Reception
Dimitri became a popular leading man soon after his debut on All My Children in 1991 and "was prominent in some of the show's most memorable tales of that decade." The character and his portrayer, Michael Nader, were credited with lifting the Nielsen ratings as well as saving the Natalie, Trevor, and Janet storyline. In that storyline, the character Janet Green imprisons her sister Natalie in a well and masquerades as Natalie to seduce her fiance Trevor. Fans and soap opera press criticized the story. In Soap Opera Weekly, Marlena De Lacroix said, "Dimitri was the saving grace of the storyline I'd earlier called an artistic disaster: the Janet and Natalie body switch." She described Dimitri as a "cross between Rudolph Valentino's Sheik and the gothic Maxim de Winter from Rebecca." Viewers found the character "irresistible"; so much so that Soap Opera Digest questioned whether the character was a diversion from the failed storyline. All My Children's head writer Agnes Nixon denied this. "We expected to get negative mail on Janet/Nat," she said, "they don't like it but they watching."
The character gained further success with the popular Dimitri and Erica pairing. In 1993, viewers named them a supercouple, along with One Life to Live's Bo and Nora and Days of our Lives' Roman and Marlena. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed them among the top seventeen supercouples. Soap Opera Digest compared them to the real life couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton because of their tumultuous nature.
The romance between Dimitri and Finola Hughes' Alexandra Devane Marick also rose in popularity. Soap Opera Update named them the best couple of the year in 1999 for All My Children despite the fact that their love story played out through brief flashbacks. The magazine compared the couple's relationship to the television series Once and Again. Soap Opera Update also referred to them as the "break out supercouple of the year".
The Dimitri character took a darker turn in the 1997, in what Soap Opera Digest considered an effort to make Erica more sympathetic after her role in the kidnapping of the baby Maddie Grey (then known as Sonja). Soap Opera Digest praised the move in an article naming Nader Performer of the Week, saying, "Nader has been surprisingly effective as a meanie, and nothing short of brilliant taking an already complex character and making him more compelling." Soap Opera Weekly's Gabrielle Winkel expressed similar sentiments, saying, "Michael Nader is far more entertaining and compelling now that Dimitri is out for himself than when he was as Erica's devoted husband...AMC was right on target when it developed Dimitri's dark side. Nader's brooding looks and raspy voice have always given Dimitri that evil edge. Nader, though, wisely keeps Dimitri's obsessiveness sufficiently in check to make it believable." At the conclusion of the storyline Soap Opera Digest again named him Performer of the Week for "unleashing the sort of go-for-broke fury and fray that actors are usually reluctant to release unless they're certain their character is about to be killed off."
Read more about this topic: Dimitri Marick
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)