're quite a writer yourself. People don't get that these shows are about families and generations and love and life and we shared so much with them. I cherish memories more than ever now and these shows bring it all back to me.
I'm glad it touches a cord in you and I enjoyed your stories as much as you enjoyed mine. I loved hating Phoebe though. But her "Benjamin" made me love her a bit and her Mona hate- or the "Kane" woman, as you say- was wonderful. I did love Mona though.
I can't wait to see some of them again and I know you'll be there with me when it signs on.
I can't do anything with the comment feature but please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.
Rat Bastards at Blogspot!