AMC Preview: Caleb Comes Into His Own. But What About Jack?
David collapsed and died just after Caleb finished his big speech, claiming the name Cortlandt and vowing to fight for the company. ALL MY CHILDREN’s co-head writers, David Kreizman and Donna Swajeski, filled us in on what happens next to the mountain man-turned-business tycoon, and how it impacts all of Pine Valley…especially Erica and Jack.
Soap Opera Weekly: Opal’s been on the sidelines since Palmer’s death, basically. Will she be involved with Caleb returning to the Cortlandt fold?
David Kreizman: She’ll definitely be involved; she has a real stake in how Caleb becomes integrated into this town. She really feels like Palmer sent him there, and that Caleb needs to be the Cortlandt that Palmer wanted him to be.
Donna Swajeski: She helps him go from being a Cooney to a Cortlandt.
Kreizman: And so he does; the more time he spends in town, and the more people he comes into contact with, Caleb comes to feel this responsibility more.
Swajeski: We will see oncamera the making of the patriarch: him coming out of his West Virginia “Hickville” look and feel, to much more of a Palmer-type character.
Weekly: Caleb’s also building nonbusiness relationships, right?
Kreizman: He’s started to become the patriarch to this family that’s going on here. He’s got relationships with Marissa, and Bianca and Miranda; so this guy who kind of didn’t want anything in his life now has this [unique] family gathering around him.
Weekly: What about Bianca’s mom, Erica? How is it when she returns from her pre-wedding honeymoon with Jack?
Kreizman: She’ll come back from the honeymoon in a very good place with Jack, because they’ve been together for three months and it’s been pretty easy. But when she returns and finds a very different Caleb than she left — a Caleb who now has a relationship with her daughter and her daughter’s children — and a guy who is now invested in the town, people and business, doing what Palmer hoped he would do…suddenly, it’s a whole different thing.
Swajeski: [Caleb] knocks her off her pins, again.
Kreizman: She geared up to face the guy that he was, and now it’s different.
Weekly: But what happens when Jack sees all this?
Swajeski: Jack will also be pulled into his own dilemma, into a different orbit with Krystal and [other] people. But he and Erica will be solid through this, trying to face obstacles together.
Kreizman: Jack walks back into what’s going on in Greenlee’s life: that she’s really in trouble, and he needs to help her. So this relationship built in a vacuum between Erica and Jack — it’s really been great [for them] to get away from everything, but now suddenly they’re both being pulled into these big [events]. And for Erica especially, she has to decide what her priorities are.
Weekly: Meaning, Jack or Caleb?
Kreizman: Yeah. The difference between who Jack is and who Caleb is, just seeing them together in the same room, you really sort of get what the triangle is. You know they are very different [men] who offer Erica very different things.
Weekly: Krystal has been positioned as a friend to both men. How does this affect the potential triangle?
Swajeski: She’s going to be back helping at Jack’s law firm. But [since] Marissa has started to work for Caleb, she’s really also got a stake in both men.
Kreizman: She was starting to have the beginning of feelings for him right before Jack left. Then she pushed them aside when he and Erica became so close again. And then she had a little moment where she starts to think that maybe there’s some interest from Caleb — but she realizes pretty quickly that he still is thinking about Erica and not looking to get into a relationship. So she pulls back, and they really are just friends by the time Erica and Jack return.
Conversation
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