Myrtle's Farewell

I have already gone on record with my sadness at the passage "Great Aunt Myrtle". Beyond losing the phenomenal Eileen Herlie, long-term lapsed viewers like me also lost yet another touchstone to the Pine Valley of our memories. And, along with the loss of folks like Darlene Conley (B&B's Sally Spectra), it also seems that the era of the great "broads" (meant with ultimate respect, as strong women who spoke their mind and fiercely protected their "brood") has passed.

So, of course, I would not miss her funeral for the world! In this post, I confess that I feel a bit petty for having some less than positive things to say. I have no complaint about the way Myrtle was honored per se, but I find myself reacting to the fact that I think this funeral was actually a fair demonstration of the relatively poor health of All My Children these days. It is in that "meta" sense that I offer these impressions. I apologize to those who feel AMC is doing better these days, or who loved the episode unabashedly.

Now, let me start with fulsome praise. The fact that AMC would even honor its fallen vet, in the modern era, is remarkable. For a show that just let Julia Barr disappear, this is a terrific gift. There was genuine love, too, from all of the cast members who were present. Thorsten Kaye showed every drop of his true love for Herlie, and his poem at the end was goosebump inducing. The flashbacks were a special treat.

But even as I was grateful for all this, as a lapsed viewer who just watched the "funeral" for Katherine Chancellor on "my" show (Y&R)...well...the contrasts were stunning.

Where was Dr. Joe? Where was Tad? Where was Linc Tyler? Where was granddaugther Skye Alcazar? (They explained that daughter Rae Cummings was overseas).

All in all, there was so much sparseness...in the sets used, the characters used (some of whom had little meaningful connection to Myrtle). There was only one notable return, even though most of Pine Valley has lived with Myrtle at some point.

Sadly, I have to compare this to Y&R, where no expense was spared, from a sumptuous church set, to a half dozen returning favorites (who made sense and were logically connected to Kay).

There was also a heavy handedness in the AMC treatment that I, as a non-regular viewer, didn't like. The tinkling bells everywhere. The gold-burnished fadeouts on the flashbacks. The "crystal ball" made me feel I was watching Passions, and there was no need for that device...especially one that broadcast images to both Opal and Petey simultaneously. That, sadly, purely provoked eye rolls.

In the end, as a "visiting" viewer, it was clear to me that this was a departure episode with very little integration into the larger current canvas of the show. Moreover, as a "historical" episode, apart from a few flashbacks, there was very little attempt to link Myrtle into her larger history on the show. No flashback of Lenny/Langley?

There was no greater testament of how separated today's AMC has come from its' history than when "legacy" character (I know some folks hate that term) Petey Cortland had this exchange with his mother:

Opal: She wasn't fooling anybody. This here crystal ball's the real McCoy. She had this from way back when Phoebe Wallingford pulled her out of a homeless shelter to pose as Kitty Shea's mama.

Pete: Who?

It is such a sign of how much AMC has lost its historical throughline that Petey, legimitately, could have no idea whom his mother Opal she was talking about.

Ah, but in the end, at least Myrtle was honored, and that is all that mattered. In that context, I feel petty even listing these grievances. The heart strings were duly plucked.

It is my own selfish nostalgia...wishing for an AMC of my youth... I call this wish "selfish" because I did not hold up my end of the bargain. I did not "age along" with my old show. I stopped watching some time in the 80s, so AMC doesn't owe me any historical "feel good" hour. Theirs was an episode for current viewers.

Like a real funeral with a family you no longer often see, it was nice, for an hour, to come together with my old show, and some faces I remembered, and say goodbye to that wonderful old friend. The final poem by Thorsten Kaye was a beautiful ending, and I reproduce it here with gratitude, courtesy of the TV Megasite:

Now who will lead our carnival?
And who will make us stronger?
Who will mend our broken sleep when she is here no longer?
For whose part do we stand and bow?
What stories do we tell?
And will we memorize the day when great and greatness fell?
Say will this valley overcome, and will these shadows fade?
And will we lift our eyes to see the beauty that she made?
The disappearing last of her that leads to worlds unknown
has left a path to softly tread when sadness wanders home.
I'll meet thee where the highland winds divide wild mountain tyne,
where I will be forever yours and you,
forever mine.

Great Aunt Myrtle has passed

Fair warning: I'm a melodramatic, sappy kinda guy. Nowhere is that truer than this post. I apologize in advance.

Full disclosure: As a kid, I watched waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many soaps. From birth to age six, my paternal grandmother babysat me by day, and she was an ABC fan. Not just ABC, but I definitely remember a lot of ABC in my home. When other children in the neighborhood might go out to play, my grandmother had me take my afternoon "nap". My nap took place on the sofa of her living room, while she watched her soaps and game shows. My earliest memories of this seem to include One Life to Live...I have this distinct flashbulb memory of Tommy Lee Jones in prison...but that may have been manufactured memory by clips I have since seen.

We got the Buffalo affiliate, and they really didn't start showing One Life till the mid-to-late 70s, when OLTL went to 45 minutes and shared a timeslot with General Hospital. (Do I have that right?). The stalwarts, those afternoons, were All My Children and General Hospital. My memories for that era are hazy...I was pre-school age...but I have very specific scary images of AMC's Tara Martin, upset over some romantic problem with Phillip Brent as I recall, laying down in the snow and almost freezing to death. I have memories of my grandmother RAILING against GH's Audrey Hardy, who had had a baby, and was hiding it from the father. My grandmother was just heated over that deceptive woman. I remember "Howie and Jane" from GH, and I seem to recall the death (head hit on coffee table?) of a young girl (Brooke?), and everybody being sad for a day. My narrative recollection of the shows and their storylines really doesn't set in till later in the 70s.

During this hazy era, I remember AMC fairly well. In my flashbulbs, I remember Erica fighting with her mother. I remember Phoebe calling Mona all kinds of names (for stealing the heart of Phoebe's husband Charles). I remember Kitty and Nick, and then I remember Kitty dying, and then (in what I think might have been a first for soaps?) Kitty's identical twin Kelly coming to town. I remember Margo having a facelift, and pulling some deception on her husband Paul, and Margo having a drug using mess of a daughter named Claudette, and on and on. I bet if I ever read those storylines in written summaries, it would all come back to me.

From this era, when we still had black and white TV (we didn't get our first color TV till about 1976, as I recall, a little Toshiba), I recall Myrtle Lum Fargate. As I recall her, she was initially hired by Phoebe...maybe as a scam mother to Kitty or Kelly? Anyway, what I firmly remember is that she was a character! Loud, boisterous...different from anything else on that show. She was far from young....and she was far from a sweet grandmother. I seem to recall pretty quickly she developed a fondness for Kitty, and was regretting her deceptiveness, and eventually she became a real "mama" to Kitty. I remember being so sad when Kitty died, and glad when Kelly appeared.

My memories of Myrtle come into firmer resolution later in the 70s and early 80s, after Lenny Wlasika (that's Langley Wallingford, to you!) appeared. The astute, educated professor was really a con man. His secret was revealed when ex-"carney" Myrtle spotted him...and remembered their larcenous past.

What fun! Myrtle's blackmail of Langley, getting him to do the right things, seems to have extended for years! Myrtle was a crackling life force, and the screen lit up whenever she got up to her maneuvers.

Now, that life force is gone, at least in corporeal form. Eileen Herlie has passed on.

I am absolutely a lapsed AMC viewer. I really haven't watched AMC with any regularity since at least 1983 or 1985. I have monitored from afar, but for the most part, the show never really recaptured my interest. As my life got busier and busier, my soap addiction narrowed down to healthier and healthier subset (now it is Y&R and--with disdain these days--an occasional B&B), and AMC was never compelling enough to grab me.

Let me digress for a second...but it is relevant. If you are like me, your parents at some point sold the house you grew up in. The house might still be there, but the parents aren't. Still, when you get back to your hometown, maybe you're compelled to drive past the old homestead. I am. Or maybe you lived in a town once, and moved away, but have occasion to drive past your old apartment once in a while. Anyway, if you're like me...it is not a satisfying experience. The exterior changes. The people and surrounds are different. You can't really go inside anymore. The physical place deviates more and more from how you remember it. And one day you realize that the portion of that place that is important to you lives in your mind and memories. The physical place is irrelevant, and in fact kind of interferes with the memories. If you're like me, your emotional attachment is to the way things were...not the way they are.

Well, maybe you see where I am going. AMC now is like a house I grew up in, but that I haven't lived in for 25 years. The house is no longer mine. So, I no longer even really want to live there. I've moved on.

I might feel differently if the house--AMC--had much semblance of how it used to be. But most of my touchstones--Ruth (Mary Fickett), Phil, Tara, Chuck, Phoebe, Charles, Linc, Kitty, Kelly, Mona, Erica (she's still there!)...and later Palmer (barely there), Monique, Nina, Cliff, Sybil, Greg, Jenny, Jesse and Angie (back!), Tad (well, I guess he's still there), Marion, Liza--are gone. Indeed, there has been SO much attrition from my era that going back is almost a little like visiting a cemetary...it serves as a palpable reminder of what I once had, and what no longer exists...and so rather than the few remaining veterans capturing me, they serve more as sepulchral reminders of death and loss. Not really fun.

Well, now with the passing of Myrtle, my ancestral home is even more different, less inviting. The crypt of my memories has yet another member.

This sounds like a selfish kind of mourning...and it is. It is all about my personal connection to what AMC used to be, and my sadness to have lost it. I mourn not only Ms. Herlie, and Myrtle, and all the characters of my youth...I also mourn what daytime used to be. When I was a child, I distinctly remember being MOST captivated, of all the stories, by loud drunken Phoebe and wooden stoic Charles and poor hapless Mona. Here you had a trio of sextagenarians in a bona fide (if chaste) love triangle, and it was a rip-snorting blast! Such fun to watch. Ruth Warrick and Eileen Herlie burned up the screen whenever they were on together, sparring, trading insults. It was grand, grand entertainment.

That day shall never come again. These weren't "veterans". They were HIRED as "old people", but played on the front burner! Now, soaps no longer play their vets...and they surely don't hire "old people".

It is our loss.

We shall never enjoy the sublime and unique entertainments of a woman like Eileen Herlie on daytime again.

I have written here, and elsewhere, that Y&R is really the only soap to still own my loyalty. Part of the reason is that that is a home I never left. I have watched pretty continuously since the show's debut. But, in addition, that is a home--a dramatic canvas--that still bears a strong similarity to the canvas I enjoyed 25 years ago. Same actors, same characters, same sets, same music, even some of the same historical threads. With every day that passes, I realize what a gift this continuity is...and that this, too, shall never be again.

I shall miss Eileen Herlie. I wish her great peace in her transition. Yet, in a different sense, I have this gift so beautiful it gives me goosebumps as I type this. Because Myrtle Lum Fargate shall live on for as long as I do. I will always hear that loud, deep, throaty voice and that lilting accent. I shall always remember Kitty and Kelly calling her mama. I shall always delight in her impish manipulation of Lenny/Langley. Those things truly, truly shall endure for me, and make me smile every time I think of them. For this gift, I thank you Ms. Herlie, I thank you Ms. Nixon, I thank you ABC.