JR Chandler and Babe Carey

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Babe and J.R.

J.R. Chandler and Babe Carey are the popular J.R. and Babe or Jabe couple from the American daytime drama All My Children. J.R. Chandler is played by Jacob Young, and Babe Carey is played by Alexa Havins.

History

In 1992, after ABC executives decided that the show needed new blood, and promoted Agnes Nixon's protege Megan McTavish to the position of head writer, McTavish began adding new dimensions to the show.[1] As part of this, she created the character of Babe Carey, who first appeared in the fictional town of Pine Valley in 2003. The character was introduced as a vixen latched onto the arm of the wealthy heir to the Chandler fortune, J.R. Chandler.

When Megan McTavish and Brian Frons, president of ABC Daytime, collaborated on the storyline, their inspiration for the pairing was that of the story from two decades earlier, the Adam Chandler/Dixie Cooney/Tad Martin love triangle of the late 1980s, where Adam was set up as the roadblock antagonizing Tad and Dixie's union. McTavish and Frons originally saw Babe and Jamie as the true love couple with J.R. as the antagonist.[2]

Actor Jacob Young, portrayer of J.R., disagreed. He wanted to focus more on widening his acting range, so they began turning J.R. in a different direction, deepening the story by having J.R. not respect his father, and having many of the elements of his mother in him.[3]

Storyline

After the babyswitch drama of their son Adam Chandler III[4][5] -- usually referred to as "Little Adam" or "Little A" -- and J.R. was further confirmed as the biological father of the child,[6] J.R. and Babe divorced as a result of the betrayal. But the couple would grow closer again when Babe took the blame for J.R.'s drunken hit-and-run of Amanda Dillon. Babe was scheming J.R. at the time to steal their child away, but quickly realized that her love for J.R. had never faded.

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J.R. and Babe in a shack making love during their back-together status.

Complications arose when not too long after J.R. and Babe declared their love for each other, Babe and Little Adam were kidnapped by Janet Dillon, who made it appear as if Babe had run off with her son. J.R., angry and distraught, suffered as his trust in Babe was broken yet again. He began drinking, even resorted to holding Krystal Carey, Babe's mother, at gunpoint in order to find Babe.

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J.R holds Krystal hostage, gun in hand.

Babe, meanwhile, was very much envisioning J.R. coming to rescue her. Once out of her daydream, she stood realizing that it was all too good to be true. Babe's innocence was proven when she was rescued from Janet, and she forgave J.R. for his doubts toward her.

The two remarried. They enjoyed a blissful getaway to the south of France for their honeymoon. While there, they knew true peace. J.R. wished upon a shooting star that their romantic love for each other would never die J.R. was full of pleasant surprises during this getaway, such as speaking French, and having revealed another side of himself to Babe -- that he was quite skilled in the art of drawing. Although, he never bragged about this skill, the sketch he drew of Babe was flawless. Babe described this time as the happiest day of her life. She later wished on the same notion that their love will never die. But this great bliss between them, at least after France, was short-lived. J.R. was rocked when he discovered his long estranged mother Dixie Cooney was still very much alive. When she told him that she chose to stay away for four years and she refused to say why she had, he closed himself off from everyone, even Babe. Drinking heavily again, his feelings of being betrayed got mixed up with his suspicions of Babe, he lost control and set a trap to kill Babe in what he believed at the time was the only way to save his son from having Babe do to Little Adam what was done to him by Dixie. However, longtime best friend Kendall Hart was caught in the trap instead and fell into a coma while pregnant. Babe, while eavesdropping on a one-sided conversation J.R. was having with a coma-induced Kendall, soon discovered that J.R. had tried to murder her. She then confronted him about it.

J.R. On Trial, Verdict Mess

J.R. was arrested and put in jail. He was angry with everyone, and most definitely angry with Babe. He felt that Babe had spit on their love. Adam told J.R. that he wouldn't bail him out, thus J.R. was convinced that he was all alone at that point. His uncle Stuart Chandler paid his bail and took this angry J.R. on a tour, sort of like a take on the novel/movie A Christmas Carol...where J.R. could see how the people he loves think about him not being there, that they really do appreciate him, and therefore he has no reason not to clean up his hostile attitude. J.R. gained the knowledge that despite all the anger and pain that he'd dished out, his family still loved him, such as his brother Jamie. As for his love-life, J.R. overheard Babe tell Josh that J.R. is the love of her life, even when she was romantically with Jamie. [7]

J.R. also caught Dixie imparting words that she loved him while she blamed herself for his problems. J.R. made a decision to be upfront. He confessed to Babe about setting the trap for her, but hurting Kendall instead, and endangering her unborn baby. Babe was skeptical at the new J.R. for a while there, but J.R. was willing to go to prison for his crime. And when it seemed that J.R. would be sent to prison for ten years, Babe, persuaded by Dixie, told the courtroom that she lied about J.R.'s actions before. It was all a lie. J.R. was flabbergasted, but Babe stood by him. Even when Kendall awoke from her coma and tried to testify that J.R. had confessed while she was unconscious, it proved not enough to send J.R. to prison. J.R. was set free, while several residents of Pine Valley, Kendall as well, Erica Kane and Ryan Lavery vowed to take revenge on the duo. J.R. and Babe set out to start fresh on their romance, to make it work, no matter the loathing from other people in Pine Valley.

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J.R. and Babe work on re-building their bond.

The J.R., Babe, Josh Love Triangle

J.R. didn't expect his life to be easy after getting away with attempted murder. It wasn't. Kendall, Ryan, and Zach Slater were all after him. And Babe faced verbal smackdowns by The Women Of Fusion. J.R., having come into the knowledge on the wherabouts of his missing baby sister Kate Martin, the daughter Dixie had given up to Greg Madden years before, occupied himself with trying to find her.

In the mean time, Babe had grown close to a man by the name of Josh Madden, Greg Madden's son. One night, months after Greg Madden's death, and J.R. had promised Babe not to reveal to Josh Madden that Josh was the aborted son of Erica Kane, J.R. did it anyway, which infuriated Babe. She ran after the emotional Josh, tried to reason with him, but he snuck off into the cockpit, started the engine and took off in his plane, kidnapping Babe. Babe and Josh argued, but it all seemed pretty insignificant when they realized that the plane was out of gas, and that they were going to crash. Crash, the plane did, on a small deserted island where the two argued some more. A few intimate scenes, such as a kiss followed, but Babe refused to betray her marriage vows any further, and would not make the mistake of having sex with Josh.

That all changed when Josh and Babe grew closer, and she got the emotional intimacy she craved, leading to her one-night stand with Josh. After Josh told J.R. of this against Babe's wishes, and Babe later admitted it to J.R., J.R. went off the deep end, no matter Babe voicing that she loves J.R. more. He sought out Josh, going to Josh's hotel room while Josh was out. He gulped down an entire rack of alcohol, and was seriously drunk, hoping to brawl with Josh. Bianca found J.R. there in Josh's room instead. And despite her efforts to calm J.R. down, J.R. had revenge on his mind. But when Bianca and Erica refused to let him leave through the door in order to hurt someone, he opted for the alternative: J.R. jumped through a window and slammed into the patio below, resulting in being knocked unconscious while he bled there, on the brink of death.

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J.R. on the brink of death after his jump out of a window.

Recovering, Giving Babe Another Chance

Josh found J.R. on the ground bleeding to death. There was a slight hesitation as Josh weighed the option of saving his enemy or having Babe free to himself. Josh soon started to work to keep J.R. alive in that moment, despite their mutual hatred for each other. The work was rough but skilled, and Josh managed to save J.R.'s life. While recovering, J.R. expressed that he hated Babe, but Tad told him that the kind of love J.R. and Babe share will never fade; it's the same kind of love that Tad himself has for Dixie.

J.R. absolutely would not forgive Babe. Terrible physical agony only aided in making sure he got little sleep. Once J.R. was back home, he wanted Babe gone, but as he slowly healed, Babe used every opportunity she could to be near him, and they began to repair the damage to their marriage. Murders at Fusion started to occur, so J.R. hired a bodyguard to protect Babe...and to spy on her. He was still not as emotionally close to her again yet, but the two had begun the re-building process. That was somewhat diminished though when Babe's bodyguard told J.R. that he spotted Babe and Josh kissing on New Year's Eve. J.R. then discovered that Babe and Josh had been at the Valley Inn together with the transgender rock star Zarf/Zoe. [8] [9] J.R. thus had his suspicions that Babe and Josh were still seeing each other romantically, so J.R. called his lawyer to find out how to get full custody of Little Adam.

Babe's Almost-Death And Fake-Death

A serial killer was on the loose in Pine Valley, killing the women of Fusion. Once Babe passed on eating a stack of pancakes secretly meant for her by The Satin Slayer, and Dixie ate them instead, Tad and J.R. rushed to her bedside at P.V. hospital where she died. J.R. said an emotional goodbye to his mother, returned to her a necklace in which she adored, and cried in his wife's arms.

J.R. was beyond crushed, but rather than drinking his sorrows away, he talked about his feelings in great detail to Babe, something in which Babe had always wanted from him. Babe blamed herself for Dixie's death. J.R. assured her that he'd never wish her dead in his mother's place, but when he caught Babe and Josh kissing in a shed, he used his mother's secret to punish her: He confronted Babe with the news about Krystal's unborn baby being Tad's, and forced her to choose between custody of Little Adam or her mother's secret. Babe pled with J.R. that the kiss he witnessed her give Josh in the shed was just a goodbye kiss, and that she was still very much in love with J.R., but J.R. didn't care for such talk. Babe was devastated when J.R. verbally lashed out that she should've died instead of Dixie. His words of --

My mother died in your place! She's dead because of you... All because you couldn't eat your favorite pancake breakfast. Your stupid favorite breakfast. No, 'ruin lives'? You should be in the ground, not her! And I wish to hell you were.

-- stuck painfully on Babe's mind. In the parking garage of Chandler Enterprises, Babe's bodyguard was killed and Babe was attacked by The Satin Slayer. J.R. didn't believe that Babe had been attacked at first, thinking that it was just a ploy, like her earlier scheme of having gotten her transgender buddy Zarf/Zoe to kiss him by surprise while Babe snapped a picture of it, hoping to use that as a weapon of blackmail just moments before. J.R. quickly did realize that Babe had really been hurt by The Satin Slayer when Tad relayed it to him. J.R. rushed to P.V. Hospital, just as Babe, at that very moment, flat-lined, experiencing her life flash before her eyes; the images were of her mother, her son, and J.R., noticeably ending on a final flash where Babe is in France with J.R. looking over the balcony in what she described as the happiest day of her life. J.R. made it to the hospital a little after Krystal and Adam did, but soon after that...Babe was declared dead in the operating room... She "died" loving J.R..

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J.R. heartbroken that Babe is (supposedly) dead.

It was later revealed that although Babe was attacked by The Satin Slayer, she didn't die. Josh had saved her, with the help of Zach, Kendall, Jackson Montgomery, his grandfather Joe Martin and his father Jeff Martin. In truth, it was Zach's idea to fake Babe's death. And Jeff and Joe who saved her life by implanting a pacemaker within her heart to regulate it, but Josh got most of the credit due to his constant vigil at her bedside. To fake Babe's death, they had slowed down her heart-rate, causing her to go into a coma and then they moved her to Zach's casino. Josh pretended to skip town out of his "heart-breaking loss" of Babe.

J.R. mourned, and the serial killer was soon discovered to be Alexander Cambias, Sr., Zach's biological father. Babe stayed at Zach's casino where, through Josh's lies, she was led to believe that she was in a real hospital and that J.R. didn't care about her.

Accepting Things As They Are

By the time Babe found out everyone, including J.R., thought that she was dead, the damage had already been done to her psyche concerning how J.R. felt about her. Krystal was finally told the truth that Babe was still alive. She fainted at first news of it, but once reunited with Babe, all was well in her universe. She even let Babe know how deeply J.R. mourned Babe, but hearing that did little to wash Babe's skepticism on the matter. Babe wanted to keep her being-alive status a secret from everyone else in Pine Valley. Having listened to Josh, she felt that fleeing with Josh and snatching Little Adam was the only way that she and J.R. wouldn't continue this same love-and-hate cycle that they have, and that it was the best way for her to ensure she keep custody of Little Adam. So Krystal agreed to respect her daughter's wishes and promised to keep it a secret as well, even from her own husband...Adam.

However, Erica uncovered the truth about Babe's status and went to the Chandler mansion to inform J.R. of this. Josh was furious when he found out, but by the time he got to Babe's room, J.R. was there. Josh left the room in frustration and J.R. continued to voice to Babe how truly sorry he was for how he had treated her before her "death" and how much he wanted her back. He also guaranteed that Krystal's secret was safe with him.

Krystal, after having been pressured by Josh, but ultimately wanting Babe free from any mental weight in order to make a clear decision about J.R and Josh, made up her mind to tell the secret about her unborn child to Adam. Babe voiced that although she is in love with J.R., and always will be, sometimes love is not enough. Babe felt that a divorce and the two of them never entering into a romantic relationship with each other again is the only way to make certain that they no longer cause each other severe pain. She reasoned that being separated as lovers should give their son a better shot at a stable life not brought up in a war-zone between two bickering parents. Babe was able to get through to J.R. that a divorce is the right way to go. Joint custody of Little Adam is what both aim for now.

Cultural Impact

• When J.R. tried to murder Babe, and yet the couple was still portrayed as true loves to each other, it furthered an older debate of female characters remaining romantically linked to men who have tried to physically hurt them in the past. This certainly wasn't the first time that a character in daytime drama had tried to murder the love of his life. Alan of the couple Alan and Monica had tried the same thing with his true love, except it was several times for that particular pairing. Blogger Ben Bryant noted, "ABC in particular, has seen the unpredictable rise of 'anti-leading' men, including two wildly popular characters with rapist pasts: Anthony Geary's 'Luke Spencer' on GENERAL HOSPITAL and Roger Howarth (later Trevor St. John)'s 'Todd Manning' on ONE LIFE TO LIVE. Is it the appeal (or at least promise) of 'redemption via a good woman's love' or the age-old affinity for the 'bad boy,' that draws..." [11]

• J.R. and Babe's tempestuous romance got TV Guide's Daniel R. Coleridge to take notice. In his exclusive interview with Alexa Havins, he commented on the matter.

  Let's talk about Mrs. Babe Chandler's dysfunctional marriage. Not only has JR tried to kill her, but he verbally abuses her all the time. I can't believe she stayed with him!

  [12]

• Jacob Young's very realistic portrayal of an alcoholic battling his inner demons at a time of struggling with the fact that he'd tried to kill his wife got him and his character noticed by PRISM, in which supports productions and performances featuring the accurate depiction of drug, alcohol and tobacco use, addiction, as well as mental health. He was nominated for the 11th Annual Prism Awards under the title of "All My Children: JR's Alcoholism."[13]

Popularity

Despite J.R.'s murder attempt on Babe and Babe's tough rode with fans, the J.R. and Babe romance still remains a popular pairing in polls such as the about.com polls. [14] or the Soap Opera Digest polls when being asked if Babe's destiny lies with J.R. or Josh. However, their days of being on the same level as Zach and Kendall faded.

The storyline of Babe's "death" at one of the most animosity-filled breakups between J.R. and Babe rocked AMC fans, and was one of the biggest upsets in daytime history, but not necessarily because Babe was killed off. Dixie Cooney Martin's death by The Satin Slayer serial killer is what had most viewers in a rage. The producers of "All My Children" decided to kill off the character of Dixie in place of Babe, then toyed with the audience in the notion that "ONE'S NOT DEAD" in their ABC promos after Babe died as well. Many fans clamored in trying to find a way to save Dixie [15], but it was too late, and the audience's rage toward Babe was magnified as witnessed in such articles as Creatvity anyone? Others simply said a peaceful goodbye to the character. [16]

References

• Daily Recaps, All My Children, About.com (2005-2-18). "FRENCH CONNECTION". Karin Watkins. Retrieved 2007-5-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

• Press, associated (2006-7-17). "McTavish Faces Fury of Fans: Writer of All My Children Infuriates Fans of The Show". Jaclyn. Retrieved 2007-5-10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)

• Brian Frons.Brian Frons: Executive Musings.

• Digest, Soap Opera (2005-4-19). "Jacob Young - Young Gun". Tonya Lensch. Retrieved 2007-5-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)

• Alexa Havins - Chatter Box

• About.com The Big Baby Switch.

• TVmegasite.net. All My Children Transcript, Wednesday 5/24/06, Stuart Secretly Leads J.R. On A Spy Tour.

• TV Buzz, mediaVillage (2006-12-5). "Transgender Transitions on All My Children". Kara Rozansky. Retrieved 2007-5-12. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)

• showbuzz. 'AMC' Introducing Transgender Character

• Pipe, Soap (2007-3-23). "AMC's Havins and TVGuide.com's Coleridge tackle uncomfortable soap paradox". Ben Bryant. Retrieved 2007-5-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)

• Guide, TV (2007-2-23). "All My Children's Alexa Havins Comes Back From the Dead". Daniel R. Coleridge. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• Notes, NIDA (2000). "PRISM Awards Commend Accuracy in Drug-Issue Entertainment Programming". Barbara Shine. Retrieved 2007-5-11. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

• Nominees Nominees for 11th Annual PRISM Awards.

• Favorite couple. Favorite Couple Polls

• Two Scoops Commentary. Creativity anyone?

• Petition Spot. Save Dixie

• Bella Online. Fairwell to Dixie

External links

• SoapCentral
• Official ABC page
• youtube
• Official website

• AMC @ myabcSOAPS.com

• Pine Valley Podcast

• Soapdom: All My Children

• J.R. Chandler Quotes and Transcripts

• Babe bio

• J.R. bio