Though the final AMC script called for a celebration, the prevailing mood emanating from the set was sad, as one of the genre's classic sagas fell victim to changing tastes and economic realities. Its 1 p.m. time slot will be filled by a food show, The Chew.
It's no longer certain that the show will gain new life on the Internet in February. Prospect Park, the production company that bought the rights to All My Children, could not come to terms with Lucci, the cast's longtime cynosure. There are reports that Prospect Park may elect to transplant just one soap to the web, the higher-rated One Life to Live, at least initially.
AMC's future isn't clear, but its writers thoughtfully left a few cliffs for their successors to hang plot lines off.
Dr. David Hayward (Vincent Irizarry) didn't reveal the identity of the other person he is bringing back from the dead. (What can I say? Soaps have always had a fatal attraction for mystical/miraculous plot twists.)
And at the very end, J.R. (Jacob Young) apparently acted on his deadly vendetta, but we couldn't see who was his target. A twist on the old Dallas trump card: Who did J.R. shoot? Nice.
There were a few attempts to evoke the storied heritage of the show. At one point in the episode schoolchildren were rehearsing this poem for an assembly:
"The great and the least
The rich and the poor,
The weak and the strong,
In sickness and in health,
In joy and sorrow,
In tragedy and triumph,
You are All My Children."
That was the credo written by the soap's creator, Agnes Nixon, when she was conceiving the program. (Full disclosure: Mrs. Nixon is my mother-in-law. I briefly wrote for All My Children.)
