It’s not every television series that can boast (?) of being cancelled more than once, but that’s the case with the once-perennial fixture of early afternoon viewing, All My Children. While there hasn’t been “official” official word from the show’s producers Prospect Park (at least publicly as of this writing), tweets from star Debbi Morgan (Angie Hubbard) expressing thanks to fans have been widely circulated and quoted by generally reliable sources such as Michael Fairman On Air On Soaps and retweeted by Cady McClain (Dixie Martin).
(Update: Cady McClain [always a class act, BTW] confirms via Michael Fairman.)
The cast of the “new” All My Children included many familiar faces, including original cast member Ray MacDonnell and longtime co-stars Cady McClain, Jill Larson, David Canary, Julia Barr and others. Image: Ferencomm/The Online Network.
There’s going to be a lot of snarky fan reaction on the Innerwebs in the coming days and weeks along the lines of:
- I knew it wouldn’t last.
- Why couldn’t it have been every day?
- I didn’t want to watch on Hulu.
- I couldn’t figure out how to get it on my computer, so I gave up.
- They didn’t have Erica Kane.
And here’s what I have to say about that, quoting that wonderful singer-songwriter Phoebe Kreutz — boo frickin’ hoo.
Honest to God. I’m just happy to see someone try to do something differently. I was appreciative of the opportunity, as a viewer, to meet these characters on this new canvas for a while. To have produced 43 episodes in this new format is not a loss, it’s a win. Producers are finding more and more ways to interact with audiences through the Web than they ever have before:
- Cady McClain made a cool short movie;
- Freddie Smith, Shawn Christian (DOOL) and company are making a web series;
- Indie phenom Adam Goldman is producing his second brilliant web series;
- Broadway’s Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Kate Wetherhead produce, script and star in a smart web comedy
- Kit Williamson and Van Hansis (ATWT) starred in Williamson’s exceptional web program….
I could go on and on. But to the naysayers, just remember, small, closed minds have never discovered new worlds, written great novels, played great music, developed cures for disease or launched the next life-changing app. They laughed at Edison, too, you know.
It was terrific to see folks like Cady McClain and Debbie Morgan and Darnell Williams and Jill Larson in old familiar roles — even the never-count-him-amongst-the-dead Matthew Cowles — but it was even better to watch some terrific new talent like Eric Nelsen and Denise Tontz and Rob Scott Wilson emerge and breath new life into characters whose names, but not much else, were familiar to longtime viewers.
So, again, we write the elegy — and eulogy — for Pine Valley, but we move on, figuring out what’s next and where we’ll be tomorrow and what we’ll tune into then. Something new. And different. The world still turns. Well, as it were.
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Recent Ramblings on All My Children:
One Last Word 
Pingback: Hope springs eternal | helpsaveoursoaps
Brilliantly said. As sad as I am that it won’t continue, and how that impacts in a very real way the actors, writers, producers, directors and crew, I am in awe of what they were able to accomplish. It was a gamble well played and I’m grateful they did it.