Ever think you're going to hate something and you wind up liking it? I certainly chortled when I heard that jail-bound Erica Kane on All My Children was going to escape from the cops during a police van crash and go on the run handcuffed to a female bank robber named…Sugar.
SomeAMC writer has to be an old movie fan. In the 1958 film The Defiant Ones, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis are prisoners on the run chained to one another. And Sugar? Darlings, how many times have we all seen Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in the comedy classic Some Like it Hot? In that one, Marilyn Monroe plays a sexy band singer named Sugar.
I have a theory about who that 1950s movie fan and All My Children writer might be...but more on that shortly.
I actually thought Erica and Sugar were quite fun together all of last week. The Rosie Perez-flavored Sugar (the character's given name is Carmen Morales) is a real shot of energy for AMC,and the debuting actress Elizabeth Rodriguez makes a refreshing acting partner for Susan Lucci. Anyone who thought Sugar was an ethnic stereotype was proven wrong when Sugar turned out to be a fully-rounded human being.
This being a soap, before the second day was over, Erica and Sugar had confided in each other about their love lives. Sugar's love, Mondo, had staged a bank robbery and left her literally holding the bag, and she's fighting mad at him. Erica told her the story of her relationship with Jack (with lots of flashbacks).
"I saw the way that man at the police station looked at you, and he really loves you," said Sugar. "Compared to him, Mondo is spit...."
Now if a soap character uses the word "spit" like that and Marlena still wants to stay tuned in, that's really saying something.
The on-the-run sequence hasn't been rollickingly funny, but at least it was an attempt at humor, something we’ve rarely seen Erica do for a long time. (Opal hardly appears anymore!) What made AMC my favorite for decades was its sense of humor, sometimes a very sophisticated sense of humor, sometimes a campy one. It's that campy humor ingeniously mixed with a still-human character that made Lucci's Erica the most popular character on soaps for decades. All hail Lucci, but Erica hasn't had the opportunity to be truly funny in her very own storyline for at least 15 years. The endless troubles of those two albatross-y daughters Bianca and Kendall!
Yes, it’s about time to freshen Erica! I think the whole storyline starting with Erica's conviction of Martha Stewart-style insider trading and her new association with Sugar is meant to give the character back her badly needed solo spotlight. And, as I read it, it may be and attempt to show why Erica became the most popular character on soaps over the earlier decades of the show. A lot of young viewers who started watching in the ’90s have no idea why the now pain-in-the-butt mini-skirted mogul momma was once daytime's Numero Uno.
That's probably why during the on-the-run sequences, Erica told Sugar the story of her life, strategically recalling many bygone eras (with lots of great flashbacks), including her early days with Jack. What a treat, since Erica’s history hasn’t been mentioned in years.
When Sugar asked her if she had ever killed a man, Erica told the early ’80s story of her accidental murder of her lover Kent Bogard. When Erica was telling the Kent story, I began thinking.…
Agnes, is that you? Who else is left at AMC, other than Lucci herself, who knows Erica's history? I began to theorize that Agnes Nixon is writing this story. After all, Nixon's greatest creation was Erica, and during her long and glorious tenure at the show’s helm, she wrote all of Erica’s stories.
Speaking of Erica and Sugar, Ms. Nixon loved to pair characters from different social strata, like grande dame Phoebe Tyler and chauffeur Benny, and former hooker Donna and doctor Chuck. Plus, she's renowned for writing ethnic/racial characters (think Jesse and Angie) who are fully-rounded human beings, not stereotypes.
Hey, didn't I fantasize back when Angie and Jesse came back to the show that Nixon was involved? Lo and behold, there were many rumors she was consulting on that story. And two weeks ago, ABC released a picture of the now 80-year-old Nixon backstage with her good friend Warren Buffet, who is guest starring again. He'll visit fellow business mogul Erica when she gets to jail.
Did the "retired" Nixon really create the Sugar and Erica story ? It's just an educated guess. But I can tell you from the many interviews I did with Nixon years ago, she's not the kind of person who would let Erica or her master soap creation AMC go down in flames if she could help it. Her will of steel--and more--is Erica's!
Read more Marlena and friends at http://www.marlenadelacroix.com.