All My Children opinion columns from 2009

Love a storyline? Want to throw the remote at the screen during others? Our Two Scoops columnists feel the same way. Each week, they provide their own commentary on the action in the Two Scoops column.

Every week, our Two Scoops columnists share their thoughts and opinions in the Two Scoops commentary columns. Those columns are archived to allow fans a chance to make sure that they've read every opinion for every week. This archive features columns written about All My Children in the calendar year.

To access columns from other years or to review columns for other soaps, please see the Related Information links at the bottom of this page to access a specific year. Or to view a listing of all years for which columns are available, simply click here.

January 5, 2009

The purpose of this column, the first one of the New Year, is to take a look at the year ahead and share some of the things that are on my wish list.

January 12, 2009

The message boards are abuzz with posts about how AMC's head writer, Charles Pratt, Jr., has "ruined" all of the Kane women. The biggest gripe seems to be how the scribe is writing for Bianca!

January 19, 2009

First, let's address the apparent gun problem in Pine Valley. Everyone seems to have a gun no more than an arm's stretch away.

January 26, 2009

A while back when I first started writing this column on a regular basis, I said how much I wanted to see Amanda get a front burner storyline. Of course, I also said that I wanted it to have to do with something other than sex. Someone over at All My Children heard me - or at least part of what I said.

February 2, 2009

The other week, I posed a question about David's tenuous safety over on the message boards. With everyone hating him, surely All My Children could have a great murder mystery on its hands if -- and I do say if -- David Hayward were to be bumped off.

February 9, 2009

So how many of you thought that Erica had really killed Greenlee during their little office chair fencing tournament?

February 16, 2009

No man really knows the lengths that women will go to in order to look good, so I am not entirely sure what Greenlee used to affix her veil to herself.

February 23, 2009

Lately, All My Children has been working overtime to undo historic firsts. A whole bunch of years ago, AMC was the first soap to write a storyline about legalized abortion. Two years back, the show undid that groundbreaking story by "unaborting" Josh Madden. Last week, Bianca and Reese were married in the first same-sex wedding in daytime history, but it was quickly undone when Bianca learned that Reese and Zach had "slept together."

March 2, 2009

This was a week to say goodbye to two Pine Valley favorites who've fallen under some intense scrutiny due to their recent storylines. Bianca left town after having her heart broken by the woman she loved. Greenlee, meanwhile, lost her life in a tragic motorcycle accident.

March 9, 2009

I love a good soap villain. They are necessary for the whole good vs. evil thing and, if well written, the villain can be downright entertaining to watch. David is just such a villain. He's all kinds of dastardly but incredibly gifted in the art of spin. He's also a brilliant doctor in a Dr. Frankenstein kind of way.

March 16, 2009

Hey everyone. I'm back after a one-week break. A lot of interesting things have happened in the past two weeks, and I thank Liz for filling in for me while I was celebrating my birthday. There isn't much to celebrate in Pine Valley lately. Families are broke, couples are breaking up, doctors are shipping off to war zones, fires are gutting mansions, women have been blinded, and... whoo. Let's take a deep breath and jump right in.

March 23, 2009

Okay, who else giggled when Reese called out Bianca's name after Zach sat down next to Reese, following her corrective eye surgery, and picked up her hand? Really? You can't tell the difference between Bianca and Zach's hands? Does that mean Zach has smooth delicate hands or that Bianca has hairy calloused ones? Hmm...I suddenly found myself wondering if Zach carried around a murse (man-purse) in which he kept a bottle of lotion so that he could regularly moisturize throughout the day.

March 30, 2009

Sometimes fans complain that what they see on-screen on All My Children doesn't fly because it's not realistic. It made me think about some of what is real and not-so-real in Pine Valley lately. I look forward to reading your emails about what you think is realistic on the show.

April 6, 2009

Sometimes when I am watching All My Children I wish I had a little sound effects panel. I surely would have hit the "cuckoo clock" button when Annie introduced Aidan to her special friend, Tori.

April 13, 2009

The new Scott Chandler, played by Adam Mayfield, arrived in Pine Valley last week. Aside from his initial scene where he popped JR in the jaw, I'm not all that interested in the character. At least not yet.

April 20, 2009

Something about Frankie's deployment to Iraq just didn't seem realistic to me. This comes just a few weeks after I praised the Hubbards for being the most realistic family in Pine Valley. First of all, Frankies seemed to get Iraq in the blink of eye. It was as if there was no travel time involved.

April 27, 2009

There were a lot of surprising character twists over the past week or so. Let's start at the top with random hook-upees Zach and Liza.

May 4, 2009

I want to like Marissa. SO far she hasn't done too much to annoy me, but her drunken Chopsticks serenade with David didn't really score any points with me. I did, however, enjoy that she liked the fact that David's home has a name.

May 11, 2009

I know many of you are ready to jump into the upcoming murder mystery, but let's handle some of the other events in Pine Valley last week -- and we'll get to that pesky murder in just a bit.

May 18, 2009

It pains me to say this, but Annie Lavery has to go. For me, the pendulum has swung back into the "dislike" direction and I just can't bear to see any more of Annie's cuckooness.

May 25, 2009

So now you all know what I've been keeping under my hat for the past four weeks. The beloved, would-never-hurt-a-fly Stuart Chandler has been tragically mowed down by an assassin's bullet.

June 1, 2009

In what police world do cops bow to the will of the local celebrity? All Erica had to do in order to get Ryan released from his cell was to tell Natalia, "I want you to bring him here immediately."

June 8, 2009

It would appear that All My Children is getting much better at writing the big, confrontational scenes. There have been several in recent weeks and they've been pretty chilling.

June 15, 2009

"Zendall" fans were no doubt overjoyed by the spontaneous liplock shared by Kendall and Zach. Are these two finally back on the road to reconciliation?

June 22, 2009

The goofy Tad seems to be fading away and a new, darker Tad is coming to light. What brought about this sudden change? I can't be certain, but I think it was the ridiculous incident with Tad tossing a dart into Liza's stomach. I do believe it scared Tad straight.

June 29, 2009

I've decided to start off my column with the part that could be dubbed the meanest. That way I'll get it out of the way and hopefully you'll forget all about it by the time you get to the end of the column.

July 6, 2009

Let's be frank. Most of the time that soaps have a ghostly vision of a dead loved one, it comes across as rather corny. I was actually touched by JR seeing Babe at her gravesite.

July 13, 2009

So many of you wrote in to ask how everyone seemed to whisk back and forth between Pine Valley and Washington, DC. So to prove that this time warp travel is possible -- and since I have extra time on my hands due to there being only four new episodes last week -- I am preparing to recreate Madison North and Zach Slater's trips in real-time for this week's column.

July 20, 2009

The new district attorney reminds me of Batman, for some reason. Maybe it's his facial features... the squinted yet strong eyes, the faint facial hair, and the ample lips. Add those physical characteristics to the somewhat halting way he speaks, and you get Batman - or maybe another superhero of your choice.

July 27, 2009

There are certain things that have become known as soap opera staples over the years. The back-from-the-dead storylines, amnesia, the dramatic organ music from the "olden" days, and the stares into the camera when something suspenseful takes place.

August 3, 2009

There was a range of highs and lows for Erica Kane this week. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the weepy scene of Erica telling Kendall how she can't live with the thought of Kendall going to jail. She needs her, she says.

August 10, 2009

It's rather hard to write a commentary column when there's a really big pink elephant sitting in the corner of the room. So after I do a quick once over of some of the highlights of last week, we'll get to the topic that's on everyone's mind. I've put a plate of peanuts out, so hopefully that will buy us some time.

August 17, 2009

The show ended with Erica asking to see her daughter... and then Kendall was revealed to be in some unknown location that was definitely not jail. The next day, however, when the show did their mini-recap thing at the top of the hour, we saw that a Kendall doppelganger was actually the one in solitary confinement.

August 24, 2009

Doesn't it seem like the residents of Pine Valley are making some really, really bad decisions of late? Okay, so they've never been the poster children of doing the right thing, but lately the show's tagline seems to be "Don't do as I say and definitely don't do as I do."

August 31, 2009

This week was an interesting week in Pine Valley. Randi discovered that being a mommy was more than rocking cute babies and cooing to them all day long.

September 7, 2009

Erica moved in with Zach, the kids, and the hidden Kendall. I'm not really a fan of the Kendall-in-a-box plot. I love that the show came up with the idea to have a Kendall doppelganger in jail instead of the real Kendall, but they haven't taken advantage of that.

September 14, 2009

All My Children has had its fair share of villains over the years. Let's see, there was Ray Gardner, Billy Clyde Tuggle, Richard Fields. I think we need to add David Hayward to the list of evildoers. He's never been the nicest of guys, but was it really that bad to dump an aphrodisiac into the punch bowl?

September 21, 2009

One of the things that I look forward to most on the soaps is a storyline that gets the entire cast together. You know, the gala balls, the costume parties, weddings, the big to-dos. Whenever the entire town gets together, you just know that some sort of mayhem will soon follow.

September 28, 2009

You know, for decades men have wondered what goes on in the women's restroom and now it suddenly makes sense why no woman wants to go to the bathroom alone. There are crazy people waiting in the stalls to jump you!

October 5, 2009

Well, the list is out. No, not the Forbes list of billionaires and how much money they lost per hour as a result of the recession. The list. We now officially know which All My Children stars are making the move to Los Angeles when the show relocates in January.

October 12, 2009

This week's All My Children must have been sponsored by the casual dining chain, Chili's. Every time Bailey popped up on screen and chattered, "I want my baby back, baby back, baby back..." I wanted to run out and get some ribs!

October 19, 2009

Okay, so I have a confession to make. I've never been arrested, though it's not necessarily for a lack of trying! So everything I am about to say is based off of conjecture, nine years of watching Murder, She Wrote, and an overactive imagination. Now that I've issued that disclaimer, let's get on with the column.

October 26, 2009

A funny thing happened on the way to me writing this column -- and it's a true story. While at a wedding over the weekend, I unwittingly ate some steak with a sauce containing lobster. Having a shellfish allergy, this could have been a pretty serious situation. I could have made it a truly soapy situation, perhaps crashing into the wedding cake, but I didn't. Things were made even more serious by the fact that Kendall was nowhere to be found with that magical cure-all chicken soup of hers.

November 2, 2009

Who knew that Zach was a closet poet? Meanwhile, Kendall, who once published a book in record time, is unable to come up with anything more than a dirty limerick.

November 9, 2009

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano and those wild horses swimming across the Chesapeake, we've come to our annual soap opera ritual: November Sweeps. That's right, folks. It's that time again when the soaps ramp up their storylines in an effort to boost their ratings.

November 16, 2009

Adam Chandler had a really rough week. He literally dropped dead at his wedding and then learned that one of his worst nightmares -- David Hayward -- was acting as Lucifer.

November 23, 2009

My Children's announced move to Los Angeles prompted a special column about what we might witness once the show settled down out west. Now, the dismissal of head writer Charles Pratt prompts another special column. It's a look back at Pratt's tenure as top scribe for AMC and the good, the bad, and everything else.

November 30, 2009

Every year at this time I like to have all of the Two Scoops columnists take a step back from some of the grumbling that takes place in the commentary columns and focus on the things for which we should all be thankful. Since this is the first year that I am writing a Thanksgiving Week column, I'm going to honor my own request.

December 7, 2009

It's seems like I've spent months lamenting the unnecessary (and unwanted) changes taking place on All My Children at the hands of head writer Charles Pratt. It wasn't such much that his story ideas were horrible as it was that he just didn't seem to follow through on anything. His announced ouster last month had AMC fans dancing in the street. Okay, that might be overstating it, but you get the idea. So how is it possible that a Pratt-penned episode has me thinking Emmy nomination?

December 14, 2009

Remember about two months ago when it was announced that Stephanie Gatschet (Madison North) was moving to Los Angeles and we wondered how the show was going to find a way to keep the murdering bad girl around? Well, last week we got our answer.

December 21, 2009

This is part one of a special two-part year-end Two Scoops showcasing the best and worst of All My Children in 2009.

December 28, 2009

This is part two of a special two-part year-end Two Scoops showcasing the best and worst of All My Children in 2009.