OK it's not technically a character, but the town of Pine Vally has almost as many quirks and lovable nuances, as well as dangers and surprises as the characters themselves. For the purposes of this post, you are going to have to suspend your disbelief in the way the show has been going recently.
I read somewhere that when Agnes Nixon conceived All My Children (hey, isn't that a current plot running now involving Kendall?), she had definite ideas about what sort of town it would be. Before the word "diversity" became a buzzword, it was being acted out on this pioneering soap opera.
Nixon didn't want the show to be about a string of upper-middle class desperate housewives, she wanted manor folk, steel mill folk, and people of all kinds, with various degrees of virtue and sin at any given time--all these kinds of people--to interact with each other and affect one another's lives.
The poem written on the inside cover of the opening theme's long-standing motif of the family photo album reads like a humanistic version of "All Things Bright And Beautiful": The Town of Pine Valley held it all. She even very maternally titled the show, "All My Children" to indicate that the characters belonged to somebody--to the Creator of all things, who also made them. Sound familiar?
Questions for discussion:
--What sorts of places in Pine Valley would you go if you lived there?
--It appears that Pine Valley and Llanview (in neighboring OLTL) share a church on a road between them. Where is the temple, mosque...?
--What do you make of the progression of weddings on the show from full-out word-for-word liturgy to promises under a banyan tree?
--Would it surprise you if a character walked in the (always unlocked) door of a neighbor's house and said, "I just got back from talking with my pastor about the lustful feelings I'm starting to have for my brother's wife's lesbian lover's ex-daughter-in-law's sister and...")
--Does Pine Valley accurately reflect any part of society you are familiar with?
--Any general absurd/humorous observations about Pine Valley?
*My list:
--No one locks their doors
--people conspire against one another within earshot of the conspiree
--Everything is within a quick walking distance to everything else, except when someone needs to have a car accident
--Most people spend all day butting into other people's business at very unlikely locations (the boathouse, the beach, this little rocky area where Greenlee fell down a hole, Leo fell over a bridge (same bridge as Tad?), Ryan leaped off (into the ocean?) from his motorcycle, and now we find out there's a vat of quicksand lying around unattended).
--Nobody cooks a meal at home anymore, nobody really works except the cops and the doctors (boy do they have the free time), but everybody eats out or has someone else cook for them.
--To my knowledge there has never been a fat person in Pine Valley.
I read somewhere that when Agnes Nixon conceived All My Children (hey, isn't that a current plot running now involving Kendall?), she had definite ideas about what sort of town it would be. Before the word "diversity" became a buzzword, it was being acted out on this pioneering soap opera.
Nixon didn't want the show to be about a string of upper-middle class desperate housewives, she wanted manor folk, steel mill folk, and people of all kinds, with various degrees of virtue and sin at any given time--all these kinds of people--to interact with each other and affect one another's lives.
The poem written on the inside cover of the opening theme's long-standing motif of the family photo album reads like a humanistic version of "All Things Bright And Beautiful": The Town of Pine Valley held it all. She even very maternally titled the show, "All My Children" to indicate that the characters belonged to somebody--to the Creator of all things, who also made them. Sound familiar?
Questions for discussion:
--What sorts of places in Pine Valley would you go if you lived there?
--It appears that Pine Valley and Llanview (in neighboring OLTL) share a church on a road between them. Where is the temple, mosque...?
--What do you make of the progression of weddings on the show from full-out word-for-word liturgy to promises under a banyan tree?
--Would it surprise you if a character walked in the (always unlocked) door of a neighbor's house and said, "I just got back from talking with my pastor about the lustful feelings I'm starting to have for my brother's wife's lesbian lover's ex-daughter-in-law's sister and...")
--Does Pine Valley accurately reflect any part of society you are familiar with?
--Any general absurd/humorous observations about Pine Valley?
*My list:
--No one locks their doors
--people conspire against one another within earshot of the conspiree
--Everything is within a quick walking distance to everything else, except when someone needs to have a car accident
--Most people spend all day butting into other people's business at very unlikely locations (the boathouse, the beach, this little rocky area where Greenlee fell down a hole, Leo fell over a bridge (same bridge as Tad?), Ryan leaped off (into the ocean?) from his motorcycle, and now we find out there's a vat of quicksand lying around unattended).
--Nobody cooks a meal at home anymore, nobody really works except the cops and the doctors (boy do they have the free time), but everybody eats out or has someone else cook for them.
--To my knowledge there has never been a fat person in Pine Valley.
