Do You Remember When ‘All My Children’ Had to Change a Storyline Because of a National Tragedy?
Though soaps are known for their outrageously dramatic storylines, they also often shed light on real-world issues — through the decades, soap operas have been among the first shows to deal with cutting-edge topics from cancer diagnoses to same-sex marriage. But in 1995, an All My Children storyline accidentally came too close to a recent tragedy that shocked America.
In spring of that year, All My Children developed a storyline in which Janet Green (Robin Mattson) schemed to regain custody of her infant daughter, Amanda, from her ex, Trevor (James Kiberd) by bombing his wedding to Laurel (Felicity LaFortune). Janet, who had previously tampered with Laurel’s brakes, now sought to build her own bomb.
Then came April 19, 1995 — the date of the horrific Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people. All My Children scrambled to figure out how to deal with their plot, which had gone from high drama to painfully close to real-life violence.
According to an Associated Press report from April 25, 1995, ABC publicist Sally Schoenbaum commented that “Unfortunately, these scenes were taped weeks ago and began airing this week. Today we showed Janet fumbling with the bomb, discovering she really doesn’t know how to build a bomb.”
Though some of the episodes aired as previously filmed, the show’s actors and producers decided to film statements, delivered out of character, to run before each episode that dealt with the bomb. Mattson began with a taped commentary that began, according to the Associated Press, “Hello, I’m Robin Mattson, the actress who plays Janet on All My Children. All of us were horrifeid by and deplore the violence in Oklahoma City that took so many innocent lives. Violence is never, never a way of settling differences in a civilized society. Today’s episode, in which Janet uses a bomb, was taped long before the tragic occurrence in Oklahoma City. We regret this coincidence and are certain that your concerns about the story will be allayed when you see the outcome.”
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Though we don’t know the exact plot the writers had planned before the Oklahoma City tragedy, the one that made it to air had Janet finally grasp the gravity of the situation after hearing reports of the real-life violence in Oklahoma City — at the last moment, she has a crisis of conscience, and is unable to place the bomb at the wedding.
Janet was then immediately struck by lightning — an experience that, reasonably, caused the other residents of Pine Valley to assume she was dead. But in reality, Janet simply had a near-death experience, and ended up in the woods, where she, an ex-military survivalist, and a young homeless girl began living together as a family.
Laurel was soon murdered — shot on the set of a talk show. Surprisingly, Janet was not the culprit (though, again, the people of Pine Valley reasonably assumed that she was).
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